As Bonbright walked away from his father's house he came into
possession for the first time of the word RESPONSIBILITY. It was
defined for him as no dictionary could define it. Every young man meets
a day when responsibility becomes to him something more than a
combination of letters, and when it comes he can never be the same
again. It marks definitely the arrival of manhood, the dropping behind
of youth. He can never look upon life through the same eyes. Forever,
now, he must peer round and beyond each pleasure to see what burden it
entails and conceals. He must weigh each act with reference to the
RESPONSIBILITY that rests upon him. Hitherto he had been swimming in
life's pleasant, safe, shaded pools; now he finds himself struggling in
the great river, tossed by currents, twirled by eddies, and with no
bottom upon which to rest his feet. Forever now it will be swim--or
sink....
To-morrow Bonbright was to undertake the responsibilities of family
headship and provider; to-night he had sundered himself from his means
of support. He was jobless. He belonged to the unemployed.... In the
office he had heard without concern of this man or that man being
discharged. Now he knew how those men felt and what they faced.
Realization of his condition threw him into panic. In his panic he
allowed his feet to carry him to the man whose help had come readily
and willingly in another moment of need--to Malcolm Lightener.
The hour was still early. Lights shone in the Lightener home and
Bonbright approached the door. Mr. Lightener was in and would see him
in the office. It was characteristic of Lightener that the room in the
house which was peculiarly his own was called by him his office, not
his den, not the library.... There were two interests in Lightener's
life--his family and his business, and he stirred them together in a
quaintly granite sort of way.
For the second time that evening Bonbright stood hesitating in a
doorway.
"Well, young fellow?" said Lightener. Then seeing the boy's hesitation:
"Come in. Come in. What's happened NOW?"
"Mr. Lightener," said Bonbright, "I want a job. I've got to have a job."
"Um!... Job! What's the matter with the job you've got?"
"I haven't any job.... I--I'm through with Bonbright Foote,
Incorporated--forever."
"That's a darn long time. Sit down. Waiting for it to pass will be
easier that way.... Now spit it out." He was studying the boy with his
bright gray eyes, wondering if this was the row he had been expecting.
He more than half hoped, as he would have expressed it, "that the kid
had got his back up." Bonbright's face, his bearing, made Lightener
believe his back WAS up.
"I've got to have a job--"
"You said that once. Why?"
"I'm going to be married to-morrow--"
"What?"
"I'm going to be married to-morrow--and I've got to support my
wife--decently..."
"It's that little Frazer girl who was crying all over my office
to-day," said Lightener, deducing the main fact with characteristic
shrewdness. "And your father wouldn't have it--and threw you out...or
did the thing that stands to him for throwing out?"
"I got out. I had gotten out before. Yesterday morning.... Somebody
told him I'd been going to see Ruth--and he was nasty about it. Called
it a liaison....I--I BURNED UP and left the office. I haven't been
back."
"That accounts for his calling me up--looking for you. You had him
worried."
"Then I got to thinking," said Bonbright, ignoring the interruption. "I
was going back because it seemed as if I HAD to go back. You
understand? As if there was something that compelled me to stick by the
Family...."
"How long have you been going to marry this girl?"
"She said she would marry me to-night."
"Engaged to-night--and you're going to marry to-morrow?"
"Yes....And I went home to tell father. Mother was there--"
Lightener sucked in his breath. He could appreciate what Bonbright's
mother's presence would contribute to the episode.
"--and she was worse than father. She--it was ROTTEN, Mr.
Lightener--ROTTEN. She said she'd never receive Ruth as her daughter,
and that she'd see she was never received by anybody else, and she--she
FORCED father to back her up....There wasn't anything for me to do but
get out....I didn't begin to wonder how I was going to support Ruth
till it was all over with."
"That's the time folks generally begin to wonder."
"So I came right here--because you CAN give me a job if you will--and
I've got to have one to-night. I've got to know to-night how I'm going
to get food and a place to live for Ruth."
"Um!...We'll come to that." He got up and went to the door. From thence
he shouted--the word is used advisedly--for his wife and daughter.
"Mamma.... Hilda. Come here right off." He had decided that Bonbright's
affairs stood in need of woman's counsel.
Mrs. Lightener appeared first. "Why, Bonbright!" she exclaimed.
"Where's Hilda?" asked Lightener. "Need her, too."
"She's coming, dear," said Mrs. Lightener.
There are people whose mere presence brings relief. Perhaps it is
because their sympathy is sure; perhaps it is because their souls were
given them, strong and simple, for other souls to lean upon. Mrs.
Lightener was one of these. Before she knew why Bonbright was there,
before she uttered a word, he felt a sense of deliverance. His
necessities seemed less gnawing; there was a slackening of taut
nerves....
Then Hilda appeared. "Evening, Bonbright," she said, and gave him her
hand.
"Let's get down to business," Lightener said. "Tell 'em, Bonbright."
"I'm going to marry Ruth Frazer to-morrow noon," he said, boldly.
Mrs. Lightener was amazed, then disappointed, for she had come to hope
strongly that she would have this boy for a son. She liked him, and
trusted in his possibilities. She believed he would be a husband to
whom she could give her daughter with an easy heart.... Hilda felt a
momentary shock of surprise, but it passed quickly. Like her father,
she was sudden to pounce upon the concealed meaning of patent
facts--and she had spent the morning with Ruth. She was first to speak.
"So you've decided to throw me over," she said, with a smile.... "I
don't blame you, Bonbright. She's a dear."
"But who is she?" asked Mrs. Lightener. "I seem to have heard the name,
but I don't remember meeting her."
"She was my secretary," said Bonbright. "She's a stenographer in Mr.
Lightener's office now."
"Oh," said Mrs. Lightener, and there was dubiety in her voice.
"Exactly," said Lightener.
"MOTHER!" exclaimed Hilda. "Weren't you a stenographer in the office
where dad worked?"
"It isn't THAT," said Mrs. Lightener. "I wasn't thinking about the girl
nor about Bonbright. I was thinking of his mother."
"That's why he's here," said Lightener. "The Family touched off a mess
of fireworks. Mrs. Foote refuses to have anything to do with the girl
if Bonbright marries her. Promised to see nobody else did, too. Isn't
that it, Bonbright?"
"Yes."
"I don't like to mix in a family row..."
"You've GOT to, dad," said Hilda. "Of course Bonbright couldn't stand
THAT." They understood her to mean by THAT the Foote family's position
in the matter. "He couldn't stand it.... I expect you and mother are
disappointed. You wanted me to marry Bonbright, myself..."
"HILDA!" Mrs. Lightener's voice was shocked.
"Oh, Bonbright and I talked it over the night we met. Don't be a bit
alarmed. I'm not being especially forward.... We've got to do
something. What does Bon want us to do?"
"He wants me to give him a job."
She turned to Bonbright. "They turned you out?"
"I turned myself out," he said.
She nodded understandingly. "You WOULD," she said, approvingly. "What
kind of a job can you give him, dad?"
"H'm. THAT'S settled, is it? What do you think, mother?"
"Why, dear, he's got to support his wife," said Mrs. Lightener.
Malcolm Lightener permitted the granite of his face to relax in a
rueful smile. "I called you folks in to get your advice--not to have
you run the whole shebang."
"We're going to run it, dad....Don't you like Ruth Frazer?"
"I like her. She seems to be a nice, intelligent girl....Cries all over
a man's office...."
"I like her, too, and so will mother when she meets Ruth. I like her a
eap, Bon; she's a DEAR. Now that the job for you is settled--"
"Eh?" said Lightener.
Hilda smiled at him and amended herself. "Now that a very GOOD job for
you is settled, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. First thing, I'm
invited to the wedding, and so is mother, and so are some other folks.
I'll see to that. It isn't going to be any justice-of-the-peace
wedding, either. It's going to be in the church, and there'll be enough
folks there to make it read right in the paper."
"I'm afraid Ruth wouldn't care for that," said Bonbright, dubiously. "I
know she wouldn't."
"She's got to start off RIGHT as your wife, Bon. The start's
everything. You want your friends to know her and receive her, don't
you? Of course you do. I'll round up the folks and have them there. It
will be sort of romantic and interesting, and a bully send off for Ruth
if it's done right. It 'll make her quite the rage. You'll see.
...That's what I'm going to do--in spite of your mother. Your wife will
be received and invited every place that _I_ am....Maybe your mother
can run the dowagers, but I'll bet a penny I can handle the young
folks." In that moment she looked exceedingly like her father.
"HILDA!" her mother exclaimed again. "You must consider Mrs. Foote. We
don't want to have any unpleasantness over this...."
"We've got it already," said Hilda, "and the only way is to--go the
limit."
Lightener slammed the desk with his fist. "Right!" he said. "If we
meddle at all we've got to go the whole distance. Either stay out
altogether or go in over our heads.... But how about this girl, Hilda,
does she belong?"
"She's decently educated. She has sweet manners. She's brighter than
two-thirds of us. She'll fit in all right. Don't you worry about her."
"Young man," growled Lightener, "why couldn't you have fallen in love
with my daughter and saved all this fracas?"
Bonbright was embarrassed, but Hilda came to his rescue. "Because I
didn't want him to," she said. "You wouldn't have MADE me marry him,
would you?"
"PROBABLY not," said her father, with a rueful grin.
"I'm going to take charge of her," said Hilda. "We'll show your mother,
Bon."
"You're--mighty good," said Bonbright, chokingly.
"I'm going to see her the first thing in the morning. You see. I'll fix
things with her. When I explain everything to her she'll do just as I
want her to."
Mrs. Lightener was troubled; tears stood in her eyes. "I'm so sorry,
Bonbright. I--I suppose a boy has the right to pick out his own wife,
but it's too bad you couldn't have pleased your mother.... Her heart
must ache to-night."
"I'm afraid," said Bonbright, slowly, "that it doesn't ache the way you
mean, Mrs. Lightener."
"It's a hard place to put us. We're meddling. It doesn't seem the right
thing to come between mother and son."
"You're not," said Hilda. "Mrs. Foote's snobbishness came between them."
"HILDA!"
"That's just what it is. Ruth is just as nice as she is or anybody
else. She ought to be glad she's getting a daughter like Ruth. You'd
be....And we can't sit by and see Bon and his wife STARVE, can we? We
can't fold our hands and let Mrs. Foote make Ruth unhappy. It's cruel,
that's what it is, and nothing else. When Ruth is Bon's wife she has
the right to be treated as his wife should be. Mrs. Foote has no
business trying to humiliate her and Bon--and she sha'n't."
"I suppose you're right, dear. I KNOW you're right.... But I'm thinking
how I'd feel if it were YOU."
"You'd never feel like Mrs. Foote, mother. If I made up my mind to
marry a man out of dad's office--no matter what his job was, if he was
all right himself--you wouldn't throw me out of the house and set out
to make him and me as unhappy as you could. You aren't a snob."
"No," said Mrs. Lightener, "I shouldn't."
Malcolm Lightener, interrupted. "Now you've both had your say," he
said, "and you seem to have decided the thing between you. I felt kind
of that way, myself, but I wanted to know about you folks. What you say
GOES....Now clear out; I want to talk business to Bonbright."
Hilda gave Bonbright her hand again. "I'm glad," she said, simply. "I
know you'll be very happy."
"And I'll do what I can, boy," said Mrs. Lightener
Bonbright was moved as he had never been moved before by kindliness and
womanliness. "Thank you.... Thank you," he said, tremulously. "I--you
don't know what this means to me. You've--you've put a new face on the
whole future...."
"Clear out," said Malcolm Lightener.
Hilda made a little grimace at him in token that she flouted his
authority, and she and her mother said good night and retired from the
room.
"Now," said Malcolm Lightener.
Bonbright waited.
"I'm going to give you a job, but it won't be any private-office job. I
don't know what you're good for. Probably not much. Don't get it into
your head I'm handing a snap to you, because I'm not. If you're not
worth what I pay you you'll get fired. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"If you stick you'll learn something. Not the kind of rubbish you've
been sopping up in your own place. I run a business, not a museum of
antiquity. You'll have to work. Think you can?"
"I've wanted to. They wouldn't let me."
"Um!...You'll get dirt on your hands....Most likely you'll be running
Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, one of these days. This thing won't
last. Your father'll have to come around....I only hope he lets you
stay with me long enough to teach you some business sense and something
about running a plant. I'll pay you enough to support you and this girl
of yours--but you'll earn it. When you earn more you'll get it...Sounds
reasonable."
"I--I can't thank you enough."
"Report for work day after to-morrow, then. You're a man out of a job.
You can't afford honeymoons. I'll let you have the day off to-morrow,
but next morning you be in my office when the whistle blows. I always
am."
"Yes, sir."
"Where are you going to live? Got any money?"
"I don't know where we shall live. Maybe we'd better find a place to
board for a while. I've got a hundred dollars or so."
"Board!...Huh! Nobody's got any business boarding when they're married.
Wife has too much time on her hands. Nothing to do. Especially at the
start of things your wife'll need to be busy. Keep her from getting
notions....I'll bet the percentage of divorces among folks that board
is double that it is among folks that keep house. Bound to be....You
get you a decent flat and furnish it. Right off. After you get married
you and your wife pick out the furniture. That's what I'm giving you
the day off to-morrow for. You can furnish a little flat--the kind you
can afford, for five hundred dollars.... You're not a millionaire now.
You're a young fellow with a fair job and a moderate salary that you've
got to live on. ...Better let your wife handle it. She's used to it and
you're not. She'll make one dollar go as far as you would make ten."
"Yes, sir."
Lightener moved awkwardly and showed signs of embarrassment. "And
listen here," he said, gruffly, "a young girl's a pretty sweet and
delicate piece of business. They're mighty easy to hurt, and the hurt
lasts a long time....You want to be married a long time, I expect, and
you want your wife to--er--love you right on along. Well, be darn
careful, young fellow. Start the thing right. More marriages are
smashed in the first few days than in the next twenty years....You be
damn gentle and considerate of that little girl."
"I--I hope I shall, Mr. Lightener."
"You'd better be....Where you going to-night?"
"To the club. I have some things there. I've always kept enough clothes
there to get along on."
"Your club days are over for some time. Married man has no business
with a club till he's forty....Evenings, anyhow. Stay at home with your
wife. How'd you like to have her running out to some darn thing three
or four nights a week?...Go on, now. I'll tell Hilda where you are.
Probably she'll want to call you up in the morning....Good night."
"Good night...and thank you."
"Huh!" said Malcolm Lightener, and without paying the slightest bit of
attention to whether Bonbright stayed or went away, he took up the
papers on his desk and lost himself in the figures that covered them.
Bonbright went out quietly, thankfully, his heart glad with its own
song....The future was settled; safe. He had nothing to fear. And
to-morrow he was going to enter into a land of great happiness. He felt
he was entering a land of fulfillment. That is the way with the very
young. They enter upon marriage feeling it is a sort of haven of
perpetual bliss, that it marks the end of unhappiness, of difficulties,
of loneliness, of griefs...when, in reality, it is but the beginning of
life with all the diverse elements of joy and grief and anxiety and
comfort and peace and discord that life is capable of holding....