THE WAR
I
Eunice Hoyt was the daughter of “Tommy” Hoyt, of Hoyt and Brainerd,
whose advertisements of investment securities you saw on the financial
pages of the Beach City newspapers. Tommy you saw at racing meets and
boxing events, and generally you noticed that he had with him a new
lady, highly and artificially colored; sometimes she wore a veil, and
you kept tactfully out of the way, understanding that Tommy was “playing
the woman game.” Mrs. Tommy you saw pictured among “the distinguished
hostesses of the week”; she went in for art, and there would be a
soulful young man about the house. The servants understood the
situation, and so did Eunice.
She was dark and slender, a quick and impatient little thing, with an
abundance of what was currently known as “pep.” She was in two of
Bunny’s classes, and discovering that he was a serious youngster, she
worried him by saying sharp and cutting things, that he was never sure
whether she meant or not; he dared not ask, because then she would tease
him worse than ever. There were always half a dozen fellows following
her about, so it was easy to keep out of the way.
But one Saturday afternoon Bunny won the 220-yard run for the school
team, and that made him a bit of a hero, and boys and girls swarmed
about him, cheering and patting him on the back. Then, after he had had
his shower and was dressed, he went out in search of his car, and there
was Eunice just getting into her roadster, and she said, “Let me take
you.” He answered, “I’ve got my own car here,” and she exclaimed, “Why,
you horrid rude thing! Get into this car at once, sir!” So of course he
did, a little rattled. When she said, “Are you afraid somebody will
steal that cheap old car of yours?”—was it up to him to defend the
newness and expensiveness of Dad’s latest gift?
“Bunny,” she said, “my mother and father are having a row at home, and
it’s horrid there.”
“Well, what do you want to do?” said he, sympathetically.
“Let’s go somewhere and have supper—away from everything. You come, and
it’ll be my party.”
So they drove for an hour or so, and climbed by a winding road to the
top of a hill, and there was a café, with a terrace looking out over a
bay and a rocky shore-line that would have been famous if it had been in
Italy. They ate supper, and chatted about school affairs, and Eunice
told him about her home-life and how some one had written her mother a
letter revealing that her father had paid a lot of money to some woman,
and Mrs. Hoyt was furious, because why should men do things that made it
necessary for them to pay money?
The sun set over the ocean, and the lights came out along the shore, and
a big full moon behind the hills; and Eunice said, “Do you like me a
little bit, Bunny?” He answered that of course he did, and she said,
“But you don’t show it ever.” “Well,” he explained, “I never know quite
what to make of you, because you always kid me;” and to that she said,
“I know, Bunny, I’m a horrid mean thing, but the truth is, I just do
that to keep my courage up. I’m afraid of you, too, because you’re
serious, and I’m just a silly chatterbox, and I have to make a show.” So
after that Bunny was able to enjoy the party.
They got into the car and drove again. The road ran through a tangle of
sand-dunes, high up above the ocean. “Oh, this is lovely!” said Eunice,
and when they came to a place where the ground was firm she ran the car
off the pavement and parked it. “Let’s go and watch the ocean,” she
said. “There’s a rug in the back.” So Bunny got the rug out, and they
walked over the dunes, and sat on top of one, and listened to the waves
below; and Eunice smoked a cigarette, and scolded Bunny because he was a
horrid little Puritan that wouldn’t keep her company. Presently a man
came walking by, and glanced at them as he passed, and Eunice said,
“Have you got a gun?” And when he said that he hadn’t, she remarked,
“You’re supposed to bring a gun nowadays when you go on a petting
party.” Bunny had not realized that this was exactly a petting party,
but you can see that it would not have been polite of him to say so.
He listened while she told him about bandits who were making a business
of holding up couples parked by the roadside; some were beastly to the
girls, and what would Bunny do if one of them were suddenly to appear?
Bunny said he didn’t know, but of course he’d defend a woman the best he
could. “But I don’t want you to get shot,” said Eunice. “We’ve a scandal
already in our family.” So she said, “Let’s get lost, Bunny;” and he
gathered up the rug and they wandered over the dunes—a long way from
the road and from everything; and in one of the hollows, a still nest
where the sand was soft and smooth, she told him to spread the rug
again, and there they sat, hid from everything save the round yellow
moon, which has looked down upon millions and millions of such scenes,
and never yet betrayed a confidence.
They sat close together, and Eunice rested her head against Bunny’s
shoulder and whispered, “Do you care for me a little bit?” He assured
her that he did, but she said, no, he must think she was a horrid bold
thing; and when he declared that he didn’t, she said, “Then why don’t
you kiss me?” He began to kiss her, but she wasn’t satisfied—he didn’t
mean it, she said; and suddenly she whispered, “Bunny, I don’t believe
you’ve ever really loved a girl before!”
He admitted that he had not. “I’ve always known you were a queer boy,”
she said. “What is the matter?” Bunny said he didn’t quite know; he was
trembling violently, because he had never had anything like this happen
to him, and several different emotions clamored at the same time, and
which one should he follow? “Let me teach you, Bunny,” whispered the
girl; and when he did not answer at once, she put her lips upon his, in
a long kiss that made him dizzy. He murmured faintly that something
might happen, she might get into trouble; but she told him not to worry
about that, she knew about those things and had taken the needed
precautions.
II
Such was the way of Bunny’s initiation into the adult life. Gone were
the days of happy innocence when he could be content to sit holding
hands with Rosie Taintor. “Holding hands” was now walking on a slippery
ledge, over a dark abyss where pleasure and pain were so mingled you
could hardly tell them apart. Bunny was frightened by the storm of
emotion which seized upon him, and still more by the behavior of the
girl in his arms; a kind of frenzy shook her, she clung to him in a
convulsion of excitement, half sobbing, half laughing, with little cries
as of an animal in pain. And Bunny must share this delirium, she would
not have it otherwise, she was furious in her exactions, the mistress of
these dark rites, and he must obey her will. The first time, the boy was
overwhelmed by the realization of what he had done, but she clung to
him, whispering, “Oh, Bunny don’t be ashamed! No, no! I won’t let you be
ashamed! Why haven’t we got a right to be happy? Oh, please, please, be
happy!” So he had to promise, and do his best.
“Oh, Bunny, you are such a sweet lover! And we are going to have such
good times.” This was her crooning song, wrapped in his arms, there
under the springtime moon, which is the same in California as everywhere
else in the world. And when the chill of the California night began to
creep into their bones, they could hardly tear themselves apart, but all
the way over the dunes they walked arm in arm, kissing as they went.
“Oh, Bunny, it was bold and bad of me, but tell me you forgive me, tell
me you’re glad I did it!” It appeared to be his duty to comfort her.
Driving back to Beach City they talked about this adventure. Bunny
hadn’t thought much about sex, he had no philosophy ready at hand, but
Eunice had hers, and told it to him simply and frankly. The old people
taught you a lot of rubbish about it, and then they sneaked off and
lived differently, and why should you let yourself be fooled by silly
“don’ts”? Love was all right if you were decent about it, and when you
had found out that you didn’t have to have any babies, why must you
bother to get married? Most married people were miserable anyhow, and if
the young people could find a way to be happy, it was up to them, and
what the old folks didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
Did Bunny see anything wrong with that? Bunny answered that he didn’t;
the reason he had been “such an old prude,” was just that he hadn’t got
to know Eunice. She said that men were supposed not to care for a girl
who made advances to them; therefore, she added with her flash of
mischief, it would be up to Bunny to make some of the advances from now
on. He said he would do so, and would have started at once, only Eunice
was driving at forty-some miles an hour, and it would be better to hurt
her feelings than to upset the car.
Were there other girls like Eunice, Bunny wanted to know, and she said
there were plenty, and named a few, and Bunny was surprised and a little
shocked, because some of them were prominent in class affairs, and
decorous-seeming. Eunice told him about their ways, and it was a good
deal like a secret society, without any officers or formal ritual, but
with a strict code none the less. They called themselves “the Zulus,”
these bold spirits who had dared to do as they pleased; they kept one
another’s secrets faithfully, and helped the younger ones to that
knowledge which was so essential to happiness. The old guarded this
knowledge jealously—how to keep from having babies, and what to do if
you got “caught.” There was a secret lore about the art of love, and
books that you bought in certain stores, or found stowed away behind
other books in your father’s den. Such volumes would be passed about and
read by scores.
It was a new ethical code that these young people were making for
themselves, without any help from their parents. Eunice did not know, of
course, that she was doing anything so imposing as that; she just talked
about her feelings, and what she liked and what she feared. Was it right
to love this way or that? And what did Bunny think about the possibility
of loving two girls at the same time? Claire Reynolds said you couldn’t,
but Billy Rosen said you could, and they were wrangling all the time.
But Mary Blake got along quite happily with two boys who loved her and
had agreed not to be jealous.—This was a new world into which Bunny was
being introduced, and he asked a lot of questions, and could not help
blushing at some of Eunice’s matter-of-fact replies.
Bunny crept into the house at two o’clock in the morning, and no member
of the family was the wiser. But he was equally as late the next night,
and the next—had he not promised Eunice to “make the advances”? So of
course the family realized that something was up, and it was interesting
to see their reactions. Aunt Emma and Grandma were in a terrible
“state,”: but they could not say why—such was the handicap the old
generation imposed upon themselves. They both went to Dad, but could
only talk about late hours and their effect on a boy’s health. And Dad
himself could not do much more. When Bunny said that he had been taking
Eunice Hoyt driving, Dad asked about her, was she a “nice” girl? Bunny
answered that she was the treasurer of the girls’ basket-ball team, and
her father was Mr. Hoyt, whom Dad knew, and she had her own car and had
even tried to pay for the supper. So there could be no idea that Bunny
was being “vamped,” and all Dad said was “Take it easy, son, don’t try
to live your whole life in a couple of weeks.”
Also there was Bunny’s sister, and that was curious. Had some
underground message come to Bertie, through connections with the
“Zulus”? All that she said was, “I’m glad you’ve consented to take an
interest in something beside oil and strikers for a change.” But behind
that sentence lay such an ocean of calm feminine knowledge! Bunny was
started upon a new train of thought. Could it be that late hours meant
the same thing for his sister that they had suddenly come to mean for
him? Bertie was supposed to be dancing; and did she always come directly
home, or did she also park by the waysides? Bunny had got over being
shocked by the parking of Eunice’s car, but it took him longer to get
used to the idea of the parking of his sister’s car. He began to notice,
as he drove along the highways in the evening—what a great number of
parked cars there were!
III
All this was near the end of the strike; and also it was while America
was going to war. So the excitements of sex were mingled in Bunny’s mind
with those of patriotism. The two were not so far apart as you might
think, for the youth of the country was preparing to march away to
battle, and that loosened sexual standards. You might not come back, so
it made less difference what you did in the meantime. The girls found
their hearts softened toward the boys, and the boys were ready to snatch
a bit of pleasure before it was too late.
Bunny was too young for the first draft, but he went to drilling at
school, which cast the military halo about him. There was a high school
corps, provided with old rifles of the state militia, and the
athletic-ield was covered with groups of lads marching, “Hep, hep! Hep,
hep! Squad right! Squad left!”—treading on one another’s toes, but
keeping the grim look on their young faces. Soon they would have
uniforms, and so would the girls of the nurses’ training corps. Boys and
girls met in school assembly and sang patriotic songs with fervor.
Yes, it was war! Whole fleets of cargo vessels were taking supplies to
England and France, and brigades of engineers and laborers to prepare
the way for the army. The President was making speeches—wonderful,
glowing, eloquent speeches. There was a race of evil men, the Huns, who
had risen up to threaten civilization, and now the might of democratic
America was going to put them down. When this job had been done, there
would be an end to all the world’s troubles; so the duty of every
patriot was to take his part in this last of all wars—the War to end
War—the War for Democracy. Statesmen big and little took up the chorus,
the newspapers echoed it a million copies every hour, and a host of
“four minute men” were trained, to go into factories and theatres, and
wherever crowds were gathered, to rouse America for this crusade.
The Ross family, like all other families, read, and listened, and
argued. Bunny, the young idealist, swallowed every word of the
propaganda; it was exactly what he wanted to believe, his kind of mental
food. He would argue with his cool, slow-moving, quietly dubious father.
Yes, of course, Dad would say, we had to win the war; we had to win any
war we got into. But as to the future, well, it would be time to decide
about that when we came to it. First, Dad was occupied with getting the
strike settled, and after that, with selling oil on a constantly rising
market. There was no sense giving it away, because the government wanted
more wells drilled, and how were they to be financed, unless the product
was paid for? The government was paying generously, and that was
patriotism enough for Dad; he would see to the spouting of his wells,
and leave the other kinds of spouting to the politicians.
Aunt Emma considered that a shameful way to talk to a boy, and she
scolded vigorously, according to the privilege of “in-laws.” Aunt Emma
would go to the clubs and listen to the patriotic lady-orators, telling
about Belgian babies with their hands cut off, and munition depots blown
up by German spies, and she would come home in a blaze of militarism.
Bertie was even worse, for her young man who took her to the
jazz-parties was active in one of the defense societies, and knew the
names of all the German agents in Southern California, and the
villainies they were planning; so Bertie was full of dark hints, and a
sense of awful responsibility.
You could never tell how this war excitement was going to hit any one
person. For example, could you have imagined that a perfectly
respectable old lady of way over seventy, brought up on a ranch, and
supposed to be wrapped up in painting in oils, would suddenly blossom
out as a Hun sympathizer? Such was Grandma, who declared that she had no
use whatsoever for this war; the Germans were no worse than any of the
other people concerned, they were all stained with blood, and all there
was to the atrocity stories and spy rubbish was to make people hate the
enemy. But Grandma wasn’t going to hate anybody, no matter how much Emma
and Bertie and the rest might rage; she proceeded to show her defiance
by painting a picture of some Germans in old-time costumes drinking beer
out of painted steins. She wanted to hang this in the dining-room, and
there was a great row, with Aunt Emma and Bertie trying to persuade Dad
to forbid it!
All this was part of Bunny’s education; he listened and learned. From
his quiet, steady old father he learned to smile amiably over the
foibles of human nature, and to go on gathering in the dollars. Talk was
all right, but after all, what was going to win the war was bullets and
shells, and to get them to the battle-field you had to have
transportation. The oil that Dad brought up out of the ground was
driving big trucks that were carrying munitions up to the front; it was
moving the biggest and fastest cargo-ships, and the swift destroyers
that were protecting them; it was lubricating the machinery in the
factories, and more and more was being called for. As soon as the strike
was over, Dad proceeded to sign contracts with the government, and to
put down a dozen new wells in the Paradise field. The one thing that was
troubling him was that he could not make three times as many contracts
and put down three times as many wells; the big fellows, who controlled
the banks, would not let him have enough money—at least not unless he
would go in with them and let them hog most of the profits. That was a
different kind of war, one going on right at home, and there was no
prospect of it’s being ended by presidential speeches. Dad would explain
that to Bunny, as a reason for the limitations in the “idealism” of a
business man!
IV
Up at Paradise things were booming. All the men were back at work—even
the blacklisted ones, at a dollar a day more and with another raise
promised; a good driller was worth just about his weight in gold. Here
too came the “four minute men,” and were listened to gladly; the oil
workers were patriotic, and would have enlisted to a man, but they were
needed on this job—there was nothing more important than oil, and the
way for them to serve their country was to keep the stuff flowing, and
watch out for fires, and for obstructions dropped into the wells, and
other acts of vandalism by enemy agents.
Paul was back as Dad’s boss builder. But then came the first draft, and
Paul had one of the lucky numbers. Dad offered to get him exempted, for
obviously there had to be shacks to house the men who were to drill and
operate the new wells. Dad had power to arrange matters—you can
understand that, when you learn that the chairman of the exemption board
was Mr. Carey, the rancher who had accepted money from Dad to get the
road built for the drilling. But Paul said no, there were married men
with families who knew as much about building houses as he did, so Paul
would do his share in the field.
Paul and Bunny were friends again, and had no end of arguments. Paul
wasn’t nearly as keen for the war as Bunny thought he ought to be; he
agreed that we had to win, since we were in, but he wasn’t sure it was
necessary for us to be in, so Bunny had to retell the arguments he heard
from the orators at school. That made lively times at the Rascum
cabin—because, strange as it may seem, Ruth was taking exactly the same
attitude to the war as Grandma, whom Ruth had never met. Ruth declared
that all wars were wicked, and she would never have anything to do with
one. But of course you could see what she really meant, she didn’t want
Paul taken away and killed! When Paul read his number in the first
draft-list, Ruth became quite frantic, and there was nothing that would
pacify her. She clung to Paul, vowing he should not go, she would die of
grief if he did; when she realized that he was actually going, she went
about her work, pale and silent.
Paul went away to a training-camp, and after that paleness and silence
became the dominant notes of Ruth’s character. She went back to her
father’s home to stay at night, which meant that on Sunday’s she had to
go to church with them, and sit and bite her lips while Eli preached.
For Eli was a prophet after the old testament model, calling down
judgment upon the enemies of the Lord, smiting them hip and thigh,
leaving not one alive, not even the little ones, the “spawns of the
devil.” Eli, being a preacher, did not have to do this killing himself;
he was exempt, and so was his sister Meelie, who solved the war problem
for herself by marrying a young derrick man and getting Dad to make him
a foreman and have him kept at home. Meelie, who was a chatterbox and a
fresh young thing, said to Bunny that Ruth ought to find herself a
husband instead of mourning over Paul; maybe the day would come when
Bunny would want to be exempted, and they might both solve the problem
at the same time!
V
That was a feverish summer in Bunny’s life, between the war and his
raptures with Eunice. He spent a great deal of time at Beach City,
because he had the excuse of the military work, and because the girl was
so imperious in her demands. Indeed, the first rift in their happiness
came because he would persist in paying visits to Paradise, where Eunice
could not very well come. She took up Bertie’s phrase that Bunny was a
“little oil gnome.” “What do you want with so much money?” she would
argue. “My God, let me get some from Papa, if you need it!” Tommy Hoyt,
it seems, had made a huge killing, buying old hulks down at the harbor
just before the country entered the war; it was reported he had cleared
a cool three million. There had been a lot about it in the papers—all
very complimentary, since that was everybody’s dream of glory.
How could Bunny explain that it wasn’t the money, but the fact that the
country had to have oil, and he wanted to do his share; what kind of
preternatural solemnity was that for a youth of eighteen? He put the
blame on Dad, who wasn’t very well and needed his son; and so it became
an issue, which did Bunny care for most, his Dad or his sweetheart?
Eunice would grab him by the shoulders and shake him; she had to have
some one to take her to a dance, and if he went off and buried himself
in the desert, she would get another fellow.
She was insatiable, ravenous for pleasure; she never knew when to stop,
whatever it might be. “One dance more! Just one!” she would plead; and
then it would be one kiss more, or one drink. She was always pleading
with Bunny to drink, and having her feelings hurt because he refused.
How could he count his promise to his father more than his promise to be
her pal? And how could she take him out with her crowd if he played the
part of a skeleton at a feast?
Not for long was she content to lose themselves in the sand-dunes, and
share their secret with the moon. Eunice loved the bright lights, the
free and conspicuous spending of Papa’s sudden wealth. They would drive
to Angel City, where in fashionable hotels were palatial dining-rooms,
with jazz-orchestras, and crowds of revellers, celebrating new contracts
and new financial coups. The rooms were decorated with the flags of all
the allies, and the men wore the uniforms of all the services. This was
what the war meant to Eunice, to be in this shining company, and stand
up while the orchestra played the “Star-spangled Banner,” and after that
to dance all night while it played, “Kiss me, honey-baby,” or
“Toodle-ums too,” or whatever amorous cajolement the saxophone might
present. She was an aggressive little dancer, clinging to her partner,
her body fitted into his as if it had been moulded there. Bunny would
not have thought it quite decent to behave like that in public, but it
was the mood of the time, and no one paid any attention to them,
especially after the hours had passed and the drinks had taken effect.
There was always the problem of getting Eunice away from these
excitements. She never wanted to go, not even when she was exhausted; he
would half carry her out, and she would fall asleep on his shoulder on
the way home, and it was all he could do to keep from falling asleep
himself. There was a boy in their crowd who would carry a broken nose
about for the rest of his life, because he had dozed at the
steering-wheel on a crowded boulevard; another had spent ten days in
jail because, after a smash-up, the police had smelled liquor on his
breath. It was the etiquette of parties that the man who had to drive
must drink only gin—not because that would not make him drunk, but
because it left no odor on his breath!
The time came when Eunice decided that it was silly to take that long
drive to Beach City after dancing. She found a hotel where you could
register as Mr. and Mrs. Smith of San Francisco and no one would ask any
questions; you paid in advance, because of your lack of baggage, and in
the morning you slipped out separately, and no one was the wiser. You
told the folks at home that you had spent the night with a friend, and
they did not pursue the matter—being afraid of what they might find
out.
All this made a great difference in Bunny’s life, and before long it
began to show in his appearance; he was not quite so rosy, and Dad took
notice, and was no longer embarrassed to speak. “You’re making a fool of
yourself, son; these late hours have got to stop.” So Bunny would try to
get out of going to some dance, and Eunice would fly into his arms, and
sob, and cling to him, moulding her body into his in that terrible,
breath-taking way she had; all Bunny’s senses would be filled with her,
the delicate perfume she used, the feeling of the filmy stuffs she wore,
her tumbled hair, her burning, swift, persistent kisses. He would have
to stand and argue and plead, trying to keep his reason while his head
went round.
Sometimes there would be embarrassment mingled with his other emotions,
because these scenes took place in the drawing-room of the Hoyt home,
with either of the parents present. But what could they do? They had
raised this wild young creature, giving her everything in the world,
half a dozen servants to wait on her, to answer her every whim. She had
always had what she wanted, and now she wanted her lover, and all that
poor Mrs. Hoyt could say was, “Don’t be hard-hearted, Bunny”—really
seeming to blame him for these tantrums in her presence! As for poor
“Tommy,” when he happened in on a tantrum, there came a frightened look
on his rosy, rather boyish face, and he turned and skedaddled. He had
troubles enough of his own making, and the next time he met Bunny, he
set forth his point of view in one pregnant sentence, “There’s no such
thing as a normal woman in the world!”
VI
Just before school opened, Bunny took the bit in his teeth and went to
Paradise to spend a week with Dad, and found that Paul was there on a
three day’s furlough. Paul was not going to get overseas, it appeared;
the army had put him to work at his old job—building barracks—only
now, instead of ten dollars a day he was getting thirty a month “and
beans.” That was what it meant for a workingman to be patriotic! It was
quite a contrast with Tommy Hoyt’s three millions, and the hundred and
twenty thousand a week of Dad’s oil-contracts! But nobody thought about
that, because of the eloquence of the President’s speeches, and the
concentrated ardor of the four minute orators.
Paul looked big and strong in his khaki uniform; and Ruth was happy,
because Paul wasn’t going to be killed. Meelie was happy, because there
was a baby on the way, and Sadie because there was a young rancher
“keeping company” with her. Dad was happy, because he had brought in
another gusher, and proved up a whole new slope of the Paradise tract;
he was putting in pipe-lines and preparing a colossal development—the
bankers couldn’t keep him down, he would finance himself with oil!
Everybody was happy except Bunny, who could think of nothing but the
fact that Eunice was angry, and he was risking the loss of her. She had
warned him, she would not be left alone; if he deserted her, she would
punish him. He knew that she meant it; she had had lovers before him,
and would have others after him. This “petting” was a daily necessity
for her, and a girl could not get it unless she was willing to “go the
limit.” That was the etiquette prevailing in this smart and dashing
crowd; the rich high school youths would go out hunting in pairs in
their fancy sport-cars, and would pick up girls and drive them, and if
the girls did not play the game according to their taste, they would
turn them out on the road, anywhere, a score of miles from a town. There
was formula, short and snappy, “Pet or walk!”
Bunny took long tramps, trying to shake off his cruel fever. He would
come back to sleep, but instead he would think about Eunice, and the
manifold intoxication of his senses would return; she would be there
with all her allurements and her abandonments. Bunny tried haltingly
once or twice to tell Paul about it; Paul being a sort of god, a firm
and dependable moral force, to whom one might flee. Bunny remembered the
scorn with which Paul had talked about “fornications,” and Bunny had not
known quite what he meant—but Bunny knew now, alas, only too well. He
tried to confess, but was ashamed, and could not break down the
barriers. Instead, he made some excuse to his father and drove back to
Beach City, three days earlier than he had intended; and all the way as
he rode he was hearing Paul’s voice, those cruel words of the
strike-days: “You’re soft, Bunny, you’re soft.”
VII
The first rain of the season was falling, and Bunny got in fairly late,
and found that Eunice was at home, and had not carried out her threat to
get another lover. No, she was trying an experiment she had read about
in a book of her mother’s, a thing called “mental telepathy”; you sat
and shut your eyes and “concentrated,” “willing” that somebody should do
something, and then they would do it, and the “new thought” doctrine
would be vindicated. Eunice was trying it, and when she heard Bunny’s
step on the veranda, she sprang up with a little shriek of delight and
rushed into his arms, and while she smothered him with kisses she told
him about this marvelous triumph of experimental psychology. “Oh, Bunny,
I just knew you couldn’t be so cruel to me! I knew you’d come, because
I’m all alone, Mamma has gone to raise money for the Serbian orphans.
Oh, Bunny, come on!”—and she started to draw him toward the stairs.
Bunny didn’t think that was quite the thing, and tried to hold back, but
she smothered his protest in kisses. “You silly boy, are we going out
and park in the rain? Or do you want to go to a hotel here in town,
where everybody knows us?”
“But, your mother, Eunice—”
“Mother, bunk!” said Eunice. “Mother has a lover and I know it, and she
knows I know it. If she don’t know about you and me, it’s time she was
making a guess. So you come up to my room.”
“But how’ll I get out, Eunice?”
“You’ll get out when I let you out, and maybe it’ll be morning, and
you’ll be treated with decent hospitality.”
“But Eunice, I never heard of such a thing!”
“Bunny, you talk like your grandmother!”
“But what about the servants, dear?”
“Servants, hell!” said Eunice. “You can run your home to please the
servants, but that’s not our way—at least, not tonight!” And to save
Bunny any embarrassment, she kept him in her room in the morning while
she broke the news to her mother; and if there were any mental agonies
Bunny never knew it, because the patroness of the Serbian orphans
breakfasted in bed, reading in the morning paper the account of her
fashionable philanthropies.
After that, the ice was broken—as the French have observed, it is the
first step that counts, thought it is doubtful if any parent in
old-fashioned France has been compelled to take quite so long a step.
The rainy season continued, making outdoor petting parties
uncomfortable, so whenever he was commanded, Bunny would stay in
Eunice’s home, and it was all quite domestic and regular according to
advanced modern standards. In fact, there was only one small detail
left, and Bunny suggested that: “Eunice, why shouldn’t we go and get
married, and have it over with?”
He was surprised by the vehemence of the girl’s reaction. “Oh, Bunny,
we’re having such a happy time, and why do you want to ruin it?”
“But why would that ruin it?”
“All married people are miserable. I know, because I’ve watched them.
Mamma and Papa would give a million dollars—well, maybe not that much
but certainly a couple of hundred thousand, if they could get loose
without having to go through all the fuss in the courts, and the horrid
things the newspapers would publish, and their pictures and all.”
“But we won’t have to do that, dear.”
“How do you know we mightn’t? If we got married, you’d think you had a
right to me, and then you wouldn’t do what I say any more, and I
wouldn’t be happy. Oh, let’s do our own way, and not what other people
try to make us. All my life other people have been making me do things,
and I’ve been fighting them—even you, Bunny-bear.” She had a score of
such appellatives for him, because, as you can understand, his name was
adapted to petting-party uses; they were dancing a contrivance known as
the Bunny-hug, and he heard a lot about that.
You went about in this prosperous and fashionable society, and on the
surface everything was decorous and proper, fitting the marital formulas
laid down in the laws and preached in the churches. But when you got
under the surface—anywhere, high or low—what you found was that human
beings, finding themselves unhappy, had come to private understandings.
Husbands and wives set one another free, they made exchanges of
partners, they brought friends into their homes, who were in reality
substitute husbands or wives; there were companions and secretaries and
governesses and cousins who played such roles—and when the children
found it out, they were in position to put pressure on their parents, a
kind of informal family blackmail, good for motor-cars and fur-coats and
strings of pearls, and most precious of all, the right to have your own
way.
VIII
Early in the year, while America was getting into the war, the people of
Russia had overthrown their Tsar and set up a republic. That had pleased
most people in America; it was much pleasanter to be allied with a
republic. But now, in the fall, came a terrifying event; there was
another revolution, this time not made by respectable scholars and
business men, but by wild-eyed fanatics called “Bolshevikis,” who
proceeded to confiscate property and smash things up. At once it became
apparent what a calamity this was going to mean for the allies; Russia
was going to desert them, and the mass of the Germans on the East would
be set free to be hurled against the half-exhausted Western front.
Already the Russian armies were going to pieces, the soldiers were
deserting wholesale and swarming back to the cities or to their
villages; at the same time the leaders of the new government were
starting a world-wide propaganda attacking the allies and their
war-aims.
Who were these leaders? It was enough for America to note that a horde
of them, who had been hiding in Switzerland, were loaded into a sealed
train by the German government and escorted across Germany and dumped
into Russia to make all the trouble they could. That meant Lenin and his
crowd were hired agents of the Hun; when they proceeded to attack what
they called “allied imperialism,” that was the Kaiser’s voice speaking
Russian, and when they published the secret treaties of the allies,
taken from the archives of the Tsar, the newspapers in America dismissed
the documents as obvious forgeries.
Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers. He considered that
this “Bolsheviki revolution” was the most terrible event that had
happened in the world in his life-time; his face would grow pale as he
talked to Bunny about it. America could get no army to France until next
spring, and perhaps not till fall, and meantime the Germans had a
million men they could move, only a few hundred miles across their
country to the West front; they were jist a-goin’ to roll over the
British and French, and take Paris, and perhaps the whole of France, and
we should have the job of driving them out again. The whole burden of
the war now fell onto America’s shoulders, and it would last years and
years—neither Dad nor Bunny might live to see the end of it.
Dad would read paragraphs out of the papers, details of the horrors that
were happening in Russia—literally millions of people slaughtered, all
the educated and enlightened ones; the most hideous tortures inflicted,
such obscenities as you could not put into print. Before long they began
applying their Communist theories to the women of the country, who were
“nationalized” and made into public property by official decree; the
“commissars” were raping them wholesale. Lenin was killing Trotsky, and
Trotsky was throwing Lenin into jail. It was a boiling up from the
bottom of the social pit, such savagery as we had hardly dreamed
existing in human nature. Bunny could see now the folly of that
“idealism” he had been prattling, his idea of letting strikers have
their way, and turning industry over to the mob. Here was the thing
tried out in practice, and how did he like it? Bunny had to admit that
he didn’t like it so well, and he was crushed and sobered.
The problem came home to him, because he had to decide as to his own
duty in this world crisis. This was his last year in school; then he
would be old enough for the draft, and what was he going to do? He and
his father talked it out in a solemn conference. Dad thought that he had
responsibilities enough to entitle him to the help of one son; he didn’t
think he would be a slacker if he were to get Mr. Carey to release Bunny
for service in the oil industry. But Bunny insisted that he must go to
the front; he even talked of quitting school at once and enlisting, as a
number of other boys had done. They finally agreed to compromise,
waiting till Bunny was through school, and then see how matters shaped
up. But meantime Bunny owed this much to his country, as well as to
himself—he should give more time to his studies, and less to playing
about. If a young fellow really understood this world crisis, he would
surely stick to whatever work he was doing, and not throw himself away
in dissipations. Bunny flushed and let his eyes fall, and said he
guessed that was true, and he’d do better in future.
IX
He went to Eunice in his mood of high seriousness, to explain how the
burden of the task of saving civilization had fallen upon their
shoulders. She told him yes, she had been realizing it, she had just
been getting a serious talk from her mother, who had explained that
there was going to be a shortage of food and all kinds of materials, as
a result of the war and the needs of our allies. The club-ladies had
decided upon their duty—they would purchase only the most expensive
kinds of food, so as to leave the lard and cabbage and potatoes for the
poor; Mrs. Hoyt had given away all her clothing to the Salvation army,
and spent a small fortune buying a complete outfit of the most costly
things she could find. Eunice was of course quite willing to use only
luxuries, but found it a little puzzling, because her Aunt Alice took
just the opposite view, and had bought herself a lot of cheap things, in
order to set an example to the working-classes. Which did Bunny think
was right?
But this sober mood did not last long with Eunice. A couple of days
later she was invited to a Belgian orphans’ ball, and when Bunny
insisted that he had to study, she threatened to go with Billy Chalmers,
the handsome captain of last year’s football team—there was no team
this year. Bunny said all right, and so Eunice flaunted Billy in front
of the whole school, and there were rumors that he was parking his car
with her, and that Bunny’s nose was out of joint. This went on for a
week or two, until Bunny’s heart-ache was more than he could stand. It
was a Saturday night—and Dad had granted that it wouldn’t be wrong to
go to one dance a week; so he phoned Eunice, and they “made it up” with
tears and wild gusts of passion, and she declared that she had never
really really loved anyone but her Bunny-bear, and how could he have
been so wicked as to refuse to please her?
But then came Christmas, and the shrewd and persistent Dad arranged a
series of temptations—a big turkey, and Ruth to cook it, and two new
wells coming in, to say nothing of the quail calling over the hills at
sunset. Bunny promised, and simply had to go; and Eunice had the most
terrible of all her tantrums, she grabbed Bunny by the hair and pulled
him about her mother’s drawing-room, with her mother standing helpless
by; she vowed that Bunny was a four-flusher, and a wretch, and she would
ring up Billy Chalmers, and they would go off on a joy-ride that very
night, and not come back till the Christmas holidays were over and maybe
not then.
Bunny went to Paradise, and studied the new wells, and the drawings for
the new pipe-lines, and the “set-up” of the proposed refinery; he
wandered over the hills with Dad and shot quail, and at night he lay in
his lonely bed and writhed in misery. It seemed to him that he was
turning into an old man—surely he would find all his hair grey in the
morning! He was losing more sleep than if he had taken Eunice to the
dances, and what was the sense of that? At school they were teaching him
biology and nineteenth century English poets, and how was that going to
help drive the Germans out of France? Eunice was so fragile, so
beautiful, and she was going to be so unhappy! She was different from
other girls, difficult to understand, and the next fellow would not be
so good to her as Bunny had been! Also, the world that was trying to
tear them apart was the same blind and stupid world that was killing
millions of people; maybe Grandma was right after all, the whole thing
was a chaos of cruelty, and it didn’t matter what you did, or which side
won.
Then in the morning there would be Dad, and the day’s grinding of their
tremendous big machine. Dad at least was dependable, Dad had something
he was sure of. Also, he seemed to know all about Bunny without being
told, he was gentle and sympathetic in a tactful way, not saying a word,
but trying to entertain Bunny, and find things they could do together.
Come to think of it, Dad had been through things like this himself! It
would have been interesting to talk straight with him—only it would
have embarrassed him so. Bunny thought of his “little Mamma,” whom he
had not seen for more than a year; she had gone to New York, and Bunny
suspected that Dad had increased her allowance on condition that she
would stay there. Bunny wished that he might talk with her about Eunice,
and get her opinion on the subject of exchangeable lovers.
He stuck it out, and when he went back home, he did not go to see
Eunice. Whenever he met her, his heart would give a jump that hurt, but
he would turn the other way and walk a few miles to get over it. The
news spread among the “Zulus” that the pair had broken for good, and
several sprightly young ladies began making overtures to the young oil
prince. But Bunny hardly saw them, his heart was dead within him, he
told himself that he would never look at another girl. One of the
nineteenth century poets was Byron, and in his romances Bunny found
exactly the mood of aristocratic broken-heartedness to which he could
respond. As for Eunice, she went on petting parties with her former
football captain, and apparently managed to escape every one of the
calamities which Bunny had feared for her.