Towards the beginning of 1866 things had, the son told the mother, come to the worst.
"All is lost," he said; "all is lost. I have been staving off and staving off until everything has got into a hopeless tangle, out of which I can find but one thing—ruin!"
"Then, Henry, I suppose you must shut the door; and as you see nothing else for it, the sooner you stop up the better."
"Mother, the day I shut the Bank door I'll open another door."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll open the door into the other world with a charge of gunpowder."
"Don't say such a foolish, dreadful thing! You are not, I hope, such a coward as to fly from the consequences of your own act. If you have lost the money in fair trading you need not be ashamed to meet them all; others beside you lost by that unfortunate South. Your father would have stood his ground and faced the city," said the old woman, with spirit and pride.
"No doubt, mother, no doubt my father would have had the manliness to stand and face the break; but he was a man of great endurance and nerve; you know I am not. I would do anything rather than meet such a crash and live after it. You know I have been much more out in the world than my father. I am mixed up with such a number of things, am closely connected with such a number of institutions and men, that nothing, no consideration, could induce me to outlive bankruptcy. The people would not believe facts; they would not credit any statement, however plain, that I was insolvent. They would say that I had appropriated the money of the depositors, made a fraudulent pretence of bankruptcy, and concealed the money for my own use. I know the world better than you, mother; I know the world, and what it would say. I may be popular now; but if I fell, the street-boys might kick me through the gutter and no one would take my part, or try to get me fair play."
He dropped his head into his hands and shuddered.
The old woman looked at him with a sad sympathy, which was not wholly destitute of reproach.