Youth Challenges Part 57

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 nutsh.e.l.l."

"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... Cla.s.s exists.

The employer cla.s.s 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."

"n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d wants every man to be."

THE END