XXVII

BY RIGHT OF ANCESTRY

There were to be no stories of Little Rivers at dinner; no questions asked about desert life. This chapter of Jack's career was a past rung of the ladder to John Wingfield, Sr. who was ever looking up to the rungs above. The magnetism and charm with which he won men to his service now turned to the immediate problem of his son, whom he was to refashion according to his ideas.

"Are you ready to settle down?" he asked, half fearful lest that scene in the drawing-room might have wrought a change of purpose.

In answer he was seeing another Jack; a Jack relaxed, amiable, even amenable.

"If you have the patience," said Jack. "You know, father, I haven't a cash-register mind. I'm starting out on a new trail and I am likely to go lame at times. But I mean to be game."

He looked very frankly and earnestly into his father's eyes.

"Wild oats sown! My boy, after all!" thought the father. "Respected his mother! Well, didn't I respect mine? Of course--and let him! It is good principles. It is right. He has health; that is better than schooling."

In place of the shock of the son's will against his, he was feeling it as a force which might yet act in unison with his. He expanded with the pride of the fortune-builder. He told how a city within a city is created and run; of tentacles of investment and enterprise stretching beyond the store in illimitable ambition; how the ball of success, once it was set rolling, gathered bulk of its own momentum and ever needed closer watching to keep it clear of obstacles.

"And I am to stand on top like a gymnast on a sphere or be rolled under,"

thought Jack. "And I'll have cloth of gold breeches and a balancing pole tipped with jewels; but--but--"

"A good listener, and that is a lot!" thought the father, happily.

Jack had interrupted neither with questions nor vagaries. He was gravely attentive, marveling over this story of a man's labor and triumph.

"And the way to learn the business is not from talks by me," said his father, finally. "You cannot begin at the top."

"No! no!" said Jack, aghast. "The top would be quite too insecure, too dizzy to start with."

"Right!" the father exclaimed, decidedly. "You must learn each department of itself, and then how it works in with the others. It will be drudgery, but it is best--right at the bottom!"

"Yes, father, where there is no danger of a fall."

"You will be put on an apprentice salary of ten dollars a week."

"And I'll try to earn it."

"Of course, you understand that the ten is a charge against the store.

That's business. But as for a private allowance, you are John Wingfield's son and--"

"I think I have enough of my own for the present," Jack put in.

"As you wish. But if you need more, say the word. And you shall name the department where you are to begin. Did you get any idea of which you'd choose from looking the store over to-day?"

"That's very considerate of you!" Jack answered. He was relieved and pleased and made his choice quickly, though he mentioned it half timidly as if he feared that it might be ridiculous, so uncertain was he about the rules of apprenticeship.

"You see I have been used to the open air and I'd like a little time in which to acclimatize myself in New York. Now, all those big wagons that bring the goods in and the little wagons that take them out--there is an out-of-door aspect to the delivery service. Is that an important branch to learn?"

"Very--getting the goods to the customer--very!"

"Then I'll start with that and sort of a roving commission to look over the other departments."

"Good! We will consider it settled. And, Jack, every man's labor that you can save and retain efficiency--that is the trick! Organization and ideas, that's what makes the employer and so makes success. Why, Jack, if you could cut down the working costs in the delivery department or improve the service at the present cost, why--" John Wingfield, Sr.

rubbed the palms of his hands together delightedly.

Everything was going finely--so far. He added that proviso of _so far_ instinctively.

"Besides, Jack," he went on, changing to another subject that was equally vital to his ego, "this name of Wingfield is something to work for. I was the son of a poor New England clergyman, but there is family back of it; good blood, good blood! I was not the first John Wingfield and you shall not be the last!"

He rose from the table, bidding the servant to bring the coffee to the drawing-room. With the same light, quick step that he ascended the flights in the store, he led the way downstairs, his face alive with the dramatic antic.i.p.ation that it had worn when he took Jack out of the office to look down from the balcony of the court.

"Ah, we have something besides the store, Jack!" he was saying, in the very exultation of the pride of possession, as he went to the opposite side of the mantel from the mother's portrait and turned on the reflector over a picture.

Jack saw a buccaneer under the brush of the gold and the shadows of Spain; a robust, ready figure on fighting edge, who seemed to say, "After you, sir; and, then, pardon me, but it's your finish, sir!"

"It's a Velasquez!" Jack exclaimed.

"And you knew that at a glance!" said his father.

"Why, yes!"

"Not many Velasquezes in America," said the father, thinking, incidentally, that his son would not have to pay the dealers a heavy toll for an art education, while he revelled in a surprise that he was evidently holding back.

"Or many better Velasquezes than this, anywhere," added Jack. "What mastery! What a gift from heaven that was vouchsafed to a human being to paint like that!"

He was in a spell, held no less by the painter's art than by the subject.

"Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count Galting," continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fifty thousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you are going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I know what I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists who manufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, checking one off against another."

"Yes," answered Jack, absently. He had hardly heard his father's words.

In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of the foot, the att.i.tude of the man in the picture.

"And who do you think he is--who?" pursued John Wingfield, Sr.

"A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed!

Velasquez caught all that!" answered Jack.

"That old fellow was a great man in his day--a great Englishman--and his name was John Wingfield! He was your ancestor and mine!"

After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearer the portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of Senor Don't Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of pose as the figure he was facing.

"They say I resemble him!" The father repeated that phrase which he had used in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing with greedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mere resemblance of feature, he added: "But you--you, Jack, you're the dead spit of him!"

"Yes," said Jack, as if he either were not surprised or were too engrossed to be interested. To the buccaneer's "After you, sir; and, then, your finish, sir!" he seemed to be saying, in the fully-lived spirit of imagination: "A good epitaph, sir! I'll see that it is written on your tombstone!"

The father, singularly affected by the mutual and enjoyed challenge that he was witnessing, half expected to see a sword leap out of the scabbard of the canvas and another from Jack's side.