Youth Challenges Part 18

"I had to," he said. "I--all day I've done nothing but wait to see you.

I've got to talk to you.... Please, now that I'm here, won't you get in?"

She saw that something was wrong, that something out of the ordinary had happened, and as she stepped into the car she shot a glance at his set face and felt a wave of sympathy for him.

"I want you to--to have something to eat with me--out in the country. I want to get away from town. Let me send a messenger to your mother. I know you don't want to, and--and all that, but you'll come, won't you?"

Ruth considered. There was much to consider, but she knew he was an honest, wholesome boy--and he was in trouble.

"This once," she said, and let him see her grin.

"Thank you," he said, simply.

It was but a short drive to an A. D. T. office, where Bonbright wrote a message to Mrs. Frazer:

I'm taking your daughter to Apple Lake to dinner. I hope you won't mind. And I promise to have her home safe and early.

A boy was dispatched with this, and Bonbright and Ruth drove out the Avenue with the evening sun in their faces, toward distant, beautiful Apple Lake. Bonbright drove in silence, his eyes on the road. Ruth was alone in her appreciation of the loveliness of the waning day.

The messenger left on his bicycle, but had not gone farther than around the first corner when a gentleman drew up beside him in an automobile.

"Hey, kid, I want to speak to you," said Mr. Rangar.

The boy stopped and the car stopped.

"You've got a message there that I'm interested in," said Rangar. "It isn't sealed. I want a look at it." He held out a five-dollar bill. The boy pocketed the bill and handed over the message, which Rangar read and returned to him. Then Rangar drove to the office from which the boy had come and dispatched a message of his own, one not covered by his instructions from Mr. Foote. It was a private matter with him, inspired by an incident of the morning having to do with a rumpled necktie and a ruffled dignity. The malice which had glittered in his eyes then was functioning now.

Rangar's message was to Dulac.

"Your girl's just gone to Apple Lake with young Foote in his car," it said. That was all, but it seemed ample to Rangar.

Bonbright was not a reckless driver, but he drove rapidly this evening, with a sort of driven eagerness. From, time to time Ruth turned and glanced at his face and wondered what could have happened, for she had never seen him like this before, even in his darkest moments. There was a new element in his bearing, an element never there before.

Discouragement, apathy, she had seen, and bitterness. She had seen wistfulness, hopelessness, chagrin, humiliation, but never until now had she seen set determination, smoldering embers of rage. What, she wondered, could this boy's father have done to him now?

Soon they were beyond the rim of industry which banded the city, and, leaving behind them towering chimneys, smokeless for the night, clouds of released working-men waiting their turns to crowd into overloaded street cars, the grimy, busy belt line which extended in a great arc through the body of the manufacturing strip, they pa.s.sed through sprouting, mushroomlike suburban villages--villages which had not been there the year before, which would be indistinguishable from the city itself the year after. Farther on they sped between huge-lettered boards announcing the location of real-estate developments which as yet consisted only of new cement sidewalks, immature trees promising future shade, and innumerable stakes marking lot boundaries. Mile after mile these extended, a testimonial to the faith of men in the growth of their city.... And then came the country, guiltless of the odors of gregarious humanity, of ga.s.ses, of smokes, of mankind itself, and of the operations which were preparing its food. Authentic farms spread about them; barns and farmhouses were dropped down at intervals; everywhere was green quiet, softened, made to glow enticingly by the sun's red disk about to dip behind the little hills.... All this Ruth saw and loved. It was an unaccustomed sight, for she was tied to the city. It altered her mood, softened her, made her more pliable.

Bonbright could have planned no better than to have driven her along this road....

Presently they turned off at right angles, upon a country road shaded by century-old maples--a road that meandered leisurely along, now dipping into a valley created for agriculture, now climbing a hillside rich with fruit trees; and now and then, from hilltop, or through gap in the verdure, the gleam of quiet, rush-fringed lakes came to Ruth--and touched her, touched her so that her heart was soft and her lashes wet.... The whole was so placid, so free from turmoil, from compet.i.tion, from the tussling of business and the surging upward of down-weighted cla.s.ses. She was grateful to it.

Yet when, as she did now and then, she glanced at Bonbright, she felt the contrast. All that was present in the landscape was absent from his soul. There was no peace there, no placidity, but unrest, bitterness, unhappiness--grimness. Yes, grimness. When the word came into her mind she knew it was the one she had been searching for.... Why was he so grim?

Presently they entered upon a road which ran low beside Apple Lake itself, with tiny ripples lapping almost at the tire marks in the sand.

She looked, and breathed deeply and gladly. If she could only live on such a spot!...

The club house was deserted save by the few servants, and Bonbright gave directions that they should be served on the veranda. It was almost the first word he had uttered since leaving the city. He led the way to a table, from which they could sit and look out on the water.

"It's lovely," she said.

"I come here a good deal," he said, without explanation, but she understood.

"If I were you, I'd LIVE here. Every day I would have the knowledge that I was coming home to THIS in the evening.... You could. Why don't you, I wonder?"

"I don't know. I can't remember a Foote who has ever lived in such a place. If it hasn't been done in my family, of course I couldn't do it."

She pressed her lips together at the bitter note in his voice. It was out of tune. "Have the ancestors been after you?" she asked. She often spoke of the ancestors lightly and jokingly, which she saw he rather liked.

"The whole lot have been riding me hard. And I'm a well-trained nag. I never buck or balk.... I never did till to-day."

"To-day?"

"I bucked them off in a heap," he said, with no trace of humor. He was dead serious. "I didn't know I could do it, but all of a sudden I was plunging and rearing--and snorting, I expect.... And they were off."

"To stay?"

He dropped his eyes and fell silent. "Anyhow," he said, presently, "it's a relief to be running free even for an hour."

"When they go to climb back why don't you buck some more? Now that they're off--keep them off."

"It's not so easy. You see, I've been trained all my life to carry them. You can't break off a thing like that in an instant. A priest doesn't turn atheist in a night... and this Family Tradition business is like a religion. It gets into your bones. You RESPECT it. You feel it demanding things of you and you can't refuse.... I suppose there is a duty."

"To yourself," she said, quickly.

"To THEM--and to the--the future.... But I bucked them off once. Maybe they'll never ride so hard again, and maybe they'll try to break me by riding harder.... Until to-day I never had a notion of fighting back--but I'm going to give them a job of it now.... There are things I WILL do. They sha'n't always have their way. Right now, Miss Frazer, I've broken with the whole thing. They may be able to fetch me back. I don't know.... Sometime I'll have to go. When father's through I'd have to go, anyhow--to head the business."

"Your father ought to change the name of the business to Family Ghosts, Incorporated," she said, with an attempt to lighten his seriousness.

"I'll be general manager--responsible to a board of directors from across the Styx," he said, with an approach to a smile. "Here's our waiter. I telephoned our order. Hope I've chosen to please you."

"Indeed you have," she replied. "I feel quite the aristocrat. I ought not to do this sort of thing.... But I'm glad to do it once. I abhor the rich," she said, laughing, "but some of the things they do and have are mighty pleasant."

After a while she said: "If I were a rich man's wife I'd be something more than a society gadabout. I'd insist on knowing his business... and I'd make him do a lot of things for his workmen. Think of being a woman and able to do so much for thousands of--of my cla.s.s," she finished.

"Your cla.s.s!" he said, sharply.

"I belong to the laboring cla.s.s. First, because I was born into it, and, second, because my heart is with it."

"Cla.s.s doesn't touch you. It doesn't concern you. You're YOURSELF." For the first time in her acquaintance with him he made her uneasy. His eyes and the way he spoke those sentences disturbed her.

"Nonsense!" she said.

Neither spoke for some time. It was growing dark now, and lights were glowing on the veranda. "When we're through," Bonbright said, "let's walk down by the lake. There's a bully walk and a place to sit.... I asked you to come because I wanted to take you there--miles away from everybody...."

She was distinctly startled now, but helpless. She read storm signals, but no harbor was at hand.

"We must be getting back," she said, lamely.

"It's not eight. We can go back in an hour.... Shall we walk down now?

I can't wait, Ruth, to say what I've got to say...."

It was impossible to hold back, futile to attempt escape. She knew now why he had brought her and what he wanted to say, but she could not prevent it.... If he must have his say let it be where he desired. Very grave now, unhappy, her joy marred, she walked down the steps by his side and along the sh.o.r.e of the lake. "Here," he said, presently, drawing her into a nook occupied by a bench. She sat down obediently.