Ruth's strength returned miraculously, for it had not been her body
that was ill, but her soul, and her soul was well now and at peace.
Once she had thought that just to be at peace would be perfect bliss.
She knew better now, for she was at peace, and happiness was hers,
besides.... It was pitiful how she clung to Bonbright, how she held him
back when he would be leaving in the morning, and how she watched the
door for his return.
Bonbright knew peace, too. Sometimes it seemed that the conflict was
over for him and that he had sailed into a sure and quiet haven where
no storm could reach him again. All that he had lacked was his;
independence was his and the possibility of developing his own
individualism. The ghosts of the ancestors were laid; Bonbright Foote,
Incorporated, was no longer a mold that sought to grasp him and turn
him into something he was not and did not wish to be. The plan was
proving itself, demonstrating its right to be. Even Malcolm Lightener
was silenced, for the thing marched. It possessed vitals. Nor had it
upset business, as Lightener once predicted. After the first tumult and
flurry labor had settled back into its old ways. The man who worked for
Bonbright Foote was envied, and that man and his family prospered and
knew a better, bigger life. The old antagonism of his employees had
vanished and he had become a figure to call out their enthusiasm. He
believed every man of them was his friend, and, more than that, he
believed he had found the solution to the great problem. He believed he
had found a way of bringing together capital and labor so that they
would lie down together like the millennial lion and lamb... All these
things made for peace. But in addition he had Ruth's love, and that
brought back his old boyishness, gave him something he had never had
before, even in his youth--a love of life, a love of living, a gladness
that awoke with him and accompanied him through his days.
When Ruth was able to sit up they began to lay out their future and to
plan plans. Already Bonbright was building a home, and the delight they
had from studying architect's drawings and changing the position of
baths and doors and closets and porches was unbelievable. Then came the
furnishing of it, and at last the moving into it.
"I'm almost glad it all happened," Ruth said.
"Yes," said Bonbright.
"We'd have been just ordinarily happy if we'd started like other
folks... But to have gone through that--and come into all this!..."
"Let's not remember it," he said. Then: "Ruth, you never make any
suggestions--about the men. You know lots more about them than I do.
You were born among them. But you just listen to me when I talk to you,
and never offer a word."
"I--I've been afraid to," she said.
"Afraid?"
"Yes... Don't you remember? It might look as if..."
He silenced her, knowing what was her thought. "I'll never think
anything about you that isn't so," he said.
"Then I'll suggest--when I think of anything. But I couldn't have
suggested any of it. I couldn't have dreamed it or hoped it. Nothing I
could have asked for them would have been as--as splendid as this."
"You believe in it?"
"More than that. I've been into their homes. They were glad to see me.
It was wonderful... Enough to eat, cleanliness, mothers at home with
their babies instead of out washing, no boarders... And no worries.
That was best. They showed me their bank accounts, or how they were
buying homes, and how quickly they were paying for them... And I was
proud when I thought it was my husband that did it."
"Lightener says it looks all right now, but it won't last. He says it's
impractical."
"He doesn't know. How could he know as well as you do? Aren't you the
greatest man in the world?" She said it half laughingly, but in her
heart she meant it.
She loved to talk business with him; to hear about the new mills and
how they were turning out engines. She discussed his project of
enlarging further, perhaps of manufacturing automobiles himself, and
urged him on. "It will give work to more men, and bring more men under
the plan," she said. That was her way of looking at it.
Hilda came often, and laughed at them, but she loved them.
"Just kids," she jeered, but she envied them and told them so. And
then, because she deserved it, there came a man into her own life, and
he loved her and she loved him. Whereupon Bonbright and Ruth returned
her jeers with interest.
More than a year went by, a year of perfection. Then came a cloud on
the horizon. Even five dollars a day and the plan did not seem to
content labor, and Bonbright became aware of it. Dulac was active
again, or, rather, he had always been active. Discontent manifested
itself.... It grew, and had to be repressed. In spite of the plan--in
spite of everything, a strike threatened, became imminent.
Ruth was thunderstruck, Bonbright bewildered. His panacea was not a
panacea, then. He studied the plan to better it, and did make minor
improvements, but in its elements it was just, fair. Bonbright could
not understand, but Malcolm Lightener understood and the professor of
sociology understood.
"I can't understand it," Bonbright said to them.
"Huh!" grunted Lightener. "It's just this: You're capital, and they're
labor. That's it in a nutshell."
"But it's fair."
"To be sure it's fair--as fair as a thing can be. But the fact remains.
Capital and labor can't get together as long as they remain capital and
labor."
The professor nodded. "You've said the thing that is, Mr. Lightener.
But it's deeper than that. It's the inevitable surge upward of
humanity. You rich men try to become richer. That is natural. You are
reaching up. Labor has a long way to climb to reach you, but it wants
to reach you. Perhaps it doesn't know it, but it does. As long as a
height remains to be climbed to, man will try to climb... Class exists.
The employer class and the employed. So long as one man can boss
another; so long as one man can say to another, 'Do this or do that,'
there will be conflict. Everybody, whether he knows it or not, wants to
be his own boss, and by as much as he is bossed he is galled ... It can
never be otherwise..."
"You knew from the beginning I would fail," said Bonbright.
"You haven't failed, my boy. You've done a fine thing; but you haven't
solved a problem that has no solution... You are upset by it now, but
after a while you'll see it and the disappointment will go. But you
haven't failed... I don't believe you will ever understand all you have
accomplished."
But Bonbright was unhappy, and he carried his unhappiness to his wife.
"It's all been futile," he said.
She was wiser than he. "No," she said, hotly, "it's been wonderful ...
Nothing was ever more wonderful. I've told you how I've visited them
and seen the new happiness--seen women happy who had never been happy
before; seen comfort where there had been nothing but misery ... It's
anything but futile, dear. You've done your best--and it was a splendid
best... If it doesn't do all you hoped, that's no sign of failure. I'm
satisfied, dear."
"They want something I can't give them."
"Nobody can give it to them... It's the way things are. I think I
understand what the professor said. It's true. You've given all you can
and done all you can.... You'd have to be God and create a new world...
Don't you see?"
"I see..." he said. "I see..."
"And you won't be unhappy about it?"
He smiled. "I'm like the men, I guess. I want more than the world has
to give me... I don't blame them. They're right."
"Yes," she said, "they're right."
It was not many weeks after this that Bonbright sat, frightened and
anxious, in the library--waiting. A nurse appeared in the door and
motioned. She smiled, and a weight passed from his heart.
Bonbright followed into Ruth's room, pausing timidly at the door.
"Come in, come in, young man. I have the pleasure to announce the safe
arrival of Bonbright Foote VIII."
Bonbright looked at Ruth, who smiled up at him and shook her head.
"Not Bonbright Foote VIII, doctor," said Bonbright, as he moved toward
his wife and son. "Plain Bonbright Foote. There are no numerals in this
family. Everyone who is born into it stands by himself... I'll have no
ancestors hanging around my boy's neck..."
"I know it," Ruth whispered in his ear, "but I was a--a teeny
bit--afraid. He's OURS--but he's more than that. He's HIS OWN... as God
wants every man to be."
THE END