“Well?—beyond that, what, son?”
“It sounds rather stagy, but I’m going to say it. Beyond what money payment we may be able to make, we shall owe Mr. Grillage a debt of gratitude that will be canceled only when we are both under the sod. That is about the way it strikes me. I don’t care what people say about his business methods and the way he rides rough-shod over his competitors; that doesn’t cut any figure in his relations with you. He has done this thing for you, individually, and I don’t come even into the outer edges of it; just the same, he has laid an obligation upon me that I shall never live long enough to forget.”
For a long minute Adam Vallory sat staring into vacancy. When he looked up it was to say: “You are bone of my bone, David, and I thank God for a son who can see eye to eye with me at a time like this. And yet ... you are young, David; in many ways you are younger than your years. You are maturing slowly, just as I did. Sometimes I’ve been afraid—afraid you might throw yourself into something as a boy throws himself, without reserve, you know; blind to everything but the one thing, whatever it might be. If you can only have time to ripen——”
David’s laugh was entirely care free. “That was the way you talked when I went to college, Dad, and again, when I left for Florida. I haven’t noticed that I’m particularly raw, compared with other men.”
“It isn’t that,” the father hastened to say, “it’s just that, up to to-day, you’ve never had to shoulder a man’s load. Perhaps I am foolishly apprehensive, but the way in which you spoke just now of our obligation—your obligation—to Eben Grillage.... I don’t know how to express it, but it made me feel as I have sometimes felt before; that if anything which you might conceive to be a duty were pushing you, you’d shut your eyes and go to any length.”
David laughed and shook his head. “Some day, Dad, you’ll wake up and find that I’m a man grown; or I hope you will. Just the same, we do owe Mr. Grillage a lot more than we can ever pay, and if it ever comes in my way to chop the debt down a bit, you may be sure I’ll sharpen my axe. Now, if you are not too wretchedly tired and worn out, suppose we turn in and make our plans before we sleep. I told Lucille that we’d most likely be late coming home and she won’t be sitting up for us. To-morrow morning you’re going to turn the winding up of this thing over to me and let me save what I can. That is what Mr. Grillage said I must do, and it is what I mean to do.”
Deep into the night father and son sat together in the private room in the rear, poring over the books and bank paper and setting things in order for the speedy beaching of the outworn business ship. But it was not until after they had left the bank and were walking home that David won his final point.
“You shall do as you think best, David,” the father conceded, closing an argument which had begun at the very outset of the planning. “If it were left to me, I should probably be too easy with the bank’s debtors, as I’ve always been. You may retain Oswald, if you think best; only don’t let him be too hard on the borrowers who are in difficulties.”
The following day saw the beginning of the end for the oldest banking institution in the county. At nine o’clock in the morning the cue leading to Winkle’s wicket was formed again; but in an hour or two the tide showed signs of turning. At Oswald’s suggestion the Vallorys had posted a notice in the bank window to the effect that Middleboro Security was going out of business, and inviting all who had claims upon the bank to present them and get their money. Coincidently with the posting of this notice, a rumor, starting from nobody knew just where, began to pass from lip to lip among the anxious depositors. It was to the effect that Eben Grillage, well known in the town and currently spoken of by his former townsmen as a multimillionaire, was backing Adam Vallory. The result was almost magical. First one and then another dropped out of the line in front of Winkle’s window; and by noon many of those who had already withdrawn their savings were coming back to furnish an object-lesson in the mutability of human nature by begging Adam Vallory to stay in business and reinstate them as depositors.
Early in the afternoon David persuaded his father to go home, and himself took the chair at the president’s desk, with Herbert Oswald at his elbow. By evening a good beginning had been made and the tangle was simplifying itself.