Bonbright went to the huge brick storage building, and persuaded a clerk to search the records. A bill from Bonbright's pocketbook added to the persuasion…. An hour's wait developed that a green van belonging to the company had moved goods from that address—and the spinster was vindicated.
"Brought 'em here and stored 'em," said the young man. "Here's the name—Frazer. Ruth Frazer."
"That's it," said Bonbright. "That's it."
"Storage hain't been paid…. No word from the party. Maybe she'll show up some day to claim 'em. If not, we'll sell 'em for the charges."
"Didn't she leave any address?"
"Nope."
It had been only a cul de sac. Bonbright had come to the end of it, and had only to retrace his steps. It had led him no nearer to his wife. What to do now? He didn't see what he could do, or that anybody could do better than he had done…. He thought of going to the police, but rejected that plan. It was repulsive to him and would be repulsive to Ruth…. He might insert a personal in the paper. Such things were done. But if Ruth were ill she would not see it. If she wanted to hide from him she would not reply.
He went to Mrs. Frazer, but Mrs. Frazer only sobbed and bewailed her fate, and stated her opinion of Bonbright in many confused words. It seemed to be her idea that her daughter was dead or kidnapped, and sometimes she appeared to hold both notions simultaneously…. Bonbright got nothing there.
Discouraged, he went back to his office, but not to his work. He could not work. His mind would hold no thought but of Ruth…. He must find her. He MUST…. Nothing mattered unless he could find her, and until he found her he would be good for nothing else.
He tried to pull himself together. "I've got to work," he said. "I've got to think about something else…." But his will was unequal to the performance…. "Where is she?… Where is she?.." The question, the DEMAND, repeated itself over and over and over.
There was a chance that a specialist, a professional, might find traces of Ruth where Bonbright's untrained eyes missed them altogether. So, convinced that he could do nothing, that he did not in the least know how to go about the search, he retained a firm of discreet, well-recommended searchers for missing persons. With that he had to be content. He still searched, but it was because he had to search; he had to feel that he was trying, doing something, but no one realized the uselessness of it more than himself. He was always looking for her, scanned every face in the crowd, looked up at every window.
In a day or two he was able to force himself to work steadily, unremittingly again. The formula of his patent medicine, with which he was to cure the ills of capital-labor, was taking definite shape, and the professor was enthusiastic. Not that the professor felt any certainty of effecting a permanent cure; he was enthusiastic over it as a huge, splendid experiment. He wanted to see it working and how men would react to it. He had even planned to write a book about it when it should have been in operation long enough to show what its results would be.
Bonbright was sure. He felt that it would bridge the gulf between him and his employees—that gulf which seemed now to be growing wider and deeper instead of disappearing. Mershon's talk was full of labor troubles, of threatened strikes, of consequent delays.
"We can finish thirty days ahead of schedule," he said to Bonbright, "if the unions leave us alone."
"You think I ought to recognize them," Bonbright said. "Well, Mr. Mershon, if labor wants to cut its own throat by striking—let it strike. I'm giving it work. I'm giving it wages that equal or are higher than union scale. They've no excuse for a strike. I'm willing to do anything within reason, but I'm going to run my own concern. Before I'll let this plant be unionized I'll shut it down. If I can't finish the new shops without recognizing the unions, then they'll stand as they are."
"You're the boss," said Mershon, with a shrug. "Do you know there's to be a mass meeting in the armory to-night? I think the agitator people are going to try to work the men up to starting trouble."
"You think they'll strike?"
"I KNOW they will."
"All the men, or just the steel workers and bricklayers and temporary employees on the new buildings?"
"I don't know…. But if any of them go out it's going to make things mighty bad."
"I'll see what can be done," said Bonbright.
The strike must be headed off if possible. It would mean a monstrously costly delay; it might mean a forfeiture of his contract with Lightener. It might mean that he had gone into this new project and expended hundreds of thousands of dollars to equip for the manufacture of engines in vain…. The men must not strike.
There seemed no way to avert it but to surrender, and that Bonbright did not even consider…. He called in the professor.
"The plan is practically complete, isn't it?" he asked.
"I'd call it so. The skeleton is there and it's covered with flesh. Some of the joints creak a little and maybe there's an ear or an eyebrow missing…. But those are details."
Bonbright nodded. "We'll try it out," he said. "To-night there's a mass meeting—to stir our men up to strike. They mustn't strike, and I'm going to stop them—with the plan."
"Eh?" said the professor.
"I'm going to the meeting," said Bonbright.
"You're—young man, you're crazy."
"I'm going to head off that strike. I'm going there and I'm going to announce the plan."
"They won't let you speak."
"I think they will…. Curiosity will make them."
The young man did understand something of human nature, thought the professor. Curiosity would, most likely, get a hearing for him.
"It's dangerous," said he. "The men aren't in a good humor. There might be some fanatic there—"
"It's a chance," said Bonbright, "but I've got to take it."
"I'll go with you," said the professor.
"No. I want to be there alone. This thing is between my men and me.It's personal. We've got to settle it between ourselves."
The professor argued, pleaded; but Bonbright was stubborn, and the professor had previous acquaintance with Bonbright's stubbornness. Its quality was that of tool steel. Bonbright had made up his mind to go and to go alone. Nobody could argue him out of it.
Bonbright did go alone. He went early in order to obtain a good position in the hall, a mammoth gathering place capable of seating three thousand people. He entered quietly, unostentatiously, and walked to a place well toward the front, and he entered unobserved. The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place. In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of tenseness, of excitement. Bonbright could feel it. It made him tingle; it gave him a sensation of vibrating emptiness resembling that of a man descending in a swift elevator.
Bonbright was not accustomed to public speaking, but, somehow, he did not regard what he was about to say as a public speech. He did not think of it as being kindred to oratory. He was there to talk business with a gathering of his men, that was all. He knew what he was going to say, and he was going to say it clearly, succinctly, as briefly as possible.
In half an hour the chairs on the platform were occupied by chairman, speakers, union officials. The great hall was jammed, and hundreds packed about the doors in the street without, unable to gain admission…. The chairman opened the meeting briefly. Behind him Bonbright saw Dulac, saw the members of the committee that had waited on him, saw other men known to him only because he had seen their pictures from time to time in the press. It was an imposing gathering of labor thought.
Bonbright had planned what he would do. It was best, he believed, to catch the meeting before it had been excited by oratory, before it had been lashed to anger. It was calmer, more reasonable now than it would be again. He arose to his feet.
"Mr. Chairman," he said, distinctly.
The chairman paused; Bonbright's neighbors turned to stare; men all over the hall rose and craned their necks to have a view of the interrupter.
"Sit down!…Shut up!" came cries from here and there. Then other cries, angry cries. "It's Foote!… It's the boss! Out with him!… Out with him!"
"Mr. Chairman," said Bonbright, "I realize this is unusual, but I hope you will allow me to be heard. Every man here must admit that I am vitally interested in what takes place here to-night…. I come in a friendly spirit, and I have something to say which is important to me and to you. I ask you to hear me. I will be brief…"
"Out with him!… No!… Throw him out!" came yells from the floor. The house was on its feet, jostling, surging. Men near to Bonbright hesitated. One man reached over the shoulders of his fellows and struck at Bonbright. Another shoved him back.
"Let him talk…. Let's hear him," arose counter-cries. The meeting threatened to get beyond control, to become a mob.
The chairman, familiar with the men he dealt with, acted quickly. He turned to Dulac and whispered, then faced the hall with hands upheld.
"Mr. Foote is here uninvited," he said. "He requests to be heard. Let us show him that we are reasonable, that we are patient…. Mr. Dulac agrees to surrender a portion of his time to Mr. Foote. Let us hear what he has to say."
Bonbright pushed his way toward the aisle and moved forward. Once he stumbled, and almost fell, as a man thrust out a foot to trip him—and the hall laughed.
"Speak your piece. Speak it nice," somebody called, and there was another laugh. This was healthier, safer.
Bonbright mounted the platform and advanced to its edge.
"Every man here," he said, "is an employee of mine. I have tried to make you feel that your interests are my interests, but I seem to have failed—or you would not be here. I have tried to prove that I want to be something more than merely your employer, but you would not believe me."
"Your record's bad," shouted a man, and there was another laugh.
"My record is bad," said Bonbright. "I could discuss that, but it wouldn't change things. Since I have owned the mills my record has not been bad. There are men here who could testify for me. All of you can testify that conditions have been improved…. But I am not here to discuss that. I am here to lay before you a plan I have been working on. It is not perfect, but as it stands it is complete enough, so that you can see what I am aiming at. This plan goes into effect the day the new plant starts to operate."
"Does it recognize the unions?" came from the floor.
"No," said Bonbright. "Please listen carefully…. First it establishes a minimum wage of five dollars a day. No man or woman in the plant, in any capacity, shall be paid less than five dollars a day. Labor helps to earn our profits and labor should share in them. That is fair. I have set an arbitrary minimum of five dollars because there must be some basis to work from…."
The meeting was silent. It was nonplused. It was listening to the impossible. Every man, every employee, should be paid five dollars a day!
"Does that mean common labor?"
"It means everyone," said Bonbright. "It means the man who sweeps out the office, the man who runs the elevator, the man who digs a ditch. Every man does his share and every man shall have his share.
"I want every man to live in decent comfort, and I want his wife and babies to live in comfort. With these wages no man's wife need take in washing nor work out by the day to help support the family. No man will need to ask his wife to keep a boarder to add to the family's earnings…."
The men listened now. Bonbright's voice carried to every corner and cranny of the hall. Even the men on the platform listened breathlessly as he went on detailing the plan and its workings. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the world's history. No such offer had ever been made to workingmen by an employer capable of carrying out his promises…. He told them what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do it. He told them what he wanted them to do to co-operate with him—of an advisory board to be elected by the men, sharing in deliberations that affected the employees, of means to be instituted to help the men to save and to take care of their savings, of a strict eight-hour day…. No union had ever dreamed of asking such terms of an employer.
"How do we know you'll do it?" yelled a man.
"You have my word," said Bonbright.
"Rats!"
"Shut up… shut up!" the objector was admonished.
"That's all, men," Bonbright said. "Think it over. This plan is going into effect. If you want to share in it you can do so, every one of you…. Thank you for listening."
Bonbright turned and sat down in a chair on the platform, anxious, watching that sea of faces, waiting to see what would happen.
Dulac leaped to his feet. "It's a bribe," he shouted. "It's nothing but an attempt to buy your manhood for five dollars a day. We're righting for a principle—not for money…. We're—"
But his voice was drowned out. The meeting had taken charge of itself. It wanted to listen to no oratory, but to talk over this thing that had happened, to realize it, to weigh it, to determine what it meant to them. Abstract principle must always give way to concrete fact. The men who fight for principle are few. The fight is to live, to earn, to continue to exist. Men who had never hoped to earn a hundred dollars a month; men who had for a score of years wielded pick and shovel for two dollars a day or less, saw, with eyes that could hardly believe, thirty dollars a week. It was wealth! It was that thirty dollars that gripped them now, not the other things. Appreciation of them would come later, but now it was the voice of money that was in their ears. What could a man do with five dollars a day? He could live—not merely exist…. The thing that could not be had come to pass.
Dulac shouted, demanded their attention. He might as well have tried to still the breakers that roared upon a rocky shore. Dulac did not care for money. He was a revolutionist, a thinker, a man whose work lay with conditions, not with individuals. Here every man was thinking as an individual; applying that five dollars a day to his own peculiar, personal affairs…. Already men were hurrying out of the hall to carry the amazing tidings home to their wives.
Dulac stormed on.
One thing was apparent to Bonbright. The men believed him. They believed he had spoken the truth. He had known they would believe him; somehow he had known that. The thing had swept them off their feet. In all that multitude was not a man whose life was not to be made easier, whose wife and children were not to be happier, more comfortable, removed from worry. It was a moving sight to see those thousands react. They were drunk with it.
An old man detached himself from the mass and rushed upon the platform."It's true?… It's true?" he said, with tears running down his face.
"It's true," said Bonbright, standing up and offering his hand.
That was the first of hundreds. Some one shouted, hoarsely, "Hurrah forFoote!" and the armory trembled with the shout.
The thing was done. The thing he had come to do was accomplished. There would be no strike.
Dulac had fallen silent, was sitting in his chair with his face hidden.For him this was a defeat, a bitter blow.
Bonbright made his way to him.
"Mr. Dulac," he said, "have you found her?"
"You've bribed them…. You've bought them," Dulac said, bitterly.
"I've given them what is theirs fairly…. Have you found any trace of her?" Even in this moment, which would have thrilled, exalted another, which would have made another man drunk with achievement, Bonbright could think of Ruth. Even now Ruth was uppermost in his mind. All this mattered nothing beside her. "Have you got any trace?" he asked.
"No," said Dulac.
Next morning the whole city breakfasted with Bonbright Foote. His name was on the tongue of every man who took in a newspaper, and of thousands to whom the news of his revolutionary profit-sharing or minimum-wage plan was carried by word of mouth. It was the matter of wages that excited everyone. In those first hours they skipped the details of the plan, those details which had taken months of labor and thought to devise. It was only the fact that a wealthy manufacturer was going to pay a minimum wage of five dollars a day.
The division between capital and labor showed plainly in the reception of the news. Capital berated Bonbright; labor was inclined to fulsomeness. Capital called him on the telephone to remonstrate and to state its opinion of him as a half-baked idiot of a young idealist who was upsetting business. Labor put on its hat and stormed the gates of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, seeking for five-dollar jobs. Not hundreds of them came, but thousands. The streets were blocked with applicants, every one eager for that minimum wage. The police could not handle the mob. It was there for a purpose and it intended to stay…. When it was rebuked, or if some one tried to tell them there were no jobs for it, it threw playful stones through the windows. It was there at dawn; it still remained at dark.
A man who had an actual job at Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, was a hero, an object of admiring interest to his friends and neighbors. The thing touched him. There had been a miraculous laying on of hands, under which had passed away poverty. So must the friends and acquaintances of a certain blind man whose sight was restored by a bit of divine spittle have regarded him.
Malcolm Lightener did not content himself with telephoning. He came in person to say his say to Bonbright, and he said it with point and emphasis.
"I thought I taught you some sense in my shop," he said, as he burst into Bonbright's office. "What's this I hear now? What idiocy are you up to? Is this infernal newspaper story true?"
"Substantially," said Bonbright.
"You're crazy. What are you trying to do? Upset labor conditions in this town so that business will go to smash? I thought you had a level head. I had confidence in you—and here you go, shooting off a half-cocked, wild-eyed, socialistic thing! Did you stop to think what effect this thing would have on other manufacturers?"
"Yes," said Bonbright.
"It'll pull labor down on us. They'll say we can afford to pay such wages if you can."
"Well," said Bonbright, "can't you?"
"You've sowed a fine crop of discontent. It's damned unfair. You'll have every workingman in town flocking to you. You'll get the pick of labor."
"That's good business, isn't it?" Bonbright asked, with a smile. "Now, Mr. Lightener, there isn't any use thrashing me. The plan is going into effect. It isn't half baked. I haven't gone off half cocked. It is carefully planned and thought out—and it will work. There'll be flurries for a few days, and then things will come back to the normal for you fellows…. I wish it wouldn't. You're a lot better able than I am to do what I'm doing, and you know it. If you can, you ought to."
"No man has a right to go ahead deliberately and upset business."
"I'm not upsetting it. I'm merely being fair, and that's what business should have been years ago. I'm able to pay a five-dollar minimum, and labor earns it. Then it ought to have it. If you can pay only a four-dollar minimum, then you should pay it. Labor earns it for you…. If there's a man whose labor earns for him only a dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and that man pays it, he's doing as much at I am…"
"Bonbright," said Malcolm Lightener, getting to his feet, "I'm damn disappointed in you."
"Come in a year and tell me so, then I'll listen to you," saidBonbright.
"This nonsense won't last a year. It won't pan out. You'll have to give it up, and then what? You'll be in a devil of a pickle, won't you?"
"All you see is that five dollars. In a day or two the whole plan will be ready. I'm having it printed in a pamphlet, and I'll send you one. If you read it carefully and can come back and tell me it's nonsense, then I don't know you. You might let me go under suspended sentence at least."
Lightener shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Take one chunk of advice," he said. "Keep away from the club for a few days. If the boys feel the way I do they're apt to take you upstairs and drown you in a bathtub."
That was the side of the affair that Bonbright saw most during the day. Telephone messages, letters, telegrams, poured in and cluttered his desk. After a while he ceased to open them, for they were all alike; all sent to say the same thing that Malcolm Lightener had said. Capital looked upon him as a Judas and flayed him with the sharpest words they could choose.
He read all the papers, but the papers reflected the estimated thought of their subscribers. But to all of them the news was the big news of the day. No headline was too large to announce it… But the papers, even those with capitalistic leanings, were afraid to be too outspoken. Gatherers of news come to have some knowledge of human nature, and these men saw deeper and farther and quicker than the Malcolm Lighteners. They did not commit themselves so far but that a drawing back and realignment would be possible… No little part of Bonbright's day was spent with reporters.
The news came to every house in the city. It came even to Mrs. Moody's obscure boarding house, and the table buzzed with it. It mounted the stairs with Mrs. Moody to the room where Ruth lay apathetically in her bed, not stronger, not weaker, taking no interest in life.
Mrs. Moody sat daily beside Ruth's bed and talked or read. She read papers aloud and books aloud, and grumbled. Ruth paid slight attention, but lay gazing up at the ceiling, or closed her eyes and pretended she was asleep. She didn't care what was going on in the world. What did it matter, for she believed she was going to leave the world shortly. The prospect did not frighten her, nor did it gladden her. She was indifferent to it.
Mrs. Moody sat down in her rocker and looked at Ruth triumphantly. "I'll bet this'll interest you," she said. "I'll bet when I read this you won't lay there and pertend you don't hear. If you do it's because somethin's wrong with your brains, that's all I got to say. Sick or well, it's news to stir up a corpse."
She began to read. The first words caught Ruth's attention. The words were Bonbright Foote. She closed her eyes, but listened. Her thoughts were not clear; her mental processes were foggy, but the words Mrs. Moody was reading were important to her. She realized that. It was something she had once been interested in—terribly interested in… She tried to concentrate on them; tried to comprehend. Presently she interrupted, weakly:
"Who—who is it—about?" she asked.
"Bonbright Foote, the manufacturer. I read it out plain."
"Yes… What is it?… I didn't—understand very well. What did he—do?"
Mrs. Moody began again, impatiently. This time it was clearer to Ruth … Once she had tried to do something like this thing she was hearing about—and that was why she was here… It had something to do with her being sick… And with Bonbright… It was hard to remember.
"Even the floor sweepers git it," said Mrs. Moody, interpreting the news story. "Everybody gits five dollars a day at least, and some gits more."
"Everybody?…" said Ruth. "HE'S—giving it to—them?"
"This Mr. Foote is. Yes."
Suddenly Ruth began to cry, weakly, feebly. "I didn't help," she wailed, like an infant. Her voice was no stronger. "He did it alone—all alone… I wasn't there…"
"No, you was right here. Where would you be?"
"I wonder—if he did—it—for me?" Her voice was piteous, pleading.
"For you? What in goodness name have YOU got to do with it? He did it for all them men—thousands of 'em…. And jest think what it'll mean to 'em!… It'll be like heaven comin' to pass."
"What—have I—got to do—with it?" Ruth repeated, and then cried out with grief. "Nothing… Nothing…. NOTHING. If I'd never been born—he would have done it—just the same."
"To be sure," said Mrs. Moody, wondering. "I guess your head hain't jest right to-day."
"Read… Please read… Every word. Don't miss a word."
"Well, I swan! You be int'rested. I never see the like." And the good woman read on, not skipping a word.
Ruth followed as best she could, seeing dimly, but, seeing that the thing that was surpassed was the thing she had once sacrificed herself in a futile effort to bring about… It was rather vague, that past time in which she had striven and suffered… But she had hoped to do something… What was it she had done? It was something about Bonbright… What was it? It had been hard, and she had suffered. She tried to remember…. And then remembrance came. She had MARRIED him!
"He's good—so good," she said, tearfully. "I shouldn't have—done it … I should have—trusted him… because I knew he was good—all the tune."
"Who was good?" asked Mrs. Moody.
"My husband," said Ruth.
"For the land sakes, WHAT'S HE got to do with this? Hain't you listenin' at all?"
"I'm listening… I'm listening. Don't stop."
Memory was becoming clearer, the fog was being blown away, and the past was showing in sharper outline. Events were emerging into distinctness. She stared at the ceiling with widening eyes, listening to Mrs. Moody as the woman stumbled on; losing account of the reading as her mind wandered off into the past, searching, finding, identifying… She had been at peace. She had not suffered. She had lain in a lethargy which held away sharp sorrow and bitter thoughts. They were now working their way through to her, piercing her heart.
"Oh!…" she cried. "Oh!…"
"What ails you now? You're enough to drive a body wild. What you cryin'about? Say!"
"I—I love him… That's why I hid away—because I—loved him—and—and his father died. That was it. I remember now. I couldn't bear it…"
"Was it him or his father you was in love with?" asked Mrs. Moody, acidly.
"I—hated his father… But when he died I couldn't tell HIM—I loved him… He wouldn't have believed me."
"Say," said Mrs. Moody, suddenly awakening to the possibilities ofRuth's mood, "who was your husband, anyhow?"
Ruth shook her head. "I—can't tell you… You'd tell him… He mustn't find me—because I—couldn't bear it."
The mercenary came to the door. "Young woman at the door wants to see you," she said.
"Always somebody. Always trottin' up and down stairs. Seems like a body never gits a chance to rest her bones…. I'm comin'. Say I'll be right downstairs."
In the parlor Mrs. Moody found a young woman of a world with which boarding houses have little acquaintance. She glanced through the window, and saw beside the curb a big car with a liveried chauffeur. "I vum!" she said to herself.
"I'm Mrs. Moody, miss," she said. "What's wanted?"
"I'm looking for a friend… I'm just inquiring here because you're on my list of boarding houses. I guess I've asked at two hundred if I've asked at one."
"What's your friend's name? Man or woman?"
"Her name is Foote. Ruth Foote."
"No such person here… We got Richards and Brown and Judson, and a lot of 'em, but no Foote."
The young woman sighed. "I'm getting discouraged…. I am afraid she's ill somewhere. It's been months, and I can't find a trace. She's such a little thing, too…. Maybe she's changed her name. Quite likely."
"Is she hidin' away?" asked Mrs. Moody.
"Yes—you might say that. Not hiding because she DID anything, but because—her heart was broken."
"Um!… Little, was she? Sort of peaked and thin?"
"Yes."
"Ever hear the name of Frazer?"
"Why, Mrs. Moody—do you—That was her name before she was married …"
"You come along with me," ordered Mrs. Moody, and led the way up the stairs. "Be sort of quietlike. She's sick…"
Mrs. Moody opened Ruth's door and pointed in. "Is it her?" she asked.
Hilda did not answer. She was across the room in an instant and on her knees beside the bed.
"Ruth!… Ruth!… how could you?…" she cried.
Ruth turned her head slowly and looked at Hilda. There was no light of gladness in her eyes; instead they were veiled with trouble. "Hilda…" she said. "I didn't—want to be found. Go away and—and unfind me."
"You poor baby!… You poor, absurd, silly baby!" said Hilda, passing her arm under Ruth's shoulders and drawing the wasted little body to her closely. "I've looked for you, and looked. You've no idea the trouble you've made for me… And now I'm going to take you home. I'm going to snatch you up and bundle you off."
"No," said Ruth, weakly. "Nobody must know… HE—mustn't know."
"Fiddlesticks!" "Do you know?… He's done something—but it wasn't for me… I didn't have ANYTHING to do with it… Do you know what he's done?"
"I know," said Hilda. "It was splendid. Dad's all worked up over it, but I think it is splendid just the same." "Splendid," said Ruth, slowly, thoughtfully—"splendid… Yes, that's it—SPLENDID." She seemed childishly pleased to discover the word, and repeated it again and again.
Presently she turned her eyes up to Hilda's face, lifted a white, blue-veined, almost transparent hand, and touched Hilda's face. "I"—she seemed to have difficulty to find a word, but she smiled like a tiny little girl—"I—LIKE you," she said, triumphantly. "I'm—sorry you came—but I—like you."
"Yes, dear," said Hilda. "You'd BETTER like me."
"But," said Ruth, evidently striving to express a differentiation,"I—LOVE him."
Hilda said nothing; there was nothing she could say, but her eyes brimmed at the pitifulness of it. She abhorred tears.
"I'm going now, dear," she said. "I'll fix things for you and be back in no time to take you home with me…. So be all ready."
"No…" said Ruth.
"Yes," Hilda laughed. "You'll help, won't you, Mrs. Moody?"
"Hain't no way out of it, I calc'late," said the woman.
"I won't be half an hour, Ruth… Good-by."
But Ruth had turned away her face and would not answer.
"Say," said Mrs. Moody, in a fever of curiosity which could not be held in check after they had passed outside of Ruth's room, "who is she, anyhow?… SOMEBODY, I'll perdict. Hain't she somebody?"
"She's Mrs. Foote… Mrs. Bonbright Foote."
"I SWAN to man!… And me settin' there readin' to her about him. If it don't beat all… Him with all them millions, and her without so much as a nest like them beasts and birds of the air, in Scripture. I never expected nothin' like this would ever happen to me…" Hilda saw that Mrs. Moody was glorifying God in her heart that this amazing adventure, this bit out of a romance, had come into her drab life.
"Is that there your auto?" Mrs. Moody asked, peering out with awe at the liveried chauffeur.
Hilda nodded. "And who be you, if I might ask?" Mrs. Moody said.
"My name is Hilda Lightener, Mrs. Moody."
"Not that automobile man's daughter—the one they call the automobile king?"
"They call dad lots of things," said Hilda, with a sympathetic laugh. She liked Mrs. Moody. "I'll be back directly," she said, and left the good woman standing in an attitude suggestive of mental prostration, actually, literally, gasping at this marvel that had blossomed under her very eyes.
As Hilda's car moved away she turned, picked up her skirts, and ran toward the kitchen. The news was bursting out of her. She was leaking it along the way as she sought the mercenary to pour it into her ears.
Hilda was driving, not to her home, but to Bonbright Foote's office.
Dulac was on his way to Bonbright's office, too. He had started before Hilda, and arrived before she did. If he had been asked why he was going, it is doubtful if he could have told. He was going because he had to go… with fresh, burning hatred of Bonbright in his heart. Bonbright was always the obstacle he encountered. Bonbright upset every calculation, brought his every plan to nothing. He believed it was Bonbright who had broken the first strike, that strike upon which he had pinned such high hopes and which meant so much to labor. It had been labor's entering wedge into the automobile world. Then Bonbright had married the girl he loved. Some men can hate sufficiently for that cause alone… Ruth had loved him, but she had married Bonbright. He had gone to take her away, had seen her yielding to him—and Bonbright had come. Again he had intervened. And now, better equipped than for the first strike, with chances of success multiplied, Bonbright had intervened again—with his plan.
Dulac did not consider the plan; did not perceive virtues in it, not the intent that was behind it. He did not see that labor was getting without effort benefits that no strike could bring. He did not see the happiness that it brought to thousands… All he saw was that it had killed the new strike before birth. He regarded it as sharp practice, as a scheme for his undoing. The thing he fought for was the principle of unionization. Nothing else mattered; not money, not comforts, not benefits multiplied could weigh against it… He was true to his creed, honest in its prosecution, sincere in his beliefs and in his efforts to uplift the conditions of his fellow men. He was a fanatic, let it be admitted, but a fanatic who suffered and labored for his cause. He was stigmatized as a demagogue, and many of the attributes of the demagogue adhered to him. But he was not a demagogue, for he sought nothing for himself… His great shortcoming was singleness of vision. He fixed his eyes upon one height and was unable to see surrounding peaks.
So he was going to see the man who had come between him and every object he had striven for… And he did not know why. He followed impulse, as he was prone to follow impulse. Restraints were not for him; he was a thinker, he believed, and after his fashion he WAS a thinker…. But his mind was equipped with no stabilizer.
The impulse to see Bonbright was conceived in hatred and born in bitterness. It was such an impulse as might, in its turn, breed children capable of causing a calloused world to pause an instant on its way and gasp with horror.
He brushed aside the boy who asked his business with Mr. Foote, and flung open Bonbright's door. On the threshold he stood speechless, tense with hatred, eyes that smoldered with jealousy, with rage, burning in hollows dug by weariness and labor and privation. He closed the door behind him slowly.
Bonbright looked up and nodded. Dulac did not reply, but stared, crouching a little, his lips drawn a trifle back so that a glint of white showed between.
"You wanted to see me?" said Bonbright.
"Yes," said Dulac. The word was spoken so low, so tensely, that it hardly reached Bonbright's ears. That was all. He said no more, but stood, haggard and menacing.
Bonbright eyed him, saw his drawn face, saw the hatred in his eyes. Neither spoke, but eye held eye. Bonbright's hand moved toward a button on his desk, but did not touch it. Somehow he was not surprised, not startled, not afraid—yet he knew there was danger. A word, a movement, might unleash the passions that seethed within Dulac….
Dulac stepped one step toward Bonbright, and paused. The movement was catlike, graceful. It had not been willed by Dulac. He had been drawn that step as iron is drawn to magnet. His eyes did not leave Bonbright's. Bonbright's eyes did not leave Dulac's.
It seemed minutes before Dulac made another forward movement, slowly, not lifting his foot, but sliding it along the rug to its new position…. Then immovability…. Then another feline approach. Step after step, with that tense pause between—and silence!
It seemed to Bonbright that Dulac had been in the room for hours, had taken hours to cross it to his desk. Now only the desk separated them, and Dulac bent forward, rested his clenched fists on the desk, and held Bonbright's eyes with the fire of his own…. His body moved now, bending from the waist. Not jerkily, not pausing, but slowly, slowly, as if he were being forced downward by a giant hand. … His face approached Bonbright's face. And still no word, no sound.
Now his right hand moved, lifted. He supported his weight on his left arm. The right moved toward Bonbright, opening as it moved. There was something inexorable about its movement, something that seemed to say it did not move by Dulac's will, but that it had been ordained so to move since the beginning of time…. It approached and opened, fingers bent clawlike.
Bonbright remained motionless. It seemed to him that all the conflict of the ages had centered itself in this man and himself; as if they were the chosen champions, and the struggle had been left to them… He was ready. He did not seek to avoid it, because it seemed inevitable. There could never be peace between him and Dulac, and, strangely enough, the thought was present in his brain that the thing was symbolical. He was the champion of his class, Dulac the champion of HIS class—between which there could never be peace and agreement so long as the classes existed. He wondered if himself and Dulac had been appointed to abolish each other… In those vibrating seconds Bonbright saw and comprehended much.
The hand still approached.
Bonbright saw a change in the fire of Dulac's eyes, a sudden upleaping blaze, and braced himself for the surge of resistance, the shock of combat.
The door opened unheeded by either, and Hilda stood in the opening.
"I've found her…" she said.
Dulac uttered a gulping gasp and closed his eyes, that had been unwinking, closed his eyes a moment, and with their closing the tenseness went out of him and he sagged downward so that his body rested on the desk. Bonbright shoved himself back and leaped to his feet.
"Hilda…" he said, and his voice was tired; the voice of a man who has undergone the ultimate strain.
"I've found her. She's ill—terribly ill. You must go to her."
Dulac raised himself and looked at her.
"You've found—HER?" he said.
"We must go to her," said Bonbright. He was not speaking to Hilda, but to Dulac. It seemed natural, inevitable, that Dulac should go with him. Dulac was IN this, a part of it. Ruth and Dulac and he were the three actors in this thing, and it was their lives that pivoted about it.
They went down to the car silently, Dulac breathing deeply, like a man who had labored to weariness. In silence they drove to Mrs. Moody's boarding house, and in silence they climbed the stairs to Ruth's little room. Mrs. Moody hovered about behind them, and the mercenary sheltered her body behind the kitchen door, her head through the narrow opening, looking as if she were ready to pop it back at the least startling movement.
The three entered softly. Ruth seemed to be sleeping, for her eyes were closed and she was very still. Bonbright stood at one side of her bed, Dulac stood across from him, but they were unconscious of each other. Both were looking downward upon Ruth. She opened her eyes, saw Bonbright standing over her; shut them again and moved her head impatiently. Again she opened her eyes, and looked from Bonbright to Dulac. Her lips parted, her eyes widened… She pointed a trembling finger at Dulac.
"Not you…" she whispered. "Not you… HIM." She moved her finger until it indicated Bonbright.
"I don't—believe you're—really there… either of you," she said, "but I—like to have—YOU here…. You're my husband…. I LOVE my husband," she said, and nodded her head.
"BONBRIGHT!" whispered Hilda.
He did not need the admonition, but was on his knees beside her, drawing her to him. He could not speak. Ruth sighed as she felt his touch. "You're REAL," she whispered. "Is he real, too?"
"We're all real, dear," said Hilda.
"Ask HIM—please to go away, then," Ruth said, pointing to Dulac. "I don't want to—hurt him… but he knows I—don't want him…."
"Ruth!" Dulac's utterance was a groan.
"YOU know—don't you, Hilda?… I told you—a long time ago… I never loved—HIM at all. Isn't that—queer?… I thought I did—but—I didn't know… It was something else… You won't feel too bad … will you?"
Ruth looked up at Dulac. "I think you—better—go," she said, gently. He looked at Ruth, looked at Bonbright. Then he turned and, stumbling a little as he went, fumbling, to open the door, he obeyed. They listened in silence to the slow descent of his footsteps; to the opening and closing of the door, as Dulac passed out into the street.
"Poor—man!" said Ruth.
"Bonbright," said Hilda, "do you believe me now?"
He nodded. Hilda moved toward the door. "If you want her—cure her …Nobody else can. You've got the only medicine." And she left them alone.
"I—loved you all the time, but… I didn't know… I was going… to tell you… and then HE died. Hilda knows. You'll… believe me, won't you?"
"Yes," was all he could say.
"And you… want me back? You… want me to be your… wife?"
"Yes."
She sighed happily. "I'll get… well, then… It wasn't worth the—theBOTHER before."
Neither of them spoke for a time; then she said: "I saw about it… in the papers. It was… splendid." She used proudly the word Hilda had found for her. "I was… proud."
Then: "You haven't… said anything. Isn't there… something you … ought to say?"
He bent over closer and whispered it in her ear, not once, but many times. She shut her eyes, but her lips smiled and her fragile arms drew his head even closer, her white hand stroked his cheek.
"If it's all… REAL," she said, "why don't you… KISS me?"
Words were not for him. Here was a moment when those symbols for thoughts which we have agreed upon and called words, could not express what must be expressed. As there are tones too high or too low to be sounded on any instrument, so too there are thoughts too tender to be expressed by words.
"Do you really… WANT me?" She wanted to be told and told again and again. "I'll be a… nice wife," she said. "I promise… I think we'll be… very happy."
"Yes," he said.
"I'll never… run away any more… will I?"
"No."
"You'll—keep me CLOSE?"
"Yes."
"Always?"
"Always."
"And you won't… remember ANYTHING?"
"Nothing you don't want me to."
"Tell me again… Put your… lips close to my ear… like that … now tell me…
"I think I'll… sleep a little now… You won't run away—while my eyes are shut?"
"Never," he said.
"Let me put my head… on your arm… like that." She closed her eyes, and then opened them to smile up at him. "This is… so nice," she said.
When she opened her eyes again Bonbright was still there. He had not moved… Her smile blossomed for him again, and it was something like her old, famous smile, but sweeter, more tender.
"I didn't… dream a bit of it," she said to herself.
Hilda came in. "We're going to take her to our house, Bonbright, till she gets well. That's best, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"You'll come, won't you, Ruth—now?"
"If my… husband comes, too," she said.
Ruth's strength returned miraculously, for it had not been her body that was ill, but her soul, and her soul was well now and at peace. Once she had thought that just to be at peace would be perfect bliss. She knew better now, for she was at peace, and happiness was hers, besides…. It was pitiful how she clung to Bonbright, how she held him back when he would be leaving in the morning, and how she watched the door for his return.
Bonbright knew peace, too. Sometimes it seemed that the conflict was over for him and that he had sailed into a sure and quiet haven where no storm could reach him again. All that he had lacked was his; independence was his and the possibility of developing his own individualism. The ghosts of the ancestors were laid; Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, was no longer a mold that sought to grasp him and turn him into something he was not and did not wish to be. The plan was proving itself, demonstrating its right to be. Even Malcolm Lightener was silenced, for the thing marched. It possessed vitals. Nor had it upset business, as Lightener once predicted. After the first tumult and flurry labor had settled back into its old ways. The man who worked for Bonbright Foote was envied, and that man and his family prospered and knew a better, bigger life. The old antagonism of his employees had vanished and he had become a figure to call out their enthusiasm. He believed every man of them was his friend, and, more than that, he believed he had found the solution to the great problem. He believed he had found a way of bringing together capital and labor so that they would lie down together like the millennial lion and lamb… All these things made for peace. But in addition he had Ruth's love, and that brought back his old boyishness, gave him something he had never had before, even in his youth—a love of life, a love of living, a gladness that awoke with him and accompanied him through his days.
When Ruth was able to sit up they began to lay out their future and to plan plans. Already Bonbright was building a home, and the delight they had from studying architect's drawings and changing the position of baths and doors and closets and porches was unbelievable. Then came the furnishing of it, and at last the moving into it.
"I'm almost glad it all happened," Ruth said.
"Yes," said Bonbright.
"We'd have been just ordinarily happy if we'd started like other folks… But to have gone through that—and come into all this!…"
"Let's not remember it," he said. Then: "Ruth, you never make any suggestions—about the men. You know lots more about them than I do. You were born among them. But you just listen to me when I talk to you, and never offer a word."
"I—I've been afraid to," she said.
"Afraid?"
"Yes… Don't you remember? It might look as if…"
He silenced her, knowing what was her thought. "I'll never think anything about you that isn't so," he said.
"Then I'll suggest—when I think of anything. But I couldn't have suggested any of it. I couldn't have dreamed it or hoped it. Nothing I could have asked for them would have been as—as splendid as this."
"You believe in it?"
"More than that. I've been into their homes. They were glad to see me. It was wonderful… Enough to eat, cleanliness, mothers at home with their babies instead of out washing, no boarders… And no worries. That was best. They showed me their bank accounts, or how they were buying homes, and how quickly they were paying for them… And I was proud when I thought it was my husband that did it."
"Lightener says it looks all right now, but it won't last. He says it's impractical."
"He doesn't know. How could he know as well as you do? Aren't you the greatest man in the world?" She said it half laughingly, but in her heart she meant it.
She loved to talk business with him; to hear about the new mills and how they were turning out engines. She discussed his project of enlarging further, perhaps of manufacturing automobiles himself, and urged him on. "It will give work to more men, and bring more men under the plan," she said. That was her way of looking at it.
Hilda came often, and laughed at them, but she loved them.
"Just kids," she jeered, but she envied them and told them so. And then, because she deserved it, there came a man into her own life, and he loved her and she loved him. Whereupon Bonbright and Ruth returned her jeers with interest.
More than a year went by, a year of perfection. Then came a cloud on the horizon. Even five dollars a day and the plan did not seem to content labor, and Bonbright became aware of it. Dulac was active again, or, rather, he had always been active. Discontent manifested itself…. It grew, and had to be repressed. In spite of the plan—in spite of everything, a strike threatened, became imminent.
Ruth was thunderstruck, Bonbright bewildered. His panacea was not a panacea, then. He studied the plan to better it, and did make minor improvements, but in its elements it was just, fair. Bonbright could not understand, but Malcolm Lightener understood and the professor of sociology understood.
"I can't understand it," Bonbright said to them.
"Huh!" grunted Lightener. "It's just this: You're capital, and they're labor. That's it in a nutshell."
"But it's fair."
"To be sure it's fair—as fair as a thing can be. But the fact remains. Capital and labor can't get together as long as they remain capital and labor."
The professor nodded. "You've said the thing that is, Mr. Lightener. But it's deeper than that. It's the inevitable surge upward of humanity. You rich men try to become richer. That is natural. You are reaching up. Labor has a long way to climb to reach you, but it wants to reach you. Perhaps it doesn't know it, but it does. As long as a height remains to be climbed to, man will try to climb… Class exists. The employer class and the employed. So long as one man can boss another; so long as one man can say to another, 'Do this or do that,' there will be conflict. Everybody, whether he knows it or not, wants to be his own boss, and by as much as he is bossed he is galled … It can never be otherwise…"
"You knew from the beginning I would fail," said Bonbright.
"You haven't failed, my boy. You've done a fine thing; but you haven't solved a problem that has no solution… You are upset by it now, but after a while you'll see it and the disappointment will go. But you haven't failed… I don't believe you will ever understand all you have accomplished."
But Bonbright was unhappy, and he carried his unhappiness to his wife."It's all been futile," he said.
She was wiser than he. "No," she said, hotly, "it's been wonderful … Nothing was ever more wonderful. I've told you how I've visited them and seen the new happiness—seen women happy who had never been happy before; seen comfort where there had been nothing but misery … It's anything but futile, dear. You've done your best—and it was a splendid best… If it doesn't do all you hoped, that's no sign of failure. I'm satisfied, dear."
"They want something I can't give them."
"Nobody can give it to them… It's the way things are. I think I understand what the professor said. It's true. You've given all you can and done all you can…. You'd have to be God and create a new world… Don't you see?"
"I see…" he said. "I see…"
"And you won't be unhappy about it?"
He smiled. "I'm like the men, I guess. I want more than the world has to give me… I don't blame them. They're right."
"Yes," she said, "they're right."
It was not many weeks after this that Bonbright sat, frightened and anxious, in the library—waiting. A nurse appeared in the door and motioned. She smiled, and a weight passed from his heart.
Bonbright followed into Ruth's room, pausing timidly at the door.
"Come in, come in, young man. I have the pleasure to announce the safe arrival of Bonbright Foote VIII."
Bonbright looked at Ruth, who smiled up at him and shook her head.
"Not Bonbright Foote VIII, doctor," said Bonbright, as he moved toward his wife and son. "Plain Bonbright Foote. There are no numerals in this family. Everyone who is born into it stands by himself… I'll have no ancestors hanging around my boy's neck…"
"I know it," Ruth whispered in his ear, "but I was a—a teeny bit—afraid. He's OURS—but he's more than that. He's HIS OWN… as God wants every man to be."