Youth Challenges Part 41

Bonbright's hold upon himself was firm. "If you wish to continue this conversation you will not speak in that way of my wife. Let me make that very clear.... As to coming back to the office--there is nothing under heaven that would bring me back to what I escaped from.

Nothing.... If I were ever to come it would have to be on terms of my own making, and you would never agree to them. And whatever terms you agreed to I should not come until you and mother--both of you--went to my wife and made the most complete apology for the thing you did to her in the theater that night.... I am not thinking of myself. I am thinking of her. My mother and father pa.s.sed my wife and myself on our wedding night, in a public place, and refused to recognize us.... It was barbarous." Bonbright's voice quivered a trifle, but he held himself well in hand. "That apology must come before anything else.

After you have made it, we will discuss terms."

"You--you--" Mr. Foote was perilously close to losing his dignity.

"No," said Bonbright; "on second thought, we will not discuss terms.

You can have my final reply now.... You have nothing to give me that will take the place of what I have now. I will not come back to you.

Please understand that this is final."

Mr. Foote was speechless. It was moments before he could speak; then it was to say, in a voice that trembled with rage: "In the morning I shall make my will--and your name will not appear in it except as a renegade son whom I have disowned..., Probably you regarded the property as under entail and that it would come to you after me.... For six generations it has gone from father to son. You shall never touch a penny of it."

"I prefer it that way, sir."

Mr. Foote glared at his son in quite unrestrained, uncultured rage, and, whirling on his heel, strode furiously away. Bonbright looked after him curiously.

"I wonder how the thing missed out with me," he thought. "It worked perfectly six generations--and then went all to smash with me....

Probably I'd have been a lot happier...."

It had been a month since he saw Ruth. He had not wanted to see her; the thought of seeing her had been unbearable. But suddenly he felt as if he must see her--have a glimpse of her. He must see how she looked, if she had changed, if she were well.... He knew it would bring refreshed suffering. It would let back all he had rigidly schooled himself to shut out--but he must see her.

He set his will against it and resolutely walked away from the direction in which her apartment lay, but the thing was too strong for him. As a man surrenders to a craving which he knows will destroy him, yet feels a relief at the surrender, he turned abruptly and walked the other way.

The apartment in which they had lived was on the second floor of a small apartment house. He pa.s.sed it on the opposite side of the street, looking covertly upward at the windows. There was a light within. She was there, but invisible. Only if she should step near the window could he see her.... Again and again he pa.s.sed, but she did not appear.

Finally he settled himself guiltily in the shadows, where he could watch those windows, and waited--just for that distant sight of her.

There was a lamp on the table before the window. Before she retired she would have to come to shut it off.... He waited for that. He would then see her for a second, perhaps.

At last she came, and stood an instant in the window--just a blur, with the light behind her, no feature distinguishable, yet it was her--her.

"Ruth..." he whispered, "Ruth...." Then she drew down the shade and extinguished the light.

For a moment he stood there, hands opened as if he would have stretched them out toward her. Then he turned and walked heavily away. He had seen her, but It had not added to his happiness. He had seen her because he must see her.... And by that he knew he must see her again and again and again. He knew it. He knew he would stand there in the shadows on innumerable nights, watching for that one brief second of her presence.... And she loved another man. In a year she would be free to marry Dulac!

He returned to his room and to his book on the ailments of internal-combustion engines; but it was not their diagrams his eyes saw, but only a featureless blur that represented a girl standing in an upper window---forever beyond his reach....

CHAPTER XXVII

Malcolm Lightener's plant, huge as it was, could not meet the demands of the public for the car he manufactured. Orders outran production.

New buildings had been under construction, but before they were completed and equipped their added production was eaten up and the factory was no nearer to keeping supply abreast with demand than it had been in the beginning.

Lightener was forced to make contracts with other firms for parts of his cars. From one plant he contracted for bodies, from another for wheels. He urged Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, to increase their production of axles by ten thousand a year--and still dealers in all parts of the country wrote and telephoned and telegraphed for more cars--more cars.

Hitherto Lightener had made his own engines complete. From outside manufactories he could obtain the other essential parts, but his own production of engines held him back. The only solution for the present was to find some one to make engines to his specifications, and he turned to Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. Whatever might be said of the Foote methods, their antiquity, their lack of modern efficiency, they turned out work whose quality none might challenge--and Malcolm Lightener looked first to quality.

He reached his determination at noon, while he was eating his luncheon, and to Mrs. Lightener's amazement sprang up from the table and lunged out of the room without so much as a glance at her or a word of good-by. In some men of affairs this might not be remarkable, but in Malcolm Lightener it was remarkable. Granite he might be; crude in his manner, perhaps, more dynamic than comfortable, but in all the years of his married life he had never left the house without kissing his wife good-by.

He drove his runabout recklessly to his office, rushed into the engineering department, and s.n.a.t.c.hed certain blue prints and specifications from the files. He knew costs down to the last bolt or washer on the machine he made, and it was the work of minutes only to determine what price he could afford to pay for the engines he wanted.

His runabout carried him to the entrance to Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, and he hurried up the stairs to the office.

"Mr. Foote in?" he snapped.

"Just returned, Mr. Lightener."

"Want to see him--right off--quick."

"Yes, sir."

The girl at the switchboard called Mr. Foote and informed him.

"He says to step right in, sir," she said, and before she was done speaking Lightener was on his way down the corridor.

Mr. Foote sat coldly behind his desk. He held no kindness for Malcolm Lightener, for Lightener had befriended Bonbright in his recalcitrancy.

Lightener had made it possible for the boy to defy his father.

Lightener's wife and daughter had openly waged society war against his wife in behalf of his son's wife.... But Mr. Foote was not the man to throw away an enormous and profitable business because of a personal grudge.

Lightener paused for no preliminaries.

"Foote," he said, "I want ten thousand engines complete. You can make 'em. You've got room to expand, and I can give you approximate figures on the costs. You make good axles and you can make good engines. What d'you think about it?"

Mr. Foote shrugged his shoulders. "It doesn't attract me."

"Huh!... You can have that plant up in six months. I'll give you a contract for five years. Two years' profits will pay for the plant.

Don't know what your profits are now, but this ought to double them.

... Doesn't half a million a year extra profit make you think of anything?"

"Mr. Lightener, this business was originally a machine shop. It has grown and developed since the first Bonbright Foote founded it. I am the first to deviate in any measure from the original plan, and I have done so with doubt and reluctancy. I have seen with some regret the manufacturing of axles overshadow the original business--though it has been profitable, I admit. But I shall go no farther. I am not sure my father and my grandfather would approve of what I have done. I know they would not approve of other changes.... More money does not attract me. This plant is making enough for me. What I want is more leisure. I wish more time to devote to a certain literary labor upon which I have been engaged..."

"Literary flub-dub," said Lightener. "I'm offering you half a million a year on a silver platter."

"I don't want it, sir.... I am not a young man. I have not been in the best of health--owing, perhaps, to worries which I should not have been compelled to bear.... I am childless. With me Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, comes to an end. Upon my death these mills close, the business is to be liquidated and discontinued. Do I make myself clear?... I am not interested in your engines."

"What's that you said?" Lightener asked. "Childless? Wind up this business? You're crazy, man."

"I had a son, but I have one no longer.... In some measure I hold you responsible for that. You have taken sides with a disobedient son against his father..."

"And you've treated a mighty fine son like a dog," said Lightener, harshly.

"I have done my duty.... I do not care to discuss it with you. The fact I want to impress is that my family becomes extinct upon my death. My wife will be more than amply provided for. I may live ten years or twenty years--but I shall live them in such comfort as I can obtain....

Is there anything else you wish to talk to me about?"

It was a dismissal, and Malcolm Lightener was not used to being dismissed like a troublesome book agent.

"Yes," he said, getting to his feet. "There is something, and I'll be short and sweet about it. You have a son, and if I'm any judge, he's about four times the man his father is. You don't want him!... Well, I do. I want him in my business, and he won't lose such a lot by the change. It's your ledger that shows the loss, and don't you forget it.

You did what you could to warp him out of shape--and because he wouldn't be warped you kicked him out. Maybe the family ends with you, but a new Foote family begins with him, and it won't be any cut-and-dried, ancestor-ridden outfit, either. One generation of his kind will be worth more to this country than the whole six of yours....

I hope you live to see it."