His father was not satisfied with him, that he realized—and that he was under constant suspicion. He was unsatisfactory. His present mental form was not acceptable and must undergo painful processes of alteration. His parents would have taken him back, as a bad bargain, and exchanged him for something else if they could, but being unable, they must make him into something else.
Humiliation lay heavy on him. Every man in the employ of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, must realize the shamefulness of his position, that he was a fiction, a sham held up by his father's hands. Orders issued from his lips to unsmiling subordinates, who knew well they were not his orders, but words placed in his mouth to recite parrot-like. Letters went out under his signature, dictated by him—according to the dictation of his father. He was a rubber stamp, a mechanical means of communication…. He was not a man, an individual—he was a marionette dancing to ill-concealed strings.
The thing he realized with abhorrence was that when he was remade, when he became the thing the artisans worked upon him to create—when at last his father passed from view and he remained master of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, it would not be Bonbright Foote VII who was master. It would be an automaton, a continuation of other automatons…. It is said the Dalai Lama is perpetual, always the same, never changing from age to age. A fiction maintained by a mystic priesthood supplying themselves secretly with fresh Dalai Lama material as needful—with a symbol to hold in awe the ignorance of their religionists…. Bonbright saw that he was expected to be a symbol….
He approached his desk in the morning with loathing, and left it at night without relief. Hopelessness was upon him and he could not flee from it; it was inescapable.
True, he sought relief. Malcolm Lightener had become his fast friend—a sort of life preserver for his soul. In spite of his youth and Lightener's maturity there was real companionship between them…. Lightener knew what was going on, and in his granite way he tried to help the boy. Bonbright was not interested in his own business, so Lightener awakened in him an interest in Lightener's business. He discussed his affairs with the boy. He talked of systems, of efficiency, of business methods. He taught Bonbright as he would have taught his own son, half realizing the futility of his teaching. Nor had he question as to the righteousness of his proceeding. Because a boy's father follows an evil course the parenthood does not hallow that course…. So Bonbright learned, not knowing that he learned, and in his own office he made comparisons. The methods of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, he compared with the methods of Malcolm Lightener. He saw where modern business would make changes and improvements—but after the first few trampled-on suggestions he remained silent and grew indifferent.
Once he suggested the purchase of dictating machines.
"Fol-de-rol," said his father, brusquely—and the matter ended.
In Lightener's plant he saw lathes which roughed and finished in one process and one handling. In his own plant castings must pass from one machine to another, and through the hands of extra and unnecessary employees. It was economic waste. But he offered no suggestion. He saw time lost here, labor lavished there, but he was indifferent. He knew better. He knew how it should be done—but he did not care…. The methods of Bonbright Foote I not only suited his father, but were the laws of his father's life.
Not only had Bonbright established sympathetic relations with Malcolm Lightener, but with Lightener's family. In Mrs. Lightener he found a woman whose wealth had compelled the so-called social leaders of the city to accept her, but whose personality, once she was accepted, had won her a firm, enduring position. He found her a woman whose sudden, almost magical, change from obscurity and the lower fringe of salary-drawers to a wealth that made even America gasp, had not made her dizzy. Indeed, it seemed not to have affected her character at all. Her dominant note was motherliness. She was still the housewife. She continued to look after her husband and daughter just as she had looked after them in the days when she had lived in a tiny frame house and had cooked the meals and made the beds…. She represented womanhood of a sort Bonbright had never been on terms of intimate friendship with…. There was much about her which gave him food for reflection.
And Hilda…. Since their first meeting there had been no reference to the desire of their mothers for their marriage. For a while the knowledge of this had made it difficult for Bonbright to offer her his friendship and companionship. But when he saw, as the weeks went by, how she was willing to accept him unaffectedly as a friend, a comrade, a chum, how the maternal ambition to unite the families seemed to be wholly absent from her thoughts, they got on delightfully.