"You would give in…. Oh, I know you would. You haven't a thought outside of Family. I wasn't born in your family, remember. I married into it. I have my own rights in this matter, and, Family or no Family, Bonbright, that girl shall never be received where I am received…. NEVER."
Mr. Foote walked to the window and looked out. He saw his son's tall form pass down the walk and out into the street—going he did not know where; to return he did not know when. He felt an ache in his heart such as he had never felt before. He felt a yearning after his son such as he had never known. In that moment of loss he perceived that Bonbright was something more to him than Bonbright Foote VII—he was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. The stifled, cramped, almost eliminated human father that remained in him cried out after his son….
CHAPTER XVIII
As Bonbright walked away from his father's house he came into possession for the first time of the word RESPONSIBILITY. It was defined for him as no dictionary could define it. Every young man meets a day when responsibility becomes to him something more than a combination of letters, and when it comes he can never be the same again. It marks definitely the arrival of manhood, the dropping behind of youth. He can never look upon life through the same eyes. Forever, now, he must peer round and beyond each pleasure to see what burden it entails and conceals. He must weigh each act with reference to the RESPONSIBILITY that rests upon him. Hitherto he had been swimming in life's pleasant, safe, shaded pools; now he finds himself struggling in the great river, tossed by currents, twirled by eddies, and with no bottom upon which to rest his feet. Forever now it will be swim—or sink….
To-morrow Bonbright was to undertake the responsibilities of family headship and provider; to-night he had sundered himself from his means of support. He was jobless. He belonged to the unemployed…. In the office he had heard without concern of this man or that man being discharged. Now he knew how those men felt and what they faced.
Realization of his condition threw him into panic. In his panic he allowed his feet to carry him to the man whose help had come readily and willingly in another moment of need—to Malcolm Lightener.
The hour was still early. Lights shone in the Lightener home and Bonbright approached the door. Mr. Lightener was in and would see him in the office. It was characteristic of Lightener that the room in the house which was peculiarly his own was called by him his office, not his den, not the library…. There were two interests in Lightener's life—his family and his business, and he stirred them together in a quaintly granite sort of way.
For the second time that evening Bonbright stood hesitating in a doorway.
"Well, young fellow?" said Lightener. Then seeing the boy's hesitation:
"Come in. Come in. What's happened NOW?"
"Mr. Lightener," said Bonbright, "I want a job. I've got to have a job."