"If it is hard for me, I presume it is even harder for you to bear," he said, aloud. "On the way over, as I sat in the sun in my steamer chair, with nothing else to think about, I often pictured you there at the bank with those associates. My reason tells me that they are sympathetic with you and must feel a certain regret for allowing you to pay back such a large amount; still, if I may be allowed to say so, you must feel awkward. You must meet big depositors who—well, who think perhaps that you ought to have had better judgment than not to have kept track of the boy's plunging. To have retained a dissipated young scamp like that in your employment was imprudent in itself, to say nothing of all the rest."
"They may blame me," William said, reluctantly. "I don't know how they feel, or how they talk together in private. I only know they still seem to have confidence in me and in my business judgment. God knows I am doing the best I can to run things straight, and I keep showing them the figures. They laugh at me for being so particular, and assure me that it is unnecessary, but I intend to keep it up."
"This is a hidebound, Puritan community," the old man responded, with a slow frown, "and I feel that you are against conditions at the bank that you don't yet fully realize. Bradford and the others are sly, long-headed business men, and they are not going to tell you all they think."
William stared, his mouth falling open, a heavy hand splaying over the cap of his knee. "I don't understand," he faltered. "What could they be keeping from me?"
"Well"—and the old man seemed to be probing his vocabulary for adroit words—"it may be like this. In a community of this kind there is perhaps a certain class of well-meaning people who have the—the old-fashioned idea that dishonesty runs in the blood of certain families. I remember that when I was younger I imbibed that idea from some source or other. It is silly, of course, but it may exist, and if there is any place that it would be apt to thrive it would be among a lot of nervous bank depositors and stockholders. Now that is one thing I have come to fight by my influence and with my money."
William's groping, even bewildered, stare showed that he did not understand what his uncle was driving at, and in a few halting words he managed to say so.
"Why, it is like this, my boy," the old man explained. "I know Bradford well, and several of your directors, and when I plank down my half of the missing money to-morrow I am going to take such a firm, fatherly stand behind you that—well, two of us fighting for the family honor will be a stronger force than one, that's all. I stand well here in Boston, I know that, and I am going to back you."
"I haven't really felt that I was in need of—" William was breaking in, but his uncle did not suffer him to finish.
"Well, you do need it," he said, sharply. "I can see it in your looks. You have lost weight. You look nervous. You have an agitated manner. You speak in jerks. This thing is killing you. Your mind may break under the strain. Yes, I'm going to hang about the bank. I'll transfer my chief deposit—and it happens to be a big one just now—from New York to your bank. I'll buy all the floating stock I can pick up. I'll be in the market for it at all times. Now—now what do you think of that?"
"It will help wonderfully," William declared, with faintly rising fervor which in a moment seemed to pass away, for Celeste was entering the room. She came in softly and resumed the chair she had left a few minutes before.