He was on his feet now and had his arm around Adam’s shoulder. “Couldn’t you trust me, Old Gentleman? Don’t you know how close you are to me? Did you think I wouldn’t understand? What you tell me about your leaving her is no surprise. You wouldn’t—you couldn’t do anything else. That’s because you are a man and a gentleman. You are doing such things every day of your life; that’s why everybody loves you. As to what you want me to do, don’t say any more to me”—the tears he was hiding were choking him. “Let me go home. What you have told me of my mother, of yourself—everything has knocked me out. My judgment has gone—I must think it all over. I know every word you have said about the loan is true; but I haven’t told you all. The situation is worse than you think. Everything depends on it—Madeleine—her father—all of us. If I could have found some other plan—if you had only talked to me this way before. But I’ve promised them all—they expect it. No! Don’t speak to me. Don’t say another word. Let me go home.” And he flung himself from the room.
Adam sat still. The confession had wrung his soul; the pain seemed unbearable. What the outcome would be God only knew. With a quick movement, as if seeking relief, he rose to his feet and walked to the portrait. Then lifting his hands above his head with the movement of a despairing suppliant before the Madonna he cried out:
“Help him, my beloved. Help him as you did me.”
IX
At the offices of Philip Colton & Co., just off Wall Street, an unusual stir was apparent—an air of expectancy seemed to pervade everything. The cashier had arrived at his desk half an hour earlier than usual, and so had the stock clerk and the two book-keepers. This had been in accordance with Mr. Colton’s instructions the night before, and they had been carried out to the minute. The papers in the big copper loan, he had told the stock clerk, were to be signed at half-past eleven o’clock the next morning, and he wanted all the business of the preceding day cleaned up and out of the way before the new deal went through. This accomplished, he said to himself, Mr. Eggleston would be able to retire a part if not all of his special capital, and his dear Madeleine, to quote a morning journal, find a place by the side of “one of the bright young financiers of our time.”
Mr. Eggleston, in tan-colored waistcoat, white gaiters and shiny silk hat, a gold-headed cane in one hand—the embodiment of a prosperous man of affairs—also arrived half an hour earlier—ten o’clock, really, an event that caused some astonishment, for not twice in the whole year had the special partner reached his son’s office so early in the day.
Young Eggleston reached his desk a few minutes after his father. His dress was as costly as his progenitor’s, but a trifle more insistent. The waistcoat was speckled with red; the scarf a brilliant scarlet decorated with a horseshoe set in diamonds, and the shoes patent leather. He was one size smaller than his father and had one-tenth of his brains. With regard to every other measurement, however, there was not the slightest doubt but that in a few years he would equal his distinguished father’s outlines, a fact already discernible in his middle distance. In looking around for the missing nine-tenths of gray matter his father had found it under Philip Colton’s hat, and the formation of the firm, with himself as special and his son as junior, had been the result.