Youth Challenges Part 17

"Naturally, sir," said Rangar.

"But you will on no account relax your firmness with these strikers.

They must be shown."

"They're being shown," said Rangar, grimly, and walked out of the office. In the corridor his face, which had been expressionless or obsequious when he saw the need, changed swiftly. His look was that of a man thinking of an enemy. There was malice, vindictiveness, hatred in that look, and it expressed with exactness his sentiments toward young Bonbright Foote.... It did not express all of them, for, lurking in the background, unseen, was a deep contempt. Rangar despised Bonbright as a nincomp.o.o.p, as he expressed it privately.

"If I didn't think," he said, "I'd get all the satisfaction I need by leaving him to his father, I'd take a hand myself. But the Foote spooks will give it to him better than I could.... I can't wish him any worse luck than to be left to THEM." He chuckled and felt of his disarranged tie.

As for Bonbright Foote VI, he was frightened. No other word can describe his sensations. The idea that his son might marry--actually MARRY--this girl, was appalling. If the boy should actually take such an unthinkable step before he could be prevented, what a situation would arise!

"Of course it wouldn't last," he said to himself. "Such marriages never do.... But while it did last--And there might be a child--a SON!" A Bonbright Foote VIII come of such a mother, with base blood in his veins! He drew his aristocratic shoulders together as though he felt a chill.

"When he comes back," Mr. Foote said, "we'll have this thing out."

But Bonbright did not come back that day, nor was he visible at home that night.... The next day dragged by and still he did not appear. ...

CHAPTER XII

Ruth Frazer had been working nearly two months for Malcolm Lightener, and she liked the place. It had been a revelation to her following her experience with Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. It INTERESTED her, fascinated her. There was an atmosphere in the tremendous offices--a tension, a SNAPPINESS, an alertness, an efficiency that made Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, seem an anachronism; as belonging in an earlier, more leisurely, less capable century. There was a spirit among the workers totally lacking in her former place of employment; there was an att.i.tude in superiors, and most notable in Malcolm Lightener himself, which was so different from that of Mr. Foote that it seemed impossible. Foote held himself aloof from contacts with his help and his business. Malcolm Lightener was everywhere, interested in everything, mixing into everything. And though she perceived his granite qualities, experienced his brusqueness, his gruffness, she, in common with the office, felt for him something that was akin to affection. He was the sort to draw forth loyalty.

Her first encounter with him occurred a couple of days after her arrival in the office. She was interrupted in the transcription of a letter by a stern voice behind her, saying:

"You're young Foote's anarchist, aren't you?"

She looked up frightened into the unsmiling eyes of Malcolm Lightener.

"Mr. Foote--got me my place here," she said, hesitatingly.

"Here--take this letter." And almost before she could s.n.a.t.c.h book and pencil he was dictating, rapidly, dynamically. When Malcolm Lightener dictated a letter he did it as though he were making a public speech, with emphasis and gesture. "There," he said, "read it back to me."

She did, her voice unsteady.

"Spell isosceles," he demanded.

She managed the feat accurately.

"Uh!... That usually gets 'em.... Needn't transcribe that letter. Like it here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

She looked up at him, considering the matter. Why did she like it there? "Because," she said, slowly, "it doesn't seem like just a--a--big, grinding machine, and the people working here like wheels and pulleys and little machines. It all feels ALIVE, and--and--we feel like human beings."

"Huh!..." he grunted, and frowned down at her. "Brains," he said.

"Mighty good thing to have. Took brains to be able to think that--and say it." He turned away, then said, suddenly, over his shoulder, "Got any bombs in your desk?"

"Bombs!..."

"Because," he said, with no trace of a smile, "we don't allow little girls to bring bombs in here.... If you see anything around that you think needs an infernal machine set off under it, why, you come and tell me. See?... Tell me before you explode anything--not after. You anarchists are apt to get the cart before the horse."

"I'm not an anarchist, Mr. Lightener."

"Huh!... What are you, then?"

"I think--I'm sure I'm a Socialist."

"All of the same piece of cloth.... Mind, if you feel a bomb coming on--see me about it." He walked away to stop by the desk of a mailing clerk and enter into some kind of conversation with the boy.

Ruth looked after him in a sort of daze. Then she heard the girls about her laughing.

"You've pa.s.sed your examination, Miss Frazer," said the girl at the next desk. "Everybody has to.... You never can tell what he's going to do, but he's a dear. Don't let him scare you. If he thought he had he'd be tickled to death--and then he'd find some way to show you you needn't be at all."

"Oh!" said Ruth.

More than once she saw laboring men, machinists, men in greasy overalls, with grimy hands and smeared faces, pa.s.s into Malcolm Lightener's office, and come out with the Big Boss walking beside them, talking in a familiar, gruff, interested way. She was startled sometimes to hear such men address him by his first name--and to see no lightning from heaven flash blastingly. She was positively startled once when a machinist flatly contradicted Lightener in her hearing on some matter pertaining to his work.

"That hain't the way at all," the man said, flatly. Ruth waited for the explosion.

"Landers planned it that way." Landers was chief engineer in the plant, drawing a princely salary.

"Landers is off his nut. He got it out of a book. I'm DOIN' it. I tell you it won't work."

"Why?" Always Lightener had a WHY. He was constantly shooting it at folks, and it behooved them to have a convincing answer. The machinist had, and he set it forth at length and technically. Lightener listened.

"You win," he said, when the man was done. That was all.

More than once Ruth saw Hilda Lightener in the office. Usually the girls in an office fancy they have a grudge against the fortunate daughter of their employer. They are sure she snubs them, or is a sn.o.b, or likes to show off her feathers before them. This was notably absent in Hilda's case. She knew many by name and stopped to chat with them.

She was simple, pleasant, guiltless of pomp and circ.u.mstance in her comings and goings.

"They say she's going to marry young Foote. The Foote company makes axles for us," said Ruth's neighbor, and after that Ruth became more interested in Hilda.

She liked Bonbright Foote and was sorry for him. Admitting the unwisdom of his calls upon her, she had not the heart to forbid him, especially that he had shown no signs of sentiment, or of stepping beyond the boundary lines of simple friendship.... She saw to it that he and Dulac did not meet.

As for Dulac--she had disciplined him for his outbreak as was the duty of a self-respecting young woman, and had made him eat his piece of humble pie. It had not affected her veneration for his work, nor her admiration for the man and his sincerity and his ability.... She had answered his question, and the answer had been yes, for she had come to believe that she loved him....

She saw how tired he was looking. She perceived the discouragements that weighed on him, and saw, as he refused to see, that the strike was a failure in spite of his efforts. And she was sensible. The strike had failed; nothing was to be gained by sustaining the ebbing remnants of it, by making men and women and children suffer futilely. ... She would have ended it and begun straight-way preparing a strike that would not fail. But she did not say so to him. He HAD to fight. She saw that. She saw, too, that it was not in him to admit defeat or to surrender. It would be necessary to crush him first.

And then, at five o'clock, as she came out of the office she found Bonbright Foote waiting for her in his car. It had never happened before.

"I--I came for you," he said, awkwardly, yet with something of tenseness in his voice.

"You shouldn't," she said, not unkindly. He would understand the reasons.