Summary
A master artisan of ebony and ivory, Joseph Wilton has carved both pianos and a fortune from the forests of thrift, only to discover that the most delicate mechanism he ever built is the soul of his son. Bob, cosseted by paternal sacrifice, enrolls at university where gilded halls echo with whispers of inadequacy; ashamed of the very hands that funded his polish, he drifts into the orbit of Herbert Graham, a velvet-gloved predator who perfumes debt with champagne. Father, blinded by love sharper than any chisel, keeps signing checks until the day he stands rain-soaked in a football field, pride ballooning, only to be publicly disowned by the boy whose victory he came to hymn. Expulsion follows; the parasite accompanies the prodigal home, convinces the aging craftsman to bankroll a boutique bank, then guts it with speculative jackals. When the crash howls, Graham eats a bullet while Bob slinks off under the shadow of criminal charges, leaving a Dear-John letter to his betrothed Grace and a lifetime of shame to his sister Molly—exiled earlier for daring to warn the patriarch. Ruin forces Joseph to trade concert grand for tenement upright, tuning strangers’ pianos in a cold-water warren. Years of anonymous penance later, Bob re-emerges in Manhattan as a reborn executive; Molly, now married with a four-year-old sprout, hunts their destitute father through borough fog. The final chord resolves in a sudden reunion: three generations, one restored honor, and a lullaby hummed to a child who will never know how loudly silence once screamed.
Synopsis
Joseph Wilton is a thrifty German and an expert piano maker, who through his industry has built up a small factory and acquired considerable money. His whole life and further ambitions are centered on his son, Bob, whom he has entered in a big university. His only daughter, Molly, has taken the place of her mother in the home, since Mrs. Wilton's death. Bob is carried away by college life, and begins to feel embarrassed over his father's humble life and surroundings. He falls under the influence of Herbert Graham, a suave society leech and college mate, who inveigles him into drinking, gambling and a life of profligacy. Bob is induced to draw on his father for large amounts, on the excuse that he needs the money for expenses at college. The blindness of the father's love for his son is emphasized when he insists on attending a football game, where his son is the hero of the hour. Bob practically denies his father in the presence of his friends on the campus. Soon afterward Bob's continued escapades cause him to be expelled from college. Graham induces Bob to take him home with him, hoping to get an opportunity to swindle his father. They arrive and explain that they have been granted several extra weeks for the Christmas holidays. Graham induces the elder Wilton to finance a small bank for himself and Bob. They are popular and succeed from the start. But Graham indulges in many wild-cat speculations, and the bank is ruined. In a run on the bank both narrowly escape bodily injury, Graham commits suicide. Bob decides to face the disaster, but after hearing Aubrey Maynard, the father of Grace Maynard to whom he is engaged, denounce him in the presence of his own father, he decides to leave, as he has borrowed money from Grace when the bank was first in trouble, and her father threatens him with imprisonment as a swindler. He leaves her a note, saying he will return when he has made a man of himself, and can make good his obligations. Molly, his sister, is in love with George Lennan, and their advice to the elder Wilton to halt Bob in his early profligacy has resulted in the aged piano manufacturer ordering Molly from home. After Bob's departure, Wilton, who has lost his entire fortune in his son's failure, in an effort to make good with his son's creditors, takes up his abode in the slums, eking out an existence by tuning pianos. In a distant city, Bob starts life over and steadily rises to a position of trust and importance. He is promoted to be general manager of the New York office of the big concern in which he has made his success. Upon his return to New York, his sister Molly, who has married Lennan, has started to search for her father. She succeeds in locating him the very day that Bob returns. There is a happy reunion, including Bob's fiancée and a little four-year-old grandson, the child of Molly, whom the older Wilton sees for the first time.
