The world owes no small part of its advancement to the reflections of
men in jails.
Bonbright, alone in the darkness of his cell, was admirably situated
for concentrated thought. All through the sleepless night he reviewed
facts and theories and conditions. He reached few definite conclusions,
and these more boyish than mature; he achieved to no satisfaction with
himself. His one profound conclusion was that everything was wrong.
Capital was wrong, labor was wrong; the whole basis upon which society
is organized was wrong. It was an exceedingly sweeping conclusion,
embracing EVERYTHING. He discerned no ray of light.
He studied his own conduct, but could convince himself of no voluntary
wrongdoing. Yet he was in a cell.... In the beginning he had merely
tried to understand something that aroused his curiosity--labor. From
the point of view of capital, as represented by his father, this had
been a sin. How or why it was a sin he could not comprehend.... Labor
had been willing to be friendly, but now it hated him. Orders given in
his name, but not originating in his will, had caused this. His
attitude became fatalistic--he was being moved about by a ruthless hand
without regard to his own volition. He might as well close his eyes and
his mind and submit, for Bonbright Foote VII did not exist as a
rational human individual, but only as a checker on the board, to be
moved from square to square with such success or error as the player
possessed.
Last night.... He had been mishandled by the employees of capital and
the guardians of society; he had been mobbed by labor. He resented the
guard and the police, but could not resent the mobbing. ... He seemed
to be dangling between two worlds, mishandled by either that he
approached. But one fact he realized--labor would have none of him. His
father had seen to that. There was no place for him to go but into the
refuge of capital, and so to become an enemy to labor against which he
had no quarrel.... This night set him more deeply in the Bonbright
Foote groove. There was nothing for him now but complete submission,
apathetic submission.
If it must be so, it must be so. He would let the family current bear
him on. He would be but another Bonbright Foote, differentiated from
the others only by a numeral to designate his generation.
Singularly, his own immediate problem did not present itself
insistently until daylight began to penetrate the murk of the cell.
What would the authorities do with him? How was he to get his liberty?
Would the thing become public? He felt his helplessness, his
inadequacy. He could not ask his father to help him, for he did not
want his father ever to know what had happened the night before, yet he
must have help from some one. Suddenly the name of Malcolm Lightener
occurred to him.
After a time the doorman appeared with breakfast.
"Can I send a message?" asked Bonbright.
The doorman scrutinized him, saw he was no bum of the streets, but
quite evidently a gentleman in temporary difficulty.
"Maybe," he said, grudgingly. "Gimme the message and I'll see."
"Please telephone Mr. Malcolm Lightener that the younger of the
gentlemen he called on last evening is here and would like to see him."
"Malcolm Lightener, the automobile feller?"
"Yes."
"Friend of your'n?"
"Yes."
"Um!..." The doorman disappeared to return presently with the
lieutenant.
"What's this about Malcolm Lightener?" the officer asked.
"I gave the man here a message for him," said Bonbright.
"Is it on the level? You know Lightener?"
"Yes," said Bonbright, impatiently.
"Then what the devil did you stay here all night for? Why didn't you
have him notified last night? Looks darn fishy to me."
"It will do no harm to deliver my message," said Bonbright.
"Huh!... Let him out." The doorman swung wide the barred door and the
lieutenant motioned Bonbright out. "Come and set in the office," he
said. "Maybe you'd rather telephone yourself?"
"If I might," said Bonbright, amazed at the potency of Lightener's name
to open cell doors and command the courtesy of the police. It was his
first encounter with Influence.
He was conducted into a small office; then the lieutenant retired
discreetly and shut the door. Bonbright made his call and asked for
speech with Malcolm Lightener.
"Hello!... Hello!" came Lightener's gruff voice. "What is it?"
"This is Bonbright Foote.... I'm locked up in the Central Station. I
wonder if you can't help me somehow?"
There was a moment's silence; then Bonbright heard a remark not
intended for his ears but expressive of Lightener's astonishment,
"Well, I'm DARNED!" Then: "I'll be right there. Hold the fort."
Bonbright opened the door and said to the lieutenant, "Mr. Lightener's
on his way down."
"Um!... Make yourself comfortable. Say, was that breakfast all right?
Find cigars in that top drawer." The magic of Influence!
In twenty minutes Lightener's huge form pushed through the station
door. "Morning, Lieutenant. Got a friend of mine here?"
"Didn't know he was a friend of yours, Mr. Lightener. He wouldn't give
his name, and never asked to have you notified till this morning....
He's in my office there."
Lightener strode into the room and shut the door.
"Well?" he demanded.
Breathlessly, almost without pause, Bonbright poured upon him an
account of last night's happenings, making no concealments,
unconsciously giving Lightener glimpses into his heart that made the
big man bend his brows ominously. The boy did not explain; did not
mention accusingly his father, but Lightener understood perfectly what
the process of molding Bonbright was being subjected to. He made no
comment.
"I don't want father to know this," Bonbright said. "If it can be kept
out of the papers.... Father wouldn't understand. He'd feel I had
disgraced the family."
"Doggone the family," snapped Lightener. "Come on."
Bonbright followed him out.
"May I take him along, Lieutenant? I'll fix it with the judge if
necessary.... And say, happen to recognize him?"
"Never saw him before."
"If any of the newspaper boys come snoopin' around, you never saw me,
either. Much obliged, Lieutenant."
"You're welcome, Mr. Lightener. Glad I kin accommodate you."
Lightener pushed Bonbright into his limousine. "You don't want to go
home, I guess. We'll go to my house. Mother'll see you get breakfast.
... Then we'll have a talk.... Here's a paper boy; let's see what's
doing."
It was the morning penny paper that Lightener bought, the paper with
leanings toward the proletariat, the veiled champion of labor. He
bought it daily.
"Huh!" he grunted, as he scanned the first page. "They kind of allude
to you."
Bonbright looked. He saw a two-column head:
YOUNG MILLIONAIRE URGES ON POLICE
The next pyramid contained his name; the story related how he had
rushed frantically to the police after they had barbarously charged a
harmless gathering of workingmen, trampling and maiming half a dozen,
and had demanded that they charge again. It was a long story, with
infinite detail, crucifying him with cheap ink; making him appear a
ruthless, heartless monster, lusting for the spilled blood of the
innocent.
Bonbright looked up to meet Lightener's eyes.
"It--it isn't fair," he said, chokingly.
"Fairness," said Lightener, almost with gentleness, "is expected only
when we are young."
"But I didn't.... I tried to stop them."
"Don't try to tell anybody so--you won't be believed."
"I'm going to tell somebody," said Bonbright, his mind flashing to Ruth
Frazer, "and I'm going to be believed. I've got to be believed."
After a while he said: "I wasn't taking sides. I just went there to
see. If I've got to hire men all my life I want to understand them."
"You've got to take sides, son. There's no straddling the fence in this
world.... And as soon as you've taken sides your own side is all you'll
understand. Nobody ever understood the other side."
"But can't there ever be an understanding? Won't capital ever
understand labor, or labor capital?"
"I suppose a philosopher would say there is no difference upon which
agreement can't be reached; that there must somewhere be a common
meeting ground.... The Bible says the lion shall lie down with the
lamb, but I don't expect to live to see him do it without worrying some
about the lion's teeth."
"It's one man holding power over other men," said Bonbright.
As the car stopped at Malcolm Lightener's door, sudden panic seized
Bonbright.
"I ought not to come here," he said, "after last night. Mrs.
Lightener... your daughter."
"I'll bet Hilda's worrying you more than her mother. Nonsense! They
both got sense."
Certainly Mrs. Lightener had.
"Just got him out of the police station," her husband said as he led
the uncomfortable Bonbright into her presence. "Been shut up all
night.... Rioting--that's what he's been doing. Throwing stones at the
cops."
Mrs. Lightener looked at Bonbright's pale, weary, worried face. "You
let him be, Malcolm.... Never mind HIM," she said to the boy. "You just
go right upstairs with him. A warm bath and breakfast are what you
need. You don't look as if you'd slept a WINK."
"I haven't," he confessed.
When Bonbright emerged from the bath he found the motherly woman had
sent out to the haberdashers for fresh shirt, collar, and tie. He
donned them with the first surge of genuine gratefulness he had ever
known. Of course he had said thank you prettily, and had thought he
felt thanks.... Now he knew he had not.
"Guess you won't be afraid to face Hilda now," said Lightener, entering
the room. "I notice a soiled collar is worn with a heap more misgiving
than a soiled conscience.... Grapefruit, two soft-boiled eggs, toast,
coffee.... Some prescription."
Hilda was in the library, and greeted him as though it were an ordinary
occurrence to have a young man just out of the cell block as a
breakfast guest. She did not refer to it, nor did her father at the
moment. Bonbright was grateful again.
After breakfast the boy and girl were left alone in the library,
briefly.
"I'm ashamed," said Bonbright, chokingly.
"You needn't be," she said. "Dad told us all about it. I thought the
other night I should like you. Now I'm sure of it." She owned her
father's directness.
"You're good," he said.
"No--reasonable," she answered.
He sat silent, thinking. "Do you know," he said, presently, "what a lot
girls have to do with making a fellow's life endurable?... Since I went
to work I--I've felt really GOOD only twice. Both times it was a girl.
The other one just grinned at me when I was feeling down on my luck. It
was a dandy grin.... And now you..."
"Tell me about her," she said.
"She's my secretary now. Little bit of a thing, but she grins at all
the world... Socialist, too, or anarchist or something. I made them
give her to me for my secretary so I could see her grin once in a
while."
"I'd like to see her."
"I don't know her," said Bonbright. "She's just my secretary. I'll bet
she'd be bully to know."
Hilda Lightener would not have been a woman had she not wondered about
this girl who had made such an impression on Bonbright. It was not that
she sensed a possible rival. She had not interested herself in
Bonbright to the point where a rival could matter. But--she would like
to see that girl.
Malcolm Lightener re-entered the room.
"Clear out, honey," he said to his daughter. "Foote and I have got to
make medicine."
She arose. "If he rumbles like a volcano," she said to Bonbright,
"don't be afraid. He just rumbles. Pompeii is in no danger."
"You GIT," her father said.
"Now," he said when they were alone, "what's to pay?"
"I don't know."
"Will your father raise the devil? Maybe you'd like to have me go along
when you interview him."
"I think I'd rather not."
Lightener nodded with satisfaction.
"Well, then--I've kind of taken a shine to you. You're a young idiot,
all right, but there's something about you.... Let's start off with
this: You've got something that's apt to get you into hot water. Either
it's fool curiosity or genuine interest in folks. I don't know which.
Neither fits into the Bonbright Foote formula. Six generations of 'em
seem to have been whittled off the same chip--and then the knife
slipped and you came off some other chip altogether. But the Foote chip
don't know it, and won't recognize it if it does.... I'm not going to
criticize your father or your ancestors, whatever kind of darn fools I
may personally think they are. What I want to say is, if you ever kick
over the traces, drop in and tell me about it. I'll see you on your
road."
"Thanks," said Bonbright, not half comprehending.
"You can't keep on pressing men out of the same mold forever. Maybe you
can get two or three or a dozen to be as like as peas--and then nature
plays a joke on you. You're the joke on the Foote mold, I reckon. Maybe
they can squeeze you into the form and maybe they can't.... But
whatever happens is going to be darn unpleasant for you."
Bonbright nodded. THAT he knew well.
"You've got a choice. You can start in by kicking over the traces--with
the mischief to pay; or you can let the vanished Footes take a crack at
you to see what that can make of you. I advise no boy to run against
his father's wishes. But everybody starts out with something in him
that's his own--individual--peculiar to him. Maybe it's what the
preachers call his soul. Anyhow, it's HIS. Whatever they do to you, try
to hang on to it. Don't let anybody pump it out of you and fill its
room with a standardized solution. Get me?"
"I think so."
"I guess that's about, all from me. Now run along to your dad. Got any
idea what will happen?"
Bonbright studied the rug more than a minute before he answered.
"I think I was right last night. Maybe I didn't go about it the way I
should, but I INTENDED right. At least I didn't intend WRONG. Father
will be--displeased. I don't think I can explain it to him... "
"Uh!" grunted Lightener.
"So I--I guess I sha'n't try," Bonbright ended. "I think I'll go along
and have it over with."
When he was gone Malcolm Lightener made the following remark to his
wife, who seemed to understand it perfectly:
"Some sons get born into the wrong families."