When he was gone Malcolm Lightener made the following remark to his wife, who seemed to understand it perfectly:
"Some sons get born into the wrong families."
CHAPTER VIII
Bonbright entered his office with the sensations of a detected juvenile culprit approaching an unavoidable reckoning. If there was a ray of brightness in the whole episode it was that the newspapers had miraculously been denied the meatiest bit of his night's adventure—his detention in a cell. If that had been flaunted before the eyes of the public Bonbright felt he would never have been able to face his father.
He was vividly aware of the stir his entrance caused among the office employees. It was as though the heart of the office skipped a beat. He flushed, and, with eyes straight before him, hurried into his own room and sat in his chair. He experienced a quivering, electric emptiness—his nerves crying out against an approaching climax. It was blood-relative to panic.
Presently he was aware that his father stood in the door scrutinizing him. Bonbright's eyes encountered his father's. They seemed to lock … In that tense moment the boy was curiously aware how perfectly his father's physical presence stood for and expressed his theory of being. Tall, unbending, slender, aristocratic, intellectual—the pose of the body, the poise of the head, even that peculiar, slanting set of the lips expressed perfectly the Bonbright Foote idea. Five generations had bred him to be the perfect thing it desired.
"Well, sir," he said, coldly. Bonbright arose. There was a formality about the situation which seemed to require it. "Good morning," he said, in a low tone.
"I have seen the papers."
"Yes, sir."
"What they printed was in substance true?"