Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (62 page)

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—Boiling 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.

V

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 lets 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.

VI

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 work-ingmen 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 factions 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!"