"Ruth," he said, taking her hand and holding it with both his own, "you mustn't be afraid of ME.... You are afraid. You're my wife," he said, boyishly. "It's my job to make you happy—the most important job I've got—and to look after you and to keep away from you everything that might—make you afraid." He lifted her fingers to his lips; they were cold. "I want to take you in my arms and hold you... but not until you want me to. I can wait.... I can do ANYTHING that you want me to do. Both of us have just gone through unpleasant things—and they've tired and worried you.... I wish I might comfort you, dear...." His voice was low and yearning.

She let her hand remain in his, and with eyes from which the terror was fading she looked into his eyes to find them clear, honest, filled with love and care for her. They were good eyes, such as any bride might rejoice to find looking upon her from her husband's face.

"You're—so good," she whispered. Then: "I'm tired, Bonbright, so tired—and—Oh, you don't understand, you CAN'T understand.... I'll be different presently—I know I shall. Don't be angry..."

"Angry!"

"I'll be a good wife to you, Bonbright," she said, tremulously, a bit wildly. "I—You sha'n't be disappointed in me.... I'll not cheat. ... But wait—WAIT. Let me rest and think. It's all been so quick."

"You asked that," he said, hurt and puzzled.

"Yes.... It had to be—and now I'm your wife... and I feel as if I didn't know you—as if you were a stranger. Don't you understand?... It's because I'm so helpless now—just as if you owned me and could do what you wanted to with me... and it makes me afraid...."

"I—I don't understand very well," he said, slowly. "Maybe it's because I'm a man—but it doesn't seem as if it ought to be that way." He stopped and regarded her a moment, then he said, "Ruth, you've never told me you loved me."

She sensed the sudden fear in his voice and saw the question that had to be answered, but she could not answer it. To-day she could not bring herself to the lie—neither to the spoken lie nor the more difficult lying action. "Not now," she said, hysterically. "Not to- day.... Wait.... I've married you. I've given myself to you.... Isn't that enough for now?... Give me time."

It was not resentment he felt, not doubt of her. Her pitiful face, her cold little hands, the fear that lurked in her eyes, demanded his sympathy and forbearance, and, boy though he was, with all a boy's inexperience, he was man enough to give them, intuitive enough to understand something of the part he must play until she could adjust herself to her new condition.

He pressed her hand—and released it. "I sha'n't bother you," he said, "until you want me.... But it isn't because I don't want you— don't want to hold you—to LOVE you... and to have you love me.... It will be all right, dear. You needn't be afraid of me...."

The car was stopping before the hotel. Now the doorman opened the door and Bonbright helped his bride to alight. She tottered as her feet touched the sidewalk, and he took her arm to support her as he might have helped an invalid. The elevator carried them up to the floor on which were the rooms that had been prepared for them, and they stopped before the door while he inserted the key and turned the lock for their admission. On the threshold she halted, swept by a wave of terror, but, clenching her hands and pressing shut her eyes, she stepped within. The door closed behind them—closed out her girlhood, closed out her independence, shut away from her forever that ownership of herself which had been so precious, yet so unrecognized and unconsidered. It seemed to her that the closing of that door—even more than the ceremony of marriage—was symbolical of turning over to this young man the title deeds of her soul and body. ...

Bonbright was helping her to rid herself of her wraps, leading her to a sofa.

"Lie down," he said, gently. "You're tired and bothered. Just lie down and rest."

"Are we going away?" she asked, presently. "Have I got to get ready?"

He had promised her they would go away—and had not seen her since that moment to tell her what had happened. Hilda would not let him go to her that morning, so she was in ignorance of the change in his condition, of his break with his family, and of the fact that he was nothing but a boy with a job, dependent upon his wages. Until this moment he had not thought how it might affect her; of her disappointment, of the fact that she might have expected and looked forward to the position he could give her as the wife of the heir apparent to the Foote dynasty.... It embarrassed him, shamed him as a boy might be shamed who was unable to buy for his girl a trinket she coveted at some country fair. Now she must be told, and she was in no condition to bear disappointments.

"I promised you we should go away," he said, haltingly, "but—but I can't manage it. Things have happened....I've got to be at work in the morning. Maybe I should have told you. Maybe I should have come last night after it happened—"

She opened her eyes, and at the expression of his face she sat up, alarmed. It told her that no ordinary, small, casual mishap had befallen, but something vital, something which might affect him—and her tremendously.

"What is it?" she asked. "What has happened?"

"I went home last night," he said, slowly. "After—you promised to marry me—I went home to tell father....Mother was there. There was a row—but mother was worse than father. She was—rather bad."

"Rather bad—how, Bonbright?"

"She—didn't like my marrying you. Of course we knew neither of them would like it, but I didn't think anything like this would happen. ...You know father and I had a fuss the other day, and I left the office. I had thought things over, and was going back. It seemed as if I ought to go back—as if that was the thing to do.... Well, mother said things that made it impossible. I'm through with them for good. The Family and the Ancestors can go hang." His voice grew angry as recollection of that scene presented itself. "Mother said I shouldn't marry you..."

"You—you don't mean you're not going to—to have anything to do with Bonbright Foote, Incorporated—and all those thousands of men?"

"That's it....I couldn't do anything else. I had to break with them. Father was bad, but it was mother....She said she would never receive you or recognize you as my wife—and that sort of thing—and I left. I'm never going back.... On your account I'm sorry. I can't give you so much, and I can't do the things for you that I could.... We'll be quite poor, but I've got a job. Mr. Lightener gave me a job, and I've got to go to work in the morning. That's why we can't go away...."

"You mean," she said, dully, trying to sense this calamity, "that you will never go back? Never own—that—business?"

"It was a choice of giving you up or that. Mother made that clear. If I married you I should never have anything from them...."

She did not see the happiness that might lie for her in the possession of a husband whose love was so great that he could give up the kingdoms of the earth for her. She could not see the strength of the boy, his loyalty, his honor. All she saw was the crushing of her plan before it began to germinate.... She had given herself for the Cause. She was here, this young man's wife, alone in these rooms with him, because she loved the Cause and had martyred herself for it.... Her influence was to ameliorate the conditions of thousands of the Bonbright Foote laborers; she was to usher in a new era for them—and for that she had offered herself up.... And now, having bound herself forever to this boy that she did not love—loving another man—the possibility of achievement was snatched from her and her immolation made futile. It was as if she plunged into a rapids, offering her life to save a child that struggled there, to find, when she reached the little body, and it was too late to save herself, that it was a wax figure from some shop window.... But her position was worse than that; what she faced was worse than swift, merciful death.... It was years of a life of horrid possibilities, tied to a man whose chattel she was. She stood up and clutched his arm.

"You're joking," she said, in a tense, metallic voice.

"I'm sorry, dear. It's very true."

"Oh!" Her voice was a wail. "It can't be—it can't be. I couldn't bear that—not THAT...."

Bonbright seized her by the arms and peered into her face. "Ruth," he said, "what do you mean? Was THAT why you married me? You're not like those women I've heard about who married—for MONEY."

"No....No..." she cried. "Not that—Oh, don't believe that."

She spoke the truth, and Bonbright could not doubt it. Truth was in her words, her tone, her face....It was a thing she was incapable of, and he knew it. She could not be mean, contemptible. He drew her to him and kissed her, and she did not resent it. A surge of happiness filled him....She had been dismayed because of him. There was no other interpretation of her words and actions. She was conscience stricken because she had brought misfortune upon him.

He laughed boyishly. "Don't worry about me. I don't care," he said, gayly, "so long as I have you. You're worth it a dozen times....I'm glad, Ruth—I'm glad I had to pay for you dearly. Somehow it makes me seem worthier—you understand what I mean...."

She understood—understood, too, the interpretation he had put on her words. It brought a flush to her white cheeks....She disengaged herself gently.

"If we're not going away," she said, "I can lie down—and rest."

"Of course."

"Alone? In the next room?"

He opened the door for her. "I'll be as quiet as a mouse," he said. "Have a good sleep. I'll sit here and read." She read in his eyes a plea for affection, for another kiss, as she left him, but she had not the strength to give it. She went into the adjoining room, and shut the door after her. Then she stood there silently regarding the door—regarding the KEY.... If she locked it she was safe from him. He could not come in.... She could lock him out.

Her hand went to the key, but came away without turning it. No.... She had no right. She had made her bargain and must abide by it. Bonbright was her husband and she was his wife, and as such she must not turn locks upon him.... Marriage gave him the right of free access.

Dressed as she was, in the suit that had been her wedding dress, she threw herself upon the bed and gave up her soul to torment. She had taken her all and paid it for a thing desirable in her eyes—and her all had bought her nothing. She had wrenched her love from the man to whom she had given it, and all her life must counterfeit love for a man whom she did not love—and in return she would receive—nothing. She had seen herself a Joan of Arc. That dream was blown away in a breath.... But the bargain was made. That she did not receive what she had thought to receive was no fault of Bonbright's—and she must endure what was to be endured. She must be honest with him—as honesty showed its face to her. To be honest with him meant to her to deceive him daily, hourly, to make her life a lie. He was cheated enough as matters stood—and he did not deserve to be cheated. He was good, gentle, a man. She appreciated him—but she did not love him. ... And appreciating him, aware of his strength and his goodness to her, she could not keep her eyes off the door. She lay there eying it with ever increasing apprehension—yet she did not, would not, could not, rise to turn the key....



CHAPTER XX

In every formation of a fresh family group there must be readjustments of habit and of thought. Two people who fancy they know each other intimately discover that they are in reality utter strangers. They start a new acquaintanceship at the moment of marriage, and the wonder of it is that so many millions of them manage the thing with success. It is true that a man and woman who join their hands and their fortunes because of a deep-seated, genuine, calm affection have a greater chance of lasting happiness than those who unite because of the spur of sudden, flaring passion. There are those who contend that friendship and mutual confidence are a firmer foundation for marriage than the emotion that we call love. Thousands of men and women have married because prudence told them a certain other individual would make a trustworthy, efficient, comfortable husband or wife, and as days and weeks and years passed this respect and trust and regard has blossomed into a beautifully permanent flower of love....Doubtless happiness has resulted from marriages which resulted from motives purely mercenary, for human beings are blessed by Heaven with a quality called adaptability. Of no marriage can one predict happiness surely. At the altar the best one can do is to hope for the best....But what can be said of a marriage brought about by the causes and motives that led Bonbright Foote to Ruth Frazer and Ruth Frazer to Bonbright Foote?

Of the two, Bonbright's reasons most nearly approached the normal, and therefore the safe; Ruth had been urged by a motive, lofty perhaps, visionary, but supremely abnormal. Therefore the adjustments to be made, the problems to be mastered, the difficulties in their road to a comfortable, reasonably happy future, were multiplied many times. Instead of being probable, the success of their little social entity became merely possible, doubtfully possible.

Ruth, being a woman, understood something of this. Bonbright, being a boy, and a singularly inexperienced boy, understood it not at all, and as he sat alone, a closed door between him and his wife, he wearied his brain upon the puzzle of it. He came to the conclusion that the present difficult situation was the natural thing. It was natural for the bride to be timid, frightened, reluctant, for she was entering a dark forest of strange, new experiences. He understood that his own case might be exaggerated because their marriage had been preceded by no ordinary courtship, with the opportunity which a courtship gives to begin the inevitable readjustments, and to become accustomed to intimacy of thought and act.

The ordinary man has little intuition, but a world of good intentions. Men blunder woefully in their relations with women, not because of innate boorishness in the sex, not because of willful brashness, but because of lack of understanding. They mean well, but their performance is deplorable.... In that moment Bonbright's most valuable possession was a certain intuition, a fineness, a decency, a reserve, a natural modesty. As he sat there alone he reached a conclusion which was, probably, the most profoundly wise conclusion he was to arrive at in his life. It came not so much from taking thought, as by blessed inspiration. This conclusion was that he must court Ruth Frazer as a sweetheart, not approach her as a husband....

It was a course that would require infinite patience, forbearance, fineness. In his love for Ruth he felt himself capable of it; felt that it would bring its reward.

So he sat and waited. He did not approach the door which she had watched with apprehensive eyes until weariness had closed them in sleep....

The luncheon hour had passed when he heard Ruth moving about within.

"Hungry?" he called to her, boyishly. His voice reassured her. It was comradely. There was nothing in it that menaced her security....The sleep and the rest had bettered her. She was less tense, more calmly resigned to events. She had marshaled her will; had set it to bear her up and to compel her to carry on bravely and without hysteria the part of a wife.

"I am hungry," she said, and presently she appeared in the door, stood there a moment, and then walked across the room to Bonbright. "Thank you," she said, simply, and he understood.

"You don't mind being poor for a while?" he asked.

"I've always been poor," she said, with something that approached her old smile.

"Because," he said, "we are poor. I am going to earn about thirty dollars a week. So, you see, we can't afford to live here. We've got to find a little house or flat...."

"Let's begin," she cried. It was not the delight of a woman at the thought of hunting for her first home, but the idea of having something to do, of escaping from these rooms. "Let's go right out to look."

"First," he said, with pretended severity, "we eat."

So they went down to the dining room, and after they had eaten they inaugurated their house hunting. Perhaps Providence intervened at this difficult moment to give them occupation. If so, Providence acted with amazing wisdom and kindness.

Ruth found an interest in the search. She forgot. Her mind was taken from morbid breedings as they climbed stairs and explored rooms and questioned agents. Bonbright was very happy—happier because he was openly and without shame adapting his circumstances to his purse.... They found a tiny flat, to be had for a fourth of their income. Ruth said that was the highest proportion of their earnings it was safe to pay for rent, and Bonbright marveled at her wisdom in such matters. ...

Then there were the furnishings to select. Bonbright left the selection and the chaffering wholly to Ruth—and she enjoyed it. The business rested, refreshed, stimulated her. It pushed her fears into the dim background and brought again to the light of day her old self that Bonbright loved. More than once she turned the light of her famous grin upon him or upon some thrice lucky salesman.

But the end was reached at last; everything was done that could be done, and there was nothing to do but to return to the hotel. Ruth did her best to keep up her spirits, but by every block that they approached the hotel, by so much her lightness vanished, by so much her apprehension, her heartache, the black disappointment of the failure of her great plan, returned.

Bonbright saw the change and it grieved him—it strengthened the determination he had made. When they reached their rooms he drew her over to the sofa.

"Let's sit here together, dear," he said. "We haven't had a decent talk, and there are a heap of things to talk about, aren't there?"

She forced herself to sit down close to him, and waited icily, steeling herself to yield to his demonstrations of affection if he offered them, but he did not.

"I've an idea," he said. "I—I hope you'll like it. It'll be sort of- -fun. Sort of a game, you know.... While I sat here this afternoon I was thinking about us—and—how I want to make you happy....We were married—suddenly. Most folks play along and get to know each other, and grow to love each other gradually, I guess....I didn't grow to love you gradually. I don't know how it was with you. But, anyhow, we missed our courtship. We started right in by being husband and wife. Of course I'm glad of that....Don't think I'm not. I wanted you— right away. But—but my idea was that maybe we could—have our courtship now—after we are married....Mayn't we?"

"What—what do you mean?" she asked, fearfully, hopefully.

"We'll pretend we aren't married at all," he said. "We'll make believe we're at a house party or something, and I just met you. I'm no end interested in you right off, of course. I haven't any idea how you feel about me....We'll start off as if we just met, and it's up to me to make you fall in love with me....I'll bring out the whole bag of tricks. Flowers and candy and such like, and walks and rides. I'll get right down and pursue you....After a while you'll—maybe— get so far as to call me by my first name." He laughed like a small boy. "And some day you'll let me hold your hand—pretending you don't know I'm holding it at all....And I'll be making love to you to—to beat the band. Regular crush I'll have on you....What do you think?"

"You mean REALLY?...You mean we'll LIVE like that? That we won't be married, but do like you said?" She was staring at him with big, unbelieving eyes.

"That's the idea exactly....We won't be married till I WIN you. That's the game....And I'll try hard—you haven't any notion how hard I'll try." There was something pleading, pathetic in his voice, that went to her heart.

"Oh," she said, breathlessly, "that's DEAR of you.... You're good— so GOOD.... I—I hate myself.... You'll do THAT?... I didn't—know anybody—could be—so—so good." She swayed, swayed toward him in a storm of tears, and he drew her face down on his shoulder while with awkward hand he patted her shoulder.

"There.... There..." he said, clumsily, happily. She did not draw away from him, but lay there wetting his coat with her tears, her heart swelling with thanks-giving; fear vanished, and something was born in her breast that would never die. The thing that was born was a perfect trust in this man she had married, and a perfect trust is one of the rarest and most wonderful things under the sun.

For so young a man, Bonbright felt singularly fatherly. He held his wife gently, silently, willing that she should cry, with a song in his heart because she nestled to him and wept on his shoulder. If he deluded himself that she clung to him because of other, sweeter emotion than grief, relief, it did not diminish his happiness. The moment was the best he had known for months, perhaps the best he had ever known.

Ruth sat up and wiped her eyes. He looked into them, saw them cleared now of dread, and it was a sufficient reward. For her part, in that instant, Ruth almost loved Bonbright, not as lovers love, but as one loves a benefactor, some one whose virtues have earned affection. But it was not that sort that Bonbright asked of her, she knew full well.

"Now—er—Miss Frazer," he said, briskly, "I don't want to appear forward for a new acquaintance, but if I suggested that there was a bully play in town—sort of tentatively, you know—what would happen to me?"

"Why, Mr. Foote," she replied, able to enter into the spirit of the pretense, "I think you'd find yourself in the awkward position of a young man compelled to buy two seats."

"No chaperons?"

"Where I come from," she said, "chaperons are not in style."

"And we'll go some place after the play....I want to make the most of my opportunity, because I've got to work all day to-morrow. It's a shame, too, because I have a feeling that I'd like to monopolize you."

"Aren't you going a bit fast for a comparative stranger?" she asked, merrily.

He pretended to look crestfallen. "You sha'n't have to put me in my place again," he promised; "but wait—wait till we've known each other a week!...Do you know, Miss Frazer, you have a mighty charming smile!"

"It has been remarked before," she said.

"We mustn't keep our hostess waiting. I'm afraid we'll be late for dinner, now." He chuckled at the idea.

"I never have eaten dinner with a man in evening dress," she said, with a touch of seriousness. "In the country I come from the men don't wear them." How true that was—in the country she came from, the country of widows who kept boarding houses, of laborers, of Dulac and their sort! She was in another land now, a land she had been educated to look upon with enmity; the land of the oppressor. Little revolutionist—she was to learn much of that country in the days to come and to know that in it bad men and good men, worthy women and trifling women, existed in about the same ratio as in her own familiar land....Bonbright insisted upon buying her violets—the first costly flowers she had ever worn. They occupied desirable seats—and the few plays Ruth had seen she had seen from gallery heights! Fortunately it was a bright play, brimming with laughter and gayety, presenting no squalid problems, holding up to the shrinking eyes of the audience no far-fetched, impossible tangles of sex. They enjoyed it. Ruth enjoyed it. That she could do so is wonderful, perhaps, but then, so many human capabilities are wonderful! Men about to be hanged eat a hearty meal with relish.... How much more might Ruth find pleasure since she had been granted a reprieve!

When the curtain descended they moved toward the exits, waiting for the crowd to clear the way. Bonbright's attention was all for Ruth, but her eyes glanced curiously about, observing the well-fed, well- kept, brilliantly dressed men and women—men and women of the world to which she belonged now. As one approached them and saw them, they were singularly human. Their faces were not different from faces she was accustomed to. Cleaner they were, perhaps, with something more of refinement. They were better dressed, but there she saw the same smiles, the same weariness, the same charm, the same faces that told their tales of hard work and weary bodies.... They were just human beings, all of them, HER sort and these....

Suddenly her fingers tightened on her husband's arm. He heard her draw a quick, startled little breath, and looked up to see his father and mother approaching them, from the opposite direction. Bonbright had not expected this. It was the last place in the world he had thought to encounter his parents—but there they were, not to be avoided. He stopped, stiffened. Ruth stole a glance at his face and saw it suddenly older, tenser.

Mr. and Mrs. Foote approached slowly. Ruth knew the moment Mrs. Foote saw her husband, for the stately woman bit her lip and spoke hurriedly to Bonbright's father, who glanced at Bonbright and then at her uncertainly. Ruth saw that Mrs. Foote held her husband's arm, did not allow him to turn aside, but led him straight toward them.... Bonbright stood stiff, expectant. On came his father and mother, with no quickening of pace. Bonbright's eyes moved from one face to the other as they approached. Now they were face to face. Mrs. Foote's eyes encountered Ruth's, moved away from the girl to her son, moved on—giving no sign of recognition. Mr. Foote looked stonily before him....And so they passed, refusing even a bow to their son, the only child that had been given them....That others had seen the episode Ruth knew, for she saw astonished glances, saw quick whisperings.

Then she looked up at her husband. He had not turned to look after his parents, but was staring before him, his face white, his eyes burning, little knots of muscle gathered at the points of his jaw. She pressed his arm gently and heard his quick intake of breath—so like a sob.

"Come," he said, harshly. "Come."

"It was cruel—heartless," she said, fiercely, quickly partisan, making his quarrel her own, with no thought that the slight had been for her as well as for him.

"Come," he repeated.

They went out into the street, Bonbright quivering with shame and anger, Ruth not daring to speak, so white, so hurt was his face, so fierce the smolder in his eyes.

"You see..." he said, presently. "You see...."

"I've cost you THAT," she said.

"That," he said, slowly, as if he could not believe his words, "that was my father and—my mother."

Ruth was frightened. Not until this moment did she realize what she had done; not until now did the teeth of remorse clench upon her. To marry her—because he loved her—this boy at her side must suffer THIS. It was her doing....She had cheated him into it. She had cost him this and was giving nothing to pay for it. He had foreseen it. Last night he had cut adrift from his parents because of her— willingly. She knew he would have made, would make, any sacrifice for her....And she had married him with no love in her heart, married him to use him for her own ends!

She dared not doubt that what she had done was right. She dared not question her act, nor that the end justified the means she had used. ...But the end was not to be attained. By the act of marrying Bonbright she had made it impossible for herself to further the Cause....It was a vicious circle of events.

As she watched his face she became all woman; revolutionist and martyr disappeared. Her heart ached for him, her sympathy went out to him. "Poor boy!..." she said, and pressed his arm again.

"It was to—be expected," he said, slowly. "I'm glad it's over....I knew what would happen, so why should the happening of it trouble me?...There have been six generations in my family that would do that thing.... Ruth, the Foote Tradition is ended. It ended with me. Such things have no right to exist.... Six generations of it...."

She did not speak, but she was resolving silently: "I'll be good to him. I'll make him happy. I'll make up to him for this...."

He shook himself. "It doesn't matter," he said. "We sha'n't let it interfere with our evening....Come, Miss Frazer, where shall we lunch?"



CHAPTER XXI

All of Ruth's life had been spent in contact with the abnormal, the ultraradical. The tradition which time had reared about HER family— as powerful in its way as the Foote Tradition, but separated from it by a whole world—had brought acquaintanceship and intimacy with strange people and strange cults. In the parlor of her home she had listened to frank, fantastic discussions; to lawless theories. These discussions, beginning anywhere, ended always with the reform of the marriage relation. Anarchist, socialist, nihilist, atheist, Utopian, altruist—all tinkered with the family group, as if they recognized that the civilization they were at war with rested upon this and no other foundation.

So Ruth was well aware how prone the individual is to experiment with the processes of forming and continuing the relations between men and women which have for their cardinal object the peopling of the earth. But in spite of the radicalism which was hers by right of inheritance and training, she had not been attracted by any of them. A certain basic sense of balance had enabled her to see these things were but vain gropings in the dark; that they might flower successfully in abnormal individual cases—orchid growths—but that each was doomed to failure as a universal solution. For mankind in bulk is normal, and its safety lies in a continuance of normality. Ages had evolved the marriage relation as it existed; ages might evolve it into something different as sudden revolution could not. It was the one way, and she knew it to be the one way.

Therefore she recognized that Bonbright and herself were embarked on one of these unstable, experimental craft. She saw, as he did not, that it was unseaworthy and must founder at the first touch of storm. She pinned no false hopes to it; recognized it as a makeshift, welcome to her only as a reprieve—and that it must soon be discarded for a vessel whose planking was reality and whose sails were woven of normal stuff.

As the days went by and they were settled in their little flat, living the exotic life which temporarily solved their problem, she knew it could not last; feared it might dissolve at any moment. Inevitable signs of the gust that should destroy it had been apparent...and her dread returned. Even Bonbright was able to see that his plan was not a perfect success.

If it had not been for Dulac.... He complicated the thing unendurably.... If Bonbright were still heir apparent to the Foote dynasty, and her plan might be carried out.... She felt a duty toward Dulac—she had promised to hold him always in her thoughts, felt he was entitled to a sort of spiritual loyalty from her. And, deprived of him, she fancied her love for him was as deep as the sea and as enduring as time....

Long days alone, with only the slightest labor to occupy her hands and mind, gave her idle time—fertile soil for the raising of a dark crop of morbid thoughts. She brooded much, and, brooding, became restless, unhappy, and she could not conceal it from Bonbright when he came home eagerly for his dinner, ready to take up with boyish hope the absurd game he had invented. She allowed herself to think of Dulac; indeed, she forced herself to think of him....

Five days she had been married, when, going to the door in answer to the bell, she opened it, to find Dulac standing there. She uttered a little cry of fright and half closed the door. He held it open with his knee.

Sudden terror, not of him, but of herself, caused her to thrust against the door with all her strength, but he forced it open slowly and entered.

"Go away," she said, shrinking from him and standing with her back against the wall. "Go away...."

"I stayed away as long as I could," he said. "Now I'm not going away- -until we've had a talk."

"There's nothing for us to—say," she whispered. "You must be crazy— to come here."

He was laboring under excitement. She could see the smoldering fire in his black eyes; it was plain that he was worn, tired, a man fighting in the last ditch. His hold upon himself was not secure, but she could not be sorry for him now. The possibilities his presence suggested terrified her and excluded all other thoughts.

He stood with his burning eyes upon her face, not speaking; staring. "Go away," she begged, but he shook his head.

"You've been cheated," he said, hoarsely. "It doesn't matter if you gave yourself to HIM for the reason you said you did—or for his money. You're cheated.... His kind always cheats. You're getting NOTHING.... Are you going to stand it? That's what I came to find out.... Are you going to stand it?"

She could make no reply.

"What are you going to do about it?" he demanded.

"What can I do?... It's too late."

"Look here, you married him to get something—to be able to do something.... You didn't have any other reason. You didn't love him. ... You loved ME. He's been kicked out by his family. He doesn't own anything. He's out for good, and you can't get anything or do anything. I want to know what you're going to do about it."

"Nothing."

"Nothing?... You're not going to stick to him. You don't love him— probably you hate him by this time.... You couldn't help it."

"I married him," she said. "It isn't his fault if his family put him out.... It was MY fault. They did it because he married me.... It was I who cheated HIM—and you can see—what it's—cost him.... I've got to make it up to him—someway. I—I don't hate him.... He's been good.... Oh, he's been wonderfully good."

"Do you want to live with him?"

"No," she said. "No...."

"What about me?... I love you, don't I? Wasn't I before HIM?... Didn't you give yourself to me? What about me?..."

"That's all—over," she said. "Oh, please go away. I mustn't talk about that....I'm MARRIED...."

"Listen," he said, feverishly. "I love you. This fellow you've married doesn't know what love is.... What does he know about it? What would he do for you?..." He leaned forward, his face working, his body quivering with passion. She let her eyes fall, unable to support his gaze, and she trembled. His old fascination was upon her; the glamour of him was drawing her. He poured out a flood of passionate words, bared his soul to her starkly, as he talked swiftly, burningly of his love, and what his love meant to him and what it would mean to her. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of him; she summoned all the strength of her will to preserve her from his fascination, to resist his temptation....

"I'd have left you alone," he said, "if you'd got what you paid for. ...But when you didn't—when you got nothing—there was no reason for me to stay away.... You belonged to me. You do belong to me.... Why should you stick to him? Why?"

She could not answer him. The only reason she should cling to her husband was because he WAS her husband, but she knew that would be no reason to Dulac.

"There's been a marriage ceremony," he said, scornfully. "What of it? It isn't marriage ceremonies that unite men and women.... It's love— nothing else.... When you told me you loved me you married me more really than any minister can marry you. That was a real marriage—but you didn't think you were breaking any laws or violating any morals when you left me and married HIM. Just because we hadn't gone to a church.... You're married to ME and living with him—that's what it amounts to.... Now I'm here demanding you. I'm after my wife."

"No..." she said, weakly.

"Yes, my wife.... I want you back and I'm going to have you back. ... With the bringing up you've had, you're not going to let this CONVENTION—this word—marriage—hold you.... You're coming with me."

The thing was possible. She saw the possibility of it, the danger that she might yield. The man's power drew her. She WANTED to go; she WANTED to believe his sophistry, but there was a stanchness of soul in her that continued to resist.

"No..." she said, again.

"You'll come," he said, "because you can't stand it. I know.... Every time he touches you you want to scream. I know. It's torture. ... He'll find out. Don't you think he'll find out you don't love him—how you feel when he comes near you? And what then?... You'll come to me willingly now—or you'll come when he pushes you out."

"He'll—not—find out."

Dulac laughed. "Anybody but a young fool would have known before this....But I don't want to wait for that. I want you now." He came toward her eagerly to take her in his arms. She could not move; her knees refused to carry her from him....Her senses swam. If he touched her it would be the end—she knew it would be the end. If he seized her in his arms she would never be able to escape. His will would master her will. Yet she could not move—she was under his spell. It was only subconsciously that she wanted to escape. It was only the true instinct in her that urged her to escape.

His arms were reaching out for her now; in an instant his hands would touch her; she would be clutched tightly to him—and she would be lost....

Her back was against the wall....In that supreme instant, the instant that stood between her and the thing that might be, the virtue in her recoiled, the stanchness asserted itself, the command to choose the better from the worse course made itself heard to her will. She cried out inarticulately, thrust out with terrified arms, and pushed him from her.

"Don't touch me," she cried. "What you say is not true. I know. ...I'm his wife—and—you must go. You must—never come back. ...Bonbright is my husband—and I'll—stay with him....I'll do what I've got to do. I sha'n't listen to you. Go—please, oh, please go— NOW."

The moment had come to Dulac and he had not been swift enough to grasp it. He realized it, realized he had failed, that nothing he could do or say would avail him now....He backed toward the door, never removing his eyes from her face.

"You're MY wife," he said. "You won't come now, but you'll come. ...I'll make you come." He stopped a moment in the door, gazing at her with haggard eyes.... "And you know it," he said. Then he closed the door, and she was alone.

She sank to the floor and covered her face with her hands, not to hide her tears—for there were no tears to flow—but because she was ashamed and because she was afraid....She knew how close she had been to yielding, how narrow had been the margin of her rescue—and she was afraid of what might happen next time, of what might happen when her life with Bonbright became unbearable, as she knew it must become unbearable.

She crouched and trembled...and then she began to think. It was given her to perceive what she must do. Instead of fondling Dulac in her thoughts, she must put him out of her heart, she must not permit him in her dreams....She had promised him he should be always present in her thoughts. That promise she must break. Daily, hourly, she must steel herself against him in preparation for his next appearance, for she knew he would appear again, demanding her....It was not in the man to give her up, as it was not in him to surrender any object which he had set his soul to attain.

In spite of cults and theories and makeshifts and sophistries, she knew where her duty lay, where the safety of her soul lay—it was in fidelity to her husband. She resolved that fidelity should be his, and as she resolved it she knew that he deserved it of her. She resolved that she would eject Dulac from her life, and that, with all the strength of her will, she would try to bring herself to give that love to Bonbright which she had promised him by implication, but never by word. She did not know that love cannot be created by an effort of the will....

Before she arose from her pitiful posture she considered many plans, and discarded them all. There was no plan. It must all be left to the future. First she believed it was required that she should tell Bonbright she had married him without love, and beg of him to be patient and to wait, for she was trying to turn her love to him. But that, she saw, would not serve. He was being patient now, wonderfully, unbelievably patient. What more could she ask of him? It would only wound him, who had suffered such wounds through her. She could not do that. She could do nothing but wait and hope—and meet her problems as best she could when they arose. It was not an encouraging outlook.

Resolve as she would, she could not quiet her fears. Dulac would come again. He might find her in a weaker moment. Now, instead of one terror she harbored two....



CHAPTER XXII

Bonbright, in his business experience, had been like a man watching a play in a foreign language, from a box seat—with an interpreter to translate the dialogue. Now he found himself a member of the cast; very much a member, with abundant lines and business. In his old position as heir apparent to Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, he had been unhappy. Time had hung heavily on his hands. He had not been allowed to participate in actual affairs except as some automatic machine or rubber stamp participates. There every effort of his superiors had been directed to eliminating his individuality and to molding him to the Bonbright Foote type. He had not been required to use his brains—indeed, had been forbidden to do so.

In his new employment the condition was reversed. It seemed as if everything his father had desired him to do was interdicted in Malcolm Lightener's vast organization; everything that had been taboo before was required of him now. He was asked to think; he was taught to make his individuality felt; he was encouraged to suggest and to exercise his intelligence independently. There were actually suggestion boxes in every department where the humblest laborer might deposit a slip of paper telling the boss any notion he had which he deemed of service to the enterprise. More than that—any suggestion accepted was paid for according to its value.

In Bonbright's father's plant change and invention were frowned upon. New devices were regarded as impious. The typewriter was tolerated; the telephone was regarded with shame. The Ancestors had not made use of such things....Malcolm Lightener let no instrument for adding efficiency pass untried. It was the same in office and in shop. The plant was modern to the second—indeed, it was a stride ahead of the minute. There was a large experimental laboratory presided over by an engineer of inventive trend, whose business it was to eliminate and combine processes; to produce machines which would enable one man to perform the labor of three; to perform at one process and one handling the work that before required several processes and the passing of the thing worked upon from hand to hand.

If Bonbright had been interested in any phase of his father's business it had been in the machine shops. Now he saw how costly were those antique processes, how wasteful of time and labor. His father's profits were large; Bonbright saw very quickly how a revolution in methods would make them enormous. But he knew that revolution would not take place—the Ancestors forbade....

The thing had started at the first moment of his connection with Malcolm Lightener as an employee. He had reported promptly at seven o'clock, and found Lightener already in his office. It was Lightener's custom to come down and to go home later for breakfast.

"Morning," said Lightener. "Where's your overalls?"

"Overalls?" said Bonbright.

"Didn't I tell you to bring some? You'll need 'em. Wait, I'll send a boy out for some—while we have a talk....Now then, you've got a job. After six o'clock you and I continue on the same basis as before; between seven in the morning and six at night you're one of the men who work for me—and that's all. You get no favors. What they get you get....There aren't any soft jobs or hangers-on here. Everybody earns what he's paid—or he finds he isn't getting paid. Clear?"

"Perfectly," said Bonbright, not wholly at his ease.

"The object of this plant is to make automobiles—to make GOOD automobiles, and to make the most of them that can be made. If one man falls down on his job it delays everybody else. Suppose one man finishing THIS"—he held up a tiny forging—"does a botch job.... There's just one of these to a car, and he's held up the completion of a car. That means money.... Suppose the same man manages to turn out two perfect castings like this in the time it once took to turn out one.... Then he's a valuable man, and he hustles up the whole organization to keep even with him. Every job is important because it is a part of the whole operation, which is the turning out of a complete automobile. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Some men are created to remain laborers or mechanics all their lives. Some are foreordained bookkeepers. A few can handle labor—but that's the end of them. A very few have executive and organizing and financial ability. The plums are for them.... Every man in this plant has a chance at them. You have.... On the other hand, you can keep on earning what you're getting now until you're sixty. It's up to you.... I'm giving you a start. That's not sentiment. It's because you've education and brains—and there's something in heredity. Your folks have been successful—to a degree and in their own way. I'm making a bet on you—that's all. I'm taking a chance that you'll pay back at the box office what you're going to cost for some months. In other words, instead of your paying for your education, I'm sending you to school on the chance that you'll graduate into a man that will make money for me. But you've got to make good or out you go. Fair?"

"Yes," said Bonbright.

"All right. Remember it....You've got the stuff in you to make a man at the top—maybe. But you don't start at the top. You've got to scramble up just like anybody else. Right now you're not worth a darn. You don't know anything and you can't do anything. Day labor's where you belong—but you couldn't stand it. And it wouldn't be sense to put you at it, or I would. I'd set you to sweeping out the machine shops if I thought you needed it....Maybe you figured on sitting at a mahogany desk?"

"I came to do whatever you put me at," Bonbright said. "I've been fed up on sitting at a mahogany desk."

"Good—if you mean it. I hear a lot of four flush about what men are willing to do. Heaps of them repeat copybook platitudes....You're going to wear overalls and get your hands dirty. If you don't like it you can always quit....I know how to do darn nearly everything that's done in this place. The man who gets up near me has got to know it, too." Here was a hint for Bonbright of the possibilities that Malcolm Lightener opened up to him. "This morning you're going into the machine shop to run a lathe, and you're going to stay there till you KNOW how it's done. Then we'll move you some place else. Your place is in the office. But how soon you get there, or whether you ever get there, is up to you. Like the looks of it?"

Bonbright was silent a moment. When he spoke it was not in reply to Lightener's question, but to put into words a fear that had become apparent.

"The men," he said; "how about them?...You know, father sort of advertised me as a strike breaker and that kind of thing. Our men hate me. I suppose all laboring men feel that way about me."

"We don't have any unions here. I run my own plant, and, by gracious! I always will. I give my men fair pay—better than most. I give them all the opportunity they ask for. I give them the best and safest conditions to work in that can be had. I figure a good crew in a plant is a heap more valuable than good machinery—and I keep my machinery in repair and look after it mighty careful. But no union nonsense.... You won't have any trouble with the men."

Bonbright was not so sure.... Presently the boy returned with the overalls. Lightener wrote a note and handed it to the boy. "Take this man to Shop One and give this note to Maguire," he said; then he turned to Bonbright and jerked his thumb toward the door. Bonbright got up without a word and followed the boy.

In a moment the boy opened a big door, and Bonbright stepped through. The sight took away his breath—not that he had never seen this room before, but that he was now seeing it through other eyes, not merely as a spectator, but as a participant. It seemed to him as if the dimensions of the room should be measured not in feet, but in acres. It was enormous, but huge as it was it was all too small for the tangle of machinery it contained. To Bonbright's eyes it seemed a tangle. A labyrinth of shafting, countershafting, hung from the high ceiling, from whose whirring pulleys belts descended to rows upon rows of machines below. It looked like some strange sort of lunar forest, or some species of monstrous, magic banyan tree. Here were machines of a hundred uses and shapes, singly, in batteries—a scrambled mass it seemed. There were small machines—and in the distance huge presses, massive, their very outlines speaking of gigantic power. Bonbright had seen sheets of metal fed into them, to be spewed out at another point bent and molded to a desired form. Overhead conveyers increased the scrambled appearance. Men with trucks, men on hurried errands, hurried here and there; other men stood silently feeding hungry contrivances—men were everywhere, engrossed in their work, paving scant attention to anything outside their task. And rushing up to Bonbright was a wave of composite sounds, a roar, a bellow, a shriek, a rattle, a whir, a grind.... It seemed the ultimate possibility of confusion.

But as he walked down the aisle, dodging from time to time men or trucks that regarded him not at all, but depended on him to clear the way and to look out for himself, he was able to perceive something of the miraculous orderliness and system of it. He was given a hint of the plan—how a certain process would start—a bit of rough metal; how it would undergo its first process and move on by gradual steps from one machine to the next, to the next, in orderly, systematic way. No time was lost in carrying a thing hither and thither. When one man was through with it, the next man was at that exact point, to take it and contribute his bit to its transformation.... Something very like a thrill of pride passed over Bonbright. He was a part of this marvel....

Through this room they walked—the room would have sufficed in extent for a good-sized farm—and into another, not smaller, and into another and another. His destination, Shop One, was smaller, but huge enough. The boy led Bonbright to a short, fat man. in unbelievably grimy overalls and black, visored cap.

"Mr. Maguire," he shouted, "here's a man and a note from the boss." Then he scurried away.

Maguire looked at the note first, and shoved it into his pocket; then he squinted at Bonbright—at his face first; then, with a quizzical glint, at his clothes. Bonbright flushed. For the first time in his life he was ashamed of his clothes, and for a reason that causes few men to be ashamed of their clothes. He wished they were of cheaper cloth, of less expensive tailoring. He wished, most of all, that the bright new overalls in the bundle under his arm were concealing them from view.

"You're a hell of a looking machinist," said Maguire.

Bonbright felt it to be a remarkably true saying.

"The boss takes this for a darn kindergarten," Maguire complained. "Ever run a lathe or a shaper or a planer?"

"No."

"He said to stick you on a lathe.... Huh! What's he know about it?... How's he expect this room to make a showing if it's goin' to be charged with guys like you that hain't nothin' but an expense?"

Bonbright got the idea back of that. Maguire was personally interested in results; Maguire wanted his room to beat other rooms in the weekly reports; Maguire was working for something more than wages—he was playing the game of manufacturing to win.

"You go on a planer," Maguire snapped, "and Gawd help you if you spoil more castings than I figger you ought to.... The boys here'll make it hot for you if you pull down their average."

So the boys were interested, too. The thing extended downward from the bosses!

"Goin' to work in them clothes?" asked Maguire, with a grin.

"Overalls," said Bonbright, tapping his parcel.

Maguire went to his desk and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A boyish impulse to smear it moved him—but he was ashamed to do it openly.

Maguire led him to a big contrivance which was called a shaper. A boy of eighteen was operating it. On its bed, which moved back and forth automatically, was bolted a great cake of iron—a casting in the rough. The machine was smoothing its surfaces.

"Show him," Maguire said to the boy, "then report to me."

The boy showed Bonbright efficiently—telling him what must be done to that iron cake, explaining how the machine was to be stopped and started, and other necessary technical matters. Then he hurried off. Bonbright gazed at the casting ruefully, afflicted with stage fright. ... He was actually about to perform real labor—a labor requiring a certain measure of intellect. He was afraid he would make a mistake, would do something wrong, and possibly spoil the casting. He started the planer gingerly. It had not seemed to move rapidly when the boy was operating it, but now the bed seemed fairly to fly forward and snap back. He bent forward to look at the cutting he had made; it was right. So far he was all right.... Surreptitiously he laid his palm in a mass of grease and metal particles and wiped it across his breast.... It was an operation which he repeated more than once that morning.

Gradually his trepidation passed and he began to enjoy himself. He enjoyed watching that casting move resistlessly under the tool; watched the metal curl up in glittering little curlicues as the tool ate its way across. He looked with pleasure at the surface already planed and with anticipation of the surface still in the rough.... It was interesting; it was fun. He wondered vaguely if all men who worked at tasks of this kind found pleasure in them, not appreciating that years of doing the same thing over and over might make it frightfully monotonous. The truth was the thing had not yet become work to him. It was a new experience, and all new experiences bring their thrill.

Until the noon whistle blew he hardly took his eyes off his work. He did not know that Maguire passed him a dozen times, not stopping, but watching him closely as he passed.... With the stopping of work about him he realized that he was tired. He had lifted weights; he had used unaccustomed muscles. He was hot, sweaty, aching. He was hungry.

"Where do we eat?" he asked the man who stood at the next machine.

"Didn't you bring no lunch?"

"No."

"Some doesn't," said the man, as if he disapproved exceedingly of that class. "They feed at the hash house across the street.... Hain't broke, be you?"

Bonbright understood the kindly offer implied. "Thank you—no," he said, and followed to the big wash room.

He ate his lunch from the top of a tall stool. It was not the sort of food he was accustomed to, and the coffee was far from being the sort that had been served to him in his home or in his club—but he hardly noticed it. When he was through he walked back across the street and stood awkwardly among his mates. He knew none of them.

An oldish, smallish man looked at him and at his overalls, and grinned.

"New man?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Thought them overalls wasn't long off the shelf. You done a good job, though, considerin'."

Bonbright blushed.

"Where you been workin'?"

How was Bonbright to answer? He couldn't tell the truth without shaming himself in this man's eyes, and all at once he found he greatly desired the good opinion of this workingman and of the other workingmen about him.

"I—The last place I worked was Bonbright Foote, Incorporated," he said, giving his father's institution its full name.

"Urn.... Strikin', eh?"

Bonbright nodded. He had struck. Not with a union, but as an individual.

"'Bout over, hain't it, from all I hear tell?"

"I think so," said Bonbright.

"Bad business.... Strikes is always bad—especially if the men git licked. Unions hain't no business to call strikes without some show of winnin'..... The boys talk that this strike never had no chance from the beginnin'.... I don't think a heap of that Foote outfit."

"Why?"

"Rotten place to work, I hear. A good machinist can't take no pleasure there, what with one thing and another. Out-of-date machines, and what not.... That young Foote, the cub, is a hell winder, they say. Ever see him?"

"I've seen him."

"His father was bad enough, by all accounts. But this kid goes him one better. Wonder some of them strikers didn't git excited and make him acquainted with a brick. I've heard of fightin' strikes hard—but never nothin' like this one. Seems like this kid's a hard one. Wants to smash hell out of the men just to see them smash.... How'd he strike you?"

"I was sorry for him," said Bonbright, simply.

"Sorry?... What's the idea?"

"I—I don't believe he did what people believe. He didn't really have anything to do with the business, you know. He didn't count.... All the things that he was said to do—he didn't do at all. His father did them and let the men think it was his son."

"Sounds fishy—but if it's so somebody ought to lambaste the old man. He sure got his son in bad.... What's this I hear about him marryin' some girl and gettin' kicked out?"

"That's true," said Bonbright.

"Huh!... Wonder what he'll do without his pa. Them kind hain't much good, I notice.... Maybe he's well fixed himself, though."

"He hasn't a cent," said Bonbright.

"Appears like you know a heap about him.... Maybe you know what he's doin' now?"

"Working."

"Friends give him a soft job?"

"He's working in a—machine shop," said Bonbright.

"G'wan," said the man, incredulously. Then he looked sharply at Bonbright, at his new overalls, back again at his face.

"What's your name?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Foote," said Bonbright.

"HIM?"

"Yes," said Bonbright.

The man paused before he spoke, and there was something not kindly that came into his eyes. "Speakin' perty well of yourself, wasn't you?" he said, caustically, and, turning his back, he walked away. ... That action cut Bonbright more deeply than any of the few affronts that had been put upon him in his life had cut. He wanted to call the man back and demand that he listen to the truth. He wanted to explain, to set himself right. He wanted that man and all men to know he was not the Bonbright Foote who had brought on the strike and fought it with such vindictive ruthlessness. He wanted to prove that he was innocent, and to wring from them the right to meet and to be received by his fellow laborers as one of themselves....

He saw the man stop beside a group, say something, turn, and point to him. Other men turned and stared. Some snickered. Bonbright could not bear it. He jostled his way through the crowd and sought refuge in the shop.

The morning had been a happy one; the afternoon was dismal. He knew he was marked. He saw men pointing at him, whispering about him, and could imagine what they were saying. In the morning he had been received casually as an equal. Nobody had welcomed him, nobody had paid particular attention to him. That was as it should be. He was simply accepted as another workman.... The attitude of the men was quite the opposite now. He was a sort of museum freak to them. From a distance they regarded him with curiosity, but their manner set him apart from them. He did not belong. He felt their hostility.... If they had lined up and jeered him Bonbright would not have felt the hurt so much, for there would have been something to arouse his fighting spirit.

One remark he overheard, which stood aptly for the attitude of all. "Well, he's gettin' what's comin' to him," was the sentence. It showed him that the reputation his father had given him was his to wear, and that here he would find no friends, scant toleration, probably open hostility.... He got no pleasure that afternoon from watching his cake of metal move backward and forward with the planer- bed.

When the whistle blew again he hurried out, looking into no man's face, avoiding contacts. He sneaked away.... And in his heart burned a hot resentment against the father that had done this thing....



CHAPTER XXIII

Such pretense as Bonbright's and Ruth's is possible only to the morbid, the eccentric, or the unhealthy. Neither of them was morbid, neither eccentric, both abundantly well. Ruth saw the failure of it days before Bonbright had even a hint. After Dulac burst in upon her she perceived the game must be brought to an end; that their life of make-believe was weighted with danger for her. She determined to end it—but, ironically enough, to end it meant to enter upon another make-believe existence far harder to live successfully than the first. One can make believe to love on the stage, uttering skillfully the words of an author and carrying out the instructions of a stage director. An audience may be taken in.... A play is brief. But to begin a spurious love scene which is to last, not twenty minutes, but for a lifetime, is a matter of quite different color. She determined to begin it....

But with the sound of Bonbright's footfall on the stairs her resolution vanished. "To-morrow," she whispered to herself, with sudden dread. "To-morrow...." And so she put it off from day to day.

In the beginning Bonbright had been optimistic. He had seen her reluctance, her reserves, vanishing in a few days. But they did not vanish. He found himself no nearer his wife than he had been at the beginning. Optimism became hope, hope dwindled, became doubt, uneasy wonder. He could not understand, and it was natural he should not understand. At first he had believed his experience was the experience of all bridegrooms. Days taught him his experience was unique, unnatural. Ruth saw him often now, sitting moodily, eyes on the floor—and she could read his thoughts. Yet he tried to bolster up the pretense. He had given his promise, and he loved Ruth. He could not, would not do as most men would have done.... What neither of them saw was that pretense had made a sudden change to reality impossible....

Bonbright was unhappy at home, unhappy at work. Just as he was outside his wife's real life, so he was excluded from the lives of the men he worked with. He was not, to them, a fellow laborer; he was Bonbright Foote VII. But he made no complaint or appeal to Malcolm Lightener.... He did not know how unnecessary an appeal to Lightener would be, for Lightener kept himself well acquainted with the facts, watched and waited, and the satisfaction of the automobile king grew and increased.

"He's no squealer," he said to his daughter. "He's taking his medicine without making a face."

"What's the good, dad? It's mean.... Why don't you take him into the office?"

"We have a testing department," he said. "Every scrap of metal that goes into a car is tested before we use it.... Bonbright's in the testing department."

"Isn't it possible to keep on testing a piece of metal till it's all used up?" she said.

"H'm!... Suppose you mind your own business," he said, in his gruff, granite way—not rudely nor offensively. "How's his wife? How are they getting along?"

Hilda shook her head. "They're queer, dad. Somehow I don't believe things are working out the way they should. I can't understand HER."

"Squabbling?"

"Never.... Bonbright's so gentle with her. He has a sort of wistful way with him as soon as she comes near. It makes me want to cry. Somehow he reminds me of a fine, affectionate dog watching a master who doesn't give back any affection. You know."

"Doesn't she?"

"Give back affection?... That's just it. I don't know. I've been there and seen him come home. She acts queerly. As soon as she hears him coming up the stairs she seems to shut up. It's as if she turned out the lights.... Where the ordinary girl would be running to kiss him and make a fuss over him she—doesn't do anything.... And she keeps watching him. And there's something in her eyes like—well, like she was blaming herself for something, and was sorry for him. ... She seems, when she's with him, as if she were trying to make up to him for something—and didn't know how."

"Readjustment," Lightener grunted. "They jumped into the thing kerplunk. Queer start-off."

"I don't know.... She's a dear—and he's a dear.... It isn't like anything I've ever seen. It's something peculiar."

"Must be his fault. I told him—"

"It isn't his fault." Hilda spoke with certainty. "If you could see him you'd know it. His manner toward her—why, dad, I never saw a man so sweet and gentle and patient."

"Maybe that's the trouble. Too much patience is as bad as too much raising the devil."

"No.... It's something."

She turned to leave the room, when her father called after her: "Bonbright quit chawing castings to-night. He doesn't know it, but to-morrow he gets a new job.... Has all of that he needs. Knows how it feels."

"What's he going to do now?"

"Nice, light, pleasant job.... He'll be passing rear axles—made by his father—down a chute to the assembling track. Bet he'll need Saint Jacob's oil on his back to-morrow night. Give his wife a job."

"Why," she scolded, for she was on intimate terms with the factory, "that's common labor. He'll be working with Wops and Guineas and Polacks."

He nodded. "If he stands the gaff I'll ease up on him."

"If he doesn't?"

Lightener shrugged his shoulders.

"Dad," said Hilda, "sometimes you make me MAD...."

When the factory heard what had become of Bonbright it laughed. Bonbright was aware it laughed, and he set his teeth and labored. Beside what he was doing now the machine shop had been play. Rear axles are not straws to be tossed about lightly. Nor are Wops, Guineas, Polacks, smelling of garlic, looking at one with unintelligent eyes, and clattering to one another in strange tongues, such workfellows as make the day pass more quickly....

Bonbright had to pass down a certain number of axles an hour. At definite, brief intervals a fragment of an automobile would move along the assembling track and pause beneath his spout—and his axle must be ready. There was a constant procession of fragments, and a second's delay brought up to his ears pointed commentary from below. ... The more pointed that those below knew who was above them.

He worked feverishly. After a while it became acute torture. He felt as if every axle he handled was the last he could manage—but he forced himself to just one more and then just one more—and another. He worked in a daze. Thought-processes seemed to stop. He was just a mechanism for performing certain set acts. The pain was gone— everything was gone but the stabbing necessity for getting another axle on that chute in time. He wanted to stop at a certain stage, but there was something in him which would not allow it. After that he didn't care. "Another.... Another.... Another..." his brain sang over and over endlessly. He was wet with perspiration; he staggered under the weights; he was exhausted, but he could not stop. It was as if he were on a treadmill where he had to keep stepping on and on and on whether he could take another step or not.... After a century the noon whistle blew.

Bonbright did not leave his place. He simply sagged down in his tracks and lay there, eyes shut, panting. Gradually his brain cleared, but he was too weary to move. Then thirst drove him to motion and he dragged himself to the wash room, cramped, aching, and there he drank and sopped himself with cold water.... So this was what men did to live! No wonder men were dissatisfied; no wonder men formed unions and struck and rioted!... Bonbright was getting in an efficient school the point of view of the laborer.

In the afternoon Malcolm Lightener stood and watched Bonbright, though Bonbright did not see, for he was working in a red haze again, unconscious of everything but that insistent demand in his brain for "another.... Another.... Another...." Lightener watched, granite face expressionless, and then walked away.

Bonbright did not hear the evening whistle. He placed another axle on the chute, but no one was below to take it. He wondered dimly what was the matter.... A Guinea from the next chute regarded him curiously, then walked over and touched his shoulder with dirty hand, and wafted garlic in his face. "Time for quit," said the man.

Bonbright sat down where he was. It was over. That day was over. Not another axle, not another, not another. He laid his head against the chute and shut his eyes.... Presently he staggered to his feet and walked blindly to the stairway. At the bottom stood Malcolm Lightener, not there by accident, but with design to test Bonbright's metal to the utmost. He placed himself there for Bonbright to see, to give Bonbright opportunity to beg off, to SQUEAL.

Bonbright, shoulders drooping, legs dragging, face drawn, eyes burning, would have passed him without recognition, without caring who it was he passed, but that did not suit Lightener's purpose.

"Well, Bonbright?" he said.

Sudden fire flashed in Bonbright's brain. He stopped, and with the knuckles of a hand that was torn and blistered and trembling, he knocked on Lightener's broad chest as he would have knocked on a door that refused to open. "Damn your axles," he said, thickly. "I can get them there—another—and another—and another—and another.... They're too slow below.... Make 'em come faster. I can keep up...." And all the time he was rapping on Lightener's chest.

He was conscious of what he did and said, but he did not do and say it of his own volition. He was like a man who dimly sees and hears another man. Subconsciously he was repeating: "Not another one till to-morrow.... Not another one till to-morrow...."

Abruptly he turned away from Lightener and, setting down each foot heavily with a clump, he plodded toward the wash room. He was going to rest. He was going to feel cool water on his head and his neck; he was going to revel in cool water... and then he would sleep. SLEEP! He made toward sleep as one lost in the desert would make toward a spring of sweet water....

Lightener stood and looked after Bonbright. His granite face did not alter; no light or shade passed over it. Not even in his gray eyes could a hint of his thoughts be read. Simply he stood and looked after Bonbright, outwardly as emotionless as a block of the rock that he resembled. Then he walked to his office, sat down at his desk, selected and lighted a cigar, and tilted back in his chair.

"There's something to that Bonbright Foote formula," he said to himself. "It's all wrong, but it could produce THAT."

Then, after a few moments of puffing and of studying the thing, he said: "We'll see if he comes back to-morrow.... If he DOES come back—"

At home that evening Hilda asked him about Bonbright. He was ashamed to confess to her what he had done to the boy—yet he was proud of having done it. To his own granite soul it was right to subject men to such tests, but women would not understand. He knew his daughter would think him a brute, and he did not want his daughter to think any such thing. "If he comes back in the morning—" he promised.

Bonbright came back in the morning, though he had been hardly able to drag himself out of bed. It was not strength of body that brought him, but pure will. He came, looking forward to the day as a man might look down into hell—but he came. "I'll show THEM," he said, aloud, at the breakfast table, as he forced himself to drink a cup of coffee. Ruth did not understand. She did not understand what was wrong with him; feared he was on the verge of an illness. He had come home the night before, scarcely speaking to her, and had gone directly to bed. She supposed he was in his room preparing for dinner, but when she went to call him she found him fast asleep, moaning and muttering uneasily.

"What did you say?" she asked, uneasily.

"Didn't know I spoke," he said, and winced as he moved his shoulders. But he knew what he had said—-that he would show THEM. It wasn't Malcolm Lightener he was going to show, but the men—his fellow laborers. The thing that lay in his mind was that he must prove himself to be their equal, capable of doing what they could do. He wanted their respect—wanted it pitifully.

Ruth watched him anxiously as he left the apartment. She knew things were not well with him and that he needed something a true wife should give. First, he needed to tell some one about it. He had not told me. If she had been inside his life, where she belonged, he must have told her. Second, he needed her sympathy, her mothering.... She might have been able to give him that—after a fashion.... She felt how it should be done, knew how she would have done it if only she loved him. "I could be the right kind of a wife," she said, wistfully. "I know I could...."

Bonbright went doggedly to his place at the mouth of the chute and was ready with the whistle, an axle poised to slide downward to the assembling car below. He was afraid—afraid he would not be able to get through the day—absurdly afraid and ashamed of his physical weakness. If he should play out!...

A boy tapped him on the shoulder. "You're wanted in the office," he heard.

"I've got to—keep up," he said, dully. "Cars are coming along below," he explained, carefully, "and I've got to get the axles to them."

"Here's a man to take your place," said the boy—and so strange is man created in God's image!—he did not want to go. He wanted to see it through till he dropped.

"If you keep the boss waiting—" said the boy, ominously.

Bonbright walked painfully to Lightener's office.

"Well?" said Lightener.

"I can do it—I'll harden to it," Bonbright said.

"Huh!... Take off those overalls.... Boy, go to Mr. Foote's locker and fetch his things...."

"Am—am I discharged?"

"No," said Lightener, bestowing no word of commendation. Men had little commendation from him by word of mouth. He let actions speak for him. When he gave a man a task to perform that man knew he was being complimented.... But he knew it in no other way.

"That's the way a laborer feels," said Lightener.... "You got it multiplied. That's because you had to jam his whole life's experience into a day...."

"Poor devils!" said Bonbright.

"I'm going to put you in the purchasing department—after that, if you make good—into the sales end.... Able to go ahead to-day?"

"Yes."

"Before you amount to a darn as a business man you've got to know how to buy.... That's the foundation. You've got to be able to buy right. Then you've got to learn how to make. Selling is easiest of all—and there are darn few real salesmen. If you can buy, you can do anything."

"I—I would rather stay out of the shops, Mr. Lightener. The men— found out who I was...I'd like to stay there till they—forget it."

"You'll go where I put you. Men enough in the purchasing department. Got a tame anarchist there, I hear, and a Mormon, and a Hindu, and a single-taxer. All kinds. After hours. From whistle to whistle they BUY."

Lightener took Bonbright personally to his new employment and left him. But Bonbright was not satisfied. Once before he had sought contact with men who labored, and he had landed in a cell in police headquarters. That had been mere boyish curiosity to find what it was all about. Now his desire to know was real. He had been—very briefly, it is true—one of them. Now he wanted to know. He wanted to know how they thought, and why they thought that way. He wanted to understand their attitude toward themselves, toward one another, toward the class they largely denominated as Capital. He had caught snatches of conversation—interesting to him, but none had talked to him. He wanted to get on a footing with them which would permit him to listen, and to talk. He wanted to hear arguments. He wanted to go into their homes and see their wives and find out what their wives thought.... All this had been brought to him by a few days in overalls. He had no idea that Lightener had intended it should be brought to him....

However, that must lie in the future; his present business was to do as he was told and to earn his wages. He must earn his wages, for he had a family to support.... It was his first experience with the ever-present fear of the wage earner—the fear of losing his job.

But he determined to know the men, and planned accordingly. With that end in view, instead of lunching with men in his department, he went to the little hash house across the road to drink vile coffee and rub elbows with laborers in greasy overalls. He would go there every day; he would seek other opportunities of contact.... Now that he felt the genuine, sympathetic hunger for an understanding of them and their problems, he would not rest until it was his....



CHAPTER XXIV

Bonbright found himself a layman in a department of specialists. On all sides of him were men who knew all about something, a few who knew a great deal about several things, and a man or two who appeared to have some knowledge of every element and article that went into a motor car. There was a man who knew leather from cow to upholstery, and who talked about it lovingly. This man had the ability to make leather as interesting as the art of Benvenuto Cellini. Another was a specialist in hickory, and thought and talked spokes; another was a reservoir of dependable facts about rubber; another about gray iron castings; another about paints and enamels, and so on. In that department it would not have been impossible to compile an encyclopedia.

It was impossible that Bonbright should not have been interested. It was not business, it was a fascinating, enthralling debating society, where the debates were not of the "Resolved that the world would be better" sort, but were as to the essential qualities of concrete things. It was practical debate which saved money and elevated the standards of excellence.

The department had its own laboratories, its own chemists, its own engineers. Everything was tested. Two articles might appear to the layman equal in virtue; careful examination by experts might not disclose a difference between them, but the skill of the chemist would show that this article was a tenth of one per cent, less guilty of alloy than that, or that the breaking strength of this was a minute fraction greater than that.... So decisions were reached.

Bonbright was to learn that price did not always rule. He saw orders given for carloads of certain supplies which tested but a point or two higher than its rival—and sold for dollars more a ton. Thousands of dollars were paid cheerfully for those few points of excellence. ... Here was business functioning as he did not know business could function. Here business was an art, and he applied himself to it like an artist. Here he could lay aside that growing discontent, that dissatisfaction, that was growing upon him. Here, in the excitement of distinguishing the better from the worse, he could forget Ruth and the increasingly impracticable condition of his relations with her.

He had come to a realization that his game of make-believe would not march. He realized that Ruth either was his wife or she was not.... But he did not know what to do about it. It seemed a problem without a solution, and it was—for him. Its solution did not lie in himself, but in his wife. Bonbright could not set the thing right; his potentiality lay only for its destruction. Three courses lay open to him; to assert his husbandship; to send Ruth home to her mother; or to put off till to-morrow and to-morrow and still another to-morrow. Only in the last did hope reside, and he clung to hope....

He tried to conceal his unrest, his discontent, his rebellion against the thing that was, from Ruth. He continued to be patient, gentle. ... He did not know how she wept and accused herself because of that gentleness and patience. He did not know how she tried to compel love by impact of will—and how she failed. But he did come to doubt her love. He could not do otherwise. Then he wondered why she had married him, and, reviewing the facts of his hurried marriage, he wondered the more with bitterness and heartache. Against his will his affairs were traveling toward a climax. The approaching footsteps of the day when something must happen were audible on the path.

The day after his installation in the purchasing department he lunched at the little hash house across the street. Sitting on his high stool, he tried to imagine he was a part of that sweating, gulping crowd of men, that he was one of them, and not an outsider, suspected, regarded with unfriendly looks.

Behind him a man began to make conversation for Bonbright's ears. It had happened before.

"The strike up to the Foote plant's on its last legs," said the man, loudly.

"So I hear," answered another.

"Infernal shame. If it was only the closed-shop question I dunno's I'd feel so. We're open shop here—but we git treated like human bein's.... Over there—" The man shrugged his shoulders. "Look at the way they've fought the strike. Don't blame 'em for fightin' it. Calc'late they had to fight it, but there's fightin' and fightin'. ... Seems like this Foote bunch set out to do the worst that could be done—and they done it."

"Wonder when it 'll peter out—the strike?"

"Back's busted now. Nothin's holding it up but that man Dulac. There's a man for you! I've knowed labor leaders I didn't cotton to nor have much confidence in—-fellers that jest wagged their tongues and took what they could get out of it. But this Dulac—he's a reg'lar man. I've listened to him, and I tell you he means what he says. He's in it to git somethin' for the other feller.... But he can't hold out much longer."

It was true; Dulac could not hold out much longer. That very noon he was fighting with his back against the wall. In Workingman's Hall he was making his last fierce fight to hold from crumbling the resolution of the strikers who still stood by their guns.... He threw the fire of his soul into their dull, phlegmatic faces. It struck no answering spark. Never before had he spoken to men without a consciousness of his powers, without pose, without dramatics. Now he was himself, and more dramatic, more compelling than ever before. ... He pleaded, begged, flayed his audience, but it did not respond to his pleadings nor writhe under the whip of his words. It was apathetic, stolid. In its weary heart it knew what it was there to do, and it would do it in spite of Dulac.... He would not admit it. He would not submit to defeat. He talked on and on, not daring to stop, for with the stoppage of his harangue he heard the death of the strike. It lived only with his voice.

In the body of the hall a man, haggard of face, arose.

"'Tain't no use, Mr. Dulac," he said, dully. "We've stuck by you—"

"You've stuck by yourselves," Dulac cried.

"Whatever you say.... But'tain't no use. We're licked. Hain't no use keepin' up and stretchin' out the sufferin'.... I hain't the least of the sufferers, Mr. Dulac—my wife hain't with me no more." The dull voice wabbled queerly. "There's hunger and grief and sufferin'— willin'ly endured when there was a chance—but there hain't no chance.... 'Tain't human to ask any more of our wimmin and children.... It's them I'm a-thinkin' of, Mr. Dulac... and on account of them I say this strike ought to quit. It's got to quit, and I demand a vote on it, Mr. Dulac."

"Vote!... Vote!... Vote!..." roared up to Dulac from all over the hall.... It was the end. He was powerless to stay the rush of the desire of those weary men for peace.

Dulac turned slowly around, his back to the crowd, walked to a chair, and, with elbows on knees, he covered his face with his hands. There was a silence, as men looked at him and appreciated his suffering. They appreciated his suffering because they appreciated the man, his honesty to their cause, and to his work. He had been true to them. For himself he would gain nothing by the success of the strike—for them he would have gained much.... It was not his loss that bowed his head, but their loss—and they knew it. He was a Messiah whose mission had failed.