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The thing had started at the first moment of his connection with Malcolm Lightener as an employee. He had reported promptly at seven o'clock, and found Lightener already in his office. It was Lightener's custom to come down and to go home later for breakfast. "Morning," said Lightener. "Where's your overalls?" "Overalls?" said Bonbright. "Didn't I tell you to bring some? You'll need 'em.
"Dad," said Hilda, with characteristic bluntness and lack of preface, "they're in a dickens of a mess." "Bonbright?" "And Ruth." "Huh!..." Lightener's grunt seemed to say that it was nothing but what he expected. "Well go ahead." Hilda went ahead. Her father punctuated her story with sundry grunts, her mother with exclamations of astonishment and sorrow.
There was a moment's silence; then Bonbright heard a remark not intended for his ears but expressive of Lightener's astonishment, "Well, I'm DARNED!" Then: "I'll be right there. Hold the fort." Bonbright opened the door and said to the lieutenant, "Mr. Lightener's on his way down." "Um!... Make yourself comfortable. Say, was that breakfast all right? Find cigars in that top drawer."
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.
He returned to his room and to his book on the ailments of internal- combustion engines; but it was not their diagrams his eyes saw, but only a featureless blur that represented a girl standing in an upper window -forever beyond his reach.... Malcolm Lightener's plant, huge as it was, could not meet the demands of the public for the car he manufactured. Orders outran production.
The magic of Influence! In twenty minutes Lightener's huge form pushed through the station door. "Morning, Lieutenant. Got a friend of mine here?" "Didn't know he was a friend of yours, Mr. Lightener. He wouldn't give his name, and never asked to have you notified till this morning.... He's in my office there." Lightener strode into the room and shut the door. "Well?" he demanded.
If Dulae and Bonbright had met at this moment there would have happened events which would have delighted the yellower press. But they did not meet. Bonbright was safe in Lightener's purchasing department, learning certain facts about brass castings. So Dulac walked and walked, and lashed himself into rage. Rage abated and became biting disappointment and unspeakable heaviness of heart.
He held his head erect proudly.... Then he sighed, relaxed into his chair, and lay across his desk, one arm outstretched, the other protecting his face.... The telephone on Malcolm Lightener's desk rang. "Hello!" said Lightener. "What is it? Who?... Yes, he's right here." He looked up to Bonbright. "Somebody wants to speak to you." Bonbright stepped to the instrument.
His contact with Malcolm Lightener's workingmen had given him certain sympathies with the theories and hopes of labor; but they had made him certain of fallacies and unsoundness in other theories and ambitions.
It was a long story, with infinite detail, crucifying him with cheap ink; making him appear a ruthless, heartless monster, lusting for the spilled blood of the innocent. Bonbright looked up to meet Lightener's eyes. "It it isn't fair," he said, chokingly. "Fairness," said Lightener, almost with gentleness, "is expected only when we are young." "But I didn't.... I tried to stop them."
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