Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Youth Challenges
By
CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
AUTHOR OF
"The Little Moment of Happiness," "The High Flyers," "Sudden Jim," "The
Source," "The Hidden Spring," etc.
CHAPTER I
Bonbright Foote VI arose and stood behind the long table which served
him as a desk and extended his hand across it. His bearing was that of
a man taking a leading part in an event of historic importance.
"My son," said he, "it gratifies me to welcome you to your place in
this firm." Then he smiled. When Bonbright Foote VI smiled it was as
though he said to himself, "To smile one must do thus and so with the
features," and then systematically put into practice his instructions.
It was a cultured smile, one that could have been smiled only by a
gentleman conscious of generations of correct antecedents; it was an
aristocratic smile. On the whole it was not unpleasant, though so
excellently and formally done.
"Thank you, father," replied Bonbright Foote VII. "I hope I shall be of
some use to you."
"Your office is ready for you," said his father, stepping to a door
which he unlocked with the gravity of a man laying a corner stone.
"This door," said he, "has not been opened since I took my place at the
head of the business--since I moved from the desk you are to occupy to
the one in this room. It will not be closed again until the time
arrives for you to assume command. We have--we Footes--always regarded
this open door as a patent token of partnership between father and son."
Young Foote was well acquainted with this--as a piece of his family's
regalia. He knew he was about to enter and to labor in the office of
the heir apparent, a room which had been tenantless since the death of
his grandfather and the consequent coronation of his father. Such was
the custom. For twelve years that office had been closed and waiting.
None had ventured into it, except for a janitor whose weekly dustings
and cleanings had been performed with scrupulous care. He knew that
Bonbright Foote VI had occupied the room for seventeen years. Before
that it had stood vacant eleven years awaiting for Bonbright Foote VI
to reach such age and attainments as were essential. Young Foote
realized that upon the death of his father the office would be closed
again until his son, Bonbright Foote VIII, should be equipped, by time
and the university founded by John Harvard, to enter as he was entering
to-day. So the thing had been done since the first Bonbright Foote
invested Bonbright Foote II with dignities and powers.
Father and son entered the long-closed office, a large, indeed a
stately room. It contained the same mahogany table at which Bonbright
Foote II had worked; the same chairs, the same fittings, the same
pictures hung on the walls, that had been the property of the first
crown prince of the Foote dynasty. It was not a bright place,
suggestive of liveliness or gayety, but it was decorously inviting--a
place in which one could work with comfort and satisfaction.
"Let me see you at your desk," said the father, smiling again. "I have
looked forward to seeing you there, just as you will look forward to
seeing YOUR son there."
Bonbright sat down, wondering if his father had felt oppressed as HE
felt oppressed at this moment. He had a feeling of stepping from one
existence into another, almost of stepping from one body, one identity,
to another. When he sat at that desk he would be taking up, not his own
career, but the career of the entity who had occupied this office
through generations, and would occupy it in perpetual succession.
Vaguely he began to miss something. The sensation was like that of one
who has long worn a ring on his finger, but omits to put it on one
morning. For that person there is a vague sense of something missing
throughout the day. Bonbright did not know what he felt the lack of--it
was his identity.
"For the next month or so," said his father, "about all you can hope to
do is to become acquainted with the plant and with our methods. Rangar
will always be at your disposal to explain or to give you desired
information. I think it would be well if he were to conduct you through
the plant. It will give you a basis to work from."
"The plant is still growing, I see," said Bonbright. "It seems as if a
new building were being put up every time I come home."
"Yes, growing past the prophecy of any of our predecessors," said his
father. He paused. "I am not certain," he said, as one who asks a
question of his inner self, "but I would have preferred a slower, more
conservative growth."
"The automobile has done it, of course."
"Axles," said his father, with a hint of distaste. "The manufacturing
of rear axles has overshadowed everything else. We retain as much of
the old business--the manufacturing of machinery--as ever. Indeed, THAT
branch has shown a healthy growth. But axles! A mushroom that has
overgrown us in a night."
It was apparent that Bonbright Foote VI did not approve of axles, as it
was a known fact that he frowned upon automobiles. He would not own one
of them. They were too new, too blatant. His stables were still
stables. His coachman had not been transmuted into a chauffeur. When he
drove it was in a carriage drawn by horses--as his ancestors had driven.
"Yes... yes..." he said, slowly, with satisfaction, "it is good to have
you in the business, son. It's a satisfaction to see you sitting
there.... Now we must look about to find a suitable girl for you to
marry. We must begin to think about Bonbright Foote VIII." There was no
smile as he said this; the observation was made in sober earnest.
Bonbright saw that, just as his ancestors looked to him to carry on the
business, so they looked to him to produce with all convenient dispatch
a male successor to himself. It was, so to speak, an important feature
of his job.
"I'll send in Rangar," said his father, not waiting for Bonbright to
reply to the last suggestion, and walked with long-legged dignity out
of the room.
Bonbright rested his chin on his palm and stared gloomily at the wall.
He felt bound and helpless; he saw himself surrounded by firm and
dignified shades of departed Bonbright Footes whose collective wills
compelled him to this or prohibited that course of action.
Adventure, chance, were eliminated from his life. He was to be no
errant musician, improvising according to his mood; the score he was to
play was before him, and he must play it note for note, paying strict
attention to rests, keys, andantes, fortissimos, pianissimos. He had
been born to this, had been made conscious of his destiny from
babyhood, but never had he comprehended it as he did on this day of his
investiture.
Even the selection and courting of a mate, that greatest of all
adventures (to the young), was made humdrum. Doubtless his mother
already had selected the girl, and presently would marry him to her.
... Somehow this was the one phase of the situation that galled him
most.
"I'll see about that," he muttered, rebelliously, "I'll see about that."
Not that marriage was of importance to him yet, except as a thing to be
avoided until some dim future. Women had not assumed consequence to
him; his relations with them had been scant surface relations. They
were creatures who did or did not please the eye, who did or did not
dance well, who did or did not amuse one. That was all. He was only
twenty-three.
Rangar, his father's secretary, and the man who stood as shield between
Bonbright Foote VI and unpleasant contacts with his business and the
world's business, entered. Rangar was a capable man whose place as
secretary to the head of the business did not measure his importance in
the organization. Another man of his abilities and opportunity and
position would have carried the title of general manager or vice
president--something respect-carrying. As for Rangar, he was content.
He drew the salary that would have accompanied those other titles,
possessed in an indirect sort of way the authority, and yet managed to
remain disentangled from the responsibilities. Had he suddenly vanished
the elder Foote would have been left suspended in rarefied heights
between heaven and his business, lacking direct contact with the mills
and machine shops and foundries; yet, doubtless, would have been unable
to realize that the loss of Rangar had left him so. Rangar was a
competent, efficient man, if peculiar in his ambitions.
"Your father," said he, "has asked me to show you through the plant."
"Thank you--yes," said Bonbright, rising.
They went out, passing from the old, the family, wing of the office
building, into the larger, newer, general offices, made necessary by
the vastly increased business of the firm. Here, in a huge room, were
bookkeepers, stenographers, clerks, filing cabinets, desks,
typewriters--with several cubicles glassed off for the more important
employees and minor executives.
"We have tried," said Rangar, "to retain as far as possible the old
methods and systems. Your father, Mr. Foote, is conservative. He clings
to the ways of his father and his grandfather."
"I remember," said Bonbright, "when we had no typewriting machines."
"We had to come to them," said Rangar, with a note of regret. "Axles
compelled us. But we have never taken up with these new
contraptions--fads--like phonographs to dictate to, card indices,
loose-leaf systems, adding machines, and the like. Of course it
requires more clerks and stenographers, and possibly we are a bit
slower than some. Your father says, however, that he prefers conducting
his business as a gentleman should, rather than to make a mere machine
of it. His idea," said Rangar, "of a gentleman in business is one who
refuses to make use of abbreviations in his correspondence."
Bonbright was looking about the busy room, conscious that he was being
covertly studied by every occupant of it. It made him uncomfortable,
uneasy.
"Let's go on into the shops," he said, impatiently.
They turned, and encountered in the aisle a girl with a stenographer's
notebook in her hand; indeed, Bonbright all but stepped on her. She was
a slight, tiny thing, not thin, but small. Her eyes met Bonbright's
eyes and she grinned. No other word can describe it. It was not an
impertinent grin, nor a familiar grin, nor a COMMON grin. It was
spontaneous, unstudied--it lay at the opposite end of the scale from
Bonbright Foote VI's smile. Somehow the flash of it COMFORTED
Bonbright. His sensations responded to it. It was a grin that radiated
with well wishes for all the world. Bonbright smiled back, awkwardly,
and bobbed his head as she stepped aside for him to pass.
"What a grin!" he said, presently.
"Oh," said Rangar. "Yes--to be sure. The Girl with the Grin--that's
what they call her in the office. She's always doing it. Your father
hasn't noticed. I hope he doesn't, for I'm sure he wouldn't like it."
"As if," said Bonbright to himself, "she were happy--and wanted
everybody else to be."
"I'm sure I don't know," said Rangar. "She's competent."
They passed outside and through a covered passageway into the older of
the shops. Bonbright was not thinking about the shops, but about the
girl. She was the only thing he had encountered that momentous morning
that had interested him, the only thing upon which Bonbright Foote,
Incorporated, had not set the stamp of its repressing personality.
He tried to visualize her and her smile that he might experience again
that sensation of relief, of lightened spirit. In a measure he was able
to do so. Her mouth was large, he saw--no small mouth could have
managed that grin. She was not pretty, but, somehow, attractive. Her
eyes were bully; intelligent, humorous sort of eyes, he decided.
"Bet she's a darn nice kid," he concluded, boyishly. His father would
have been shocked at a thought expressed in such words.
"The business has done wonders these last five years," said Rangar,
intruding on Bonbright's thoughts. "Five years ago we employed less
than a thousand hands; to-day we have more than five thousand on the
payroll. Another few years and we shall have ten thousand."
"Axles?" asked Bonbright, mechanically.
"Axles," replied Rangar.
"Father doesn't approve of them--but they must be doing considerable
for the family bank account."
Rangar shot a quick glance at the boy, a glance with reproof in it for
such a flippancy. Vaguely he had heard that this young man had done
things not expected from a Foote; had, for instance, gone in for
athletics at the university. It was reported he had actually allowed
himself to be carried once on the shoulders of a cheering mob of
students! There were other rumors, also, which did not sit well on the
Foote tradition. Rangar wondered if at last a Foote had been born into
the family who was not off the old piece of cloth, who might, indeed,
prove difficult and disappointing. The flippancy indicated it.
"Our inventory," he said, severely, "five years ago, showed a trifle
over a million dollars. To-day these mills would show a valuation of
five millions. The earnings," he added, "have increased in even greater
ratio."
"Hum," said Bonbright, his mind already elsewhere. His thought,
unspoken, was, "If we've got so blamed much, what's the use piling it
up?"
At noon they had not finished the inspection of the plant; it was well
toward five o'clock when they did so, for Rangar did his duty
conscientiously. His explanations were long, careful, technical.
Bonbright set his mind to the task and listened well. He was even
interested, for there were interesting things to see, processes
requiring skilled men, machines that had required inventive genius to
devise. He began to be oppressed by the bigness of it. The plant was
huge; it was enormously busy. The whole world seemed to need axles,
preferably Foote axles, and to need them in a hurry.
At last, a trifle dazed, startled by the vastness of the domain to
which he was heir apparent, Bonbright returned to the aloof quiet of
his historic room.
"I've a lot to learn," he told Rangar.
"It will grow on you.... By the way, you will need a secretary." (The
Footes had secretaries, not stenographers.) "Shall I select one for
you?"
"Yes," said Bonbright, without interest; then he looked up quickly.
"No," he said, "I've selected my own. You say that girl--the one who
grinned--is competent?"
"Yes, indeed--but a girl! It has been the custom for the members of the
firm to employ only men."
Bonbright looked steadily at Rangar a moment, then said:
"Please have that girl notified at once that she is to be my secretary."
"Yes, sir," said Rangar. The boy WAS going to prove difficult. He owned
a will. Well, thought the man, others may have had it in the family
before--but it has not remained long.
"Anything more, Mr. Foote?"
"Thank you, no," said Bonbright, and Rangar said good evening and
disappeared.
The boy rested his chin on his hand again, and reflected gloomily. He
hunched up his shoulders and sighed. "Anyhow," he said to himself,
"I'll have SOMEBODY around me who is human."