Then suddenly he heard a voice behind him: "I give up! I'm going back!" So he whirled, and the horse whirled, and away they went, even faster than they had come, and both of them shaking with laughter in the morning of the world!
XII
The Greeks had never worn either trousers or shirts, and the process of getting into these garments did not lend itself to romantic or esthetic interpretations. Therefore Vee Tracy rode down the beach while Bunny dressed; and when he rejoined her, she was no longer Greek, but an American young lady upon her dignity, and it would have been bad taste to have referred to her crazy prank. She was leading the horse with the bridle over its head, and Bunny walked by her side. "Did you notice that nightmare?" she said, as they passed the thirty-two Loreleis in their grave-clothes. "That was one of the dreams of old Hank Thatcher. You've heard of 'Happy Hank,' the California Grape-king?" "So that's his place!" exclaimed Bunny. "He dreamed of orgies, and kept half a dozen harems; his wife refused him a divorce to punish him, and when he died she covered up his dream as a kind of public penance." "Nobody seems to see it but the seals." "Oh, the papers were full of it; they would never pass up any news about the Thatchers. They send out a reporter once in a while. One time they had a scream of a story—the reporter had worn a suit of chain mail under his trousers, and the dogs had torn at him in vain!" "She sets dogs on them?" "That's why nobody dares go up there to peek at the statues." "Good Lord!" exclaimed Bunny. "I peeked at half a dozen of them." "Well, you were lucky. That's why I carried this revolver along; they sometimes come onto the beach, and the neighbors make war on them." "Why doesn't she put up a fence?" "She's in a dispute with the county. She claims to own the beach, and every now and then she puts a barrier across it, and the county sends men at night to tear it down. They've been fighting it out for the past ten years. Also the state is trying to put a highway through the tract—it would save several miles of the coast route—but she has spent a fortune fighting them; she lives in that castle like a beleaguered princess in the old days—all the shades drawn, and she steals about from room to room with a gun in her hand, looking for burglars and spies. Ask Harve about it—he knows her." "Is she insane?" "It's a reaction from her life with her husband; he was a profligate, and so she's a miser. They tell a story about him, he used to pay his hands in cash, and would drive about the country in a buckboard with little canvas bags, each containing a thousand dollars in gold. One time he dropped one bag and didn't miss it; one of his hands brought it to him, and old Hank looked at the man with contempt, and put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a half dollar. 'Here,' he said, 'here's the price of a rope; go buy one and hang yourself!" "So now she's taking care of the money!" "Exactly. She pays all her bills by registered mail, and preserves the receipts, and insists on having a return receipt from the post office, and when that comes she files the two together, and when the receipted bill comes back, she files and indexes that. She won't let a book-keeper do it, because you can't find any employees who can be trusted to attend to things properly. She spends hours poring over her business papers, and discovering other people's carelessness and incompetence. She employs lawyers, and then she employs other lawyers to check them up, and then a detective agency to find out how the lawyers are selling her out. She's convinced the county authorities are persecuting her, and that they're all a lot of crooks—she mayn't be so wrong in that. She's lean and haggard, and wears herself to a skeleton roaming about the house, dusting the furniture and nagging at the servants because they won't take care of things." The two walked on down the beach. "Up over that hill," said Vee, "lives old Hank's sister; he left her part of the estate, and the two women have quarrelled about the boundary line and the water-rights. Tessie Thatcher's an old rake—hires men to work for her, and makes them her lovers, arid writes them tootsie-wootsie letters, and then they try to blackmail her, and she tells them to go to hell, and they bring suit for unpaid salaries, and sell the letters to the newspapers, and they're all published; but Tessie doesn't care, she knows that nothing can hurt her social position, she's too rich; and besides, she's an old booze-fighter, and knows how to forget her troubles." "My God!" exclaimed Bunny. "What property does to people!" "To women especially," said Vee. "It's too much for their nerves. I look at the old women I meet, and think, which of them do I want to be? And I say, Oh, my God! and jump into my car and drive fifty miles an hour to get away from my troubles, and from people who want to tell me theirs!" "Is that what you were doing when the judge sent you to jail for a week?" laughed Bunny. "No," she answered, "that was a publicity stunt, the bright idea of my advertising man."
CHAPTER XIV
THE STAR 1
Bunny went back to Angel City, and discovered that if he wanted to follow Vee Tracy's program of dodging other people's troubles, he had made a fatal mistake to get interested in a labor college! He went to see Mr. Irving, and found the young instructor up to his ears in the growing pains and disputes of the labor movement. All summer long his job had been interviewing leaders and sympathizers, and trying to get them together on a program. He had managed to get the college started, with three teachers and about fifty pupils, mostly coming at night; but it was all precarious—the difficulties seemed overwhelming. There were a handful of progressive and clear-minded men and women in the labor movement; and then there was the great mass of the bureaucracy, dead from the ears up; also a little bunch of extreme radicals, who would rather have no bread at all than half a loaf. The old-line leaders would have nothing to do with the college if these "reds" got in; on the other hand, if you excluded the "reds," they would set up a clamor, and a lot of genuine liberals would say, what was the use of a new college that was so much like the old ones? The labor movement had its traditions, having to do with getting shorter hours and more pay for the workers; and the old officials were bound by that point of view. The average union official was a workingman who had escaped from day-labor by the help of a political machine inside the union. Anything new meant to him the danger of losing his desk job, and having to go back to hard work. He had learned to negotiate with the employers and smoke their cigars, and in a large percentage of cases he was spending more money than his salary. Here in Angel City, the unions had a weekly paper, that lived by soliciting advertising from business men—and what was that but a respectable form of graft? When you took any fighting news to an editor of that sort, he would say the dread word "Bolshevism," and throw your copy into the trash basket. And the same thing applied to the movement in its national aspects. The American Federation of Labor was maintaining a bureau in Washington, for the purpose of combatting the radicals, and this bureau was for practical purposes the same as any patriotic society; its function was to collect damaging news about Russia from all over the world, and feed it to the American labor press. And of course, if any labor man was defiant, and insisted upon telling the other side, he would incur the bitter enmity of this machine, and they would throw him to the wolves. There would be a scare story in the capitalist press, telling how the Communists had got possession of the plasterers' union, or maybe the button workers, and the grand jury was preparing action against a nest of conspirators. The average labor leader, no matter how honest and sincere, shivered in his boots when such a club was swung over his head.
II
Also there was Harry Seager and his troubles. The Seager Business College had turned out a class of young men and women, thoroughly trained to typewrite, "All men are created free and equal," and also, "Give me liberty or give me death." And now these young people were going about in the business offices of Angel City, and discovering that nobody wanted employees to typewrite anything of that sort! In plain words these young people were being told that the Seager Business College was a Bolshevik institution, and the business men of the city had been warned not to employ its graduates. The boycott was illegal in Angel City, and if any labor men tried to apply it, they would be whisked into jail in a jiffy. But imagine Harry Seager asking the district attorney to prosecute
the heads of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, whose campaign contributions had put the district attorney into office! Bunny went up to Paradise, and there was another bunch of grief. In preparation for the coming struggle over the wage scale, the oil operators were weeding out the "troublemakers," which meant the active union men. And now for the first time, Ross Consolidated was following the policy of the rest. Ben Riley, one of the fellows who met in the Rascum cabin, had been told that he was no longer needed. They had too many men, the foreman had said, but that was a plain lie, because he had taken on half a dozen new men since. No, Ben was a Socialist, and had talked at meetings in Paradise, and distributed Socialist papers that showed the monstrous wastes in the oil industry, and the world-rivalry for oil which was to cause the next great war. It was Ruth who told Bunny about this; very seriously, with distress in her gentle eyes. "It's a shame, Bunny, because Ben has got no place to go. And here he's got a home, and a wife and two little girls." Bunny was worried too; Dad had promised this kind of thing should not happen! "Can't you do something about it?" pleaded Ruth. "Well, but Ben was a pumper, and that's in the department of operation, and Dad only has to do with the development work. He wouldn't butt in on the superintendent of operation." "But then, ask him to give Ben a job on development." "I'll ask him, Ruth, but I know what he'll say. If he undertook to make jobs for men that other departments want to get rid of, he'd make bad feeling. You know what a lot of fuss he makes about good feeling inside the organization." "Yes, Bunny, but then, what about Ben's feeling, and all the men?" Ruth persisted, with that surprising force that gentle people sometimes display. Ruth did not understand abstract questions, she had no theories about the "class struggle"; but when it came to a human fact, a grievance, then she was possessed by it, and as determined as Paul. These men who came by the cabin to argue and discuss, they were all her friends, and if they did not get a square deal, something must be done! So here was Bunny, in his old tormenting position, watching a fight which he was powerless to stop, or even to mitigate! Ben Riley managed to get work on a ranch; he had to put in twelve hours a day, but all the same, he would come onto the tract at night and distribute his Socialist literature—and of course with a burning sense of bitterness, shared by his friends. Tom Axton was back in the field, at his organizing job, and he and Paul and Bunny had long discussions. Here in the oil workers' union, just as in the labor college, there was the problem of what to do about the "reds." You could never have any big group of workers without Socialists and Communists and I. W. W. among them—and all busily "boring." Paul was endorsing the position of Axton, that the one thing in the oil industry was to save the union; all the workers must concentrate on that, and avoid every cause of division. To this the Socialists and the Communists made answer, all right, they would help; but as the struggle developed, the bosses would call in the police and the courts, and the oil workers, like all other workers, would find they could not stay out of politics, they would have to master the capitalist state. So far the Socialists and Communists would agree; but then would come the question, how was this mastering to be accomplished—and at once the two groups would be imitating the Menzies family! The "Industrial Workers of the World," as they called themselves, were a separate group, men who had been revolted by the corruption and lack of vision in the old-line unions, and had formed a rival organization, the "One Big Union," that was some day to take in all the workers. They were hated by the regular labor leaders, and the newspapers represented them as criminals and thugs. When Bunny met one, he found a young fellow clinging to an ideal in the spirit of the early Christian martyrs. These "wobblies" were now being hunted like wild beasts under the "criminal syndicalism act" of California; every one who came into a labor camp or industrial plant was liable to be picked up by a constable or company "bull," and the mere possession of a red card meant fourteen years in state's prison. Nevertheless, here they were in Paradise; half a dozen of them had a "jungle" or camping place out in the hills, and they would lure workingmen out to their meetings, and you would see the glare of a camp-fire, and hear the faint echo of the songs they sang out of their "little red song book." To Bunny this was romantic and mysterious; while to Dad and Mr. Roscoe and the managers of Ross Consolidated, it was as if the "jungle" had been located in the province of Bengal, and the sounds brought in by the night wind had been the screams of man-eating tigers!
III
From these and all other troubles Bunny now had a way of swift escape, the Monastery. Nobody up there had troubles—or if they did, they didn't load them onto him! "Make this your country club," Annabelle had said; "come when you please and stay as long as you please. Our horses ought to be ridden, and our books ought to be read, and there's a whole ocean—only watch out for the riptides!" So Bunny would run up to this beautiful playground; and sometimes Vee Tracy was there, and when she wasn't she would turn up a few hours later—quite mysteriously. She was several years older than he, and in knowledge of the world older than he would be at a hundred. Nevertheless, she was a good playmate. It was her business to be young in both body and spirit—it was the way she earned her living, and she practiced the game all the time. She had to live hard, like an athlete in training, a pugilist before a battle. Who could tell what strange freak might next occur to the author of a novel, or to a "continuity man," or a director dissatisfied with the progress of a melodrama? She would find herself tied upon a wild horse, or to a log in a sawmill, or dragged by a rope at the end of a speed-boat, or climbing a church steeple on the outside. In ages past, in lands barbarian and civilized, the hardships of the ascetic life have been imposed upon women for many strange reasons; but was there ever one more freakish than this—that she might appear before the eyes of millions in the aspect of a terror-stricken virgin tearing herself from the hands of lustful ravishers! Anyway, here she was, a playmate for a young idealist running away from other people's troubles. They would take Annabelle's unused horses, and ride them bareback over the hills to the beach, and gallop them into the surf and swim them there, to the great perplexity of the seals; or they would turn the horses loose, and run foot-races, and turn hand-springs and cart-wheels—Vee would go, a whirlwind of flying white limbs and flying black hair, all the way into the water, and the waves would be no wilder than her laughter. Then they would sit, basking in the sun, and she would tell him stories about Hollywood—and assuredly the waves were no wilder than these. Anything might happen in Hollywood, and in fact had happened—and Vee knew the people it had happened to. Bunny would go away, and find himself haunted by a figure in a scanty one-piece bathing suit, a figure youthful, sinewy but graceful, vivid, swift. It was evident that she liked him, and Bunny would wake up from his dreams and realize he liked her. He would think about her when he ought to be studying; and his thinking summed itself up in one question, "Why not?" Echo, in the form of Dad and Mr. Roscoe and Annabelle Ames and their friends, appeared to be answering, "Why not?" The one person who would have answered otherwise was Henrietta Ashleigh, and Henrietta, alas, was now hardly even a memory. Bunny was not visiting the blue lagoon, nor saying prayers out of the little black and gold books. Bunny would call Vee Tracy on the telephone, at the studio or at her bungalow, and she was always ready for a lark. They would go to one of the restaurants where the screen folk dined, and then to one of the theatres where the same folk were pictured, and she would tell him about the private lives of these people—stories even stranger than the ones made up for them. Very soon the screen world was putting one and one together in its gossip. Vee Tracy had picked up a millionaire, an oil prince—oh, millions and millions! And it was romantic, too, he was said to be a Bolshevik! The glances and tones of voice that Bunny encountered gave new echoes of the haunting question—"Why not?"
IV Sitting on the beach, half dug into the sand, and staring out over the blue water, Vee told him something about her life. "I'm no spring chicken, Bunny, don't imagine it. When I came into this game, I had my own way to make, and I paid the price,
like every other girl. You'll hear them lie about it, but don't be fooled; there are no women producers, and no saints among the men." Bunny thought it over. "Can't they be satisfied with finding a good actress?" "She can be a good actress in the daytime, and a good mistress at night; the man can have both, and he takes them." "It sounds rather ghastly," said the other. "I'll tell you how it is, there's such fierce competition in this game, if you're going to get ahead, nothing else matters, nothing else is real. I know it was that way with me; I hung round the doors of the studios—I was only fifteen—and I starved and yearned, till I'd have slept with the devil to get inside." She sat, staring before her, and Bunny, watching her out of the corner of his eye, saw that her face was grim. "There's this to remember too," she added; "a girl meets a man that has a wad of money, and can take her out in a big car, and buy her a good meal, and a lot of pretty clothes, and set her up in a bungalow, and he's a mighty big man to her, it's easy to think he's something wonderful. It's all right for moralists to sniff, that don't know anything about it; but the plain truth is, the man that came with the cash and offered me my first real start in a picture— he was just about the same as a god to me, and it was only decent to give him what he wanted. I had to live with him a few months, before I knew he was a fat-headed fool." There was a silence. "I suppose," said Vee, "you're wondering why I tell you this. I'm safe now, I've got some money in the bank, and I might set up for a lady—put on swank and forget the ugly past. If I'd told you I was an innocent virgin, how would you have known? But I said to myself, 'By God, if having money means anything to me, it means I don't have to lie any more.'" Said Bunny: "I know a man that says that. It made a great impression on me. I'd never known anybody like it before." "Well, it makes you into a kind of savage. I've got an awful reputation in the picture world—has anybody told you?" "Not very much," he answered. She looked at him sharply. "What have they told you? All about Robbie Warden, I suppose?" "Hardly all," he smiled. "I heard you'd been in love with him, and that you'd sort of been in mourning ever since." "I made a fool of myself twice over a man; Robbie was the last time, and believe me, it's going to stay the last. He put up the money for the best picture I ever made, and he was handsome as a god, and he begged me to marry him, and I really meant to do it; but all the time he was fooling with two or three other women, and one of them shot him, so that was the end of my bright young dream. No, I'm not in mourning, I'm in rejoicing because I missed a lot of trouble. But if I'm a bit cynical about love, and a bit unrefined in my language, you can figure it out." And Vee shook the mountain of sand off her bare legs and stood up. "Here's how I keep off the fat," she said, and put her hands down on the sand where it was wet and firm, and stood the rest of herself upon them, her slender white limbs going straight up, and her face, upside down, laughing at Bunny; in that position she walked by slow handsteps down to the water, and then threw herself over in the other half of a handspring, and lighted on her feet and dashed into the breakers. "Come on in! The water's fine!"
Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair Page 39