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....