Youth Challenges. Clarence Budington Kelland
can't there ever be an understanding? Won't capital ever understand labor, or labor capital?"
"I suppose a philosopher would say there is no difference upon which agreement can't be reached; that there must somewhere be a common meeting ground. … The Bible says the lion shall lie down with the lamb, but I don't expect to live to see him do it without worrying some about the lion's teeth."
"It's one man holding power over other men," said Bonbright.
As the car stopped at Malcolm Lightener's door, sudden panic seized
Bonbright.
"I ought not to come here," he said, "after last night. Mrs.
Lightener … your daughter."
"I'll bet Hilda's worrying you more than her mother. Nonsense! They both got sense."
Certainly Mrs. Lightener had.
"Just got him out of the police station," her husband said as he led the uncomfortable Bonbright into her presence. "Been shut up all night. … Rioting—that's what he's been doing. Throwing stones at the cops."
Mrs. Lightener looked at Bonbright's pale, weary, worried face. "You let him be, Malcolm. … Never mind HIM," she said to the boy. "You just go right upstairs with him. A warm bath and breakfast are what you need. You don't look as if you'd slept a WINK."
"I haven't," he confessed.
When Bonbright emerged from the bath he found the motherly woman had sent out to the haberdashers for fresh shirt, collar, and tie. He donned them with the first surge of genuine gratefulness he had ever known. Of course he had said thank you prettily, and had thought he felt thanks. … Now he knew he had not.
"Guess you won't be afraid to face Hilda now," said Lightener, entering the room. "I notice a soiled collar is worn with a heap more misgiving than a soiled conscience. … Grapefruit, two soft-boiled eggs, toast, coffee. … Some prescription."
Hilda was in the library, and greeted him as though it were an ordinary occurrence to have a young man just out of the cell block as a breakfast guest. She did not refer to it, nor did her father at the moment. Bonbright was grateful again.
After breakfast the boy and girl were left alone in the library, briefly.
"I'm ashamed," said Bonbright, chokingly.
"You needn't be," she said. "Dad told us all about it. I thought the other night I should like you. Now I'm sure of it." She owned her father's directness.
"You're good," he said.
"No—reasonable," she answered.
He sat silent, thinking. "Do you know," he said, presently, "what a lot girls have to do with making a fellow's life endurable? … Since I went to work I—I've felt really GOOD only twice. Both times it was a girl. The other one just grinned at me when I was feeling down on my luck. It was a dandy grin. … And now you … "
"Tell me about her," she said.
"She's my secretary now. Little bit of a thing, but she grins at all the world … Socialist, too, or anarchist or something. I made them give her to me for my secretary so I could see her grin once in a while."
"I'd like to see her."
"I don't know her," said Bonbright. "She's just my secretary. I'll bet she'd be bully to know."
Hilda Lightener would not have been a woman had she not wondered about this girl who had made such an impression on Bonbright. It was not that she sensed a possible rival. She had not interested herself in Bonbright to the point where a rival could matter. But—she would like to see that girl.
Malcolm Lightener re-entered the room.
"Clear out, honey," he said to his daughter. "Foote and I have got to make medicine."
She arose. "If he rumbles like a volcano," she said to Bonbright, "don't be afraid. He just rumbles. Pompeii is in no danger."
"You GIT," her father said.
"Now," he said when they were alone, "what's to pay?"
"I don't know."
"Will your father raise the devil? Maybe you'd like to have me go along when you interview him."
"I think I'd rather not."
Lightener nodded with satisfaction.
"Well, then—I've kind of taken a shine to you. You're a young idiot, all right, but there's something about you. … Let's start off with this: You've got something that's apt to get you into hot water. Either it's fool curiosity or genuine interest in folks. I don't know which. Neither fits into the Bonbright Foote formula. Six generations of 'em seem to have been whittled off the same chip—and then the knife slipped and you came off some other chip altogether. But the Foote chip don't know it, and won't recognize it if it does. … I'm not going to criticize your father or your ancestors, whatever kind of darn fools I may personally think they are. What I want to say is, if you ever kick over the traces, drop in and tell me about it. I'll see you on your road."
"Thanks," said Bonbright, not half comprehending.
"You can't keep on pressing men out of the same mold forever. Maybe you can get two or three or a dozen to be as like as peas—and then nature plays a joke on you. You're the joke on the Foote mold, I reckon. Maybe they can squeeze you into the form and maybe they can't. … But whatever happens is going to be darn unpleasant for you."
Bonbright nodded. THAT he knew well.
"You've got a choice. You can start in by kicking over the traces—with the mischief to pay; or you can let the vanished Footes take a crack at you to see what that can make of you. I advise no boy to run against his father's wishes. But everybody starts out with something in him that's his own—individual—peculiar to him. Maybe it's what the preachers call his soul. Anyhow, it's HIS. Whatever they do to you, try to hang on to it. Don't let anybody pump it out of you and fill its room with a standardized solution. Get me?"
"I think so."
"I guess that's about, all from me. Now run along to your dad. Got any idea what will happen?"
Bonbright studied the rug more than a minute before he answered.
"I think I was right last night. Maybe I didn't go about it the way I should, but I INTENDED right. At least I didn't intend WRONG. Father will be—displeased. I don't think I can explain it to him … "
"Uh!" grunted Lightener.
"So I—I guess I sha'n't try," Bonbright ended. "I think I'll go along and have it over with."
When he was gone Malcolm Lightener made the following remark to his wife, who seemed to understand it perfectly:
"Some sons get born into the wrong families."
CHAPTER VIII
Bonbright entered his office with the sensations of a detected juvenile culprit approaching an unavoidable reckoning. If there was a ray of brightness in the whole episode it was that the newspapers had miraculously been denied the meatiest bit of his night's adventure—his detention in a cell. If that had been flaunted before the eyes of the public Bonbright felt he would never have been able to face his father.
He was vividly aware of the stir his entrance caused among the office employees. It was as though the heart of the office skipped a beat. He flushed, and, with eyes straight before him, hurried into his own room and sat in his chair. He experienced a quivering, electric emptiness—his nerves crying out against an approaching climax. It was blood-relative to panic.
Presently he was aware that his father stood in the door scrutinizing him. Bonbright's eyes encountered his father's.