Youth Challenges Part 42

Lightener stuffed his blue prints and specifications into his pocket and left the office truculently. Once more in his own office he summoned a boy.

"Fetch Mr. Foote from the purchasing department," he said.

Malcolm Lightener was acting on impulse again. He had no clear idea why he had sent for Bonbright, nor just what he should say when the boy came--but he wanted to talk to him. Lightener was angry--angry because Bonbright's father had rejected his proposition to manufacture engines; more angry at the way Mr. Foote had spoken concerning his son. In the back of Lightener's mind was the thought that he would show a Foote....

Just what he would show him was not determined.

Bonbright came in. He was not the Bonbright of six months before. The boy in him was gone, never to return. He had lost none of his old look of breeding, of refinement, of blood--but he had lost that air which rich young men bear about with them. It is an air, not of carelessness, precisely, but of absence of care; a sort of nonchalance, bred of lack of responsibilities and of definite ambitions. It is an air that makes one think of them that they would fit better into the scenery of a country club or a game of golf than into an office where men strain their intelligence and their bodies to attain important aims. This was gone with his boyishness. In its place was an alertness, an awakeness, born of an interest in affairs. His eyes were the eyes of a man who concentrated much, and was keenly interested in the object of his concentration. His movements were quicker. He seemed to see and catalogue more of what was going on about him. If one had seen him then for the first time, the impression received would have been that here was a very busy young man who was worth watching. There was something aggressive about him. He looked competent.

One could not question that his new life had improved him, but it had not made him happy. It would be absurd to say that he looked sad. A boy of his age cannot look sad continually, unless sadness is a pose with him, which he is enjoying very much indeed. But Bonbright was no poser.... And he did not look happy. There were even times when there was a worn, haggard look about his eyes when he came down in the morning. This was when he had allowed himself to think too much.

"Just came from your father's office," said Lightener. "I offered him a chance to clean up half a million a year--and he turned it down...

because his great-grandfather might not like it."

Bonbright understood perfectly. He knew how his father would do such a thing. Lightener's statement seemed to call for no reply, so he made none.

"I wanted to look at you," said Lightener, "to make sure you aren't anything like him.... But you ARE like him. You stand like him and you look like him--only you don't. If I thought you'd grow to think the way he does I'd send you to the cas.h.i.+er for your pay, in a second. But I don't believe it." He scowled at Bonbright. "No, by Jove! you don't LOOK it."

"I don't think father and I are much alike," said Bonbright, slowly.

Lightener switched the subject. "You ought to know considerable about this business. Been here six months. From what I hear you've picked up quite a lot outside of office hours."

"I've been studying hard. It gave me something to do."

"Darn it all, why couldn't you and Hilda have taken to each other!..."

Lightener stopped, and stared at his desk. Perhaps it was not too late yet. Bonbright's marriage had been no success; Bonbright was young; and it was not thinkable that he would not recover from that wound in time to marry again. Of course he would.... Then why should he not marry Hilda? Not the least reason in the world. In the affair Bonbright was guiltless--merely unfortunate. The thing was worth bearing in mind.

Perhaps something might be done; at any rate, he would talk it over with his wife.

"I want you to put in another six months learning this business," he said. "If you pan out I'll have a job for you.... I haven't heard of your falling down any place yet.... Know what I told your father? He said the Foote family ended with him--became extinct. Well, I said the family just started with you, and that one generation of your kind was worth the whole six of his. And I hoped he lived to see it."

"Somehow I can't feel very hard toward father, Mr. Lightener. Sometimes I'm--sorry for him. To him it's as bad as if I'd been born with a hunchback. Worse, maybe, because, hunchback and all, I might have been the sort he wanted.... He doesn't understand, that's it. I can understand him--so I don't have any hard feelings-except on HER account.... He said the family was extinct?"

"Yes."

"I guess it is," said Bonbright. "The family, as he thought of it, meant something that went on and on as he and his ancestors went....

Yes, it's extinct. I don't know why I was different from them, but I was. Always. I'm glad."

"He must be worth five millions, anyhow, maybe more."

"I don't know," said Bonbright.

"You won't get a cent of it, from what he says."

"I suppose not.... No, I won't get a cent."

"You don't make much fuss about it."

"I had that out with myself six months ago. It was hard to give it up.... n.o.body wants to be poor when he can be rich. If it hadn't been for Ruth I suppose I should have been there yet--pretty well made over to fit by this time."

As Bonbright and Malcolm Lightener talked, Mr. Foote sat in his office, his head upon his desk, one arm stretched out across the blotter, the other s.h.i.+elding his face. He did not move....

After Malcolm Lightener left the room he had sat for a time staring at the door. He did not feel well. He was troubled. None but himself knew how deep was his disappointment, his bitterness, because of his son's failure to stand true to his type. It was not the grief of a father at the loss of a son; it was the suffering of a man whose supreme motive is the carrying on of family and of family traditions. He had just told Lightener the family became extinct with his pa.s.sing. Now he reaffirmed it, and, reaffirming it, he felt the agony of ultimate affliction.

Six generations the family and the family's business had endured honorably according to its beliefs and tenets; with the sixth generation it ended because of the way-wardness of a boy--his boy!

Mr. Foote felt a trifle dizzy, a bit oppressed. He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. He would go home for the day as soon as the dizziness pa.s.sed, he said to himself.... It pa.s.sed. He opened his eyes and leaned toward his desk, but he stopped suddenly, his right hand flying to his breast. There was a sudden pain there; such a pain as he had never experienced before. It was near his heart. With each heartbeat there came a twisting stab of agony. Presently the spasm pa.s.sed, and he sank back, pale, shaking, his forehead damp with clammy moisture.... He tried to pull himself together. Perhaps it would be best to summon some one, but he did not want to do that. To have an employee find him so would be an invasion of his dignity. n.o.body must see him. n.o.body must know about this....

The spasm returned-departed again, leaving him gasping for breath. ...

It would come again. Something told him it would come again-once more.

He KNEW.... A third time it would come, but never again.

He forced himself to rise. He would meet it standing. For the honor of the Foote family he would meet it on his feet, looking into its eyes.

He would not shrink and cringe from it, but would face it with dignity as a Foote should face it, uttering no cry of pain or fear. It was a dignified moment, the most dignified and awful of his life. ... Five generations were looking on to see how he met it, and he was conscious of their eyes. He stared before him with level eyes, forcing a smile, and waited the seconds there remained to wait.

It was coming. He could feel its first approach, and drew himself up to the fullness of his slender height. Never had he looked so much a Foote as in that instant, never had he so nearly approached the ideal he had set for himself--for he knew.

The spasm came, but it tore no cry from him. He stood erect, with eyes that stared straight before him fearlessly until they became sightless.

He held his head erect proudly.... Then he sighed, relaxed into his chair, and lay across his desk, one arm outstretched, the other protecting his face....

The telephone on Malcolm Lightener's desk rang.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Lightener. "What is it? Who?... Yes, he's right here." He looked up to Bonbright. "Somebody wants to speak to you."

Bonbright stepped to the instrument. "Yes," he said, "this is Bonbright Foote.... Who is it? Rangar?..." Suddenly he turned about and faced Malcolm Lightener blankly. He fumbled with the receiver for its hook.

"My father is dead," he said, in a hushed voice. "They just found him--at his desk...."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Ruth had continued to live in the apartment. It had not been her intention to do so. From the moment of reading Bonbright's succinct note she was determined to go back to the little cottage and to her mother. But she put it off for a day, then for another day, and days grew into weeks and months. "To-morrow I'll move," she told herself each night, but next day she was no nearer to uprooting herself than she had been the day before.

She gave herself no reasons for remaining. If she had been asked for a reason she might have said it was because Dulac still boarded with her mother. He had not left the city with the breaking of the strike, but had remained. He had remained because he had asked the union he represented to let him remain and had been able to show them reasons for granting his request. He wanted to stay on the ground to work quietly underground, undoing the harm that had been done by the strike; quietly proselyting, preaching his gospel, gaining strength day by day, until he should have reared an organization capable of striking again.

The courage of the man was unquenchable.... And he wanted to be near Ruth. Just as he had set his will to force Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, to bow to the will of the men, so he had set his will to force Ruth to bow to his will.... So he remained and labored.

But his presence at her mother's was not the real reason that impelled Ruth to continue in the home Bonbright had made for her. It was something more intangible. She found the thought of leaving that spot unendurable, but she did not, dared not, seek in her heart for what made it unendurable.

For a week she scarcely ventured outside the door; then the loneliness, the lack of occupation, drove her out. She must be busy, for when she sat idly in a room her thoughts became torture. There were many sides to her affliction. First in her mind she placed the failure of her great project. She had wrecked her life for it without accomplishment.

Second in the rank of her griefs stood the fact that she had been on the point of giving herself to Dulac. She would have gone with him, disregarding convention, breaking her vows of marriage. For that she despised herself... despised herself the more because she knew now that she did not love Dulac, that she had never loved Dulac. That discovery had shocked and shaken her, and when she thought of what might have happened if she had gone with him a numbness of horror crept over her, leaving her cold and trembling. ... She would have gone, and she did not love him. She would not have known she did not love him until it was too late to draw back... and then she would have lived, but her soul would have died!

She accused herself bitterly for mistaking glamour for love. She knew now that Dulac had called from her nothing deeper than a foolish, girlish fascination. His personality, his work, his enthusiasm had enmeshed her, blinded her--and she had mistaken her feelings for love!

Of this she was certain.... There were moments when she felt she must tell Bonbright. Once she actually took writing materials to do so, but she did not tell him.... She wanted him to know, because, she thought, it would be a sort of vindication in his eyes. But she was wrong. She wanted him to know for quite another reason than that.

Third in the order of her griefs was the consciousness that she had caused Bonbright grief. She dealt ungently with herself because of it, for Bonbright had not deserved it at her hands. She could appreciate how good he had been to her, how solicitous, how patient, how tender.

If a man ever deserved well of a woman, he deserved it. She told herself that a hundred times daily. She remembered small thoughtfulnesses which had been a part of his daily conduct to her. She recalled small forbearances. She pictured to herself the life they had lived together, and saw how it was only the character of her husband that had made it possible at all.... And in the end he had not uttered one word of censure; had not even looked at her with just anger....

There had been no pretense about him, no labored effort to be kind. He had simply been himself.

These were her thoughts; this is how she remembered him....