Surveying the broad shoulders before him, he was thinking how nothing but aimlessness and fantasies and everything out of harmony with the career to come had been encouraged in the son. But he saw soberness coming into Jack's eyes and with it the pressure of a certain resoluteness of purpose. And now Jack spoke again, a trifle sadly, as if guessing his father's thoughts.
"It will be a case of weeding for me in the future, won't it?" he asked wanly, as he rose. "I am full of foolish ideas that are just bound to run away with me."
"Jack! Jack!" John Wingfield, Sr. put his hands out to the shoulders of his son and gripped them strongly, and for a second let his own weight half rest on that sturdy column which he sensed under the grip. His pale face, the paleness of the type that never tans, flushed. "Jack, come!" he said.
He permitted himself something like real dramatic feeling as he signalled his son to follow him out of the office and led the way to a corner of one of the balconies where, under the light from the glass roof of the great central court, he could see down the tiers of floors to the jewelry counter which sparkled at the bottom of the well.
"Look! look!" he exclaimed, rubbing his palms together with a peculiar crisp sound. "All selling my goods! All built from the little store where I began as a clerk!"
"It's—it's immense!" gasped Jack; and he felt a dizziness and confusion in gazing at this kind of an abyss.
"And it's only beginning! It's to go on growing and growing! You see why I wanted you to be strong, Jack; why it would not do to be weak if you had all this responsibility."
This was a form of apology for his farewell to Jack, but the message was the same: He had not wanted a son who should be of his life and heart and ever his in faults and illnesses. This was the recognizable one of the shadows between them now recalled. He had wanted a fresh physical machine into which he could blow the breath of his own masterful being and instil the cunning of his experience. He saw in this straight, clean-limbed youth at his side the hope of Jack's babyhood fulfilled, in the projection of his own ego as a living thing after he himself was gone.
"And it is to go on growing and growing, in my name and your name—John
Wingfield!"
Jack was swallowing spasmodically; he moistened his lips; he grasped the balcony railing so tight that his knuckles were white knobs on the bronze back of his hand. The father in his enthusiasm hardly noticed this.