Youth Challenges Part 11

"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 s.h.i.+ne 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."

CHAPTER VIII

Bonbright entered his office with the sensations of a detected juvenile culprit approaching an unavoidable reckoning. If there was a ray of brightness in the whole episode it was that the newspapers had miraculously been denied the meatiest bit of his night's adventure--his detention in a cell. If that had been flaunted before the eyes of the public Bonbright felt he would never have been able to face his father.

He was vividly aware of the stir his entrance caused among the office employees. It was as though the heart of the office skipped a beat. He flushed, and, with eyes straight before him, hurried into his own room and sat in his chair. He experienced a quivering, electric emptiness--his nerves crying out against an approaching climax. It was blood-relative to panic.

Presently he was aware that his father stood in the door scrutinizing him. Bonbright's eyes encountered his father's. They seemed to lock ...

In that tense moment the boy was curiously aware how perfectly his father's physical presence stood for and expressed his theory of being.

Tall, unbending, slender, aristocratic, intellectual--the pose of the body, the poise of the head, even that peculiar, slanting set of the lips expressed perfectly the Bonbright Foote idea. Five generations had bred him to be the perfect thing it desired.

"Well, sir," he said, coldly. Bonbright arose. There was a formality about the situation which seemed to require it. "Good morning," he said, in a low tone.

"I have seen the papers."

"Yes, sir."

"What they printed was in substance true?"

"I prefer not--to discuss it, sir."

"And _I_ prefer TO discuss it... Do you fancy you can drag the name of Foote through the daily press as though it were that of some dancing girl or political mountebank, and have no reference made of it? Tell me exactly what happened last night--and why it was permitted to happen."

"Father--" Bonbright's voice was scarcely audible, yet it was alive and quivering with pain. "I cannot talk to you about last night."

The older man's lips compressed. "You are a man grown--are supposed to be a man grown. Must I cross-examine you as if you were a sulking schoolboy?"

Bonbright was not defiant, not sulkily stubborn. His night's experiences had affected, were affecting him, working far-reaching changes in him, maturing him. But he was too close to them for their effect to have been accomplished. The work was going on each moment, each hour. He did not reply to his father immediately, but when he did so it was with a certain decision, a firmness, a lack of the old boyishness which was marked and distinct.

"You must not cross-question me. There are things about which one's own father has not the right to ask.... If I could have come to you voluntarily--but I could not. In college I have seen fellows get into trouble, and the first thing they thought of was to go to their fathers with it... It was queer. What happened last night happened to ME.

Possibly it will have some effect on my family and on the name of Foote, as you say... But it happened to ME. n.o.body else can understand it. No one has the right to ask about it."

"It happened to YOU! Young man, you are the seventh Bonbright Foote--member of a FAMILY. What happens to you happens to it. You cannot separate yourself from it. You, as an individual, are not important, but as Bonbright Foote VII you become important. Do you imagine you can act and think as an ent.i.ty distinct from Bonbright Foote, Incorporated?... Nonsense. You are but one part of a whole; what you do affects the whole, and you are responsible for it to the shops."

"A man must be responsible to himself," said Bonbright, fumbling to express what was troubling his soul. "There are bigger things than family..."

His father had advanced to the desk. Now he interrupted by bringing his hand down upon it masterfully. "For you there is no bigger thing than family. You have a strange idea. Where did you get it? Is this sort of thing being taught in college to-day? I suppose you have some notion of a.s.serting your individuality. Bos.h.!.+ Men in your position, born as you have been born, have no right to individuality. Your individuality must express the individuality of your family as mine has done, and as my father's and HIS father's did before me... I insist that you explain fully to me what occurred last night."

"I am sorry, sir, but I cannot."

There was no outburst of pa.s.sion from the father; it would have been wholly out of keeping with his character. Bonbright Foote VI was a strong man in his way; he possessed force of character--even if that force were merely a standardized, family-molded force of character. He recognized a crisis in the affairs of the Foote family which must be met wisely. He perceived that results could not be obtained through the violent impact of will; that here was a dangerous condition which must be cured--but not by seizing it and wrenching it into place... Perhaps he could make Bonbright obey him, but if matters were as serious as they seemed, it would be far from wise. The thing must be dealt with patiently, firmly. Here was only a symptom; the disease went deeper.

For six generations one Bonbright Foote after another had been born true to tradition's form--the seventh generation had gone askew! It must be set right, remolded.

"Let me point out to you," said he, "that you are here only because you are my son and the descendant of our forefathers. Aside from that you have no right to consideration or to position. You possess wealth. You are a personage... Suppose it were necessary to deprive you of these things. Suppose, as I have the authority to do, I should send you out of this office to earn your own living. Suppose, in short, I should find it necessary to do as other fathers have done--to disown you...