Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (32 page)

IX

Bunny spent that summer "playing about," as the phrase ran; he read a few books on the international situation, he studied some of the confidential reports of Vernon Roscoe's foreign agents, and watched the derricks climb over a couple more hills of the Ross Junior tract. Bertie telephoned, insisting that he should make his debut into society and meet some "eligible" girls; so he went with her to spend a week at the camp of the ultra-fashionable Wood-bridge Rileys, located high in the mountains, in a "club" to which only the elect might attain. Here people boated and swam, but otherwise lived as complicated lives as in the city, tangled in the same web of social duties and engagements, and dressing several times a day. They drank a great deal at dinner, and danced to the music of a Negro jazz orchestra until daybreak, after which the young people would go horseback riding, and have a late breakfast, and sleep a couple of hours before keeping a luncheon engagement. Here Bunny got to know Eldon Bur dick, who had been his sister's favored suitor for a couple of years. Just what was their relationship Bunny was not sure. Dad had ventured a jest about an approaching wedding, but Bertie froze him; she would attend to her own engagements, with no parental meddling. Now Bunny discovered that the pair were quarreling; he could not help overhearing them, and seeing tears in his sister's eyes. She was angry because Eldon would only spend a week-end at the camp, and he was angry because she punished him by dancing too often with some other man. But neither of the pair offered any confidences to Bunny, and he did not seek them. Eldon Burdick was the youngest son of a family of old California land-owners. Their holdings lay on the outskirts of Angel City, and every ten years or so they would sell off a chunk for "subdivisions," and this development would so increase the value of the remainder that the family grew richer all the time, despite the fact that forty people, young and old, spent money for everything they could think of. Eldon was a handsome, dashing sportsman with a tiny black moustache, after the fashion of a British army officer; he held himself erect and stiff, and Bunny discovered that he had a military mind. Bertie must have mentioned her brother's dangerous ideas, for Eldon invited the younger man for a horse-back ride, and proceeded to sound him out. Eldon himself was an amateur patriot, in the proper sense of the abused word amateur; he was letting his string of polo-ponies stay idle all summer, while he did his part to save society. It did not take long for him to uncover the deeps of Bunny's peril. The boy had got by heart every one of the Bolshevik formulas: that the people of Russia had a right to run their own country in their own way; that our troops had no business shooting and killing them without a declaration of war by Congress; that people in this country had a right to express the above convictions without being beaten or tarred and feathered or sent to prison or deported. Eldon pointed out that all this was merely camouflage, the convenient formulas whereby criminal conspirators sought to cover themselves with a mantle of legality, "free speech" and "civil rights" and all the rest. The Soviet savages had repudiated all these principles, and it was our business to fight them with their own weapons. Bunny listened politely while his companion explained the ramifications of the Bolshevik plot. Not merely had these traitors sought to give the victory to Germany, they were now organizing a propaganda machine to overthrow civilized government all over the world; they were stirring up Negroes, Hindoos, Chinese and Mohammedans to rise and exterminate the white race. They had secret organizations with hundreds of thousands of followers in this country, they published or subsidized some eight hundred papers, all preaching class hatred. How could any man of decent instincts make a truce with this monstrosity? It was indeed terrifying, and difficult to answer; nevertheless, Bunny stuck it out, we had no right in Russia or Siberia, and if we would let the Bolsheviks alone, they couldn't hurt us. When we suppressed people's ideas, we made it seem that we couldn't answer them; when we smashed up meetings and threw hundreds of people into jail for trying to attend meetings, we simply advertised the ideas we were trying to suppress, we made lots of other people sympathize with the victims. Look at those Russian Jewish boys and girls that had been arrested in New York, all of them under twenty; they had done nothing but distribute a leaflet appealing to the American people not to make war on Russia, yet they had been tortured in jail unto one of them died, and the rest had got sentences of twenty years! When Eldon Burdick discovered that Bunny was defending vermin such as these, he first became hot, and then he became cold; and soon Bunny noticed that others of the guests were cold, and his sister came to him with flashing eyes, declaring that he had ruined her social career.

X

So Bunny went to visit Henrietta Ashleigh, at the beach-home of her family; located on a beautiful blue lagoon, with little white sail-boats dotted over it, and yellow and gray cliffs covered with Spanish bungalows of many-tinted plaster. Here, gliding about in a canoe, Bunny tried to justify his ideas, but met no better success. Henrietta had an invincible prejudice about Bolsheviks, and Bunny suspected the reason—she had heard about the nationalization of women. He would have liked to hint to her that he doubted the truth of these stories; but if it had been possible to mention such a subject to Henrietta, she would not have been his ideal of feminine purity. So Bunny had to motor up to Angel City and take Mr. Irving out to lunch, in order to have some one to tell his troubles to. But Mr. Irving made matters worse by giving him an article from a Socialist paper, written by an English journalist who had just come out of Russia, telling of the desperate efforts the Communists were making to defend their cause. The party had conscripted fifty per cent of its members to go to the front and die—that was what it amounted to, for even a slight wound was often fatal— there were no antiseptics anywhere in a country of more than a hundred million people. On twenty-six fronts the Russian workers were waging battle against a host of enemies. In Finland alone the counter-revolutionary general Mannerheim had slaughtered a hundred thousand people suspected of sympathy with Bolshevism; he had done it with American guns and American ammunition, and his troops many of them wearing American uniforms. In cases where the troops had been beaten by the Bolsheviks and forced to retreat, the American Red Cross had burned millions of dollars worth of medical supplies, for fear that they might be used to save wounded Bolshevik soldiers and Bolshevik women in child-birth. Somehow, when you knew that things like this were happening in the world, you did not enjoy drifting about in a canoe on a beautiful blue lagoon! Bunny went back to Paradise, and studied and thought and waited. There came another post-card from Paul—just like the former one, cold and matter-of-fact; Paul was well and busy, and was being taken good care of; he had had another letter from Ruth; he hoped that the family was well, and also the Rosses. Bunny now knew the world-situation sufficiently to understand why Paul wrote such a card, and even to imagine the bitterness that Paul must feel to be compelled to write it. Bunny thought that he also would try his hand at card-writing. He got a plain postal, and told Paul that they were all well and busy, and producing a lot of oil to help defeat America's enemies. "I am doing a lot of thinking," Bunny added; but then it occurred to him that this might suggest a forbidden procedure to troops, so he got another card and told how happy everybody was and how well things were going, and then added, "I am coming to agree with Tom Axton in everything." Bunny figured that the censor would hardly know, way out there in Siberia, how Tom Axton had organized the oil-workers in the Paradise field! All this time Bunny was torn between two sets of emotions, both strong within him, and absolutely contradictory. He had been in the army as a prospective officer and had burned with patriotic loyalty; but now, only seven months later, here he was with a desire to "root" for the enemies of his country, and to cheer when the flag had to retreat! Yes, he was actually tempted to be glad when he read that the American troops at Archangel were checked, and their British commanders foiled in their objectives! He remembered the thrills that had stirred his soul in the training camp, when he had leaped from his tent at reveille, and seen "Old Glory" floating in the breeze of dawn; if in those days he could have seen himself as he was now, he would have called himself a black-hearted traitor!

XI

There were very few people in the world who thought the Russians would be able to defend themselves against the hosts of all the world. Yet somehow they were managing it. There was a peculiar thing to be noticed in the newspaper despatches from the various anti-Bolshevik fronts. The allied troops would win great victories; they would take Perm, or Ufa, or whatever city it might be, and capture vast thousands of the enemy. A month or two later they would be cheered up—until it occurred to them to get the map, and compare the location of the two places, and discover that the second place was one or two hundred miles farther back than the first one! Later on Bunny found out what this meant. The peasants had a way of staying quiet while the allied forces advanced, and then rising up behind their lines and forcing them to retreat. So mighty was Bolshevik propaganda—it was working thus at Archangel, and all along the western front from the Baltic to the Crimea, and all over Siberia; no victory ever lasted. Admiral Kolchak got all the way across Siberia, General Denikin, in the Ukraine, got within a hundred and twenty-fve miles of Moscow; but it all came to nothing. Then, as summer turned into fall, and fall into winter, a still more terrifying thing began to happen. The armies of the great powers began to show signs of succumbing to the deadly propaganda poison! They were now in the second winter since the armistice, and the soldiers thought the war was over, and why couldn't they go home? The very worst of the prophesies of Eldon Bur dick began suddenly to come true. The sailors of the French fleet in the Black Sea rose up and overthrew their officers and captured several battle-ships! German troops declined to win their way back to respectability by putting down Bolshevism for the allies! British soldiers at Folkestone refused to go onto the ships that were to take them to Archangel! And most appalling of all, a mutiny in the American army! The first mutiny in the whole history of "Old Glory"! Michigan lumbermen and farmer-boys, shipped up there under the Arctic circle, put under the command of British officers, and ordered out to shoot half-starved and ragged Russian workingmen at fifty degrees below zero—these boys laid down their arms! The facts were hushed up in the newspapers—but not in the higher circles of the army and of world diplomacy, nor yet in the office-buildings where the gentlemen and lady-patriots planned the future of the world! In the month of October the allies made their last military effort. They sent in the tsarist General Yudenich to take Petrograd; they gave him all the supplies he could use, and troops of many nations, and he got within a few miles of the city, so that the Soviets had to move their capital to Moscow. But the half-starved and ragged Communists drove back their foes, and Bolshevik propaganda proceeded to cause a revolution in Hungary and another in Bavaria! Also at home there were portents. In spite of all the raids and jailings and deportations, great numbers of people could not be prevented from saying publicly and loudly that we had no business making war upon a friendly people. More and more there was discontent with the program of keeping our soldiers abroad after the war was over. "Radical" newspapers and magazines continued to be circulated, and in the big cities at any rate it was not possible to prevent mass-meetings. It was a little difficult to make any protest effective, because of the peculiar condition into which the government had fallen. The President had set out on a tour, to convince the people that they should be satisfied with the peace settlement. He had come to Angel City, and Dad and Bunny had gone to hear him—in a vast hall where ten thousand people were marshalled, and taught to stand up and sit down again, and cheer at signal, all very reverently, quite like royalty. The great man's voice was strained, and his face had an unwholesome flush, and his arguments were as broken as his appearance. A few days later came word that his health had collapsed, and he was hurried back to Washington, where he had an apoplectic stroke. Now he lay, a helpless, half-conscious invalid, and the country was governed by a strange triumvirate—a Catholic private secretary, an army doctor, and one of the most fashionably dressed of Washington society ladies. But somewhere, in the cabinet, perhaps, there was left a trace of intelligence, with which to realize the mounting dangers abroad and at home. At Christmas time, while Bunny was up at Paradise, hunting quail and watching the progress of Ross Consolidated, he went out one morning to meet the Ford car which brought the mail to the tract. He got his morning paper and opened it, and there on the front page was a despatch from Washington, announcing that the army authorities had decided it was no longer necessary for them to police the Trans-Siberian Railway; we were going to leave the Japanese in charge, and come home. Bunny gave a shout, and rushed into the house, calling for Ruth. "Paul is coming back! Paul is coming back!" And then he had to run quick and catch her by the arm and help her to a chair!

CHAPTER XI THE REBEL 1

At Southern Pacific University the class lines were tacitly but effectively drawn, and in the ordinary course of events a man of Bunny's wealth, good looks and good manners, would have associated only with the members of fraternities and sororities. If some Negro boy were to develop eloquence as a debater, or is some one taking a course in millinery or plumbing were to display fleet-ness as a hurdler, the hurdler might hurdle and the debater might debate, but they would not be invited to tea-parties or dances, nor be elected to prominence in the student organizations; such honors were reserved for tall Anglo-Saxons having regular features, and hair plastered straight back from their foreheads, and trousers pressed to a knife edge and never worn two days in succession. But here was Bunny Ross, persisting in fooling with "dangerous thoughts," that made his friends angry. Of course, as anyone would have foreseen, there were "barbs" and "goats," anxious to break in where they were not wanted, and perfectly willing to pretend to think that our country ought not to intervene in Russia, if by so professing they could get to know one of the socially elite. So Bunny found himself on talking terms with various queer fish. For example, there was Peter Nagle, whose father was president of a "rationalist society," and who seemed to have one dominating desire in life—to blurt out in class that what was the matter with the world was superstition, and that mankind could never progress until they stopped believing in God. In a university all of whose faculty were required to be devout Methodists, you can imagine how popular this made him. Peter looked just as you would expect such a boor to look, with a large square head and a wide mouth full of teeth, and a shock of yellow hair which he allowed to straggle round his ears and drop white specks onto his coat collar—his coat did not match his trousers, and he brought his lunch to the university tied with a strap! And then there was Gregor Nikolaieff. Gregor was all right, when you got to know him, but the trouble was, it was hard to know him, because his accent was peculiar, and at critical moments in his talk he would forget the English word. He had jet black hair, and black eyes with a sombre frown above them—in short, he was the very picture of what the students called a "Bolsheviki." As it happened, Gregor's father had belonged to one of the revolutionary parties whom the Bolsheviks were now sending to jail; but how could you explain that to a student body which dumped into one common garbage-can Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and Anarchists, Communist-Anarchists and Anarchist-Syndicalists, Social Revolutionaries and Social Democrats, Populists, Progressives, Single-taxers, Nonpartisan Leaguers, Pacifists, Pragmatists, Altruists, Vegetarians, Anti-vivisectionists and opponents of capital punishment. Also there was Rachel Menzies, who belonged to a people that had been chosen by the Lord, but not by the aforesaid student body. Rachel was rather good-looking, though in a dark, foreign way; she was short—what feminine enemies would have called "dumpy"—and made no pretense at finery, but came to the university in black cotton stockings and a shirt-waist that did not match her skirt. There was a rumor that her father worked in a clothing factory, and her brother was pressing students' pants for an education. And here was the discoverer and heir-apparent of the Ross Junior oil field, letting himself be seen in public with these people, and even trying to introduce them to his fraternity brothers; excusing himself by saying that they believed in "free speech." As if it were not obvious that they would, having everything to gain and nothing to lose! Proletarians of all universities unite! Poor Bunny got it from both sides. "Look here," said Donald Burns, president of the sophomore class, "don't you introduce me to any more of your Yid fairies." And then, "Look here," said Rachel Menzies, "don't you introduce me to any more of your male fashion-plates." Bunny protested, he had the idea that all kinds of people ought to know one another; but Rachel informed him that she thought too much of herself. "Probably you've never been snubbed in your life, Mr. Ross, but we Jews learn the lesson early in our lives—not to go where we aren't wanted." Said Bunny, "But Miss Menzies, if you believe in ideas, you've got to teach people—" "Thank you," she said; "I believe in my ideas, but not enough to teach Donald Burns." "But how can you tell?" Bunny protested. "You're teaching me, and I don't belong to the working-class." He had learned that this girl was a member of the Socialist party, and it was "class consciousness," as well as Jewish consciousness. Rachel insisted that Bunny was one person in a million, capable of believing what was contrary to his economic interests. But Bunny had no awareness of anything extraordinary about himself. Instead of being a conspicuous and shining leader, as his high destiny directed, he was always looking for some one he could lean on, some one who was positive, and whom he could trust. He found some of this in Henrietta Ashleigh, who knew exactly what was proper; and he found some more of it in Rachel Menzies, who knew exactly what was true, and said it with energy and frankness that were like flashes of lightning in the twilight of Southern Pacific culture. The only trouble was, the contradiction between his two authorities; it appeared almost as if what was true was not proper and what was proper was not true! For Henrietta considered Rachel an impossible person, and was cold as a corpse in her presence; while Rachel's idea of being insulting was to tell Bunny that it was with Henrietta he really belonged, his Creator had made him to take her to church.