CHAPTER XXXI

THE MOVING FINGER CONTINUES TO WRITE

Having read and reread the boy’s letter Doctor Holiday sat long with it in his hand staring into the fire.  Poor Teddy for whom life had hitherto been one grand and glorious festival!  He was getting the other, the seamy side of things, at last with a vengeance.  Knowing with the sure intuition of love how deeply the boy was suffering and how sincerely he repented his blunders the doctor felt far more compassion than condemnation for his nephew.  The fineness and the folly of the thing were so inextricably confused that there was little use trying to separate the two even if he had cared to judge the lad which he did not, being content with the boy’s own judgment of himself.  Bad as the gambling business was and deeply as he regretted the expulsion from college the doctor could not help seeing that there was some extenuation for Ted’s conduct, that he had in the main kept faith with himself, paid generously, far more than he owed, and traveling through the fiery furnace had somehow managed to come out unscathed, his soul intact.  After all could one ask much more?

It was considerably harder for Larry to accept the situation philosophically than it was for the senior doctor’s more tolerant and mature mind.  Larry loved Ted as he loved no one else in the world not perhaps even excepting Ruth.  But he loved the Holiday name too with a fine, high pride and it was a bitter dose to swallow to have his younger brother “catapulted in disgrace,” as Ted himself put it, out of the college which he himself so loved and honored.  He was inclined to resent what looked in retrospect as entirely unnecessary and uncalled for generosity on Ted’s part.

“Nobody but Ted would ever have thought of doing such a fool thing,” he groaned.  “Why didn’t he pull out in the first place as Hendricks wanted him to?  He would have been entirely justified.”

But the older man smiled and shook his head.

“Some people could have done it, not Ted,” he said.  “Ted isn’t built that way.  He never deserted anybody in trouble in his life.  I don’t believe he ever will.  We can’t expect him to have behaved differently in this one affair just because we would have liked it better so.  I am not sure but we would be wrong and he right in any case.”

“Maybe.  But it is a horrible mess.  I can’t get over the injustice of the poor kid’s paying so hard when he was just trying to do the decent, hard, right thing.”

“You have it less straight than Ted has, Larry.  He knows he is paying not for what he did and thought right but for what he did and knew was wrong.  You can’t feel worse than I do about it.  I would give anything I have to save Ted from the torture he is going through, has been going through alone for days.  But I would rather he learned his lesson thoroughly now, suffering more than he deserves than have him suffer too little and fall worse next time.  No matter how badly we feel for him I think it is up to us not to try to dilute his penitence and to leave a generous share of the blame where he puts it himself—­on his own shoulders.”