Trenn got up and crossed the room.
“Yes, that’s the place,” said Mar, excitedly, thinking the boy’s goal was the brown and faded reconnaissance map. But Trenn walked straight past it to the window, and stood looking out, to where the duck-pond used to be, and where now a row of pretentious little pseudo-Spanish “villas” shut out the prospect. And still he didn’t speak.
“What I consider so important, is not the practical knowledge per se, though I think it a very real value. Not that so much, as the fact that through associating yourself with that kind of enterprise you are brought into relation with just the men you’ll need to know. If I hadn’t gone to Rock Hill I would never have met Galbraith. The longer I live, the more I realize it’s through people—through having the right sort of human relationships, that work is best forwarded. Here have I lived for nearly twenty years with a secret worth millions, and for lack of knowing the right men—”
“Why did you never tell Charlie Trennor?” the boy turned round to ask.
“Oh, Charlie Trennor! He’s not the sort. But, as a matter of fact, I did once mention the circumstance to the Trennors. Many years ago. But they are men who”—Mar stumbled—“they’ll never do anything very big; they neither one of them have a scintilla of imagination.” And then, in sheer excitement, speaking his mind for once: “There never was a Trennor who had.”
“I expect,” said the boy, doggedly, “there’s a certain amount of Trennor about me. I never noticed that I had any imagination to speak of.”
Mar was conscious that his own spirit was contracting in a creeping chill. But he said to himself it was only because he had made the mistake of criticizing his wife (by implication) before her son. It was right and proper that Trenn, on such an occasion, should range himself on the side of his mother’s family. Mar’s conception of loyalty commonly protected him from appearing to pass adverse judgment on the Trennors. But he was excited and overwrought to-day. He, not Trenn. All through the story, that for Mar was of such palpitating importance, this well-groomed youth had kept himself so well in hand, that his father, looking at the “correct,” cool face, had somewhat modified the presentment of the narrative, had cut description, emotion, wonder, and come to Hecuba as quickly as might be. And yet now that, with as business-like an air as he could muster, he had revealed his great secret—handed over the long-treasured legacy—something still in the judicial young face that gave the older man a sensation of acute self-consciousness, made him in some inexplicable manner feel “cheap.”
But he would conquer the ridiculous inclination.
It was for Mar an hour of tremendous significance. He had been waiting for it for eighteen years. “After all,” he said, making a fresh start, “you don’t need imagination in this case. You need only to use your eyes—”
Trenn lifted his, and the use he made of them was to look at his father. Didn’t say a single word. Just looked at the heavily-lined face a moment and then allowed his clear, brown eyes to drop till they rested on the toes of his own immaculate boots.