CHAPTER XXI
THE HONEYMOON
1
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 playgrounds 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!
II
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 on 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!
III
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.
IV
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 Groartys 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 agree-
Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair Page 58
