Bonbright worked feverishly. These were the best days he had known
since he left college, but they were not happy days. He could not
forget Ruth--the best he could do was to prevent himself from
remembering too much, and so he worked. He demanded of himself more
than it is in a single man to give, but he accomplished an
astonishingly large part of it. Day and night he drove himself without
relaxation and without pause. If he stopped, the old feeling of
emptiness, of the futility of his existence, and the bitterness of his
fortune returned. His nature might have become warped, but for the
labor.
The building of the new shops he left to Mershon, knowing himself
incompetent. He knew what sort of shops he wanted; Mershon knew how to
produce them, and Mershon was dependable. Bonbright had implicit
confidence in the engineer's ability and integrity, and it was
justified. The new mills were rising....
Bonbright's part in that was enough to keep one man occupied, for,
however much he might leave to Mershon, there were countless details
that he must decide; innumerable points to be referred to him and
discussed. But his chief interest was not in producing a plant to
manufacture engines, but in producing a crew of men to operate the
plant; not merely hiring capable workingmen, but producing a condition
where himself and those working-men would be in accord; where the men
would be satisfied, happy in their work; a condition millennial in that
the known as labor unrest should be eliminated. He had set himself to
find a solution to the age-old problem of capital and labor....
He had not realized how many elements entered into the matter, and what
a high degree of specialized knowledge must be brought to the task. In
the beginning he had fancied himself as capable of working out the
basis for ideal relations between him and his employees as any other.
He soon discovered himself to be all but unequipped for the effort....
It was a saving quality of Bonbright's that he would admit his own
futilities. Therefore he called to conference the country's greatest
sociologist, Professor Witzer.
The professor, a short, wabbling individual, with watery eyes that
could read print splendidly if it were held within six inches of them,
and who, when he did read, moved book or paper back and forth in front
of his spectacles in a droll, owlish, improbable way, instead of
letting his eyes travel across the lines of print, was skeptical at
first. He suspected Bonbright of being a youth scratching the itch of a
sudden and transient enthusiasm. But he became interested. Bonbright
compelled his interest, for he was earnest, intense, not enthusiastic,
not effervescing with underdone theories.
"What you want to do, as I understand it," said the professor, "is
merely to revolutionize the world and bring on the millennium."
"What I want to do," said Bonbright, "is to formulate a plan that will
be fair to labor and fair to me. I want a condition where both of us
will be satisfied--and where both will know we are satisfied. It can be
done."
"Um!..." said the professor. "Are you, by chance, a socialist?"
"Far from it."
"What are your theories?"
"I haven't any theories. I want facts, working facts. There's no use
palavering to the men. What they want and what I want is something
concrete. I want to know what they want, and how much of it will be
good for them. I want something that will work in dollars and cents, in
days' work, in making life more comfortable for the women and children
at home. If merely paying wages will do it, then I'll pay the wages...."
"It won't," said the professor. "But it 'll go quite some distance."
"It isn't a matter of sentiment with me," Bonbright said. "It's a
matter of business, and peace of mind, and all-around efficiency. I
don't mean efficiency in this plant, but efficiency in LIVING.... For
the men and their families."
"It can't be done by giving them rest rooms with Turkish rugs nor
porcelain bathtubs, nor by installing a moving-picture show for them to
watch while they eat lunch," said the professor. "It can't be done with
money alone. It would work in isolated cases. Give some men a
sufficient wage and they would correct their ways of living; they would
learn to live decently, and they would save for the rainy day and for
old age. I don't venture an estimate of the proportion.... But there
would be the fellows whose increased pay meant only that much more to
spend. Mighty little would filter through to improve the conditions of
their actual living.... In any scheme there will have to be some way of
regulating the use of the money they earn--and that's paternalism."
"Can it be made to work? It's your honest opinion I'm after."
"I don't believe it, but, young man, it will be the most interesting
experiment I ever engaged in. Have you any ideas?"
"My basic idea is to pay them enough so they can live in comfort. ..."
"And then you've got to find some machinery to compel them to live in
comfort."
"I'd like to see every employee of this concern the owner of his home.
I'd like to feel that no man's wife is a drudge. An astonishingly large
number of wives do washing, or work out by the day.... And boarders.
The boarder is a problem."
"You HAVE been thinking," said the professor. "Do I understand that you
are offering me the chance to work with you on this experiment?"
"Yes."
"I accept.... I never dreamed I'd have a chance to meddle with human
lives the way you seem to want to meddle with them...."
So they went to work, and day after day, week after week, their plan
grew and expanded and embraced unforeseen intricacies. Bonbright
approached it from the practical side always. The professor came to
view him with amazement--and with respect.
"I'm sticking my finger into the lives of twenty thousand human
beings!" the professor said to himself many times a day, with the joy
of the scientist. "I'm being first assistant to the world's greatest
meddler. That young man is headed for a place as one of the world's
leaders, or for a lamp-post and a rope.... I wonder which...."
The thing that Bonbright asked himself many, many times was a different
sort of question. "Is this the sort of thing she meant? Would she
approve of doing this?"
He was not embarked on the project for Ruth's sake. It was not Ruth who
had driven him to it, but himself, and the events of his life. But her
presence was there.... He was doing his best. He was doing the thing he
thought would bring about the condition he desired, and he hoped she
would approve if she knew.... But whether she approved or not, he would
have persisted along his own way.... If he had never known her, never
married her, he would have done the same thing. Some day she would know
this, and understand it. It would be another irony for her to bear. The
man she had married that she might influence him to ameliorate the
conditions of his workingmen was doing far more than she had dreamed of
accomplishing herself--and would have done it if she had never been
born....
Neither she nor Bonbright realized, perhaps would never realize, that
it is not the individual who brings about changes in the social fabric.
It is not fanatics, not reformers, not inspired leaders. It is the
labored working of the mass, and the working of the mass brings forth
and casts up fanatics, reformers, leaders, when it has gestated them
and prepared the way for their birth. The individual is futile; his
aims and plans are futile save as they are the outcome of the trend of
the mass....
Ruth was not so fortunate as Bonbright. Her work did not fill her time
nor draw her interest. It was merely the thing she did to earn the
necessities of life. She was living now in a boarding house on the
lower side of the city, where a room might be had for a sum within her
means. It was not a comfortable room. It was not a room that could be
made comfortable by any arrangement of its occupant. But it was in a
clean house, presided over by a woman of years and respectable
garrulity.
Six days of the week Ruth worked, and the work became daily more
exhausting, demanding more of her nervous organism as her physical
organism had less to give. She was not taking care of herself. It is
only those who cling to life, who are interested in life and in
themselves, who take care of their bodies as they should be taken care
of. She had been slight; now she was thin. No one now would have
dreamed of calling her the Girl with the Grin. She looked older,
lifeless, almost haggard at times. Her condition was not wholly the
result of unhappiness. It was due to lack of fresh air and exercise,
for she went seldom abroad. It was fear of meeting acquaintances that
shut her in her room--fear of meeting Bonbright, fear of encountering
Dulac. It was loneliness, too. She made no new acquaintances, and went
her way in solitude. She had not so much as a nodding acquaintance with
most of her fellow lodgers. Not one of them could boast of conversation
with her beyond the briefest passing of the day.... At first they
gossiped about her, speculated about her, wove crude stories about her.
Some chose to think her exclusive, and endeavored to show her by their
bearing that they thought themselves as good as she--and maybe better.
They might have saved themselves their trouble, for she never noticed.
Lack of proper nourishment did its part. Women seem prone to neglect
their food. The housewife, if her husband does not come home to the
midday meal, contents herself with a snack, hastily picked up, and
eaten without interest. Ruth had no appetite. She went to the table
three times a day because a certain quantity of food was a necessity.
She did not eat at Mrs. Moody's table, but "went out to her meals...."
She ate anywhere and everywhere.
Mrs. Moody alone had tried to approach Ruth. Ruth had been courteous,
but distant. She wanted no prying into her affairs; no seekers after
confidences; no discoverers of her identity. For gossip spreads, and
one does not know what spot it may reach....
"It hain't healthy for her to set in her room all the time," Mrs. Moody
said to the mercenary who helped with the cooking. "And it hain't
natural for a girl like her never to have comp'ny. Since she's been
here there hain't been a call at the door for her--nor a letter."
"I hain't seen her but once or twict," said the mercenary. "If I was to
meet her face to face on the street, I hain't sure I'd know it was her."
"She didn't look good when she come, and she's lookin' worse every day.
First we know we'll have her down on her back.... And then what?...
S'pose she was to be took sudden? Who'd we notify?"
"The horspittle," said the mercenary, callously.
"She's sich a mite of a thing, with them big eyes lookin' sorry all the
while. I feel sort of drawed to her. But she won't have no truck with
me... nor nobody.... She hain't never left nothin' layin' around her
room that a body could git any idee about her from. Secretive, I call
it."
"Maybe," said the mercenary, "she's got a past."
"One thing's certain, if she don't look better 'fore she looks worse,
she won't have a long future."
That seemed to be a true saying. Ruth felt something of it. It was
harder for her to get up of mornings, more difficult to drag herself to
work and hold up during the day. Sometimes she skipped the evening meal
now and went straight home to bed. All she wanted was to rest, to lie
down.... One day she fainted in the office....
Her burden was harder to support because it included not grief alone,
but remorse, and if one excepts hatred, remorse is the most wearing of
the emotions.... As she became weaker, less normal, it preyed on her.
Then, one morning, she fainted as she tried to get out of bed, and lay
on the floor until consciousness returned. She dragged herself back
into bed and lay there, gazing dully up at the ceiling, suffering no
pain... only so tired. She did not speculate about it. Somehow it did
not interest her very much. Even not going to work didn't bother
her--she had reached that point.
Mrs. Moody had watched her going and coming for several days with
growing uneasiness. This morning she knew Ruth had not gone out, and
presently the woman slap-slapped up the stairs in her heelless slippers
to see about it. She rapped on Ruth's door. There was no response. She
rapped again....
"I know you're in there," she said, querulously. "Why don't you answer?"
Inside, Ruth merely moved her head from side to side on the pillow. She
heard--but what did it matter?
Mrs. Moody opened the door and stepped inside. She was prepared for
what she saw.
"There you be," she said, with a sort of triumphant air, as of one
whose prophecy had been fulfilled to the letter, "flat on your back."
Ruth paid no attention.
"What ails you?"
No answer.
"Here now"--she spoke sharply--"you know who I be, don't you?"
"Yes," said Ruth.
"Why didn't you answer?"
"I am--so--tired," Ruth said, faintly.
"You can't be sick here. Don't you go doin' it. I hain't got no time to
look after sick folks." She might as well have spoken to the pillow.
Ruth didn't care. She had simply reached the end of her will, and had
given up. It was over. She was absolutely without emotion.
Mrs. Moody approached the bed and felt of Ruth's hand. She had expected
to find it hot. It was cold, bloodless. It gave the woman a start. She
looked down at Ruth's face, from which the big eyes stared up at her
without seeming to see her.
"You poor mite of a thing," said Mrs. Moody, softly. Then she seemed to
jack herself up to a realization that softness would not do and that
she could not allow such goings-on in her house. "You're sick, and if
I'm a judge you're mighty sick," she said, sharply. "Who's goin' to
look after you. Say?"
The tone stirred Ruth.... "Nobody..." she said, after a pause.
"I got to notify somebody," said Mrs. Moody. "Any relatives or friends?"
Ruth seemed to think it over as if the idea were hard to comprehend.
"Once I--had a--husband..." she said.
"But you hain't got him now, apparently. Have you got anybody?"
"... Husband..." said Ruth. "... husband.... But he--went away.... No,
_I_--went away... because it was--too late then.... It was too
late--THEN, wasn't it?" Her voice was pleading.
"You know more about it than me," said Mrs. Moody. "I want you should
tell me somebody I can notify."
"I--loved him... and I didn't know it.... That was--queer--wasn't
it?... He NEVER knew it...."
"She's clean out of her head," said Mrs. Moody, irritably, "and what'll
I do? Tell me that. What'll I do, and her most likely without a cent
and all that?... Why didn't you go and git sick somewheres else? You
could of...."
She wrung her hands and called Providence to witness that all the
arrows of misfortune were aimed at her, and always had been.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself--a growd woman like you--makin' me
all this nuisance. I sha'n't put up with it. You'll go packin' to the
horspittle, that's what you'll do. Mark my word."
Mrs. Moody's method of packing Ruth off to the hospital was unique. It
consisted of running herself for the doctor. It consisted of listening
with bated breath to his directions; it consisted of giving up almost
wholly the duties--A conducting her boarding house, and in making
gruels and heating water and sitting in Ruth's room wielding a fan over
Ruth's ungrateful face. It consisted in spending of her scant supply of
money for medicines, in constant attendance and patient, faithful
nursing--accompanied by sharp scoldings and recriminations uttered in a
monotone guaranteed not to disturb the sick girl. Perhaps she really
fancied she was being hard and unsympathetic and calloused. She talked
as if she were, but no single act was in tune with her words.... She
grumbled--and served. She complained--and hovered over Ruth with
clumsy, gentle hands. She was afraid somebody might think her tender.
She was afraid she might think so herself.... The world is full of Mrs.
Moodys.
Ruth lay day after day with no change, half conscious, wholly
listless.... It seemed to Mrs. Moody to be nothing but a waiting for
the end. But she waited for the end as though the sick girl were flesh
of her flesh, protesting to heaven against the imposition, ceaselessly.