CHAPTER XXTHE DEDICATION
Bunny was alone in the roaring city of New York—six or seven millions of people, and not many known to him. There were reporters, of course—it made a “human interest” story, fate snatching one of the oil magnates away from the Senate inquisitors. The country was near the end of a bitter presidential campaign, and the smallest item about the oil scandal was of importance. Also Bunny had cablegrams and telegrams of sympathy—from Verne and Annabelle, from Paul and Ruth, from Rachel and her father and brothers; yes, and one from the Princess Marescu, signing herself, with old-time nearness, “Vee-Vee.”
He purchased his ticket home, by way of Washington, and on the train he read the back newspapers, with the day by day account of what happened to his boyhood dream of a great oil field: enormous oceans of flame rolling over the earth, turning night into day with the glare, turning day into night with thunder clouds of smoke; rivers of blazing oil rushing down the valleys, and a gale of wind sweeping the fire from one hill to the next. A dozen great storage tanks had gone, and the whole refinery, with all its tanks, and some three hundred derricks, licked up and devoured in that roaring furnace. It was the worst oil fire in California history, eight or ten million dollars loss.
In Washington was someone for Bunny to tell his troubles to—Dan Irving! They took a long walk, and the older man put his arm about Bunny and told him that he had done everything possible in a difficult situation. Dan could assure him that he didn’t have to think of his father as a bad man; Dan had made it his business to know, and could confirm Bunny’s judgment, American big business men all purchased government, they all justified the purchase of government. It was something that had shocked Dan in the beginning, but he had come to realize now that it was a system; without the purchase of government, American big business could not exist. You saw it written plain in the instinctive reaction of the whole business world to the oil scandals, the determinaton to damp them down, to make nothing of them, to indict and prosecute, not the criminals, but the exposers of the crime.
So they got to talking politics, which was the best thing for Bunny, to divert his mind and get him back to his job. Dan had been doing what he could in this presidential campaign, but he was sick with the sense of impotence. The whole capitalist publicity machine had been set to work on a new job, to glorify “Cautious Cal” to the American people—this pitiful little man, a fifth-rate country politician, a would-be store-keeper, he was the great strong silent statesman and the plain people’s hero! One thing, and one only, the business men expected of him, to cut down their income taxes; in everything else he would be a cipher. The newspaper men were disgusted by their job, but all were helpless, their papers at home would take only one kind of news. And here was poor Dan with his labor press service, a score or two of obscure papers, perhaps a hundred thousand circulation in all, and most of the time not enough money for the office rent.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” said Bunny. “Before I left France, Dad gave me a million dollars in Ross Consolidated stock. I don’t know what it’ll be worth since the fire, but Verne says there’s full insurance. I’m not going to touch the principal till I have time to think things over, but I’ll put a thousand dollars a month of the income into your work, if that will help.”
“Help? My God, Bunny, that’s more money than we’ve ever thought of! I’ve been trying to raise an extra hundred a month, so as to mail free copies where they would count.”
Said Bunny, “I’ll turn the money over to you with only one provision—that you’re to have two hundred a month salary. There’s no reason why you should run yourself into debt financing the radical movement.”
Dan laughed. “No reason, except that there wouldn’t be any radical movement if some didn’t do that. You’re the first really fat angel that has appeared in my sky.”
“Well, wait,” said Bunny, “till I find out just how fat I’m going to be. I’ve an idea my friend Vernon Roscoe will do what he can to keep me lean. He knows that whatever I get will go to making trouble for him.”
“My gosh!” said Dan. “Have you seen the things we’ve been sending out about Roscoe’s foreign concessions, and what the state department is doing to make him rich? That story would beat the Sunnyside lease, if we could get the Senate to investigate it!”
Chicago, and more messages for Bunny. He had cabled Dad’s secretary to ascertain if there was any will among Dad’s papers. The secretary replied that nothing had been found, and neither the widow nor the daughter knew of such document. They were proceeding to Paris after the funeral, and the secretary would cable if anything was found there.
So then to Angel City, and more cablegrams; the secretary advised that no will was among Mr. Ross’s papers in Paris, and Bertie cabled, “I believe that infamous woman has destroyed will. Have you anything in Dad’s writing or hers.” From which Bunny made note that death-bed repentances do not last very long—at least not when it’s another person’s death-bed! Bunny had nothing from Dad, except the order for the Ross stock, and that wouldn’t bring much satisfaction to Bertie. He cabled to Alyse, at her Paris hotel, reminding her that his father had stated the terms of their marriage to be that she was to receive one million dollars from the estate, and no more, and asking her to confirm that agreement. The reply which he received was from a firm of American lawyers in Paris, advising him on behalf of their client, Mrs. Alyse Huntington Forsythe Olivier Ross, that she knew of no such agreement as he had mentioned in his cablegram, and that she would claim her full rights in the estate. Bunny smiled grimly as he read. A clash between Spiritualism and Socialism!
Also a clash between Capitalism and Socialism! Bunny went to call on his father’s partner, at the office, where both could speak frankly; and they did. Verne’s first statement was a knockout—Bunny’s father had been mistaken in thinking that he had any Ross Consolidated Class B stock, and therefore his order upon Verne was worthless. All those street certificates had been sold some time ago at Dad’s order; Dad’s memory had evidently been failing since his illness—or perhaps he had not been watching his affairs since taking up with Spiritualism. His business was in a bad way. In the first place, the Ross Consolidated Operating Company, which had been Dad’s choicest holding, was practically bankrupt. Verne had that day been notified by the fire insurance companies involved that they would not pay the claims, because they had evidence that the fires had been of incendiary origin; they didn’t quite say it in plain English, but they implied that Verne or his agents had started the fires, because the company had an oversupply of oil and was caught with a failing market.
“Good God!” said Bunny. “What’s that, a bluff?”
“No,” said Verne, “that’s a scheme of Mark Eisenberg, who runs the banking business in this city for the Big Five, to knock one of the independents out. They’ll tie us up in the courts for Christ knows how many years. Ross Operating won’t have the cash to develop that burned over field, and if it has to assess its stockholders for the money, your father’s estate won’t be able to finance its share without help. The Lobos River wells are played out, and the Prospect Hill field is filling with water. Of course your father’s got shares in my foreign undertakings, but none of them will realize anything for a long time; so it looks as if you’ll have to sell them out.”
“Who is to handle all this?”
“Here’s a copy of Jim’s will—you can take it home and study it at your leisure. The executors are you and me and Fred Orpan, and you and Bertie are to divide the estate. Of course that’s been knocked out by his marriage; unless he’s made another will, the widow gets one-half, and you and Bertie a quarter. I promised your father I’d do the executor’s work, so I suppose it’s up to me. Let me say this right away—that Paradise field bears your name, and if you want to take it over and run it, I won’t stand in your way. You can sell some of your other holdings and buy me out at the market price and run the business for yourself. Do you want to be an oil man?”
“No,” said Bunny, promptly. “I do not.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to buy out your father’s stock; because the company is bankrupt, and I won’t carry it unless I have control. You and me couldn’t work together, Jim Junior—your ideals are too high.” Verne laughed—but without his usual jollity. “If I hadn’t promised your old man to do this job, I’d like to dump Ross Operating onto you and let it go bankrupt on your hands, and see what you’d do. You didn’t agree with your father about business men controlling the courts. Well, by Jees, you just be an upright public-spirited young citizen, and let the courts appoint a receiver for Ross Operating, without any bribery or undue influence of any sort—not pulling any political wires or making any threats or improper promises—and see how much you’d have left of the eight or ten millions, or whatever will be collected from the insurance companies a few years from now!”
From these ugly problems Bunny had a refuge—his little paper. He had arrived on a Sunday, and Rachel had met him at the train, with a dozen of the Ypsels, their faces shining. There was a cheer at sight of him—just as if he had been a moving picture star! There were handshakes all round—he and Rachel had several extra shakes, they were so glad to be together. The young people knew that Bunny would be sad over his father’s death, and possibly also the burning of his oil field; so they crowded round, and told him all the news at once, and Rachel produced the proofs of a new issue of “The Young Student,” also last week’s issue, and several others that he might not have received.
The little office was home—the only home Bunny had, because the mansion his father had rented had been subleased, and their personal belongings put in storage before Aunt Emma came to Europe. The office was only one room, but quite impressive with files and records accumulating; they had a subscription list of over six thousand now, and were printing eight thousand this week. But Rachel still had only one assistant—the Ypsels did the wrapping and addressing, evenings and Saturdays and Sundays. They hadn’t got mobbed or arrested any more; the Socialists were supporting LaFollette for president, and that gave them the right to be let alone for a while.
And then Ruth. Bunny went to call on her, in the same little cottage. Paul had not got home yet; he had stopped in Chicago for a party conference, and now was coming by way of the northwest, speaking every night. He was having good meetings, because of the prominence his arrests had given him. The story of his expulsion from France had been in the papers all over the country, and Ruth showed Bunny letters telling about this and other adventures with police and spies. Ruth had made Paul promise to write her a post-card every single day; and when she didn’t get one, then right away she began to imagine him in some police dungeon, getting the third degree.
Bunny watched her face as she talked. Her words were cheerful—she was a graduate nurse now, and able to earn good money, and save some if Paul should be in need. But she was pale, and her face was strained. There were Communist papers and magazines on the table, and Bunny could see at a glance what was happening. These papers came for Paul; and Ruth, sitting here alone many and many an evening, had read them, looking for news about her brother; so she had absorbed all the horrors about the torturing and maiming and shooting of political prisoners, and it had been exactly as if Paul had been in battle.
Ruth hadn’t what you would call a theoretical mind; you never heard her talk about party tactics and political developments and things like that. She was instinctive, yet with class-consciousness all the more intense and passionate for that. She had been through two strikes, and the things she had seen with her own eyes had been all the lessons in economics she would ever need. She knew that the workers in big industry are wage-slaves, fighting for their very lives. And this war was not like capitalist wars—this one had to be, because the masters made it. But even thus believing in Paul’s work, Ruth could not help being in a tension of anxiety.
Also—a strange and perplexing thing—Ruth was angry with Rachel and “The Young Student”! It appeared that the Socialists had been getting up meetings all over the country for a so-called Social-revolutionary from Russia, a lecturer who made the imprisonment of his partisans in Russia the pretext for attacks on the Soviet Government. The Social-revolutionaries were the people who had tried to assassinate Lenin, and who had taken the money of capitalist governments to stir up civil war inside Russia. How could Bunny’s paper give support to them?
Bunny went back to Rachel and the Ypsels, who declared that this man was a Socialist, opposing the partisans of violence; the Communists had come to the meeting and tried to howl him down, and there had been almost a fight. So here was poor Bunny, facing with dismay the same internal warfare in the movement, which had so distressed him in Paris and Berlin and Vienna! He had been so profoundly impressed by Paul and his account of Russia, but he found that Rachel had not moved an inch from her position. She would defend the right of the Russians to work out their own destiny, she would defend their right to be heard in America—even though they would not defend her right. But she would have nothing to do with the Third International, and no talk about dictatorships—unless it was her own dictatorship, that was going to see to it that “The Young Student” didn’t give the post-office authorities or the district attorney’s office any pretext for a raid! No, they were going to stand for a democratic solution of the social problem; and Bunny, as usual, was going to be bossed by a woman!
It was a curious thing—the nature of women! They seemed so gentle and impressionable; but it was the pliability of rubber, or of water—that comes right back the way it was before! From the very first—look at Eunice Hoyt, so set upon having her own way! And even little Rosie Taintor—if he had married her, he would have discovered that she had a fixed religious conviction as to the proper style of window-curtains, and how often they had to be laundered! And Vee Tracy, who had given up her happiness—she would not be happy with a Roumanian prince, Bunny knew. And Ruth and Grandma, in the matter of the war! And Bertie, so hell-bent upon getting into fashionable society, in spite of having been born a mule-driver’s daughter! And now here was Rachel Menzies, and Bunny knew exactly the situation—it would break her heart to give up the little paper, she had adopted it with the passion of a mother for a child; but she would walk out of the office in a moment, if ever Bunny should fall victim to the Communist process of “boring from within.”
Bertie arrived in Angel City a week behind her brother, and afforded him still more evidence of the unchangeable nature of femininity. Bertie had come to get her share of the estate, and she went after it with the single-mindedness of a rabbit-hound. Bertie knew a lawyer—her kind of lawyer, another rabbit-hound—and she saw him the day of her arrival; and then Bunny must come to this lawyer’s office, and with the help of Bertie and a stenographer have the insides of his mind turned out and recorded: exactly what Dad had said about his arrangements with Mrs. Alyse Huntington Forsythe Olivier—Dad hadn’t said a word about it to Bertie, alas, nor to anyone else; he had made a will, of course, and that infamous woman had destroyed it—Bertie knew that with the certainty of God.
And then, everything else about Dad’s affairs that Bunny could recall; where he had kept his money and his papers, what secret hiding-place for stocks and bonds he may have had, what he had spent, so far as Bunny could guess, who had been in his confidence. And then the statements which Vernon Roscoe rendered; and all the files of Dad’s correspondence with Verne; and the trusted young executives—Bolling and Heimann and Simmons and the rest; and the bankers and their clerks; and Dad’s secretary whom Bertie had brought back from Paris with her—a veritable mountain of detail, and Bunny was required to attend all the sessions, and be just as much a rabbit-hound as the rest. He told himself that it was his duty to the movement, which so badly needed the aid of a “fat angel”!
Right at the outset, there was one bitter pill that Bertie had to swallow. Her lawyer advised her that there was no chance of depriving Mrs. Alyse Ross of her half of the estate. Bunny’s testimony was worth, in law, precisely nothing; and so, unless there should be found another will, they must accept the inevitable, and combine with the widow to get as much as possible out of Vernon Roscoe. Mrs. Ross’s Paris lawyers had named some very high priced lawyers in Angel City as their representatives, and Bertie had to swallow her rage and admit these men to their counsels.
There were troubles enough to need the very highest-priced lawyers. Accountants were put to work on the books of J. Arnold Ross, and on the statements rendered by his partner, and in a few days there began to emerge out of the tangle one colossal fact: over and above all the money that Dad had put into new business ventures with Verne and others, above all the cash which he had handled through his bank, there was more than ten million dollars’ worth of stocks and bonds which had disappeared without a trace. Verne declared that these securities had been taken by Dad, and used by him for purposes unknown; and Bertie declared that was idiocy, and that Vernon Roscoe was the biggest thief in all history. Having access to Dad’s safe deposit box, he had simply helped himself to the contents. And with rage Bertie turned upon her brother, asserting that he was to blame—Verne knew that Bunny would use his money to try to overturn society, and so it was only common sense to keep him down.
Nor could Bunny deny that this sounded reasonable. It was easy to imagine Verne saying to himself that Bunny was a social danger, and Bertie a social waster, and the widow a poor half-wit, while he, Verne, was a capable business man, who would use those securities for the proper purpose—to bring more oil out of the ground. Learning of Dad’s death, Verne had quietly transferred the securities from Dad’s strong box to his own, before the state inheritance tax commissioner came along to make his records! Verne wouldn’t consider that stealing, but simply common sense—the same as taking the naval reserves away from a government which hadn’t intelligence enough to develop them.
Now Bertie wanted to start a law-suit against her father’s partner, and put him on the stand and make him tell everything about his affairs; and Bunny, with the help of the lawyers, had to argue with her, and bear the brunt of her rage. So far, Verne had been careful to put nothing into writing; and when he took the stand, he would have a story fixed up to leave them helpless. He could say that Dad had given him the securities, and how could they disprove it? He could say that Dad had taken the securities, unknown to his partner, and lost the money on the stock market—how could they disprove that? Even if they traced the sales of Dad’s securities through Verne’s brokers, they would gain nothing, because Verne could say that he had turned over the money to Dad, or that he had been authorized to invest it, and had lost it—a hundred different tales he could invent! “Then we’ve simply got to take what that scoundrel allows us!” cried Bertie; and the lawyers agreed that was the situation. Being themselves on a percentage basis, their advice was sincere!
Then an incident that multiplied the bitterness between Bertie and her brother. Bunny went to the storage warehouse where his belongings had been put away, and in an atlas that his father had occasionally consulted he came upon five liberty bonds for ten thousand dollars each. It was some money Dad had been keeping handy—possibly to bribe the officers in case he should be caught; anyhow, here it was, and Bunny would have been free to consider it a part of the million which Dad had tried to give him in Paris. But he haughtily decided that he would not join in plundering the estate; he would turn the bonds in, to be counted as part of the assets.
But he made the mistake of telling Bertie about it—and oh, what a riot! The imbecile, to make Alyse and her lawyers a present of twenty-five thousand dollars! Instead of quietly dividing with his sister, and holding his mouth! That twenty-five thousand became to Bertie a thing of more importance than all the millions that Verne had got away with; these bonds were something tangible—or almost tangible—until Bunny took them out of her reach, and made them a present to those greedy vultures! And right when both of them needed cash, and were having to go to one of their father’s bankers to borrow money on the basis of their claims to the estate.
Bertie raved and stormed, and Bunny, to get it over with, took the bonds to the bank and turned them in; and after that Bertie never forgave him, she would mention his imbecility every time they were alone. She was making herself ill with all this hatred and fuming; she would sit up half the night poring over figures, and then she couldn’t sleep for excitement. Like all young society ladies, she set much store by the freshness of her skin and its freedom from wrinkles; but now she was throwing away her charms, and making herself pale and haggard. In after years she would be going to beauty specialists and having the corners of her mouth lifted, and the skin of her face treated with chemicals and peeled off—because now she could not control her fury of disappointment, that she was to get only a paltry one or two million, instead of the glorious ten or fifteen million she had been confident of some day possessing.
Rachel had published a brief article about Bunny’s return from abroad, quoting him as saying that he intended to use his inheritance for the benefit of the movement. And this statement had attracted the attention of a bright young newspaper woman, who had written a facetious article:
MILLIONAIRE RED TO SAVE SOCIETY
And now it appeared that there were a great many people who had ideas as to how to save society, and they all wanted to see Bunny, and waited for him in the lobby of his hotel. One had a sure cure for cancer, and another a perpetual motion machine actually working; one wanted to raise bullfrogs for their legs, and another to raise skunks for their skins. There were dozens who wanted to prevent the next war, and several who wanted to start colonies; there were many with different ways of bringing about Socialism, and several great poets and philosophers with manuscripts, and one to whom God had revealed Himself—the bearer of this message was six-feet-four and broad in proportion, and he towered over Bunny and whispered in an awe-stricken voice that the Words which God had spoken had been set down and locked in a safe, and no human eye ever had beheld them, or ever would. Several others wrote that they were not able to call because they were unjustly confined to asylums, but if Bunny would get them out they would deliver their messages to the world through him.
There was one more “nut,” and his name was J. Arnold Ross—no longer “junior.” He had a plan, which he had been turning over and over in his mind; and now he gathered his friends to get their reaction. Old Chaim Menzies, who had been a long time in the movement, and watched most of its mistakes; Chaim was working in a clothing shop, as usual, and giving his spare time to getting up meetings. And Jacob Menzies, the pale student—Jacob had got a job teaching school for a year, but then he had been found out, and now was selling insurance. And Harry Seager, who was growing walnuts, and escaping the boycotts. And Peter Nagle, who was helping his father run a union plumbing business in an open shop city, and spending his earnings on a four-page tabloid monthly ridiculing God. And Gregor Nikolaieff, who had done his Socialist duty working for a year in a lumber camp, and was now assistant to an X-ray operator in a hospital. And Dan Irving, who had come from Washington at Bunny’s expense—these six people sat down with Rachel and Bunny at a dinner party in a private dining-room, to discuss how to save society with a million dollars.
Bunny explained with becoming modesty that he was not putting forth his plan as the best of all possible plans, but merely as the best for him. He wasn’t going to evade the issue by giving his money away, putting off the job on other people; he had learned this much from Dad, that money by itself is nothing, to accomplish anything takes money plus management. Moreover, Bunny himself wanted something to do; he was tired of just looking on, and talking. He had thought for a long time about a big paper, but he had no knowledge of journalism, and would only be a blunderer. The one thing he did know was young people; he had been to college, and knew what a college ought to be, and wasn’t.
“What we’re doing—Rachel and Jacob and the rest of us Ypsels—is trying to work on young minds; but the trouble is, we only get them a few hours in the week, and the things that count for most in their lives are the enemy’s—I mean the schools, the job, the movies—everything. So I want to get some students together for a complete life, twenty-four hours a day; and see if we can’t build a Socialist discipline, a personal life, with service to the cause as its goal. Rachel will agree with me in this—I don’t know if anyone else will—I think one reason the movement suffers is that we haven’t made the new moral standards that we need. Our own members, many of them, are personally weak; the women have to have silk stockings and look like the bourgeoisie, and their idea of freedom is to adopt the bad habits of the men. If the movement really meant enough to Socialists, they wouldn’t have to spend money for tobacco, and booze, and imitation finery.”
“Dat let’s me out!” said old Chaim Menzies, who had already lighted his ten-cent cigar.
The substance of what Bunny wanted was a labor college on a tract of land somewhere out in the country; but instead of spending his million on steel and concrete, he wanted to begin in tents, and have all the buildings put up by the labor of the students and teachers. Everybody on the place was to have four hours’ manual labor and four of class work daily; and they were all to wear khaki, and have no fashionable society. Bunny had the idea of going out among the colleges and high schools, and talking to little groups of students, and here and there seducing one away from football and fraternities to a new dedication. Also the labor unions would be invited to select promising young men and women. It was a thing that should grow fast, and take little money, because, with the exception of building materials, everything could be produced on the place; they would have a farm, and a school of domestic arts—in short, teach all the necessary trades, and provide four hours’ honest work of some sort for all students who wanted to come.
What did they think about it? Chaim Menzies was, as always, the first to speak. Perhaps his feelings had been hurt by the reference to tobacco; anyhow, he said it looked to him like it vas anodder colony; you didn’t change a colony by calling it a college, and a colony vas de vorst trap you could set for de movement. “You git people to go off and live by demselves, different from de rest of de vorkers, and vedder dey are comfortable or vedder dey ain’t—and dey von’t be!—all de time dey are tinking about someting else but de class struggle out in de vorld.”
“That’s quite true,” said Bunny. “But we shan’t be so far from the world, and the purpose of our training will be, not the colony, but the movement outside, and how to help it.”
“De people vot are going to help de movement has got to be in it every hour. You git dem out vun mont’ and dey are no good any more; dey have got some sort of graft den, someting easy, dey are no longer vorkers.”
“But this isn’t going to be so easy, Comrade Chaim——”
“Listen to him! He is going to git nice young college ladies and gentlemen to come and live lives dat vill not seem easy to de vorkers!”
“You might as well admit it, Bunny,” put in Harry Seager. “You’ll have a nice polite place, with all the boys and girls wearing William Morris costumes. They’ll work earnestly for a while, but they’ll never be efficient, and if you really have any buildings put up, or any food raised, you’ll have regulation hard-fisted workingmen to do it. I know, because we’re picking walnuts now!”
“I don’t want a polite place,” said Bunny. “I want a gymnasium where people train for the class struggle; and if we can’t have discipline any other way, how about this as part of the course—every student is pledged to go to jail for not less than thirty days.”
“Attaboy!” cried Peter Nagle. “Now you’re talking!”
“Vot is he going to do—break de speed laws?” inquired Chaim, sarcastically.
“He’s going into Angel City and picket in a strike. Or he’s going to hold Socialist meetings on street-corners until some cop picks him up. You don’t need me to tell you how to get arrested in the class struggle, Comrade Chaim.”
“Yes, but he might run into some judge dat vould not understand de college regulation, and might give him six mont’s.”
“Well, that’s a chance we’ll have to take; the point is simply, no senior student is in good social standing until he or she has been in jail for at least thirty days in a class struggle case.”
“And the teachers?” demanded Gregor Nikolaieff.
“Once every three years, or every five years for the teachers.”
“And the founder! How often for the founder?” Peter clamored in glee; but Dan Irving said the founder would have to wait until he had got rid of his money.
They argued back and forth. Could you interest young people in the idea of self-discipline? Would your danger be in setting the standard too easy, so that you wouldn’t accomplish much, or in setting it too high, so that you wouldn’t have any students? Bunny, the young idealist, was for setting it high; and Harry Seager said that people would volunteer more quickly to die than they would to get along without tobacco. And he wanted to know, what were they going to do about the Communists. Harry was no politician any more, he was a social revolutionist, and only waiting for the day of action. Regardless of what Socialist party members might wish, they couldn’t keep Bolshevik students out of a college, and even if they did, the ideas would bust in.
Bunny answered by setting forth his ideal of the open mind. Why couldn’t the students do their own educating, and make their own decisions? Let the teachers give the information they were asked for: and then let the students thresh it out—every class-room an open forum, and no loyalty except to research and freedom? They were all willing to admit that there would be no use starting a sectarian institution, to advocate one set of doctrines and exclude the others. Also, it took a partisan of each doctrine to set it forth fairly. So then, here was Bunny pinning them down: “Chaim, would you be willing for Harry to explain his ideas to your class? Harry, would you give Chaim a chance to talk?” Bunny could see his own job—the arbitrator who kept these warring fractions out of each other’s hair!
Then said Chaim, the skeptic, “I vant to know, vot are you going to do about sex?”
Bunny admitted that this worried him. “I suppose we’ll have to conform to bourgeois standards.”
“Oh, my God!” cried Peter Nagle. “Let the bourgeoisie begin!”
Jacob Menzies, the student, had just been reading a book about Ruskin, the old-time Socialist colony in Tennessee. It was the sex problem which had broken up that colony, he declared; and his father chimed in, “It vill break up any colony dat ever exists under capitalism! Dere is only vun vay you can make vun man live vit vun voman all his life, and dat is to shut dem up in a house togedder and never let dem out. But if you let dem get vit odder couples, den right avay vun man finds he vants some odder voman but de right vun.”
“But then,” said Dan Irving, “according to bourgeois standards, they get a divorce.”
“Sure ting!” said Chaim. “But not in a Socialist colony! If dey vould do it in a colony, it vould be a free love nest, and you vould be on de front page of de papers, and de American Legion come and bust you in de snoot!”
The upshot of the debate was that no one of them was sure the enterprise would be a success, but all the young ones were willing to pitch in and help, if Bunny was determined for a try. And Bunny said that he had already been looking about for a site, with good land and plenty of water, somewhere about fifty miles from Angel City; he was going to make a first payment on land as soon as he could get the cash, and meantime they would work out the details. He would give his own time for three years to getting the institution on its feet, and if it proved possible to develop the right discipline and morale, he would make the institution self-directing, and furnish whatever money could be used effectively. They would need teachers, organizers, and business managers, so there were jobs for all.
And meantime, Bunny must go back to the interviews with lawyers, to try to save as much as possible of the estate. It meant long wrangles with Bertie, for their affairs were in a snarl, and getting worse every day. Verne insisted that Ross Operating must have funds to meet its current expenses; and did they want him to assess the stock, and force the estate to raise the money, or did they want him to buy the lease to the Ross Junior tract, the only asset of Ross Operating, except the claims against the insurance companies? Verne could do what he pleased, because the directors of the concern were himself and his trusted young executives. He was proposing to form another concern, the Paradise Operating Company—with other trusted young executives as directors, and sell himself the lease, which had twenty years still to run, and was worth nobody could tell how many millions of dollars, for the sum of six hundred thousand!
All right then, said Verne, let the estate do better. Bertie took up the challenge, and exchanged long cables with her husband in Paris, and went out among her rich friends—to make the embarrassing discovery that people who have six hundred thousand dollars in cash do a lot of investigating before they spend it, and then want to hog the whole thing for themselves. Bertie spent much worry and hard work—and what made her most furious was that she couldn’t do it for herself alone, but had to do it for the whole estate, giving the incompetent Bunny and the infamous Alyse the benefit of her labors. She got a proposition; and then the lawyers of the infamous Alyse turned up with another proposition; and Bertie declared they were bigger thieves than Verne.
And then Ross Consolidated needed money, and Verne was going to assess that stock—meaning to drive the estate to the wall and plunder it of everything. Presently he made a proposition—there was the Roumanian oil venture, into which Dad had put a million and a quarter in cash. Verne offered to purchase this back for the same amount, and the necessary papers were prepared—the heirs all had to consent to the sale, and they did so, and then the court must approve the proposal. This meant delay, and meanwhile the estate was delinquent in the assessment on the Ross Consolidated stock, and this stock was to be sold out. The money from the Roumanian deal was to save it, but to the consternation of the lawyers, the court refused its consent to this deal. There were technical points involved—the court questioned the authority of Mrs. Alyse Ross’ lawyers, and demanded her personal signature, attested in France. In short, the estate couldn’t get the money in time for the sale, and it was Vernon Roscoe who bought the Ross Consolidated stock at a bargain.
Oh, how Bertie raved and swore—the veritable daughter of a mule-driver! Verne, the filthy swine, had put that trick over on them! Not content with having stolen Dad’s papers, he had diddled them along like this, and got one of his crooked judges to hold up the order, so that he might grab another plum! Bertie threatened to take a gun to Verne’s office and shoot him down like a dog; but what she really did was to abuse her brother, who had been such a fool as to make a mortal enemy out of the most powerful man they knew.
It taught them a lesson. They would get themselves out of Verne’s clutches, get rid of everything that he controlled. Dad had put nearly a million into a concern called Anglo-California, which was to develop the big Mosul concession; and the lawyers of Alyse got an offer for that stock, but it included time payments, and Bertie wouldn’t agree to that, and the lawyers wouldn’t agree to Verne’s cash offer, and Bertie was in terror lest Verne would do some more hocus-pocus—organize an Anglo-California Operating Company, and lease the Mosul tract to it, and swipe all the profits!
Amid which wrangling came a letter from Alyse to Bunny. She was sure that he would not let horrid money troubles come between him and her, and break their sacred bond, the memories of dear Jim. Alyse had gone to consult her favorite medium, immediately upon her arrival in Paris, and at the third seance Jim had “manifested,” and ever since then Alyse had had his words taken down by a stenographer, and here was a bulky record, big as the transcript of a legal trial, and tied with blue ribbons of feminine elegance. Alyse hoped that Bunny had not failed to consult a medium, and would send her whatever dear Jim had had to say in his old home.
Bunny went through the record, and it gave him a strange thrill. There were pages and pages of sentimental rubbish about this happy shore and this new state of bliss, with angel’s wings and the music of harps, and tell my dear ones that I am with them, but I am wiser now, and my dear Bunny must know that I understand and forgive—all stuff that might have come out of the conscious or subconscious mind of a sentimental elderly lady or of a rascally medium. But then came something that made the young man catch his breath: “I want my dear Bunny to know that it is really his father who speaks to him, and he will remember the man who got all the land for us, and that he had two gold teeth in the front of his mouth, and Bunny said that somebody would rob his grave.” How in the name of all the arts of magic was a medium in Paris to know about a joke which Bunny had made to his father about Mr. Hardacre, the agent who had bought them options on ranches in Paradise, California?
By golly, it was something to think about! Could it really be that Dad was not gone forever, but had just disappeared somewhere, and could be got hold of again? Bunny would go for a walk to think about it; and through the streets of Angel City he would hear the voice of Eli Watkins booming over the radio. Eli’s Tabernacle was packed day and night, with the tens of thousands who crowded to see the prophet who had been floated over the sea by the angels, and had brought back a feather to prove it; all California heard Eli’s voice, proclaiming the ancient promise: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
CHAPTER XXITHE HONEYMOON
Bunny was looking for a site for the labor college. It was a much pleasanter job than seeking oil lands; you could give some attention to the view, the woods and the hills, and other things you really cared about; also it wasn’t such a gamble, because you could really find out about the water supply, and have a chemical analysis of the soil. It meant taking long rides in the country; and since Rachel was to be one of the bosses, it was good sense for her to go along. They had time to talk—and a lot to talk about, since they were going to take charge of a bunch of young radicals, boys and girls of all ages—twenty-four hours a day.
They had looked at a couple of places, and there was another farther from the city, and Bunny remarked, “If we go to that, we’ll be late getting home.” Rachel answered, “If it’s too late, we can go to some hotel, and finish up in the morning,” said Bunny, “That would start the gossips.” But Rachel was not afraid of gossips, so she declared.
They drove to the new site. It was near a village called Mount Hope, in a little valley, with the plowed land running up the slopes of half a dozen hills. It was early November, and the rains had fallen, and the new grain had sprouted, and there were lovely curving surfaces that might have been the muscles of great giants lying prone—giants with skins of the softest bright green velvet. There were orchards, and artesian water with a pumping plant, and a little ranch-house—the people had apparently gone to town, so the visitors could wander about and look at everything, and make a find—a regular airdrome of a barn, gorgeous with revolutionary red paint! “Oh, Bunny, here’s our meeting place, all ready made! We have only to put a floor in and we can have a dance the opening night!” Imagine Rachel thinking about dancing!
They climbed one of the slopes, and here was a park, with dark live oaks and pale grey sycamores, and a carpet of new grass under foot. The valley opened out to the west, and the sun had just gone down, in a sky of flaming gold; the quail were giving their last calls, and deep down in Bunny’s heart was an ache of loneliness—because quail meant Dad, and those beautiful hills of Paradise, and happiness he had dreamed in vain.
Now it was Rachel dreaming. “Oh, Bunny, this is too lovely! It’s exactly what we want! Mount Hope College—we couldn’t have made up a better name!”
Bunny laughed. “We don’t want to buy a name. We must take samples of the soil.”
“How many acres did you say?”
“Six hundred and forty, a little over a hundred in cultivation. That’s more than we’ll be able to take care of for quite a while.”
“And only sixty-eight thousand! That’s a bargain!” Rachel had learned to think on Bunny’s imperial scale, since she had been racing over the state in his fast car, inspecting millionaire play-grounds and real estate promoters’ paradises.
“The price is not bad,” said Bunny, “if we are sure about the soil and water.”
“You could see the state of the growing things, before it got dark.”
“Maybe so. We’ll come back in the morning, and have a talk with the ranchman. Perhaps he’s a tenant, and will tell us the truth.” Not for nothing had Bunny spent his boyhood buying lands with his shrewd old father!
Twilight veiled this valley of new dreams, and across the way the hills were purple shadows. Bunny said, “There’s just one thing worrying me about our plan now: I’m afraid there’s going to be a scandal.”
“How do you mean?”
“You and me being together all the time, and going off and being missing at night.”
“Oh, Bunny, what nonsense!”
“No, really, I’m worried. I told Peter Nagle we’d have to conform to bourgeois standards, and we’re beginning wrong. My Aunt Emma is a bourgeois standard, and she would never approve of this, and neither would your mother. We ought to go and get married.”
“Oh, Bunny!” She was staring at him, but it was too dark to reveal any possible twinkle in his eyes. “Are you joking?”
“Rachel,” he said, “will you take that much trouble to preserve the good name of our institution?”
He came a step nearer, and she stammered, “Bunny, you don’t—you don’t mean that!”
“I don’t see any other way—really.”
“Bunny—no!”
“Why not?”
“Because—you don’t want to marry a Jewess!”
“Good Lord!”
“Don’t misunderstand me, I’m proud of my race. But all your friends would think it was a mistake.”
“My friends, Rachel? Who the devil are my friends—except in the radical movement? And where would the radical movement be without the Jews?”
“But, Bunny—your sister!”
“My sister is not my friend. Neither did she ask me to pick out her husband.”
Rachel stood, twisting her fingers together nervously. “Bunny, do you really—you aren’t just speaking on an impulse?”
“Well, I suppose it’s an impulse. I seem to have to blurt it out. But it’s an impulse I’ve had a good many times.”
“And you won’t be sorry?”
He laughed. “It depends upon your answer.”
“Stop joking, please—you frighten me. I can’t afford to let you make a mistake. It’s so dreadfully serious!”
“But why take it that way?”
“I can’t help it; you don’t know how a woman feels. I don’t want you to do something out of a generous impulse, and then you’d feel bound, and you wouldn’t be happy. You oughtn’t to marry a girl out of the sweat-shops.”
“Good God, Rachel, my father was a mule-driver.”
“Yes, but you’re Anglo-Saxon; away back somewhere your ancestors were proud of themselves. You ought to marry a tall, fair woman that will stay beautiful all her life, and look right in a drawing-room. Jewish women bear two or three children, and then they get fat, and you wouldn’t like me.”
He burst out laughing. “I have attended the weddings of some of those tall, fair Anglo-Saxon women; and the priest pronounces, very solemnly, ‘Into this holy estate the two persons now present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.’ ”
“Bunny,” she pleaded, “I’m trying to face the facts!”
“Well, dear, if you must be solemn—it happens that I never loved a fair woman. The two I picked out to live with were dark, the same as you. It must be nature’s effort to mix things. I suppose you know about Vee Tracy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Vee had the looks all right, and she’ll keep them—she makes a business of it. But you see, it didn’t do me any good, she threw me over for a Roumanian prince.”
“Why, Bunny?”
“Because I wouldn’t give up the radical movement.”
“Oh, how I hated that woman!”
There was a note of melodrama in Rachel’s usually serene voice, and Bunny was curious. “You did hate her?”
“I could have choked her!”
“Because she struck you?”
“No! Because I knew she was trying to take you out of the movement; and I thought for sure she would. She had everything I didn’t have.”
Bunny was thinking—by golly, it was queer! Vee had known it—and he hadn’t! Oh, these women! Aloud he said, politely, “No, she didn’t have quite everything.”
“What is there that I have, Bunny? What do I mean to you?”
“I’ll tell you—I’m so tired of being quarreled with. You can’t have any idea—my whole life, since I began to think for myself, has been one wrangle with the people who loved me, or thought they had a right to direct me. You can’t imagine what a sense of peace I get when I think of being with you; it’s like settling down into nice soft cushions. I’ve hesitated about it, because of course I’m not very proud of the Vee Tracy episode, and I didn’t know if you’d take a man second-hand—or third-hand it really is, because there was a girl while I was in high school. I’m telling you my drawbacks, to balance your getting fat!”
“Bunny, I don’t care about the other women—they will always be after you, of course. I was heartsick about Miss Tracy, because I knew she was a selfish woman, and I was afraid you’d find it out too late, and be wrecked. At least, I told myself that was it—I suppose the truth is I was just green with jealousy.”
“Why, Rachel! You mean that you love me?”
“As if any woman could help loving you! The question is, do you love me?”
“I do—yes, truly!”
“But Bunny—” there was a little catch in her voice. “You don’t show it!”
So then he realized that he had been wasting a lot of time! He had to take only one more step, and put his arms about her, and there she was, sobbing on his shoulder, as if her heart would break. “Oh, Bunny, Bunny! Can I believe it?”
So to make her believe it, he began to kiss her. She had been such a sedate and proper little lady, such a manager in the office and all that, he had been in awe of her; but now he made the discovery that she was exactly like the other women who had been in love with him; as soon as she was sure that she might let herself go, that it was not some blunder, or some crazy dream—why, there she was, clinging to him in a sort of daze of happiness, half laughing, half weeping. As he kissed her, there was mingled in his emotion the memory of how brave she had been, and how loyal, and how honest; yes, it was worth while making a girl like that happy! To mingle love with those other emotions, that appeared to be safe! And she was just as passionate as either Eunice or Vee had been, not a particle more sedate or reticent! “Oh, Bunny, I love you so! I love you so!” She whispered it in the darkness, and her embraces said more than her words.
“Dear Rachel!” he said, with a happy little laugh. “If you feel that way, let’s go find a preacher or a justice of the peace.”
She answered, “Foolish Bunny! I want to know that you love me, and that I’m free to love you. What do I care about preachers or justices?”
So then he caught her tighter, and their lips met in a long kiss. If she tried to voice any more doubts, he would stop the sounds, he would find a way to convince her! And what better place for their love than this mysterious grove, the scene of their future labors? Yes, they would have to buy this ranch now, regardless of soil deficiencies! It would be a haunted place; in after years, while the young folks had their games and pageants in this grove, Bunny and Rachel would look on with a secret thrill. Had it not been in ancient oak-groves that mystic rites had been celebrated, and pledges made, and holy powers invoked!
They found the justice of the peace next morning; and then they finished the inspection of the ranch, and drove back to Angel City and made arrangements for a first payment on the purchase price. After which they had the thrills of telling all their friends about having got married—strictly in the interest of the college, of course, and to avoid scandals in the bourgeois press!
Bunny went to see Ruth, and tell her; and strange to say, this embarrassed him. Bertie and Vee had planted in his mind the idea that Ruth had been in love with him for the past ten years; and now Rachel was certain of it; and these women had all proved to be right about each other every time! Also, there was a fact which he had not mentioned to Rachel: there had been a while on the way back from Paris, when he was debating in his mind whether it was Rachel or Ruth he was going to invite to become his wife! He had a deep affection for Ruth, the same still quiet feeling that she herself manifested. But the trouble was, there was Paul. Ruth was bound by steel chains to her brother—and that meant the Communist movement, and so Bunny had to wrestle over that problem some more.
Sooner or later you had to decide, and take your place with one party or the other. Were you going to overthrow capitalism by the ballot or by “direct action”? This much had become clear to Bunny—the final decision rested with the capitalist class. They were getting ready for the next war; and that meant Bolshevism in all the warring nations, at the end of the war, if not at the beginning. The Socialists would try to prevent this war; and if they failed, then the job would be done in Paul’s way, by the Third International. But meantime, Bunny was drawn to the Socialists by his temperament. He could not call for violence! If there was to be any, the other side must begin it!
Whatever Ruth may have thought or felt about the news of his marriage, she gave no sign but of pleasure. She had expected it, she said; Rachel was a fine girl, who agreed with his ideas, and that was the main thing. Then she told him that Paul was expected back tomorrow, and was to speak at a meeting—his supporters had got him into the Labor Temple by much diplomacy, and he would have a chance to tell the workingmen about what he had seen in Russia. Bunny and Rachel must come and hear him; and Bunny said they would.
This was the Sunday before election day, the end of a long political campaign. The workers had heard no end of appeals for their votes—but here was something different, more important than any election issues. However hostile the leaders of labor might be, it was impossible for the rank and file to resist the contagion of this miracle that was happening on the other side of the world—a vast empire where the workers ruled, and were making their own laws and their own culture. Paul was fresh from these scenes; his words were vivid, he brought the things before your eyes: the red army, and the red schools, and the red papers, the white terror, and the resistance to capitalist siege on ten thousand miles of front.
Oh, the fury of the capitalist press next day! They didn’t report the meeting, but they published protests about it, and stormed in editorials. The LaFollette “reds” were bad enough, but this was an intolerable outrage—an avowed Moscow agent, who had been expelled from France, permitted to hold a meeting in Angel City and incite union labor to red riot and insurrection! What was our police department for? Where were our patriotic societies and our American Legion and our other forces of law and order?
Bunny called up Ruth next morning; he wanted to see Paul, to talk about the proposed college. Ruth said that Paul had gone down to the harbor, to see about addressing meetings of the longshoremen. These men had had a big strike while Bunny was abroad, and had taken their full course in capitalist government. Six hundred of them had been swept up off the street, for the crime of marching and singing, and had been packed into tanks with all ventilation shut off, to reduce them to silence. A score of the leaders had been sent to state’s prison for ten or twenty years for “criminal syndicalism”; so the rest ought to be ready to listen to the Communist doctrine, that the workers had to master the capitalist state. There was to be an entertainment that night in the I. W. W. hall at the harbor; there would be music and refreshments, and Paul thought it would be a good chance to get acquainted with the leaders. Bunny said that he and Rachel were going down to Beach City, and they might run over and bring Paul back with them.
Bunny had yielded to the importunities of his sister: wouldn’t he have the decency to help out the estate in at least one way—look into those reports which Vernon Roscoe had rendered concerning the Prospect Hill field? Verne asserted that more than half the wells were off production, and Bertie suspected one more trick to rob them. Bertie wouldn’t know an oil well off production from a hen-coop; but Bunny would know, and couldn’t he go down there, and snoop around a bit, and find out what other oil men thought about the field and its prospects? Bunny took Rachel with him—she went everywhere with her new husband, of course. They had got one of the oldest of the Ypsels to run the magazine office, and Rachel was just manager and editor, very high and mighty. Bunny was a one-arm driver again, and the automobile was lopsided, and Rachel was nervous when he drove fast, because the gods are jealous of such rapture as hers.
Rachel had never seen an oil field at close range. So Bunny took her to the “discovery well,” and told how Mr. Culver had had his ear-drums destroyed, trying to stop the flow with his head. He showed her the first well that Dad had drilled, and on which Bunny had helped to keep the mud flowing. That had been the beginning of Dad’s big wealth; he and perhaps a score of others had got rich, and to balance it, there were in Beach City many thousands of people who had their homes plastered with mortgages, representing losses from the buying of “units.” That was the way most of the money had been made in Prospect Hill—selling paper instead of oil. It was a fact, as Paul had cited, that more money had been put into the ground than had been taken out of it. Here had been a treasure of oil that, wisely drilled, would have lasted thirty years: but now the whole field was “on the pump,” and hundreds of wells producing so little that it no longer paid to pump them. One sixth of the oil had been saved, and five-sixths had been wasted!
That was your blessed “competition,” which they taught you to love and honor in the economics classes! Another aspect of it was those frightful statistics, that of all the thousands of men who had worked here, seventy-three out of every hundred had been killed or seriously injured during the few years of the field’s life! It was literally true that capitalist industry was a world war going on all the time, unheeded by the newspapers.
Bunny did his checking up of the Ross wells; he couldn’t do any “snooping,” because some of the old hands knew him, and came up to greet him. He talked with a number of men, and found their reports about the same as Verne’s. Then, towards evening, as he and Rachel were getting ready to leave, they came to a bungalow, dingy and forlorn, black with oil stains and grey with dust, with a storage-tank in the back yard, and a derrick within ten feet on the next lot, and on the other side a shed which had housed the engine of another derrick. Bunny stopped, and read the number on the front of the bungalow, 5746 Los Robles Blvd. “Here’s where Mrs. Groarty lives! Paul’s aunt—it was in that house we had the meeting about the lease, and I first heard Paul’s voice through the window there!”
He told the story of that night, describing the characters and how they had behaved. Paul said it was a little oil fight, and the world war had been a big oil fight, and they were exactly the same. While they were talking, the door opened, and there emerged a stout, red-faced woman in a dirty wrapper, and Bunny exclaimed, “There’s Mrs. Groarty!” Out he hopped—“Hello, Mrs. Groarty!” How many years it had been since she had seen him; he had to tell her who he was, that little boy grown up, and with a wife—well, well, would you believe it, how time does fly! And so Mr. Ross was dead—Mrs. Groarty’s husband had read the sad news out of the paper. She knew that he had got to be very rich, so she was thrilled by this visit, and invited them in, but all in a flutter because her house wasn’t in order.
They went in, because Bunny wanted Rachel to see that staircase, and to have a laugh on her afterwards, because she wouldn’t notice anything, but would think the staircase led to a second story—in a one-story bungalow! There was the room—not a thing changed, except that it seemed to have shrunk in size, and the shine was all gone. There was the window where Bunny had stood while he listened to Paul’s whispered voice. And, by golly, there was “The Ladies’ Guide, a Practical Handbook of Gentility,” still on the centre-table, faded and fly-specked gold and blue! Along side was a stack of what appeared to be legal papers, a pile at least eight inches high, and fastened with ribbons and a seal. Mrs. Groarty caught his glance at it; or perhaps it was just that she was longing for someone to tell her troubles to. “That’s the papers about our lot,” she said. “I just took them away from the lawyer, he takes our money and he don’t do nothing.”
So then she was started, and Rachel continued her education in oil history. The Groarty’s had entered a community agreement, and then withdrawn from it and entered a smaller one: then they had leased to Sliper and Wilkins, and been sold by those “lease-hounds” to a syndicate; and this syndicate had been plundered and thrown into bankruptcy; after which the lease had been bought by a man whom Mrs. Groarty described as the worst skunk of them all, and he had gone and got a lot of claims and liens against the property, and actually, people were trying to take some money away from the Groartys now, though they had never got one cent out of the well—and look at the way they had had to live all these years!
Here was the record of these transactions, community agreements and leases and quit-claim deeds and notices of release and notices of cancellation of lease, and mortgages, and sales of “percents,” and mechanic’s liens and tax receipts and notices of expiration of agreement—not less than four hundred pages of typewritten material, something like a million and a half of words, mostly legal jargon—“the undersigned hereby agrees” and “in consideration of the premises herein set forth,” and “in view of the failure of the party of the first part to carry out the said operations by the aforesaid date,” and so on—it made you dizzy just to turn the pages. And all this to settle the ownership of what was expected to be ten thousand barrels of oil, and had turned out to be less than one thousand! Here you saw where the money had gone—pale typists shut up in offices all day transcribing copies of this verbiage, and pale clerks checking and rechecking them, or looking them up, or recording them—there were men up in Angel City who had become mighty magnates by employing thousands of men and women slaves, to transcribe and check and recheck and look up and record literally millions of documents like these!
Bunny and Rachel had dinner, and then strolled on the waterfront; it was one of those warm nights that come now and then in Southern California; there was a moon on the sea, and a long pier with gleaming lights, and the sound of an orchestra drawing the lovers. At the entrance to the pier was a big bare hall, owned by the city, where very proper dancing was chaperoned by a religious city government. Bunny and his bride danced—oh, surely it was all right to dance a little bit, in this well chaperoned place on what ought to have been their honeymoon!
But in between the dances, while the orchestra was still, something shook the hall, a dull, sombre blow, like distant thunder, making the windows rattle, and jarring your feet. “What’s that?” exclaimed Rachel. “An earthquake?”
“The guns,” answered Bunny.
“Guns?” And he had to explain, the fleet was practicing. There were a score or so of battleships stationed at the harbor, facing some unnamed enemy; and now they were at night target-practice. You heard them now and then, day and night, if you lived near the coast.
So Rachel couldn’t dance any more then. Each time she heard that dull boom, she saw the bodies of young men blown into fragments. The capitalists were getting ready for their next war; what business had the Socialists to be dancing?
They drove along the boulevard which follows the harbor-front. It is fifteen or twenty miles, and there are towns and docks and bridges and railroad tracks and factories, and inland the “subdivisions” for the homes of working people. It is one of the world’s great ports in the swift making; and those who have charge of the job, the masters of credit, see rearing before them that monstrous spectre known as “direct action” or “criminal syndicalism.” The “Industrial Workers of the World” had a headquarters, where they met to discuss this program; and the masters made incessant war upon them.
The address which Ruth had given to Bunny was an obscure street in a working-class quarter. There was a fair-sized hall, with lights in the windows, and the sound of a piano and a child’s voice singing. Among the cars parked along the curb Bunny found a vacant space, and backed into it, and was just about to step from his car, when Rachel caught him by the arm. “Wait!” There came rushing down the street a squadron of motor-cars, two abreast and blocking the way entirely; and from them leaped a crowd of some fifty men, carrying weapons of various sorts, clubs, hatchets, pieces of iron pipe. They made a rush for the entrance, and a moment later the music ceased, and there came the sound of shrieks, and the crash of glass and battering of heavy blows.
“They’re raiding them!” cried Bunny, and would have run to the scene; but Rachel’s arms were flung about him, pinning him to his seat. “No! No! Sit still! What can you do?”
“My God! We must do something!”
“You’re not armed, and you can’t stop a mob! You can only get killed! Keep still!”
The sounds from within had risen to a bedlam; the hall must have been crowded, and everyone inside yelling at the top of his lungs. And that horrible drumming of blows—you couldn’t tell whether they were falling on furniture or on human bodies. Bunny was almost beside himself, struggling to get loose, and Rachel fighting like a mad thing—he had never dreamed that she had such strength. “No, Bunny! No! For God’s sake! For my sake! Oh, please, please!” She knew in those dreadful minutes the terror that was to haunt the rest of her life—that some day in this hideous class war there would come the moment when it was her husband’s duty to get himself killed. But not yet, not yet! Not on their honeymoon!
It was like the passing of a tornado, that is gone before you have time to realize it. The attacking party emerged from the hall, as quickly as they had entered. They were dragging half a dozen prisoners, and threw these into the cars, of which the engines were still going; then down the street they went roaring, and silence fell.
It was permissible for Bunny to get out now, and run into the hall, with Rachel at his heels. He had one thought, the same as on that night when he had run over Mrs. Groarty’s place, crying, “Paul! Paul!” They were certain to have taken Paul away on that lynching party; and how could Bunny save him?
The first thing he saw, in the doorway, was a man with a great gash across his forehead, and the blood streaming all over him; he was staggering about, because he couldn’t see, and crying, “The sons-o’-bitches! The sons-o’-bitches!” Near him was another man whose hand had been slashed across, and a woman was tearing her skirt to make a bandage. A little girl lay on the floor, screaming in agony, and some one was pulling off her stockings, and the raw flesh was coming with them. “They threw her into the coffee!” said a voice in Bunny’s ear. “Jesus Christ, they threw the kids into the boiling coffee!”
Everywhere confusion, women in hysterics, or sunk upon the floor sobbing. There was not a stick of furniture in the place that had not been wrecked; the chairs had been split with hatchets; the piano had been gutted, its entrails lay tangled on the floor. Tables were overset, and dishes and crockery trampled, and the metal urn or container in which the coffee had been boiling had been overset, and its steaming contents running here and there. But first they had hurled three children into it, one after another, as their frantic parents dragged them out. The flesh had been cooked off their legs, and they would be crippled for life: one was a ten years old girl known as “the wobbly song-bird;” she had a sweet treble, and sang sentimental ballads and rebel songs, and the mob leader had jerked her from the platform, saying, “We’ll shut your damned mouth!”
What was the meaning of this raid? According to the newspapers, it was the patriotic indignation of sailors from the fleet. There had been an explosion on one of the battleships, and several men had been killed, and the newspapers had printed a story that one of the wobblies had been heard to laugh with satisfaction. It is an ancient device of the master press. In old Russia the “Black Hundreds” were incited by tales of “ritual murders” committed by the Jews, Christian babies killed for sacrifice. In Britain now the government was forging letters attributed to the Soviet leaders, and using them to carry an election. In America the deportations delirium had been sanctified by a great collection of forged documents, officially endorsed.
It was a spontaneous mob, said these law and order newspapers. But this fact was noted: on all other occasions there had been policemen at these wobbly meetings, to take note of criminal utterances; but this night there had been no policeman on hand. Nor were there any afterwards; Bunny and the other “reds” might besiege the police department and the city government, and offer the names of the principal mob leaders, but there would be no step taken to punish anyone for this murderous raid!