II
With equal seriousness Bunny took the social life of this enormous institution. It was the far-off wonderful goal to which all high school students had looked; a few lucky ones had got there, and he was among them. His sister's chum had a brother who was a senior, and belonged to the best possible fraternity; so the word was spoken, and Bunny was snapped up. They were a fast, free-spending crowd, aggressive, self-confident, slangy, voluble over the prospects of this year's track team. Bunny was a runner, so they had a reason for welcoming him that was more presentable than his old man's oil. Like all Western universities, Southern Pacific was co-educational; so Bunny was exposed to the impact of a mass of femininity, the distilled and concentrated essence of allurement. Such swarms of graceful figures, trim ankles, dimpled white and brown arms, costumes the color of Brazilian butterflies; a kaleidoscope of smiles and flashing eyes, a perpetual zephyr of soft scents, blown from lilac-bushes and jasmine vines and miles upon miles of California orange and lemon-orchards. Something was bound to happen to a young idealist in such an environment—especially when he had just spent the summer in a training-camp for men only! Not all these bundles of feminine charm were accustomed to follow the market reports upon Ross Consolidated; yet somehow they managed to learn about the discoverer and heir-apparent of the Paradise oil field. Many sets of quick wits were concentrated upon him, he was invited to scores of dances and hundreds of fudge parties and thousands of motor-rides. Then a strange rumor spread; here was an unimaginable phenomenon, a young millionaire who would not "pet"! One by one the champion spell-weavers of Southern Pacific wove in vain; before long there were odds posted, and quite a trade in bets as to who would be the first girl that Bunny Ross would kiss! Researches were conducted in the Beach City High School, and word came that the young oil prince carried in his bosom a broken heart; which, of course, made him a romantic figure, and added enormously to his prestige. These things go by contraries, and the girl who landed Bunny did so because she did not try. The family of Henrietta Ashleigh had had money for generations, and so could afford to look down upon it, and all those who sought it. This was the way to impress Bunny, who was aware that his money was painfully new. Never would he attain to the aggressive self-assurance of his sister; he was looking for something better than himself, and for a while he found it in the Ashleighs, with their perfect manners and well trained servants and mansion full of the debris of culture. Henrietta was tall and slender, gentle, soft of voice, and reserved to the point of primness. Her mother had just died, and for a year she wore black, which of course was very conspicuous. She was high church Episcopal, and on Sunday mornings wore long kid gloves and carried a little prayer-book and hymnal joined together, bound in black leather with a gold border. She took Bunny to church and he learned that one does not have to take ancient Hebrew mythology with vulgar literalness, but may have its symbolic meaning explained by a white-haired old gentleman with a trace of English accent. What Henrietta meant to Bunny was a refuge from the anguish and tumult of illegitimate desire. He fled to her as to a saint, a madonna alive and visible upon a college campus. She was so far above the glaring crudeness of the smart set; she did not use paint nor powder—nothing so common as perspiration would presume to appear on her delicately chiseled nose. You might dream of kissing her, but it would remain a dream; she would call you "Mr. Ross" during the first six months of your acquaintance, and after that she would call you "Arnold," finding it dignified, perhaps because of Matthew. So long as you knew and truly appreciated her, you would make the highest grades in class, and, as the little black and gold prayer-book phrased it, "honour and obey the civil authority, and submit yourself to all your governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters."
III
Bunny went up to Paradise for his Christmas holidays, and there was the first word from Paul; a plain card, bearing the stamp of the American Expeditionary Force, but no place; no picture postcard with "Scenes in Irkutsk" or "Camel-sleigh on the Volga," or anything like that! "Dear Ruth," it said: "Just a line to let you know that I am well and everything is all right. I have received three letters from you. Please write often. We are busy and I am having an interesting time. Give my love to all the family and to Bunny and Mr. Ross. Affectionately, Paul." Ruth had had this treasure for several days, and there was no telling how many times she had read it, and studied every mark on both sides. It seemed to Bunny a cold and unsatisfactory note, but he did not say so to Ruth; he asked Dad about it, and Dad said there would necessarily be a great deal of censoring of soldier's mail, and Paul had probably written this bare message to make sure it got through. Why did there have to be so much censoring? Bunny asked; and Dad answered that these were ticklish times, and the army had to protect itself against enemy propaganda. Dad had been reading a magazine article which explained what was happening in the world. The German and Austrian empires had come down with a crash, and that was a great triumph for democracy. But now the friends of democracy had a second big job to do, which was to crush the wild beast of Bolshevism. They were starving it by a blockade on every front, and wherever the well-behaved and respectable Russians had set up a government on the borders, the allies were helping them with money and supplies. General Denikin had taken possession of south Russia; on the west a lot of new states had been set up; on the north, at Archangel, an anti-Bolshevik group was making headway under British and American protection. As to Siberia, there had been a Socialist government, holding over from the Kerensky days; but these Socialists were a lot of talkers, and now they had been kicked out and replaced by a real fighting man, Admiral Kolchak, who had once commanded the Tsar's fleet. It was this he-admiral the allies were backing to run Siberia, and our troops were there to keep the railroad open for him. Of course the Bolsheviks, and their sympathizers in this country, were making a fuss about it, and telling all the lies they could; that was why we had to have a censorhip, said Dad. Bunny accepted this explanation without question. He had been in a training-camp for seven months, and had acquired the military point of view. He was keenly alert to the danger of Bolshevik propaganda, and determined that if ever he ran into any of it, he would hasten to denounce it. So innocent was he, and so little aware of the subtlety of the enemy—he never dreamed that he was at this time absorbing the poison; and—of all places in the world—in one of the class-rooms of his most Christian and conservative university! It was hard on a poor overworked university president. Dr. Cowper's most trusted dean had engaged this young instructor, upon recommendation of high-up Y. M. C. A. authorities. The young man had been doing relief work in Saloniki, and was the son of a prominent Methodist pastor; he bore the name of Daniel Webster Irving, and how was anyone to imagine that a man with such a name might be suffering from political shell-shock? This young instructor was subtle in his method; he did not say anything that could be pinned down on him, but would sow his seeds of doubt by asking questions, and advising students to "think for themselves." There are always in every college class one or more "sore-heads," the sons of unorthodox parents; one in Bunny's class was an avowed "rationalist," and another had a Russian name. All that a teacher had to do was to let these fellows ask questions, and quickly the whole group would be wandering in a maze, demoralized by what the Japanese government in its control of education describes as "dangerous thoughts." President Wilson had gone to Europe, in order to bring about the reign of justice he had promised. He was having a triumphal progress through England and France, and our newspapers were full of the wonders of what he was about to achieve. But in Mr. Irving's class Bunny heard it pointed out that the President had dropped from mention the most important of his "fourteen points," the demand for "freedom of the seas." Could it be that this had been the price of British support for his program? And then, more startling yet, Bunny learned that the secret treaties which the allies had signed among themselves at the outset of the war were now laid on the peace table, and made the basis of jealous bickerings. Bunny had never forgotten about those treat
ies, how Dad had assured Paul that they would turn out to be Bolshevik forgeries. But here the allies were admitting them to be genuine, and furthermore, were setting out to enforce them, regardless of any promises of fair play which President Wilson had made to the Germans! Bunny took this amazing news home with him to Dad; apparently Paul had been right, and the wicked Bolsheviks had been telling the truth! What did Dad make of it? Dad didn't know what to make of it; he was much disturbed, and could only say we couldn't judge, we'd just have to wait. But the trouble was, the longer we waited, the worse things seemed to get; the more evident it became that our President had done the very thing that Dad had been sure he would never do—he had let himself be "jockeyed." Like water seeping underneath a dike, a subtle current of skepticism was creeping through those freshman classes in Southern Pacific University which were taking "Modern History 14." Mr. Irving wasn't supposed to be discussing the peace conference at all; he was supposed to be seeing to it that his students memorized the names of battles and commanding generals in the Franco-Prussian war. But one theme led so easily to the other, and it was so difficult to keep the "sore-heads" quiet! This same thing was happening in other class-rooms, and in other parts of the United Sates where men encountered their fellows, and thus became exposed to "dangerous thoughts." Before long the forbidden ideas were being voiced in Congress, and after that they could not be kept out of the newspapers. It was like a storm that burst over the whole country. A million idealists like Bunny woke up all at once to the cruel fact that their dolly was stuffed with sawdust.
IV
Yes, it was a trying time to be alive in the world. All those golden promises that had been made to us, those bright hopes we had cherished! All the blood of the young men that had been shed, three hundred thousand of them dead or wounded in France— and here were the allied statesmen, grim, cruel old men, sitting at the council-table and putting the world right back where it had been before! Perpetuating all the old hatreds, all the old injustices— with a thousand new ones to torment the future! Tearing Germans away from their own land and giving them to Frenchmen, giving Austrians to Italians, Russians to Poles—so on through a long list of blunders; condemning millions of people to live under governments which they feared and despised, and thus making certain they would revolt, and throw Europe into uproar again! Men could not realize these things all at once; they got them little by little, as details of the negotiations leaked out. Every country in the world was carrying on its own propaganda, thinking about its own selfish interests; and President Wilson was in the midst of the mess, being pulled and hauled about, this way and that, quite powerless for the good aims he had proclaimed. As the picture of this got back to America, there spread over the land such a wave of disgust as had never been known before. And then the President himself came home, to declare that he had achieved a complete victory. In the name of "self-determination of all peoples" he was giving the German Rhineland to France, and German Africa to Britain, and the German Tyrol to Italy, and a Chinese province to Japan, and to the United States a mandate over Armenia! Also he had made a perpetual alliance with France and Britain, whereby we bound ourselves to maintain this brand of self-determination forever! When this program had been thoroughly realized, a tone of hilarious cynicism became the correct thing among the young intellectuals of America; fashionable young matrons took to deceiving their husbands in the name of chastity, and college boys began toting hip-pocket flasks out of loyalty to prohibition. The thing was particularly hard upon Bunny, because he had to go to Paradise every once in a while, and come face to face with Ruth, and explain how self-determination for the people of Siberia meant that her brother must stay there in peace time and hold a bayonet at their necks. In elucidating this singular situation, Bunny became almost as skillful a trickster as if he had had a regular diplomatic job with extra-territorial immunity. For a month or two he managed it, while the Germans were dragged to Versailles and made to sign an agreement to pay an indemnity so vast that it could not be named. Then one day came a letter that made his task all but impossible. It was an innocent-looking letter, written in a crude hand on some sheets of cheap paper, postmarked Seattle, and addressed to "Mr. Bunny Ross, Paradise, California." It said: "Dear Mr. Bunny: You dont know me but I am a returned soldier that used to punch cattle in Salinas valley. Paul Watkins said I should write you because he cant get no news by the censors. I am invalidded back, have had the Asiatic dissenterry, am bleeding at the bowls three months and you should wash your hands good when you have read this letter, because it is an easy dissease to catch. I am in issolation and this will be smuggled, for God's sake dont let on I have wrote it they would sure put me in the can. But Paul said your father might do something to get us boys out if he knew what a hell it was. Mr. Bunny what are we doing in that place and why do we have to stay? It is forty below zero most of the winter and big storms a lot of the time and you have to do sentry duty and in summer the muskeetoes is big as flies and where they bite the blood runs. And the Japs take shots at us, they are suppose to be our allies but they are sure grabbing that country there is suppose to be only seven thousand but there is seventy and why did we take them in there? Our boys is not allowed to have no side arms and the Japs have got bayonets and we have only fists. We have zones that we are supposed to control but the Japs will not keep out of them and I have saw them put out with machine guns lined up, and if we have to have a war with them over Siberia there will sure be a lot of our boys massacreed at the startoff. And them Russian refugees and officers that we have orders to help I heard our colonel say, you give them money to start a government and they go on a bust and that night you have to pull them out of a sporting house. They have got one idea which is to shoot all the working-men they can get hands on and the women too and they torture them, Mr. Bunny I seen things that it would make you sick to read them. From General Graves down our army is sore on this job and some of them is gone crazy, there has been more than twenty in our regement and some has been sent home in a strait jacket. But the people at home is not allowed to know nothing, there is boys in our regement that is not had one line from their folks in half a year and they are crazy with worry. Why do we have to be there when the war is over, if you know I wish you would tell me. But Paul said not to tell his sister, because it is not so bad for himself, they move him a lot and he is always busy it is easy when you have a lot of carpenter work but for some fellers I seen them carry a stack of railway ties a hundred yards and then move them back to the old place just to keep us working. Please send me some cigarettes that will be a way to say that you have got this letter and if you send two packages I will know that you want me to write some more. Yours respectfully, Jeff Korbitty."
Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair Page 28