CHAPTER IXTHE VICTORY
The first term of Bunny’s school ended in February, and he passed his examinations with reasonable success; then there was a brief holiday, and Dad produced a wonderful scheme. He could not help feeling a little uncomfortable, with the Watkins family living right there on the tract, and he taking millions of dollars out of the ground for which he had paid them thirty-seven hundred. Dad had an impulse to do something, yet he was afraid to do too much, for fear he might “spoil” them, giving them the notion he owed them more. What he proposed was a family excursion; he would take Bunny and Ruth and Meelie and Sadie in the big limousine, and hire an extra car for old Mr. Watkins and his wife, and drive to the cantonment where Paul was working, and pay him a visit and see the new army in the making. They would stay a couple of days at some hotel nearby, and see all the sights, including the revival meetings which Eli was holding in a huge tent near the encampment.
The girls of course were wild with happiness. It was the first time they had ever had a long automobile trip in the whole of their unsophisticated lives. Bunny spoke to Ruth, who spoke to her mother, who in turn spoke to her husband, and obtained his promise that he would do his best to persuade the Holy Spirit not to send them any revelations or inspire any rolling or talking in tongues until they had got to the camp-meeting. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit had recently declared, through Eli as prophet of the Third Revelation, that these inspirational gymnastics had served their purpose and were to be dropped. No reason was vouchsafed, but there were rumors that the well-to-do people who were backing Eli in his evangelical campaigns were opposed to the rolling, and did not regard the speech of the archangels as having any meaning for mortal ears. One of these disciples was an eminent judge, and another was a proprietor of chain grocery-stores; their wives had taken Eli in hand and rubbed off the rough spots and improved his grammar, explaining that because one said heathen, one did not necessarily say healen; also they had taught him where to get his clothes and how to hold a knife and fork, so that Eli was becoming a social success.
It was almost like going to see the war: this tremendous city of canvas and corrugated iron and redwood siding which had arisen as if by Arabian Nights magic, swarming with eager young men in khaki, all of them as busy as ants—yet never too busy to take note of the presence of three good-looking girls in a row! You could go through this city at certain hours, if you got the proper permit, and see a bit of the drilling; at certain other hours Paul could get off, and while the old folks and the girls went to hear Eli, Dad and Bunny and Paul sat on the hotel veranda and talked about the state of the world.
The Russians had just concluded a peace with Germany, withdrawing entirely from the war, and giving up a lot of territory to the enemy. Dad discussed this event, and repeated his opinion of the treacherous “Bolshevikis.” Then Paul said how it seemed to him; Bunny saw that even here, with all the work he had to do, Paul had found time to read and to think his own thoughts. “Bunny,” he said, “do you remember our oil strike, and what we read about it in the papers? Suppose you had never been to Paradise, and didn’t know the strikers, but had got all your impressions from the Angel City newspapers! Well, that’s the way it seems to me about Russia; this is the biggest strike in history, and the strikers have won, and seized the oil wells. Some day maybe we’ll know what they’re doing, but it won’t be from newspaper stories made up by the allied diplomats and the exiled grand dukes.”
That made Dad rather warm, because he had been reading this news for three or four months, and believing every word of it. He wanted to know if Paul didn’t believe there had been any killing of the rich classes in Russia. Paul said he didn’t doubt there had been some, because he had read about the French revolution. What you had to remember was the way the Russian people had been treated by their ruling classes, and the kind of government they were used to; you had to judge their revolution by their standards and not by ours. Paul smiled and added that it was a mistake for an American employer who had tried to give his men a square deal, to identify himself with those masters in Russia who had beaten their men with knouts, and turned them over to the Cossacks if they attempted any protest.
That pacified Dad a little, but he said the way it seemed to him, these Bolshevikis were jist so many German agents. He told about the train that had carried Lenin—Dad called him Lee-nyne—through Germany. But Paul asked whether he had watched the news that had come from the peace negotiations; the Germans had apparently been as much afraid of the Russians as we were. These Bolsheviks were fighting the ruling classes of both sides, and the Germans might find the peace they had made more dangerous to them than the fighting; the revolutionary propaganda might spread in their armies, and even to the Western front.
There was no use expecting Dad to see anything so complicated as that. He declared that if the Russians had really wanted to help the cause of peace and justice, they should have stood by the allies until the Kaiser was put out of business. Then Paul asked whether Mr. Ross had read the secret treaties of the allies, and Dad was obliged to confess that he had never even heard of them. Paul explained how the Soviets, after demanding that the allies should make known their war aims, and having no attention paid to the request, had revealed to the world all the secret agreements which the allies had made with the Tsar, for dividing up the territories they meant to take from the Germans and Austrians and Turks. Paul declared that the text of these treaties, the most important news of the day, had been suppressed by the American newspapers. If we were going into this war blindfolded, to help Great Britain and France and Italy and Japan in their imperialist aims, then our people were being deceived, and some day they would have a bitter awakening.
Dad’s answer to that was simple: Paul might rest assured, those secret treaties would turn out to be Bolshevik forgeries. Had not our government already given out a lot of documents it had obtained in Russia, proving the Bolshevik leaders to be German agents? Those were the true documents, and Paul would find it out some day, and be ashamed of having doubted our allies. How could he suppose that President Wilson would let us be jockeyed?
Bunny sat, taking in every word of this discussion. It was puzzling, and hard to be sure about, but it seemed to him that Dad was right, what could a good American do, in war-time like this, but trust his government? Bunny was a little shocked to hear a man wearing the uniform of the army sit there and express doubts about his superiors, and he considered it his duty to get Paul off by himself, and tell him some of the things the four minute men had said in school, and try to inspire him with a more intense patriotism. But Paul only laughed, and patted Bunny on the back, saying that they got any quantity of propaganda here in the training-camp.
One evening they all went to hear Eli; in a great tent such as would hold a three ring circus, with thousands of cars parked in the fields about, and sawdust strewn in the aisles, and hundreds of wooden benches, crowded with soldier boys and ranchers and their wives and children. There was a platform with the evangelist, wearing a white robe with a golden star on his bosom, for all the world like some Persian magus; and there was a “silver band,” with trumpets and bass-tubas gleaming so that they put your eyes out. When those big blarers started a hymn of glory, and the audience started to rock and shout, “Praise the Lord!” the top of that tent would bulge up!
Eli preached against the Hun, telling how the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that the enemy was to be routed before the year was by, and promising eternal salvation to all who died in this cause of the Lord—provided, of course, that they had not rejected their chance to be saved by Eli. In the middle of the stage was a tank constructed, with steps descending into it, and the converts sitting in rows on the platform, garbed in white nighties; when that stage of the ceremonies arrived, Eli descended into the water himself, and grabbed his victims one by one by the backs of their necks, and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost he swung them forward, souse! into the water. Thereby their sins were washed from the very last hair of their bodies, and if from the holy water they contracted any of those diseases which are the penalty of sins, even among military crusaders—well, all they had to do was to come back again and have themselves “healen” by the prophet of the Third Revelation.
Next day the family drove home, and how much they had to gossip about on the way, and for weeks thereafter! Bunny was looking forward to living this camp-life the coming summer—except that, because of the preparation he was getting in school, and also because of Dad’s influence, he was to be in an officer’s training-camp. He was full of consecration, and working harder than ever at his duties.
Late in March began that long-dreaded onslaught on the Western front; one of those battles to which the world had grown accustomed, extending over a hundred miles of front, and lasting all day and all night for several weeks. Such a battle was not named from a town or a city, but from a province; this was the battle of Picardy. The German rush broke through the British line, and drove them back in rout for thirty or forty miles, and captured a hundred thousand men, and it seemed that Dad’s worst forebodings were to be realized.
But neither the Germans nor the allies knew that in an obscure village amid the fruit orchards of California a mighty prophet was exercising his magic on their behalf. It chanced that Eli Watkins read a news item from the front, declaring that the only thing which could save the British armies was rain; and forthwith he assembled his hosts of prayer, and all night long they rocked upon their knees and wrung their hands unto the Lord, invoking storms in Picardy; and the Lord heard them, and the floodgates of heaven were opened, and the rain descended, and the feet of the Huns were stuck fast, yea, and their chariot wheels also, and their mighty men at arms were drowned in mud; but on the side where the hosts of the Lord were battling there fell no rain, but the ground was clean, and reinforcements came up, and the British line was saved, and back amid the California orchards the hosannas of the faithful shook the blossoms off the prune-trees.
Even amid such agonies and thrills, Bunny, being young, had his personal life. On his way home after drill he ran into Nina Goodrich, one of his class-mates, turning a corner in her car, clad in a bathing suit with a cape over it. Upon such little things do one’s life-destinies depend! She slowed up and called, “Come have a swim with me!” He hopped in, and she whisked him down to the beach in two minutes, and in five more he had hired a bathing suit and got into it, and the two of them were running a race along the sand.
Nina Goodrich was one of those lavish Junos, of whom California brings to ripeness many thousands every year. Her limbs were strong trunks, and her hips were built for carrying a dozen babies, and her bosom for the nourishing of them. She had fair hair and a complexion that had not come out of a bottle, and her skin was bronzed by hours in the surf, in those fragile one-piece bathing suits the girls were wearing, which revealed considerably more than fifty percent of their natural charms. Never could a man who took himself a wife in Southern California complain that he did not know what he was getting!
The two swam down the shore, a long way, not troubled by the chill of the water; they ran hand in hand on the beach, and as they went back to the bath-house, Nina said, “Come have supper with me, Bunny; I’m tired of home,” So Bunny slipped into his clothes, and she drove him back to her home, and while she changed he sat in the car and got up his next lesson in nineteenth century English poetry. The poet called attention to a chain of natural phenomena:
The sunlight clasps the earthAnd the moonbeams kiss the sea!What are all these kissings worth,If thou kiss not me?
The sunlight clasps the earthAnd the moonbeams kiss the sea!What are all these kissings worth,If thou kiss not me?
The sunlight clasps the earthAnd the moonbeams kiss the sea!What are all these kissings worth,If thou kiss not me?
The sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea!
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
They drove to a cafeteria, an invention where California fish and California fruits and California salads are spread out before the eyes in such profusion as to trouble a nineteen year old Juno already struggling to “reduce.” There was nothing so safe as celery, said Nina, it took both space and time; while she munched, they sat by the window, and watched the sun set over the purple ocean, and the slow fog steal in from the sea. Then they got into the car, and without saying a word she drove out of town and down the coast highway; one of her hands was in Bunny’s, and he, searching the caverns of his memory, remembered having heard Eunice mention that Nina had had a desperate affair with Barney Lee, who had enlisted a year ago, and was now in France.
They stopped at a lonely place, and there was a rug in the car, and pretty soon they were sitting by the noisy surf, and Nina was snuggled close to Bunny and whispering, “Do you care for me the least little bit?” And when he answered that he did, she said, “Then why don’t you pet me?” And when he began to oblige her, he found his lips held in one of those long slow kisses which are sure-fire hits on the silver screen, but which the censors cut to a footage varying according to geography—00 in Japan up to 8,000 in Algeria and the Argentine.
It was evident that this nineteen year old Juno was his to do what he pleased with, there and then; and Bunny’s head had begun to swim in the familiar alarming way. He had never got the ache of Eunice out of his soul, and here at last was deliverance! But he hesitated, because he had sworn to himself that he would not get in for this again. Also from some of the English poets he had begun to hear about a different kind of love. He knew that he didn’t really love Nina Goodrich, she was all but a stranger to him; so he hesitated, and his kisses diminished in ardor, until she whispered, “What’s the matter, Bunny?”
He was rattled, but a sudden inspiration came to him. “Nina,” he said, “it doesn’t seem quite fair.”
“Why not?”
“To Barney.”
He felt her wince as she lay in his arms. “But Barney is gone, dear.”
“I know; but he’ll come back.”
“Yes, but that’s so far off; and I guess he’s got a girl in France by now.”
“Maybe so, but you can’t be sure; and it don’t seem quite right that a fellow should go risk his life for his country, and somebody else steal his girl away while he’s gone.”
So Bunny began to talk about the front, and what was happening there, and how soon the Americans would get in, and how he expected to go right after graduation, and about Paul and what he thought about Russia, and what Dad thought about Paul; and the young Juno continued to be in his arms, but with a more and more sisterly affection, until at last the fog began to chill even their young blood, and they got up to go, and the nineteen year old Juno put her arms about her escort and gave him an especially violent kiss, declaring, “Bunny, you’re a queer fellow, but I like you an awful lot!”
The Germans made another gigantic thrust at the British, and this time it was the Battle of Flanders. They captured a great stretch of the British lines, and if it had not been for a six day stand of laborers and chauffeurs and what not behind the lines, every man hiding in a hole and fighting for himself with any weapon he could pick up, the Germans would have taken the whole railway system in Flanders. A month or so later came another offensive, this time to the South, against the French, the battle of the Aisne and the Oise; it looked as if Paris was doomed, and people in America held their breath while they read the bulletins in the newspapers.
In the midst of that battle, covering nearly two hundred miles of front, an epoch-making thing happened; the hard-pressed French commander put in the first of the newly-arrived American troops. These boys had had only a few months training, and the French didn’t think they would hold; but instead of giving way like the rest of the armies, they hit the German line and went forward a couple of miles over a three mile front. So more of them were rushed in, and a few days later came the battle of Belleau Wood, and all over America went a thrill of exultation. It was not national pride, but more than that, men felt—it was a victory of free institutions. When you ran over the lists of dead and wounded in these battles you found Horowitz and Schnierow and Samerjian and Samaniego, Constantinopulos and Toplitsky and Quong Ling; but they all fought alike, and it was a victory for that golden flood of eloquence that was being poured out from the White House.
In the midst of these excitements came Bunny’s commencement time, and he had to make the great decision. He and his father had the most serious talk of their lives; Bunny had never seen the old man so deeply moved. What he said was, “Son, can’t you possibly see your way to stay and help me with this job?” What Bunny answered was, “Dad, if I didn’t get into the army, I’d never feel right the rest of my life.”
Dad pointed out what it was going to mean to him personally. He was no longer able to carry this load alone. There had to be more and more wells, and every one was an added care. They simply had to have a big refinery, and that meant also, a chain of service stations, you could not count on government contracts forever. This Paradise tract was Bunny’s, but if he wanted to give it up, why then Dad would have to negotiate with some of the big people who had been sounding him out on the question of mergers. If Bunny went into the army there would be no use counting on him, because Dad was sure this war wasn’t half over. “Those that go now aren’t many of them coming back,” was the way he put it; there was a catch in his voice, and with a little bit more they would have had to pull out their pocket-handkerchiefs, which would have been equally embarrassing to both. All that Bunny could do was to repeat, “I’ve just got to go, Dad; I’ve just got to go.”
So Dad gave up, and a couple of weeks later Bunny got his notice to report to his training-camp. Aunt Emma spilled tears over him, while Grandma drew her withered old lips tight over her badly-fitting false teeth, and said it was a crime, and it ended her interest in life. Bertie made arrangements for a farewell party, and Dad reported that he had opened negotiations with Vernon Roscoe, the biggest independent oil operator on the coast, president of Flora-Mex and Mid-Central Pete, who had several times broached the project of a vast enterprise to be known as “Ross Consolidated.”
They drove up to Paradise, to give Bunny a farewell look at things, and there they found that Paul was expected home for a furlough, preliminary to a journey across the Pacific Ocean. This war, Dad said, was like a fire in a “tank-farm,” you could never tell which way things would explode, or what would go next. Here was Paul, with the bunch of carpenters he directed, ordered onto a transport to be shipped—of all places in the world—to Vladivostok in Siberia!
It appeared that when the Bolsheviks took charge of Russia they found themselves with a great army of war prisoners, among them a hundred thousand Czecho-Slovaks. This was a new name—you looked it up in the encyclopedias and couldn’t find it, and had to have it explained to you that they were Bohemians, but this was a German word, and just as we had changed hamburger into liberty steak and sauerkraut into liberty cabbage, so the Bohemians became Czecho-Slovaks, which nobody knew how to spell when they heard it, or to pronounce when they saw it. The people of this race were revolting against Germany, and the Bolsheviks had agreed that their Czecho-Slovak prisoners would be shipped to Vladivostok, where the allies might take charge of them, and bring them to the fighting front if they saw fit. But on the way across Siberia the Czecho-Slovaks got to fighting with the Bolsheviks and the released German war prisoners, and had seized a great section of the railroad.
So now into this weird mix-up the allies were intervening. The newspapers explained the matter: the Bolshevik movement was an uprising of fanatics, imposed upon the Russian people by the guns of hired mercenaries, Chinese and Mongolians and Cossacks and escaped criminals and general riff-raff; it couldn’t last very long, a few weeks or months at the most, and what was needed was to supply a nucleus about which the decent Russians might rally. The allies were now undertaking to do that; American and Japanese troops were to help the Czecho-Slovaks in Siberia, and American and British troops were to organize the Russian refugees at Archangel in the far north. So here was Paul, going to build barracks and Y. M. C. A. huts along the famous Trans-Siberian railway, and see for himself those exciting events about which he had been debating with Dad. Bunny was going to a training-camp, and maybe when he got through they would send him to the same front—that was a case where he would let Dad use his influence! Bunny meant to work hard and rise in the service, and maybe he would have Paul and his carpenters under his command!
They had a hard time keeping their spirits up, because of Ruth, who was utterly inconsolable. She would go about the place with tears running down her cheeks, and now and then would have to jump up and rush from the room. When the time came for Paul to say his last farewell, Ruth almost went out of her mind; she locked her arms about his neck, and he had to pull her fingers away. It was sad for a fellow, to be driven away with his sister lying in a faint in a chair. Old Mr. Watkins had to come up and take her home, and send up Sadie to do the housework for Dad. By golly, it made you realize about war!
Bunny went back to Beach City, to face a trial of the same sort. Grandma did not cry out or faint, she just went up to her studio-room and locked the door and did not appear, even for meals. When Bunny was ready to go, he went and knocked on the door, and Grandma let him into her laboratory of paints and oils and high art. Her face was drawn but grim, and only her withered red eyelids gave her away. “Little boy,” she said—he was still that to her, he would never grow up—“little boy, you are a victim of the old men’s crimes. That means nothing to you now, but remember it, and some day, long after I’m gone, you’ll understand.”
She kissed him without a sound, and he stole out, with tears running down his cheeks, and feeling somehow as if he himself were committing a crime. He felt still more that way when, a week later, he received a telegram saying that Grandmother Ross had been found dead in bed. He got a three day leave to come home and attend the funeral, and had to say his good-byes to the rest of the family all over again.
The training-camp was located in the South, a place of blazing sunshine and vigorous perspiration. It was crowded with boys from every part of the state, mostly high school and college fellows, with a sprinkling of others who had got into the officer class by having military experience. The sons of grape-growers and orange and walnut and peach and prune growers, of cowmen and lumbermen, and business and professional men in the cities—Bunny wanted to know what they were like, and what they thought about life and love and the war. He drilled until his back ached, and he studied, much the same as at school; but he lived in a tent, and ate ravenously, and grew in all directions.
Now and then he would explore the country with a companion, but keeping himself out of the sex adventures that occupied most of the army’s free time. Here was a place where no bones were made about plain talk; your superiors took it for granted that when you went out of the camp you went to look for a woman, and they told you what to do when you came back, and had a treatment-station where you lined up with the other fellows and made jokes about where you had been and what it had cost you. Bunny knew enough to realize that the women in the neighborhood of this camp who were open to adventures must be pretty well debauched after a year, so he had little interest in their glances or the trim silk-stockinged ankles they displayed.
He had made application for the artillery, but they assigned him to study “military transportation,” because of his knowledge of oil. He took this quite innocently, never realizing that Dad with his wide-spreading influence might have put in a word. Dad was quietly determined that Bunny was not going across the sea, no, not if this man’s war lasted another ten years. Bunny was going to be among those who had charge of the army’s supplies of gasoline and oil, seeing that the various products were up to standard and were efficiently and promptly shipped. Who could say—perhaps he might be among those who would have the job of working out contracts, and might be able now and then to put in a good word for Ross Consolidated!
The new deal was going through, and Dad wrote long letters telling of the progress—letters which Bunny was to return when he had studied them, and not leave lying about in a tent. Also there were rumors in the papers, and then more detailed accounts, designed to prepare the public for the launching of a huge enterprise. Late in the summer Bunny got a furlough, and came home to get the latest news.
“Home” no longer meant Beach City; for Dad had only been waiting till Bunny had got through with school, and now he had moved to another house. It was a palace in the fashionable part of Angel City, which he had leased through a real estate agent for fifteen thousand a year. It was all pink stucco outside, with hedge plants trimmed to the shape of bells and balls like pawn-broker’s signs. It had a wide veranda with swings hanging by brass chains, and ferns planted in a row of huge sea shells, and big plate glass windows that did not come open. Inside was furniture of a style called “mission oak,” so heavy that you could hardly move it, but that was all right, because Dad didn’t want to move it, he would sit in any chair, wherever it happened to be, and the only place he expected comfort was in his den, where he had a huge old leather chair of his own, and a store of cigars and a map of the Paradise tract covering one whole wall. One thing more Dad had seen to, that Grandma’s biggest paintings were hung in the dining-room, including the scandalous one of the Germans with their steins! The rest of the old lady’s stuff, her easel and paints and a great stack of her lesser works, were boxed and stowed in the basement. Aunt Emma was now the mistress of the household, with Bertie as head critic when she was home.
On the desk in Dad’s den was piled a stack of papers a foot high, relating to the new enterprise. He went over them one by one and explained the details. Ross Consolidated was going to be a seventy million dollar corporation, and Dad was to have ten millions in bonds and preferred stock, and another ten millions of common stock. Mr. Roscoe was to get the same for his Prospect Hill properties and those at Lobos River, and the various bankers were to get five millions for their financing of the project. The balance was to be a special class stock, twenty-five millions to be offered to the public, to finance the new development—one of the biggest refineries in the state, and storage tanks, and new pipe-lines, and a whole chain of service stations throughout Southern California. This stock was to be “non-voting,” a wonderful new scheme which Dad explained to Bunny; the public was to put up its money and get a share of the profits, but have nothing to say as to how the company was run. “We’ll have no bunch of boobs butting in on our affairs,” said Dad; “and nobody can raid us on the market and take away control.”
A little farther on in the explanations, Bunny began to see the meaning of that perpetual and unbreakable hold which Dad and Mr. Roscoe were giving to themselves. In the prospectuses and advertisements of Ross Consolidated, the public would be told all about the vast oil resources in the Ross Junior tract at Paradise; but here it was being fixed up that Ross Consolidated was not to operate this tract, but to lease it to a special concern, the Ross Junior Operating Company, and nobody but Dad and Mr. Roscoe and the bankers were to have any stock in that! There was a whole series of such intricate devices, holding companies and leasing companies and separate issues of stock, and some of these things were to go into effect at once, and some later on, after the public had put up its money!
When Bunny, the “little idealist,” began to make objections to this, he saw that he was hurting his father’s feelings. Dad said that was the regular way of big money deals, and my God, were they running a soup-kitchen? The public would get its share and more—that stock would go to two hundred in the first year, jist you watch and see! But it was Dad and his son who had done the hard work on the Paradise tract, and at Prospect Hill and Lobos River too; and the government wanted them to go on and do more such work, to drill a hundred new wells and help win the war, and how could they do it if they distributed the money around for people to throw away on jazz-parties? Jist look at those “war-babies,” and all the mad spending in New York! Dad was taking care of his money and using it wisely, in industry, where it belonged; he was perfectly sincere, and hard set as concrete, in his conviction that he was the one to whom the profits should come. He and Mr. Roscoe were two individuals who had fought the big companies and kept themselves afloat through all the storms; they were making an unbreakable combination this time, and they were going to get the jack out of it, just you bet!
Meantime, the Germans had begun another offensive against the French, the most colossal yet; it was the second Battle of the Marne, and they called it their “Friedensturm,” because they meant to capture Paris and win their peace. But now there were large sectors held by the American troops, of whom there were a million in France, and three hundred thousand coming every month, with all their supplies, in spite of the submarines. These troops were fresh, while all the others were exhausted; and so where they stood, the line did not give way, and the great German offensive was blocked and brought to a standstill.
Then, a week or two later, began an event that electrified the whole world; the allies began to advance! Attacking now here, now there, they gained ground, they routed the enemy out of intrenchments which had been years in building, and were counted impregnable. All that mighty Hindenburg line began to crumble; and behind it, the Siegfried line, and the Hunding line, and all the other mythological constructions. To people in America it was the breaking of the first sunrays through black storm clouds. The “Yanks” were wiping out the famous St. Mihiel salient, they were capturing the enemy by tens of thousands, and even more important, the machine guns and artillery which the Germans could not replace. All through the early fall this went on; until the young officers-to-be in Bunny’s training-camp began to fret because this man’s war was going to be over before they got to the scene.
But all this time, not one word from Paul! Bunny received agonized letters from Ruth, “Oh, what do you think can have happened to him? I write him every week to the address he gave, and Iknowhe would answer if he was alive.” Bunny explained that it took six weeks for mail to go to Vladivostok and return; how much longer it took on the railroad no one could guess; and besides, there was a censorship, and many things might happen to letters in war-time. If Paul had been killed or wounded, the army would surely notify his parents; so no news was good news. There had been practically no fighting, as Ruth could see from the newspaper clippings which Bunny faithfully sent to her. The reports were scanty, but that was just because nothing much had happened; if there were any real fighting, or losses to the troops, the papers would get it, you might be sure.
In the month of July of this year of 1918, the American and Japanese troops had made a landing in Vladivostok, practically unopposed; they had spread along the Trans-Siberian railway, and were policing it, and in fact running it, all the way to Lake Baikal where they had met the Czecho-Slovaks. With the help of these intelligent men, the allies now controlled the country clean across to the Volga; the Bolsheviks had to keep back in the interior. Now and then the newspapers would report that admiral this or general that was setting up a stable Russian government, of course with the help of allied money and supplies. At the west end of the line it would be a Cossack ataman and at the east end a Chinese mandarin or Mongolian tuchun or other strange beast; thus new stretches of the earth’s surface were being delivered from the wickedness of Bolshevism. Somewhere amid these picturesque and exciting events Paul Watkins of Paradise, California, was building army barracks and “Y” huts; and some day he would come back with a wonderful story to tell! So Bunny wrote, bidding Ruth keep cheerful, and have faith in the benevolence of her old Uncle Sam.
The nights were growing cold in Bunny’s cantonment, and from Europe the thrilling news continued to pour in, and spread across the front pages of the newspapers, six or eight editions every day. The allied advance was turning into a march, that long talked of march to Berlin! A march also to Vienna and to Sofia and to Constantinople—for everywhere the central powers were weakening, collapsing, surrendering. President Wilson issued his “fourteen points,” on the basis of which the Germans were invited to quit. There were rumors of negotiations—the German leaders were suggesting a truce! There were two or three days of suspense, and then the answer, there would be no truce, only a surrender; the march to Berlin was on!
And then one day an amazing report; the enemy had capitulated, the surrender had been signed! As a matter of fact, it was a false alarm, due to the American custom of keeping one jump ahead of events. Each paper wants to beat the others, so they get everything ready in advance—speeches that have not yet been delivered, ceremonies that have not yet taken place. Some nervous reporter let his finger slip on the trigger, and the message came that set all America wild. Such a spectacle had never been witnessed since the world began; every noisemaking instrument conceivable was turned loose, and men, women and children turned out on the streets, and danced and sang and yelled until they were exhausted; pistols were shot off, and autos went flying by with tin-cans bouncing behind; newsboys and stock-brokers wept on one another’s shoulders, and elderly unapproachable bank-presidents danced the can-can with typists and telephone girls. A day or two later, when the real news came, they turned out to do it all over again, but never could recapture their first fine careless rapture.
After that, of course, the fun had gone out of military training; all the young officers-to-be wanted to get back home, to go to college or to take up their jobs, and all who had any influence quickly got furloughs that were understood to be elastic. Such a favor came to Bunny, out of the blue void where Dad wielded his mysterious power, and he went home to watch the movements of “Ross Consolidated,” which had been launched at an opening price of $108 per share for the “class B stock,” and completely sold out in two days, and was now quoted in the market at 147¾. They had made the stock of “no par value”—another new device which Vernon Roscoe’s fancy lawyers had recommended; there were certain taxes both state and federal which could be dodged by this method, and moreover there would never be need to issue “stock dividends” to conceal the amount of the profit. Mr. Roscoe was certainly a wizard when it came to finance, jist about the smartest feller Dad had met in the oil-game.
It was a tremendous load taken off Dad’s shoulders, for now the enormous Roscoe machine would market the oil and collect the money. Dad’s job was new developments—the part of the game he really liked. He was a member of the board of directors of the new concern, and also a vice-president, at a salary of a hundred thousand a year, with charge of exploring and drilling; he would travel here and there and lay out the tracts and select the drilling sites, and see that every well was brought in properly, before turning it over to another executive, the superintendent of operation. It was Dad’s idea that Bunny should take a position under his father, to start with say six thousand a year, until everybody was satisfied that he knew the business; the two of them would have the time of their lives, driving all over Southern California and smelling out oil, jist like at Paradise! Bunny said that sounded good, but he’d want a little time to think it over and get used to the idea that he wasn’t going to Siberia or to France. Dad said all right, of course, he mustn’t jump into things in a hurry; but Bunny could see that he was a little pained because his son and namesake did not do that very thing!
They went up to Paradise to see the developments; and one of the first developments they saw was Ruth, who had their lunch ready in the Rascum cabin. Bunny was shocked by her appearance; she looked ten years older than when he had seen her last, her face was pale, and her smile was forced. She had given up all pretense of feminine charm, her hair was drawn back tight and tied in a knot on top of her head, and her skirts came to her ankles, which was half a leg longer than the fashion. Ruth was just setting out to be an old maid, said Meelie, and all on account of grieving her heart out about Paul.
“Oh, I know he’s dead!” Ruth declared. “Just think, it’s been five months since he went away, and don’t you know Paul would have written me a lot of letters in that time?”
It did seem strange; and Dad thought a bit and said, “Yes, we’ve waited long enough, and now we’ll jist find out.”
“Oh, Mr. Ross, how do you mean?” cried Ruth, clasping her hands together.
“Well, we ain’t lost that army altogether in Siberia, and I guess there is some way to connect up with it.”
Ruth had gone paler than ever. “Oh, I don’t know as I’d dare find out! If I should hear he was dead—if I was really to know it—”
“Look here, child,” said Dad, “the troubles you imagine is always a lot worse than the real ones. I want to know about my boss-carpenter, and I’m jist a-goin’ to!”
So Dad went to the telephone, and called the hay and feed-store of Mr. Jake Coffey in San Elido. “Hello, Jake. Yes, we’re all fine here, how’s your old man? Say, I understand you had the nominating—I fergit the feller’s name, but the congressman from this district. Well, I never asked him a favor, but I guess I got a right to one, seeing all I put up to elect him. Well, now, you send him a telegram and tell him to toddle over to the War Department and put in an inquiry about the whereabouts and health of Paul Watkins. You got a pencil there?”
Dad turned to Ruth, “What is it now? Company B, Forty-seventh California Regiment, American Expeditionary Forces to Russia. I want the War Department to cable an inquiry and have the reply cabled; you wire the congressman twenty-five dollars to cover the cost, and if there’s anything left over he can keep the change. I’ll mail you my check today. You might explain, if you want to, a member of the family is ill, and it’s a matter of life and death to get some word at once. And I’ll be obliged, Jake, and if you need any gasoline for your car, jist drop round after we git this new refinery a-goin’. How’d you like that last dividend check from the company? Ha, ha, ha! Well, so long.”
For two days Ruth waited on tenter-hooks, holding her breath every time the phone rang; and at last there was the voice of Jake Coffey—Bunny answered, and he turned from the receiver right quick, saying, “Telegram from Congressman Leathers, the War Department reports that Paul is at Irkutsk and well.” Ruth gave a cry—she was standing by the dining table, and she grabbed at it and missed, and went swaying, and Bunny had to drop the receiver and catch her. And there she was, by golly, white and cold and senseless, they had to lay her out on the floor and sprinkle water on her face. And when she came to, all she could do was to cry and cry like a baby. Presently Bunny remembered the telephone receiver hanging, and went and apologized to Mr. Coffey and thanked him, and it was all Bunny could do to keep his own voice straight; the truth was, he and Dad had been more worried about Paul than they were willing to admit.
After Ruth was able to sit up and smile, Dad said, “Irkutsk, where is that?” And the girl said at once, “It’s on Lake Baikal, in the middle of Siberia.” Said Dad, “Hello, where did you git your geography?” It turned out there was an old atlas among Paul’s books, and Ruth had the Siberia part clean by heart—the names of every station on the Trans-Siberian Railway—Omsk, Tomsk, Tobolsk—Dad thought it was funny, and made her say them off—by golly, if there had been a timetable attached, she’d have known when the night-freight was due at Vladivostok! She knew the physical geography of the country, the races which inhabited it, the flora and fauna and principal commercial interests, furs, lumber, wheat, dairy products.
The only trouble was, her information was twenty years out of date! So now, what was she going to do but take the stage to Roseville that afternoon, and in the library she would find a big new atlas, and maybe some books on the subject. Bunny said he’d drive her; so he did, and they found an atlas with a picture of Irkutsk, a public square with some buildings, churches or mosques or whatever they were called, with round domes going up to a point on top; there was snow on the ground, and sledges with big high harness up over the horses’ necks. It was dreadful cold there, Ruth said, Paul wasn’t used to such weather; but Bunny laughed and told her not to worry about that, Paul would have plenty to wear, this was the best taken care of army in history, and so long as they had the railroad open, nobody would suffer.
But that was not enough for Ruth, what she wanted was for Paul to come home. Surely, now that the war was over, he ought to be on the way! But Bunny said she’d have to make up her mind to wait, because an armistice wasn’t the same as a peace, there was a lot of negotiating to be done, and the army would sit tight meantime. But when peace was declared, then surely Paul would come back, because we certainly weren’t going on running the Trans-Siberian Railway after the war was over. Bunny said that with a laugh, meaning it to be funny, and Ruth smiled, because it sounded funny to her; so innocent they were of the intricacies of world diplomacy, these two babes in the California woods!
Bunny spent a week hunting quail with Dad, or wandering over the hills by himself, thinking things over. At last he sat down to have it out. “Dad, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in me, but this is the truth—I want to go to college.”
“College! Gosh, son, what’s that for?” There was a look of amazement on Dad’s face; but he was an old hypocrite, he had known perfectly well that Bunny was thinking about college, and he had thought about it a lot himself.
“I just don’t feel I’ve got enough education, Dad.”
“What is it you want to know?”
“Well, that’s something you can’t say; you don’t know just what you’ll get till you’ve got it. But I have a feeling, I want to know more about things.”
Dad looked forlorn—pitifully, but quite innocently and unintentionally. “It means you jist ain’t interested in oil.”
“Well, no, Dad, that’s not quite fair. I can study for a while and then come back to the business.”
But Dad knew better than that. “No, son, if you go to college, you’ll get so high up above us oil fellers, you won’t know we’re here. If you mean to be an oil man, the thing to study is oil.”
“Well, Dad, the truth is, I’m really too young to know what I want to be. If I wanted to do something else, surely we’ve got money enough—”
“It’s not the money, son, it’s the job. You know how I feel—I like to have you with me—”
“I don’t mean to go away,” Bunny hastened to put in. “There’s plenty of colleges around here, and I can live at home. And we can come up for week-ends and holidays, the same as always. I’m not going to lose my interest in Paradise, Dad, but I really won’t be happy to buckle down to business until I’ve had a chance to learn more.”
Dad had to give way to that. There was that curious war in his own mind, a mingling of respect for knowledge, of awe in the presence of cultured people, along with fear of “notions” that Bunny might get, strange flights of “idealism” that would make him unfit to be the heir and custodian of twenty million dollars worth of Ross Consolidated!