"I hope you'll take it, because I've been keeping it for you ever since I saw you last."
Tom's eyes opened wide. "Over three years?"
"Oh, there was no hurry. Easy enough to save it. I want you to be one of the assistants to my own confidential secretary. This will keep you close to myself, which is where I want to have you for the first year at least. You'll get the hang of a lot of things there, and anything you don't understand I can explain to you. Later, if you want to go into the study of banking more scientifically—well, I shall be able to direct you."
He sat dazzled, speechless. It was the future!—Hildred!—happiness!—honor!—the big life!—the conquest of the world! He could have them all by sitting still, by saying nothing, by letting it be implied that he renounced his loyalties, by being passive in the hand of this goodwill. He would be a fool, he told himself, not to yield to it. Everyone in his senses would consider him a fool. The father of the Whitelaw baby believed that he had found his child. Why not let him believe it? How did he, Tom Whitelaw, know that he wasn't his child? The woman who had told him he was never to think so was dead and in her grave. Judged by all reasonable standards, he owed her nothing but a training in wicked ways. He would give her up. He would admit, tacitly anyhow, even if not in words, that she had stolen him. He would be grateful to this man—and profit by his mistake.
He began to speak. "I hardly know how to thank you, sir, for so much kindness. I only hope—" He was trying to find the words in which to express his ambition to prove worthy of this trust, but he found himself saying something else—"I only hope that you're not doing all this for me because you think I'm—I'm your son."
Leaning toward him, the banker put his hand on his knee. "Suppose we don't bring that up just yet? Suppose we just—go on? As a matter of fact—I'm talking to you quite frankly—more frankly than I could speak to anyone else in the world—but as a matter of fact I—I want some one who'll—who'll be like a son to me—whether he's my son or not. I wonder if you're old enough to understand."
"I think I am, sir."
"I'm rather a lonely man. I've got great cares, great responsibilities. I can swing them all right. There are my partners, fine fellows all of them; there are as many friends as I can ask for. But I've nobody who comes—who comes very close to me—as a son could come. I've thought—I've thought it for some time past—that—whoever you are—you might do that."
As he leaned with his hand on Tom's knee his eyes were lower than Tom's own. Tom looked down into them. It was strange to him that this man who held so much of the world in his grasp should be speaking to him almost pleadingly. His memories filed by him with the speed and distinctness of lightning. He was the little boy moving from tenement to tenement; he was in the big shop on that Christmas Eve; he was walking with his mother in front of the policeman; he was watching her go away with the woman who was like a Fate; he was staring at the Christmas Tree; he was being pelted on his first day at school; he was picking strawberries for the Quidmores; he was sleeping in the same room with Honey; he was acting as chauffeur at the inn-club in Dublin, New Hampshire, and picking up this very man at Keene. And here they were together, the instinct of the father calling to the son, while the instinct of the son was scarcely, if at all, articulate.
The struggle was between his future and his past. "I must be his son," he cried to himself. But another voice cried, "And yet I can't be." Aloud he said, modestly, "I'm not sure, sir, that I could fill the bill for you."