CHAPTER XXI

THE HONEYMOON

I

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 long-shoremen. 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 agreements and leases and quit claim deeds and notices of release and notices of cancellation of lease, and mortgages, and sales of “percents,” and mechanic’s liens and tax receipts and notices of expiration of agreement—not less than four hundred pages of typewritten material, something like a million and a half of words, mostly legal jargon—“the undersigned hereby agrees” and “in consideration of the premises herein set forth,” and “in view of the failure of the party of the first part to carry out the said operations by the aforesaid date,” and so on—it made you dizzy just to turn the pages. And all this to settle the ownership of what was expected to be ten thousand barrels of oil, and had turned out to be less than one thousand! Here you saw where the money had gone—pale typists shut up in offices all day transcribing copies of this verbiage, and pale clerks checking and rechecking them, or looking them up, or recording them—there were men up in Angel City who had become mighty magnates by employing thousands of men and women slaves, to transcribe and check and recheck and look up and record literally millions of documents like these!

V

Bunny and Rachel had dinner, and then strolled on the water front; it was one of those warm nights that come now and then in Southern California; there was a moon on the sea, and a long pier with gleaming lights, and the sound of an orchestra drawing the lovers. At the entrance to the pier was a big bare hall, owned by the city, where very proper dancing was chaperoned by a religious city government. Bunny and his bride danced—oh, surely it was all right to dance a little bit, in this well chaperoned place on what ought to have been their honeymoon!

But in between the dances, while the orchestra was still, something shook the hall, a dull, sombre blow, like distant thunder, making the windows rattle, and jarring your feet. “What’s that?” exclaimed Rachel. “An earthquake?”

“The guns,” answered Bunny.

“Guns?” And he had to explain, the fleet was practicing. There were a score or so of battleships stationed in the harbor, facing some unnamed enemy; and now they were at night target-practice. You heard them now and then, day and night, if you lived near the coast.

So Rachel couldn’t dance any more then. Each time she heard that dull boom, she saw the bodies of young men blown into fragments. The capitalists were getting ready for their next war; what business had the Socialists to be dancing?

They drove along the boulevard which follows the harbor-front. It is fifteen or twenty miles, and there are towns and docks and bridges and railroad tracks and factories, and inland the “subdivisions” for the homes of working people. It is one of the world’s great ports in the swift making; and those who have charge of the job, the masters of credit, see rearing before them that monstrous spectre known as “direct action” or “criminal syndicalism.” The “Industrial Workers of the World” had a headquarters, where they met to discuss this program; and the masters made incessant war upon them.

The address which Ruth had given to Bunny was an obscure street in a working-class quarter. There was a fair-sized hall, with lights in the windows, and the sound of a piano and a child’s voice singing. Among the cars parked along the curb Bunny found a vacant space, and backed into it, and was just about to step from his car, when Rachel caught him by the arm. “Wait!” There came rushing down the street a squadron of motor-cars, two abreast and blocking the way entirely; and from them leaped a crowd of some fifty men, carrying weapons of various sorts, clubs, hatchets, pieces of iron pipe. They made a rush for the entrance, and a moment later the music ceased, and there came the sound of shrieks, and the crash of glass and battering of heavy blows.

“They’re raiding them!” cried Bunny, and would have run to the scene; but Rachel’s arms were flung about him, pinning him to his seat. “No! No! Sit still! What can you do?”

“My God! We must do something!”

“You’re not armed, and you can’t stop a mob! You can only get killed! Keep still!”

The sounds from within had risen to a bedlam; the hall must have been crowded, and everyone inside yelling at the top of his lungs. And that horrible drumming of blows—you couldn’t tell whether they were falling on furniture or on human bodies. Bunny was almost beside himself, struggling to get loose, and Rachel fighting like a mad thing—he had never dreamed that she had such strength. “No, Bunny! No! For God’s sake! For my sake! Oh, please, please!” She knew in those dreadful minutes the terror that was to haunt the rest of her life—that some day in this hideous class war there would come the moment when it was her husband’s duty to get himself killed. But not yet, not yet! Not on their honeymoon!

It was like the passing of a tornado, that is gone before you have time to realize it. The attacking party emerged from the hall, as quickly as they had entered. They were dragging half a dozen prisoners, and threw these into the cars, of which the engines were still going; then down the street they went roaring, and silence fell.

It was permissible for Bunny to get out now, and run into the hall, with Rachel at his heels. He had one thought, the same as on that night when he had run over Mrs. Groarty’s place, crying, “Paul! Paul!” They were certain to have taken Paul away on that lynching party; and how could Bunny save him?

The first thing he saw, in the doorway, was a man with a great gash across his forehead, and the blood streaming all over him; he was staggering about, because he couldn’t see, and crying, “The sons-o’-bitches! The sons-o’-bitches!” Near him was another man whose hand had been slashed across, and a woman was tearing her skirt to make a bandage. A little girl lay on the floor, screaming in agony, and some one was pulling off her stockings, and the raw flesh was coming with them. “They threw her into the coffee!” said a voice in Bunny’s ear. “Jesus Christ, they threw the kids into the boiling coffee!”

Everywhere confusion, women in hysterics, or sunk upon the floor sobbing. There was not a stick of furniture in the place that had not been wrecked; the chairs had been split with hatchets; the piano had been gutted, its entrails lay tangled on the floor. Tables were overset, and dishes and crockery trampled, and the metal urn or container in which the coffee had been boiling had been overset, and its steaming contents running here and there. But first they had hurled three children into it, one after another, as their frantic parents dragged them out. The flesh had been cooked off their legs, and they would be crippled for life: one was a ten year old girl known as “the wobbly song-bird”; she had a sweet treble, and sang sentimental ballads and rebel songs, and the mob leader had jerked her from the platform, saying, “We’ll shut your damned mouth!”

What was the meaning of this raid? According to the newspapers, it was the patriotic indignation of sailors from the fleet. There had been an explosion on one of the battleships, and several men had been killed, and the newspapers had printed a story that one of the wobblies had been heard to laugh with satisfaction. It is an ancient device of the master press. In old Russia the “Black Hundreds” were incited by tales of “ritual murders” committed by the Jews, Christian babies killed for sacrifice. In Britain now the government was forging letters attributed to the Soviet leaders, and using them to carry an election. In America the deportations delirium had been sanctified by a great collection of forged documents, officially endorsed.

It was a spontaneous mob, said these law and order newspapers. But this fact was noted: on all other occasions there had been policemen at these wobbly meetings, to take note of criminal utterances; but this night there had been no policeman on hand. Nor were there any afterwards; Bunny and the other “reds” might besiege the police department and the city government, and offer the names of the principal mob leaders, but there would be no step taken to punish anyone for this murderous raid!

VI

Bunny didn’t expect to find Paul, but there he lay, flat on his back, with several people bending over him. His left eye was a mass of blood, and seemed as if destroyed by a blow; he lay, limp and motionless, and when Bunny called his name he did not answer. But he was alive, gasping with a kind of snoring sound.

A doctor! A doctor! There were several in the neighborhood, and people rushed away to look for them. From the days of Bunny’s residence in Beach City he knew the name of a surgeon, and hurried to a phone, and was so fortunate, as to find the surgeon at home. Bunny told what had happened, and the other said he would come at once; in the case of injury to skull or other bones, X-ray pictures would be needed, so he gave the name of doctors who did such work, and Bunny did more telephoning, and arranged for one of these to be at his laboratory and await developments. Also he ordered an ambulance from a hospital.

Then back to the hall, where Paul lay in the same condition. Rachel had laid a clean handkerchief over the battered eye, and put a pillow under his head. The other victims had been carried away, and the door of the wrecked hall shut against the curious crowd.

The surgeon came, and said it was concussion of the brain. There was evidence of a heavy blow at the base of the skull—either Paul had been struck in the eye, and had hit the back of his head in falling, or else he had been knocked down by a blow from behind, and later struck or trampled over the eye. The first thing was a picture; so the unconscious body was taken to the X-ray laboratory, and pictures were made, and the surgeon showed Bunny and Rachel the line of a fracture at the base of the skull, running to the front above the oral cavity. There was nothing to be done, it was impossible to operate in such a place. It was a question of how the brain had been affected, and as to that only time could tell. They must keep the patient quiet.

There was a private hospital in the town; so before long Paul was lying on a bed, with a bandage over his eye, and his head in a sling to avoid pressure on the injured place; and Bunny and Rachel were sitting by the bedside, gazing mournfully. Womanlike, Rachel was reading his thoughts. “Dear heart, are you going to blame yourself all your life because you didn’t rush in and get your skull broken, too?” No, he couldn’t have prevented the harm, he knew it; but oh, why did it have to be Paul’s brain—the best brain that Bunny had ever known! He sat with a horrified, brooding stare.

But there was another ordeal to be faced. Rachel reminded him, “We’ve got to tell Ruth.” She offered to attend to it, to spare his feelings. She got her brother Jacob on the phone—he had just got home from a committee meeting, and now he must call a taxi, and drive to Ruth’s home and bring her to the harbor.

Two hours later Ruth came running up the stairs, her face like a mask of fright. “How is he? How is he?” When she entered the room, and saw Paul, she stopped. “Oh, what is it?” And when they told her—“Is he going to live?” She drew nearer, never taking her eyes off his face. Her hands would stretch out to him, and then draw back, because she might not touch him; they would go out again, as if they had a will of their own. Suddenly her knees gave way, and she sank to the floor, and covered her face with her hands, sobbing, sobbing.

They tried to comfort her, but she hardly knew they were there. She was along, in the dreadful corridors of grief. Bunny, watching her, felt hot tears stealing down his cheeks. It wasn’t natural for a girl to feel that way about a brother, Vee had said; but Bunny knew how it was—Ruth was back in those childhood days on the lonely hills of Paradise, when Paul had been her only friend, a refuge from a family of fanatics, with a father who beat her to make her think like him. Back there she had known that Paul was a great man, and had followed him all these years; she had watched his mind unfolding, and learned everything she knew from it—and now, to see it destroyed by a brute with a piece of iron pipe!

VII

It was long after midnight; and Rachel sought to draw Bunny away. There was nothing more they could do, either for Paul or his sister. There was a small hotel a few doors away, they would get a room there, and rest, and the hospital nurse would notify them if there were any change. And Bunny yielded: he must not be unfair to Rachel. He knew there was something unnatural about his own devotion to Paul, the subjection of his mind to everything that Paul thought, the exactness of his memory of everything Paul had said. Yes, Bertie had told him that, and then Vee—and now Rachel!

He could not sleep. So, lying a-bed in the hotel-room, he explained it to her; how Paul had come when Bunny was groping for something different and better in his life. Paul had given him an ideal—something stern and hard—self-sufficiency, independence of judgment, determination to face life and understand it, and not be drawn away in pursuit of money or pleasure. Bunny had not been able to follow that ideal—no, he had lived in luxury, and gone chasing after women; but he had had the vision, the longing to be like Paul.

And then, at each new crisis in his life, Paul would come along, a sort of standard by which Bunny could measure himself and what he was doing, and realize how little success he was having. Paul had taught him about the workers, and how they felt; Paul had been the incarnation of the new, awakening working-class. Paul’s mind had been a searchlight, illumining the world-situation, showing Bunny what he needed to know. Now the light was out, and Bunny would have to see by his own feeble lantern!

“Dear, he may get well,” Rachel whispered; but Bunny moaned, no, no, he was going to die. Like a jagged flash of lightning before his mind was that X-ray picture of the crack at the base of Paul’s skull. The light was out, at least from this world; a brute with a piece of iron pipe had extinguished it.

Rachel put her arms about him and sought to beguile him with caresses. And she succeeded, of course; he could not refuse her love. So presently he slept a little. But Rachel did not sleep, she lay holding him in her arms, because he would jump and start in his sleep, his limbs would quiver—just the way she felt when the great guns went off!

What was Bunny doing? Fighting those brutes with their clubs and hatchets and iron pipe? Or back in the old days, when he had hovered over Paul and Ruth, watching events that wrung his soul? Watching Dad deprive the family of their land; watching the oil operators crush the first strike; watching the government tear Paul away and make him into a strike-breaker for Wall Street bankers; watching Vernon Roscoe throw Paul into prison; watching capitalism with its world-wide system of terror drive Paul here and there, harry him, malign him, threaten him—until at last it hired the brute with the iron pipe!

VIII

Morning came, and they went back to the hospital room. Nothing was changed. Paul still lay, breathing hoarsely; and Ruth sat in a chair by the bedside, her eyes fixed upon him, her hands clasped tightly. She was whiter, that was all, and her lips were quivering, never still. The hospital nurse begged her to lie down and rest, but she shook her head. No, she was used to watching the sick; she was a nurse too. The other answered that all nurses slept when they could; but no, please—Ruth wanted to stay right here.

The surgeon came again. There was nothing he could do, time would have to tell. Bunny took him aside and asked what were the chances. Impossible to say. If Paul were going to get well, he would return to consciousness. If he were going to die, there might be a meningitis, or perhaps a blood clot on the brain.

Rachel said the family ought to be notified. So Bunny sent a telegram to Abel Watkins at Paradise, telling him to engage an auto and bring the family at Bunny’s expense. He debated whether it was his duty to telegraph Eli, and decided not to. Old Mr. Watkins might do it, but Bunny would be guided by what Paul would have wished. Then he got the morning papers, and read their exultant account of the night’s events: the reds had been taught a much-needed lesson, and law and order were safe at the harbor.

It was the morning of election day: the culmination of a campaign that had been like a long nightmare to Bunny. Senator LaFollette had been running, with the backing of the Socialists, and the great issue had been the oil steals; the indicted exposers of the crime against the criminals in power. At first the exposers had really made some headway, the people seemed to care. But the enemy was only waiting for the time to strike. In the last three weeks of the campaign he turned loose his reserves, and it was like a vast cloud of hornets, the sky black with a swarm of stinging, burning, poisoning lies!

It was the money of Vernon Roscoe and the oil men, of course: plus the money of the bankers and the power interests and the great protected manufacturers, all those who had something to gain by the purchase of government, or something to lose by failure to purchase. Another fifty million dollar campaign; and in every village and hamlet, in every precinct of every city and town, there was a committee for the distribution of terror. The great central factories where it was manufactured were in Washington and New York, and the product was shipped out wholesale, all over the land, and circulated by every agency—newspapers and leaflets, mass meetings, parades, bands, red fire and torchlights, the radio and the moving picture screen. If LaFollette, the red destroyer were elected, business would be smashed, the workers would be jobless; therefore vote for that strong silent statesman, that great, wise, noble-minded friend of the plain people known as “Cautious Cal.” And now, while Paul Watkins lay gasping out his life, there was a snowstorm of ballots falling over the land, nearly a thousand every second. The will of the plain people was being made known.

IX

It was a day like midsummer, and the windows of the hospital room were open. Next door, some twenty feet away, was an apartment house, and in the room directly across this space, by the open window, was one of the two hundred thousand radio sets which are in use in the state of California. The occupant of the apartment was one of those two hundred thousand housewives who are accustomed to perform their domestic duties to the tune of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” or else of “Flamin’ Mamie, Sure-fire Vamp.” There are a dozen broadcasting stations within range, and some are always going, and you can take your choice. This housewife had catholic tastes, and the watchers at Paul’s bedside were beguiled by snatches from the Aloha Hawaiian Quartette, and the Organ Recital of the First Methodist Church, and the Piggly Wiggly Girls’ Orchestra, and Radio QXJ reporting that a large vote was being cast in the East, and Radio VZW offering secondhand automobiles for sale, and an unidentified orator exhorting all citizens to hurry to the polls, and Miss Elvira Smithers, coloratura soprano, singing, “Ah loves you mah honey, yes Ah doo-oo-oo-oo.”

There came telephone calls from the Workers’ party, and from the wobblies at the harbor. And newspaper reporters, who politely listened to Bunny’s indignation at the raid, and made a few notes, but published nothing, of course. The newspapers of Angel City have a policy which any child can understand—they never print news which injures or offends any business interest.

A telephone call from Paradise; Meelie Watkins, now Mrs. Andy Bugner, calling. Her father and mother, with Sadie, had gone to attend a revival meeting. Meelie didn’t know just where it was, but would try to locate them. How was Paul? And when Bunny told her, she asked had they summoned Eli. Whether they believed in him or not, it was a fact that Eli was a great healer; he had cured all sorts of people, and surely should have a chance with his own brother! So Bunny sent a telegram to Eli at the Tabernacle, telling him of Paul’s condition; and two hours later a large and expensive limousine stopped at the hospital door.

Eli Watkins, Prophet of the Third Revelation, wore a cream white flannel suit, which made his tall figure conspicuous. He had adopted a pontifical air in these days of glory and power. He did not shake hands with you, but fixed you with a pair of large, prominent, bright blue eyes, and said, “The blessings of the Lord upon you.” And when he was in the presence of his brother, he stood gazing, but asking no questions; he was not interested in X-ray pictures of skulls, the Lord knew all that was needed. Finally he said, “I wish to be alone with my brother.” There was no evident reason for denying that request, so Bunny and Rachel and Ruth went out.

It didn’t make any difference to Ruth where she was—there was nothing to do but stare in front of her, with that terrible quivering of her lips, that wrung your heartstrings. A picture of dreadful grief! The doctor of the hospital begged her to drink a little milk, and the nurse brought a glass, and Ruth tasted, but she could not swallow it. There came a rush of tears to her eyes. You couldn’t talk to her, or do anything with her at all.

Eli went away without saying a word; the ways of the Lord being not always understandable by common mortals. There was no apparent change in Paul’s condition. Ruth went back to her vigil; but now the doctor gave an order, she must take a sleeping powder and lie down; he would not permit her to kill herself in his establishment. Being trained to take the orders of doctors, Ruth was led away, and Bunny and Rachel kept the vigil.

X

Night fell. The householder who occupied the apartment opposite their window came home and had his supper, and now, comfortable in his shirtsleeves, with pipe in mouth, he sat in a deep wicker chair in front of his radio set, and proceeded to explore the circumambient ether. So the watchers by Paul’s bedside got the news of the election without leaving their posts. Owing to difference in time, California gets returns from the east before it gets its own; but it was all the same this Tuesday evening, east and west, the fifty million dollar campaign fund had done its work, and wherever you listened, you learned that more voters had cast their ballots for the strong silent statesman than for all his opponents put together. And since that was the thing ardently desired by the broadcasting stations, and the great newspapers and churches and temples and tabernacles which own them, there was a tone of jocularity in the announcements, and after you had learned that Massachusetts was going three to one for her favorite son, you would hear the Six Jolly Jazz Boys proclaiming, “Got a hot little gal in a railroad town!”—or perhaps the Chicago Comet, chuckling, “My cutie’s due at two-to-two!” It made a cheerful atmosphere to die in; but unfortunately Paul wasn’t hearing it.

The Tabernacle of the Third Revelation on the air. Eli’s followers were not concerned with elections, being soon to wing their way to celestial regions which are conducted upon the monarchical principle. They opened with an organ recital, and the householder didn’t care for that, but preferred Radio VKZ, program sponsored by the Snow Baby Soap Company, introducing the first appearance in Angel City of the Pretty Pet Trio, singing their latest popular melody hit, “My Little Jazz-baby, Razz-baby Coon.” But later the householder tried the Tabernacle again, and there was the bellowing voice of Eli, that all California householders love. So Bunny and Rachel learned what had been the meaning of Eli’s visit.

“Brethren, the Lord has vouchsafed a wonderful proof of His mercy to me. Glorious tidings He gives to the world tonight! I have an older brother, the helpmate of my boyhood, Paul by name, and he was brought up in the fear of the Lord; the voice of the Most Highest was familiar to him on the lonely hills where we tended our father’s flocks together. Shepherd boys we were, sitting under the stars, awaiting a sign of the Lord’s mercy, and praying for the lost ones of this world to be saved from the devices of the great Tempter.

“Brethren, this brother grew up, and he strayed from the faith of his childhood, he fell into evil company, and became a scoffer at the Lord’s Word. The love of our Savior Jesus Christ was no longer in his heart, but hatred and strife and jealousy of those to whom the Lord has revealed His Truth. And, brethren, the ruin which this misguided brother sought to bring upon others has fallen upon his own head, and tonight he lies dying, struck down by the evil passions which he himself incited. It was my painful task to go to his bedside, and see him lying in a stupor.

“But oh my friends, who can foresee the Wisdom of the Lord? Who can understand His ways? It was His Will to answer my prayers, and permit my lost brother to open his eyes, and hear the voice of the Lord speaking by my lips, and to answer, and confess his transgressions, and repent, and be healed, and washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Glory hallelujah! Glory! Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall become as white as snow, blessed be the name of the Lord! Brethren, rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

All through this discourse you were aware of the murmur and stir of a great crowd. They would break into ejaculations at every pause in the prophet’s words; and now at the end they drowned him out with a chorus of rejoicing, “Glory! Glory, hallelujah!” And in the doorway of the hospital room stood Ruth Watkins, having awakened from her sleep. She was staring at Bunny with horrified eyes, and whispering, “Oh, what a lie!”

Yes, Bunny suspected that it was a lie; but he could not prove it; and even if he could, what then? The radio is a one-sided institution; you can listen, but you cannot answer back. In that lies its enormous usefulness to the capitalist system. The householder sits at home and takes what is handed to him, like an infant being fed through a tube. It is a basis upon which to build the greatest slave empire in history.

XI

The householder shifted his dial. The returns from California were beginning to come in. “Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Angel City, California.” The announcer had a soft, caressing voice, worth a thousand dollars a month to him; it had a little chuckle which caused the children to adore him—he went by the name of “Uncle Peter,” and told them bed-time stories. Now he was applying his humor to the returns. “Rosario, California. Hello! The home town of Bob Buckman, secretary to the Chamber of Commerce! Let’s see what Bob’s been doing! Rosario, 37 precincts out of 52 give LaFollette 117, Davis 86, Coolidge, 549. Well, well! If Bob Buckman is listening in on VXZ, congratulations from Uncle Peter—you’re a great little booster, Bob!”

And then, startling the watchers by the bedside—“Paradise, California. Now what do you think of that? The location of the Ross Junior oil field, owned by Bunny Ross, our parlor Bolshevik! Bunny’s the boy that bails out the political prisoners, as he calls them; he publishes a little paper to dye our college boys and girls pink. Let’s see what Little Bunny’s town has to say to him. Paradise, California, 14 precincts out of 29 give LaFollette 217, Davis 98, Coolidge 693. Well, well, Bunny—you’ve got some more boring from within to do!”

The householder shifted again. “Radio QXJ, the Angel City Evening Roarer, banjo solo by Bella Blue, the Witch of Wicheta.” Plunkety-plunkety—plunkety-plunkety—plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk!

Paul’s lips were beginning to move. There was a trace of sound, and Ruth bent close to him. “He’s coming back to life! Oh, call the doctor!” The hospital doctor came, and listened, and felt Paul’s pulse; but he shook his head. It was merely a question of what areas of the brain were affected; the speech areas might be uninjured. The sounds were incoherent, and the doctor said Paul didn’t know what he was saying. He might stay that way for days, even for a week or two.

But Ruth continued to listen, and try to catch a word. Paul might be there, somehow, trying to speak to her, to convey some request. She whispered, in an agony of longing, “Paul, Paul, are you trying to talk to me?” The sounds grew louder, and Rachel said, “It’s a foreign language.” Bunny said, “It must be Russian”—the only foreign language Paul knew. It was strange, like a corpse talking, or a wax doll; the sounds seemed to come from deep in his throat. “Da zdrávstvooyet Revolútziya!” over and over; and Bunny said, “That must mean revolution.” And then, “Vsya vlast Soviétam!”—that must have something to do with the Soviets!

For an hour that went on; until suddenly Ruth exclaimed, “Bunny, we ought to find out what he’s saying! Oh, surely we ought to—just think, if he’s asking for help!”

Rachel tried to argue with her; it was just a delirium. But Ruth became more excited—she didn’t want Rachel to interfere. Rachel had saved her man, and what did she know about suffering? “I want to know what Paul’s saying! Can’t we find somebody that knows Russian?” So Bunny got Gregor Nikolaieff on the phone, and asked him to jump on the car and come down here.

When Bunny returned to the room, Paul was talking louder than ever, but still moving only his lips. The Angel Jazz Choir were shouting, “Honey-baby, honey-baby, kiss me in the neck!” And Paul was saying again and again, “Nie troodyáshchiysia da nie yest!”

“Oh, Bunny,” pleaded Ruth. “We ought to write down what he says! He might stop—and never speak again!” Bunny understood—Ruth had been brought up to believe in revelations, in words of awful import spoken on special occasions, in strange languages or other unusual ways. The doctors might call it delirium, but how could they be sure? Things that were hidden from the wise were revealed to babes and sucklings. So Bunny got out his notebook and fountain-pen, and wrote down what Paul’s words sounded like, as near as he could guess. “Hliéba, mira, svobódy!” And when Gregor came in, an hour or so later, he was able to say this meant, “Bread, peace, freedom,” the slogan of the Bolsheviks when they took possession of Russia: and “Dayesh positziyu!”—that was a war-cry of the red army, commanding the enemy to give up the position. The other things Paul had been saying were phrases of the revolution, that he had heard first in Siberia, and then in Moscow. No, Paul was not trying to talk to his sister; he was telling the young workers of America what the young workers of Russia were doing!

XII

“Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Winitsky’s orchestra, in the main dining-room of the Admiralty Hotel, broadcasting by remote control.” And then presently “Radio QXJ, the Evening Roarer,” giving election returns—big figures now. “Republican Campaign Headquarters in New York, in a bulletin issued at 1 A.M., estimates that Calvin Coolidge has carried Massachusetts by 400,000 plurality—hooray for the Old Bay State! And New York by 900,000—three cheers for the Empire State—ray, ray, ray! And Illinois by—wait a minute there, somebody’s knocked my glasses off—they’re pulling the rough stuff in this studio. Behave yourselves, girls, don’t you know the world’s listening in on QXJ tonight? Illinois by 900,000. Whoopee! That noise you hear is the Chicago Comet yelping for his home state! It’s time we heard the Chicago Comet again—sing us a hot one, Teddy—that little warble about the street car comin’ along. You know what I mean?” A broad, jolly Negro voice answered, “Yessah, Ah knows! Yessah, hyar Ah goes!” Plunkety-plunk—

Six or seven years ago the people of the United States in their sovereign wisdom had passed a law forbidding the sale of alcoholic liquor for beverage purposes. But the advocates of law and order reserve to themselves the privilege of deciding which laws they will obey, and the prohibition act is not among them. All ruling class America celebrates its political victories by getting drunk. Bunny knew how it was, having got drunk himself four years ago when President Harding had been elected; he could smile appreciatively when the announcer of QXJ tripped over his syllables—“Thass not polite now, Polly, quit your shovin’ this micro-hiccrophone!”

The householder next door was a workingman, or clerk, or such humble being, denied the royal privilege of breaking the law at ten dollars a quart for gin and thirty for champagne. But he could sit here till after midnight, and turn from one studio to another, and enjoy a series of vicarious jags. “Radio VXZ, the main dining-room of the Admiralty Hotel.” A chanteuse from the Grand Guignol in Paris was singing a ballad, and you could hear the laughter of those who understood the obscenity, and those who pretended to understand it, and those who were too drunk to understand anything but how to laugh. Bunny was there in his mind, because it was in this dining-room that he had been drunk, and Dad had been drunk, and Vee Tracy and Annabelle Ames and Vernon Roscoe—and Harvey Manning sound asleep in his chair, and Tommy Paley trying to climb onto the table, and having to be kept from fighting the waiters. There were three hundred tables in that hall, all reserved a month in advance, and all with occupants in the same condition; the tables stacked with hip-pocket flasks and bottles, strewn with the ashes of cigarettes, the stains of spilled foods, flowers and confetti, and little rolls of tissue-paper tape thrown from one table to another, covering the room with a spider’s web of bright colors; toy balloons tossing here and there; music, a riot of singing and shouting, and men sprawling over half naked women, old and young, flappers, and mothers and grandmothers of flappers.

There would be election returns read, more of those triumphant, glorious majorities for the strong silent statesman; and a magnate who knew that this victory meant several million dollars off his income taxes, or an oil concession in Mesopotamia or Venezuela won by American bribes and held by American battleships—such a man would let out a whoop, and get up in the middle of the floor and show how he used to dance the double shuffle when he was a farm-hand; and then he would fall into the lap of his mistress with a million dollars worth of diamonds on her naked flesh, and the singer from a famous haunt of the sexual perverts of Berlin would perform the latest jazz success, and the oil-magnate and his mistress would warble the chorus:

XIII

Paul moved one hand: and again Ruth cried in excitement—he was coming back to life! But the nurse said that meant nothing, the doctors had said he might move. They must not let him move his head. She took his temperature, but told them nothing.

Paul’s hands were straying over the sheet that covered him; aimlessly, here and there, as if he were picking at insects on the bed. His voice rose louder—Russian, always Russian, and Gregor would tell what the words meant. They were in the red square, and saw the armies marching, and heard the working masses shouting their slogans: they were on the playing fields with the young workers; they were in Siberia, with Mandel playing the balalaika, and having his eyes eaten out by ants. “Da zdrávstvooyet Revolútziya!”—that meant “Long live Revolution!” “Vsya vlast Soviétam!—All power to the Soviets!”

And from there they would be swept to the ballroom of the Emperor Hotel, Angel City, Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot broadcasting by direct control. Or was it to the heart of the Congo, where the naked savages danced to the music of the tomtom, their black bodies, smeared with palm oil, shining in the light of blazing fires? For a hundred centuries these savages had paddled the river, and never to the mind of one of them had come the thought of an engine; they had stood on the shores of mighty lakes, and never dreamed a sail. The weight of nature’s blind fecundity rested upon them, stifling their minds. And now capitalist civilization, rushing to destruction with the speed of its fastest battle-planes, cast about to find a form of expression for its irresistible will to degeneracy, and chose the tomtom of the Congo for its music, and the belly-dances of the Congo for its exercise, and so here was America, Land of Jazz.

A voice from the megaphone, raucous, shrill, and mocking:

And Bunny was in that great “Emperor” ball-room, where he had danced so many a night, first with Eunice Hoyt and then with Vee Tracy. All his friends would be there tonight—Verne and Annabelle and Fred Orpan and Thelma Norman and Mrs. Pete O’Reilly and Mark Eisenberg—the cream of the plutocracy, celebrating their greatest triumph to date. There would be American flags and streamers on the walls, and some would wave little flags—a great patriotic occasion—nothing like it since the Armistice—ray for Coolidge, keep cool with Cal! The room would be crowded to suffocation, and by this hour nine-tenths of the dancers would be staggering. Large-waisted financiers with crumpled shirt-fronts, hugging stout wives or slender mistresses, with naked backs and half-naked bosoms hung with diamonds and pearls, red paint plastered on their lips and platinum bangles in their ears, shuffling round and round to the thump of the tomtom, the wail of the saxophone, the rattle and clatter of sticks, the banging of bells and snarl of stopped trumpets. “She does the camel-walk!” shrilled the singer; and the hip and buttock muscles of the large-waisted financier would be alternately contracted and relaxed, and his feet dragged about the floor in the incoordinate reactions of the loco-motor ataxia and spastic paraplegia.

XIV

Paul had begun to thresh his arms about: it was necessary to hold him, and when they tried it, he began to fight back. Did he think the strike-guards at Paradise had seized him? Or was it the jailors at San Elido? Or the Federal secret service agents? Or the French gendarmes? Or the sailors of the fleet? Or the thugs with hatchets and iron pipe? He fought with maniacal fury, and there was Bunny, holding down one arm and Gregor the other, with Ruth and Rachel each clinging to one foot, while the nurse came running with a straight jacket. So with much labor they tied him fast. He would make terrific efforts; his face would turn purple, and the cords would stand out in his neck; but the system had got him, he could not escape.

Meantime, through the open window, Radio VXZ, the main dining-room of the Admiralty Hotel; a blended sound of many hundreds of people, shouting, singing, cheering, now and then smashing a plate, or pounding on the table. Some one was making a speech to the assembly, but he was so drunk he could hardly talk, and they were so drunk they could not have understood anyhow. One got snatches—“glorish victry—greatesh country—soun instooshns—greatesh man ever in White Housh—Cautioush Cal—ray for Coolidge!” A storm of cheers, yells, laughter—and the voice of the announcer, drunk also: “Baby Belle, hottes’ lill babe, sing us hot one, right off griddle. Go to it, Baby, I’ll hold you!”

Yes, the announcer was drunk, the very radio was drunk, the instruments would not send the wave-lengths true, the ether could not carry them straight, they wavered and wiggled; the laws of the physical universe had gone staggering, God was drunk on His Throne, so pleased by the election of the greatesh man ever in White Housh. Bunny, dazed with exhaustion, saw the scene through a blur of sound and motion, the shining mouths of trumpets, the waving of flags, the flashing of electric signs, the cavorting of satyrs, the prancing of savages, the jiggling of financiers and their mistresses simulating copulation. Baby Belle was unsteady before the microphone, you lost parts of her song at each stagger; but snatches came, portraying the nymphomania of “Flamin’ Mamie, sure-fire vamp—hottes’ baby in the town—some scorcher—love’s torture—gal that burns ’em down!”

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” cried Ruth. “He’s trying to speak to me!” And so for an instant it seemed. Paul’s one eye had come open, wild and frightful; he lifted his head, he made a choking noise—

“Comes to lovin’—she’s an oven!” shrilled the radio voice.

“Paul! What is it?” shrieked Ruth.

“Ain’t it funny—paper money burns right in her hand!”

Paul sank back, he gave up, and Ruth, her two hands clasped as if praying to him, seemed to follow with her soul into that faraway place where he was going.

“Flamin’ Mamie, workin’ in a mine, ate a box o’ matches at the age o’ nine!”

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” Ruth put her hand over Paul’s heart, and then started up with a scream.

“Flamin’ Mamie, sure-fire vamp,” reiterated the chorus, “hottes’ baby in the town!”

And Ruth rushed to the window, and threw herself—no, not out, because Bunny had been too quick for her; the others helped to hold her, and the nurse came running with a hypodermic needle, and in a few minutes she was lying on a cot at the side of the room, looking as dead as her brother.

And the householder turned to Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot broadcasting from its own studio. “Latest bulletin from New York, the Republican Central Committee claims that Calvin Coolidge will have the greatest plurality ever cast in American history, close to eighteen million votes. Good-night, friends of Radioland.”

XV

The Communists wanted to have a “Red funeral,” to make a piece of propaganda out of Paul’s death. But Eli interposed his majestic authority; since Paul had repented his evil ways and come back to Jesus, he should be buried according to the rites of the Third Revelation.

So three days later a little pageant wound its way to the top of one of the hills of Paradise. There was a crowd on hand, and a truck with the necessary radio apparatus—never were any of the precious words of Eli lost nowadays; the two hundred thousand radio housewives of California had been notified by the newspapers, and a hundred and ninety thousand of them had put off their marketing to hear this romantic funeral service. Bunny and Rachel and a handful of the reds stood to one side, knowing they were not welcome. Ruth stood near the grave with the weeping family, having on each side of her a sturdy oil worker—her two brothers-in-law, Andy Bugner and Jerry Black—because she had been violent on occasions, and no one knew what she might do. She was white and fearful in looks, but seemed not to realize the meaning of the big hole dug in the ground, or of the long black box covered with flowers. While Eli was preaching his fervid sermon about the prodigal son who returned, and about the strayed lamb which was found, Ruth stood gazing at the white clouds moving slowly behind the distant hill-tops.

She would make them no more trouble. All she wanted was to wander over these hills, and call now and then for the sheep which were no longer there. Sometimes she called Paul, and sometimes she called Bunny, and so they let her wander; until one day she went calling Joe Gundha. The oil workers who were putting up the new derricks and cleaning out the burned wells to put them back on production were new men to the Ross Junior tract—it is the Roscoe Junior tract now, by the way, one of Vernon Roscoe’s four sons being in charge of the job. These new men had never heard about the “roughneck” who had fallen into the discovery well, so they paid no attention to the unhappy girl who wandered here and there calling his name.

It was not till late that night, when Ruth was missing, and the family making a search, that some one told of hearing her call Joe Gundha. Meelie remembered right away, and they put down a hook in the discovery well, which was having to be drilled again, and they brought up a piece of Ruth’s dress; so they put down a three-pronged grab, and brought up the rest of her, and Eli came again, and they buried her alongside Paul, and with Joe Gundha not far away.

You can see those graves, with a picket fence about them, and no derrick for a hundred feet or more. Some day all those unlovely derricks will be gone, and so will the picket fence and the graves. There will be other girls with bare brown legs running over those hills, and they may grow up to be happier women, if men can find some way to chain the black and cruel demon which killed Ruth Watkins and her brother—yes, and Dad also: an evil Power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor.

THE END