THE MONASTERY
I
Bunny was studying and thinking, trying to make up his mind about the
problem of capital versus labor. It had become clear to him that the
present system could not go on forever—the resources and wealth of the
country thrown into an arena, to be scrambled for and carried off by the
greediest. And when you asked, who was to change the system, there was
only one possible answer—the great mass of the workers, who did not
have the psychology of gamblers, but had learned that wealth is produced
by toil. In the very nature of their position, the workers could only
prevail by combining; and so, whether they would or not, they had to
develop solidarity, an ideal of brotherhood and co-operation.
Such was the fundamental faith of all “radicals,” and Bunny accepted the
doctrine joyfully, as a way of escape from the tangle of commercialism
and war. Labor was to organize, and take over industry, and rebuild it
upon a basis of service. The formula was simple, and worthy of all
trust; but alas, Bunny was being forced to admit that the reality was
complicated. The makers of the new society were not able to agree upon
plans for the structure, nor how to get the old one out of the way. They
were split into a number of factions, and spent a good part of their
energies quarreling among themselves. Bunny would have thought that here
in Southern California at least, the labor movement had enemies enough
in the federations of the employers, with their strike-breaking and spy
agencies, their system of blacklist and persecution, and their
politicians, hired to turn the law against the workers. But alas, it did
not seem so to the young radicals; they had to make enemies of one
another!
Just now they were in a fever over the Russian revolution; a colossal
event that had shaken the labor movement of the whole world. Here for
the first time in history the workers had got possession of a
government; and what were they making of the chance? The capitalist
press of the world was, of course, portraying Russia as a nightmare; but
the Soviets continued to survive, and every day of survival was a fresh
defeat for the newspaper campaign. The workers _could_ run a government!
The workers _were_ running a government! Just look!
So, in every country of the world, the labor movement became divided
into two factions, those who thought the workers in their country could
follow the example of the Russians, and should organize and prepare to
do it; and those who thought that for one reason or another it couldn’t
be done, and the attempt was madness. This great division showed itself
in every faction and school of thought. The Socialists split into those
who wanted to follow Russia and those who didn’t; the Anarchists split
in the same way, and so did the “wobblies”; even the old line labor
leaders divided into those who wanted to let the Soviet government
alone, and those who wanted to help the capitalists to put it down!
For Bunny this struggle was embodied in the Menzies family. Papa Menzies
was an old-time Social-Democrat from abroad, active in the clothing
workers’ union. Of his six children, two daughters had followed their
mother—an old-time, orthodox Jewess who wore a dirty wig, and kept all
the feast days in the home, and wept and prayed for the souls of her
lost ones, stolen from the faith of their fathers by America, which had
made them work on Saturdays, and by the radical movement, which had made
them agnostics and scoffers. Rachel and the oldest boy, Jacob, were
Socialists like their father; but the other two, Joe and Ikey, had gone
over to the “left wing,” and were clamoring for the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
II
Bunny received a letter from Rachel. “Dear Mr. Ross”—she always
addressed him that way, alone of his class-mates; it was her way of
maintaining her proletarian dignity, in dealing with a person of great
social pretensions. “We are home after picking all the prunes in
California, and next week we begin on the grapes. You said you wanted to
attend a meeting of the Socialist local, and there is to be an important
one tomorrow evening, at the Garment-workers’ Hall. My father and
brothers will be there, and would be glad to meet you.”
Bunny replied by a telegram, inviting one old and four young Jewish
Socialists to have dinner with him before the meeting. He took them to
an expensive restaurant—thinking to do them honor, and forgetting that
they might feel uneasy as to their clothes and their table manners.
Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter into the feelings of the disinherited.
Bunny found Rachel quite altered from the drab, hardworking girl he had
known. She belonged to that oriental type which can pick fruit in the
sun for several weeks without worrying about complexions; she had sunset
in her cheeks and sunrise in her spirit, and for the first time it
occurred to Bunny that she was quite an interesting-looking girl. She
told about their adventures, which seemed to him extraordinarily
romantic. Most people, when they indulged in day-dreaming, would picture
themselves as the son and heir of a great oil magnate, with millions of
dollars pouring in upon them, and a sporty car to drive, and steel
widows and other sirens to make love to them. But Bunny’s idea of a
fairy-story was to go off with a bunch of youngsters in a rattle-trap
old Ford that broke down every now and then, and camp out in a tent that
the wind blew away, and get a job picking fruit along side of Mexicans
and Japanese and Hindoos, and send home a post-office order for ten or
twelve dollars every week!
Papa Menzies was a stocky, powerful-looking man with curly yellow hair
all over his head, and a deep chest—though most of it seemed to be in
back instead of in front, so much was he bent over by toil. There were
certain English letters he could never pronounce; he would say,
contemptuously, “Dis talk about de vorld revolution.” His son Jacob, the
Socialist one, Bunny knew as a stoop-shouldered, pale student, and found
him much improved by outdoor life. The other two boys, the young “left
wingers,” were talkative and egotistical, and repelled the fastidious
Bunny, who had not insight enough to guess that they were meeting a
young plutocrat for the first time in their lives, and this was their
uneasy effort to protect their working-class integrity. Nobody was going
to say that they had been overawed! In addition to this, they were
hardly on speaking terms with the rest of the family, because of the
bitter political dispute going on.
They went to the hall, which was crowded with people, mostly workers,
all tense with excitement. There had been a committee appointed to deal
with the policy of the “local,” and this committee brought in a report
in favor of expelling the “left wingers”; also there was a minority
report, in favor of expelling everybody else! So then the fat was in the
fire; and Bunny listened, and tried valiantly to keep from being
disillusioned with the radical movement. They were so noisy, and Bunny
had such a prejudice in favor of quiet! He wouldn’t expect working
people to have perfect manners, he told himself nor to use perfect
English; but did they need to shriek and shake their fists in the air?
Couldn’t they debate ideas, without calling each other “labor fakers”
and “yellow skunks” and so on? Bunny had chosen to call upon Local Angel
City of the Socialist party at a critical moment of its history; and
decidedly it was not putting on company manners for him!
Here was Papa Menzies, clambering onto the platform, and shouting at his
own sons that they were a bunch of jackasses, to imagine they could
bring about mass revolution in America. “Vy did de revolution come in
Russia? Because de whole country had been ruined by de var. But it vould
take ten years of var to bring de capitalist class in America to such a
breakdown; and meanvile, vot are you young fools doing? You vant to
deliver de Socialist party over to de police! Dey have got spies
here—yes, and dose spies is de mainspring of your fool left ving
movement!”
That seemed reasonable enough to Bunny. The business men of Angel City
would want the radical movement to go to extremes, so that they might
have an excuse to smash it; and when they wanted something to happen,
they did not scruple to make it happen. But to say this to the young
extremists was like waving a red rag before a herd of bulls. “What?”
shouted Ikey Menzies at his own father. “You talk about the police? What
are your beloved Social-Democrats doing now in Germany? They have got
charge of the police, and they are shooting down Communist workers for
the benefit of the capitalist class!”
“Yes, and they will do the same thing in California!” cried the other
brother. “You are a bunch of class-collaborators!” That was a new word,
and a dreadful one, it appeared. The question was whether the tottering
capitalist system could be propped up for another ten years or so; and
the “right-wingers” would take office under the capitalists, and help to
save them. “You make yourself their agent,” proclaimed Joe Menzies, “to
bribe the workers by two cents more wages per hour!”
And so there was a bust-up in Local Angel City, as everywhere else in
the world; the “reds” withdrew, and presently split into three different
Communist groups; and Joe and Ikey Menzies left home, and set up
house-keeping with two girl-workers of their own way of thinking. So
Bunny was more perplexed than ever; life appeared so complicated, and
happiness so hard to find!
III
One Saturday the telephone rang, and it was Vernon Roscoe calling Dad.
Bunny happened to answer, and heard the jovial voice, “Hello, how’s the
boy Bolsheviki? Say, Jim Junior, I thought you were coming up to my
place! Eventually—why not now? Annabelle is resting from ‘Pangs of
Passion’—she’ll be glad to see you. Vee Tracy is there, and Harvey
Manning—quite a bunch of people over Sunday. Sure, I’ll be up! You go
ahead, your old man will tell you the way.”
Bunny told Dad he had accepted the invitation, and Dad said that Mr.
Roscoe’s domestic arrangements were such that Bunny ought to be told
about them in advance. Annabelle Ames, the moving picture actress, was
what people called his mistress, but it wasn’t really that, because she
was devoted to him, and all their friends knew about it, and it was jist
the same as being married; only, of course, there was Mrs. Roscoe, who
lived in the house in the city, with her four sons. Mrs. Roscoe went in
for society and all that, and had tried to drag Verne in, but he wasn’t
cut out for that life. Sometimes Mrs. Roscoe would go out to the
Monastery, as the country place was called, but of course not when Miss
Ames was there; Dad said they must have some system to keep from running
into each other. Miss Ames had her own house, near to the studio, and
the Monastery was a “show-place,” where they took their friends over
week-ends.
You drove up behind a chain of mountains that lined the coast: another
of those wonderful roads, a magic ribbon of concrete laid out by a
giant’s hand. The engine purred softly and you raced ahead of the wind,
up long slopes and down long slopes, and winding through mazes of hills;
there were steep grades and vistas of tumbled mountains, and broad
sweeps of valley, and stretches of shore with fishermen’s huts, and
boats, and nets drying in the sun; then more hills and mountain
grades—for hours you flew, as fast as you pleased, for you were
twenty-one now, and Dad no longer expected you to obey the speed-laws.
There was a road that branched off towards the ocean, and after climbing
ten miles or so, you came to a high steel fence, and steel gates, and a
sign: “Private: Turn Back Here.”—and a wide place in the road, made
especially so that you might obey! The gate was open, so Bunny drove on,
and climbed another hill, and came over the brow, and then, oh,
wonderful!—a great bowl of yellow and green, two or three miles across,
with one side broken out towards the ocean, and in the center of the
bowl the grey stone towers of the Monastery! Mountains on every side,
and the oil magnate owned everything in sight, both the land and the
landscape; if the public wanted to see his retreat, it would have to get
a row-boat, or swim.
You rolled down the winding drive, through tumbled masses of rocks and
clumps of live oaks a century or two old, and came to a fork in the
road, and one way said “Delivery,” and the other said, “Guests.” If you
were so fortunate as to be a guest, your road led under a porte-cochere
big enough for half a dozen double-decker stages; a footman appeared,
and summoned a chauffeur to take your car to the garage, and you were
escorted into a living-room—well, it was like going into a cathedral,
your eyes would follow the arches overhead, and you might trip yourself
on the skin of an aurochs or a gnu or whatever the dickens it was. What
grim sardonic architect had played this jest of Gothic towers and
steeples and crenellations and machicolations—here in the midst of a
new pagan empire, and called by such a very suggestive name! Assuredly,
the Monastery would need to be of pre-reformation style, to fit the ways
of the monk who occupied it!
The transept of the cathedral concealed an elevator, Bunny discovered;
and out of it tripped suddenly a diminutive vision in lemon-colored
chiffon, with lemon-colored stockings and shoes, and a big lemon-colored
hat such as shepherdesses used to wear when having their portraits
painted. It was complete and costly enough for a fancy-dress ball; and
no introduction was needed, for Bunny was one of that ninety percent of
all males in the civilized world, and perhaps seventy percent in
Madagascar, Paraguay, Nova Zembla, Thibet and New Guinea, who could have
told the number of lashes in each of Annabelle Ames’s eyelids, or drawn
a diagram of her dimples, and the exact course of a tear down her cheek.
He had seen her as the “wild” daughter of a Pittsburg steel king, duly
chastened and brought to faith in mother, home and heaven; as the
mistress of a French king, dying elegantly to expiate elegant sins; as
the mistreated and eloping heiress of a Georgian manor-house; as a
bare-legged “mountainy-girl” in the Blue Ridge—“Howdy, stranger, be
you-all one of them revenooers?” All this in the “movies”; and now here
she was in the “speakies!”
“So this is Mr. Ross!” Her “speakie” was a queer little high treble.
“Papa has told me so much about you!” (Papa was Mr. Roscoe.) “I’m so
glad to have you here, and do make yourself at home. Do whatever you
please, for this is liberty hall.” Bunny recalled the caption—but was
it from “Hearts of Steel,” or from “The Maid of the Manor?”
“And here is Harve,” the mistress of the manor was saying. “Oh, Harve,
come here, this is Bunny Ross; Harvey Manning. It’s the first time Mr.
Ross has been here, and please be nice to him so he’ll come back. He’s
going to college, and reads a lot and knows everything, and we’re going
to seem so ignorant and frivolous!”
Harvey Manning was coming in through one of the French windows which
took the place of the stations of the cross in this cathedral. He was
walking slowly, and did not increase his pace; he talked slowly also, a
dry sort of drawl—having never had to hurry, because he came of one of
the old families of the state. He had a queer, ugly face, with a great
many wrinkles, and Bunny never was clear whether he was old or young.
“Hello, Ross,” he said, “pleased-to-meecher. I got an uncle that’s
spending a hundred thousand dollars to put you in jail.”
“Is that so?” said Bunny, a trifle startled.
“Sure thing! He’s nuts on this red-hunting business, and the pinks are
worse than the reds, he says. I’ve been worried about you.”
“Never mind,” said Bunny, perceiving that this was a “josh,” such as
helps to make life tolerable for idle men, young and old. “Dad will
spend two hundred thousand and get me out again.”
“Come to think of it, I guess Verne would chip in—wouldn’t he,
Annabelle?”
“None of my guests ever stay in jail,” replied the star.
“They phone to Papa, and he phones to the chief of police, who lets them
out right away.”
She said this without smiling; and Harvey Manning remarked, “You see,
Ross, Annabelle has a literal mind.”
IV
Yes, that was the truth about this bright luminary of the screen, as
Bunny came to observe it; she had a literal mind. All the poetry and
romance the public imagined about her—that was in the public’s eye, so
to say. All that Annabelle had to contribute was a youthful figure and a
pliable face; the highly paid directors did the rest. She produced
pictures as a matter of business, and her talk was of production costs,
and percentages on foreign sales, just as if it had been an oil well.
That was why she got along with Vernon Roscoe, who also had a literal
mind. A primrose by the river’s brim a yellow primrose was to him, and
to Annabelle it was a decoration for an “interior,” or a background on
“location.”
There was a certain grim honesty about this, as Bunny discovered; it was
Annabelle’s desire to be an actress rather than a mistress. “By Jees,”
Verne would proclaim to his guests, “it’s cost me eight million dollars
to make a movie queen out of this baby.” And the thirty year old baby
had the dream that some day she would achieve a masterpiece, that would
earn this eight million and vindicate her honor. Meantime, she paid
installments by taking care of Verne—so publicly that it was quite
touching, and respectable according to the strictest bourgeois
standards. If the oil magnate had ever had the idea that in taking to
his bosom a movie star he was going to lead a wild and roystering life,
he had made a sad mistake, for he was the most hen-pecked of all “butter
and egg men.”
“Now, Papa,” Annabelle would say, “you’ve had enough to drink. Put that
down.” She would say it before a company assembled in their gladdest
rags for a dinner-party; and Verne would protest, “My God, baby, I ain’t
got started yet!”
“Well, you stop before you start tonight. Remember what Doctor Wilkins
says about your liver.”
Verne would bluster, “To hell with livers!” and the answer would be,
“Now, Papa, you told me to make you obey! Have I got to make you ashamed
before all this company?”
“Me ashamed? I’d like to see anybody make me ashamed!”
“Well, Papa, you know you’ll be ashamed if I tell what you said to me
the last time you were drunk.”
Verne paused, with his glass half-way in the air, trying to remember;
and the company burst into clamor, “Oh, tell us! Tell us!”
“Shall I tell them, Papa?” It was a bluff, for Annabelle was very prim,
and never indulged in vulgarity. But the bluff went, and the great man
set down his glass. “I surrender! Take the stuff away.” Whereat
everybody applauded, and it gave the party a merry start.
Strange as it might seem, Annabelle was a pious Catholic. Just how she
managed to fix things up with her priests Bunny never knew, but she gave
freely to charity, and you would find her featured at benefits for
Catholic orphan asylums and things of that sort. At the same time her
little head was as full of superstitions as an old Negro mammy. She
would not have started a picture on a Friday for the whole of Vernon’s
eight million dollar endowment. When you spilled the salt, she not
merely advised you to throw some of it over your shoulder, she did it
for you, if necessary. Once, at luncheon, she made a girl-friend eat at
a side table, because otherwise there would have been thirteen, and this
girl, being the youngest, would have fallen the victim.
At the same time she was very good. She really liked you, and liked to
have you around, and when she begged you to come back, she meant it. Nor
would she make unkind remarks about you after you were gone. Along with
the ecstasies of the artistic temperament, she had escaped its gnawing
jealousies; she was one of the few lady-stars before whom it was safe to
praise the work of other lady-stars, Bunny found. Also, she had an
abiding respect for him, because he had read books, and had ideas about
public questions. The fact that Bunny had got his name on the front
pages of the newspapers as a dangerous “pink,” served to lend him that
same halo of mystery and romance, which the public assigned to Annabelle
as a luminary of the screen world, and the mistress of a monastery!
V
“Harve,” said Annabelle, “there’s time for you to show Mr. Ross over the
place before dinner.” And so Bunny got to see what a country place could
be like, so that he could make his father give him one. But Harvey
Manning did not make a very good escort. To show off a show-place you
need some one of an admiring disposition, whereas “Harve” had seen too
many places, and was inclined to patronize them all.
There were almost as many buildings on this estate as there were tanks
at the Paradise refinery; only these were Gothic tanks, with miniature
towers and steeples and crenellations and machicolations. There was no
chapel or place of worship, nor tombs of ancient abbots; but there was a
gymnasium, with a swimming pool of green marble, and a bowling alley,
and squash courts and tennis courts, and a nine hole golf course, and a
polo field—everything you would find at the most elaborate country
club. There was a stable with saddle horses ridden mostly by grooms, and
a library read only by motion picture directors looking up local
color—or at any rate that was Harvey’s tale about it.
Also there was a regular menagerie of local creatures. The hired men and
their youngsters had discovered that such gifts pleased the master, so
they brought in everything they could capture. There was an enclosed
park with deer and mountain sheep, and heavily barred dens with grizzly
bears shambling over the rocks, and wild cats and coyotes and mountain
lions dozing in the shade. There was a giant dome covered with netting,
with a big dead tree inside, and eagles seated thereon. An eagle in his
native state, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure deep of
air, has been a thrilling theme for poets; but sitting in a cage he is a
melancholy object. “Some of your red friends in jail!” Harvey Manning
remarked in passing.
But even the most blasé man of the world has something in which he is
interested, so Bunny found. Presently his guide took out his watch and
remarked that it was nearly six-thirty, and they must get back to the
house. He was “on the water wagon” until that hour of each day, and when
it drew near, he was about ready to jump out of his skin. So they
strolled back, and a Chinese boy clad in white duck had evidently
learned to expect him, and was on hand with a tray. Harvey took two
drinks, to make up for lost time, and then he sighed contentedly, and
revealed that he could talk without a drawl.
When Bunny came down for dinner there was quite a company
assembled—some in evening dress and some in golf clothes and some in
plain business suits like the host—it was “liberty hall,” according to
the caption. Roscoe was talking politics to Fred Orpan—the drubbing
they were going to give the Democratic party. Roscoe did the talking,
for the other was a queer silent creature, tall and lean, with a tall,
lean face, like a horse. He had the strangest grey-green eyes, that
somehow looked absolutely empty; you would decide that his head was
empty too, when he would listen and say nothing for an hour—but this
would be a mistake, for he was the directing head of a great chain of
oil enterprises, and Dad said he was sharp as a steel trap.
Also there was Bessie Barrie, because good form required that she be
invited wherever Orpan went. He had backed her in several pictures, and
she was “paying the price,” as the current phrase ran; but it wasn’t
quite the same respectable arrangement as in the case of Roscoe and his
Annabelle, because Bessie had been in love with her director, and he was
still in love with her, and the attitude of the two men was far from
cordial. This was explained to Bunny by Harvey Manning, gossip-in-chief,
who had now had several more drinks, and got his tongue entirely
loosened. Bunny noted that the hostess had tactfully placed the rival
males at opposite ends of the table.
They were in a smaller cathedral now, known as the “refectory”; and
Bunny was in the seat of honor, at the right of the charming Annabelle,
transformed from a lemon-colored shepherdess to a duchess in white
satin. On her left sat Perry Duchane, her director, telling about the
cuts in the first two reels, which he had brought along for a showing.
Next to him was a vacant seat; some lady was late, and Bunny was too
young in the ways of the world to know that this is how great personages
secure importance to themselves. It was his first meeting with
actresses, and how should he know that they sometimes act off-stage?
VI
You remember in that colossal production, “The Emperor of Etruria,” the
Scythian slave girl who is brought in from the wilds to serve the
pleasures of a pampered sybarite, and the scene where the fat eunuchs
lay hands upon her? With what splendid fury she claws them and knocks
their heads together! Her clothing is torn to shreds in the struggle,
and you have glimpses of a lithe and sinewy body—the extent of the
glimpses depending upon the censorship laws of the state in which you
see the picture. The scene made a hit with the public, and many
producers competed for Viola Tracy—pronounce it Vee-ola, please, with
the accent on the first syllable. She displayed her magnificent fighting
qualities next in “The Virgin Vamp,” and thereafter escaped dishonor by
a hair’s breadth in many palpitating scenes. Of late she had acquired
dignity, and was now regal on all the billboards of Angel City in “The
Bride of Tutankhamen,” an alluring figure, with deep-set mysterious
black eyes, and a smile fathomless as four thousand years of history.
Well, here she was, stepping out of the billboards, and into the
refectory of the Monastery; her Egyptian costume changed for a daring
one of black velvet, fresh from Paris, and with black pearls to match.
The footman drew out her chair, and she rested one hand upon it, but did
not take her seat; her hostess said, “Miss Tracy, Mr. Ross”—and still
she paused, smiling at Bunny, and he smiling at her. It was a striking
pose, and Tommy Paley, her director, who had taught her the stunt, and
watched it now from the other end of the table, suddenly called,
“Camera!” Everybody laughed, and “Vee” most gaily of all—revealing two
rows of white pearls, more regular than the black ones, and worth many
times as much to a movie star.
Annabelle Ames got along in the world without ever saying anything
unkind about anybody, but that was not “Vee” Tracy’s style; she had a
fighting tongue, as well as fighting fists, and her conversation gave
Bunny the shock of his innocent young life. They happened first to be
discussing a lady vamp, recently imported from abroad with much clashing
of advertising cymbals. “She dresses in very good taste,” said
Annabelle, mildly. “Oh, perfect!” said Vee. “Absolutely perfect! She
selected her dog to match her face!” And then presently they were
talking about that million dollar production, “The Old Oaken Bucket,”
which was just then waking home memories and wringing tears from the
eyes of millions of hardened sinners. Dolly Deane, who played the
innocent country maiden seduced by a travelling salesman, was so
charmingly simple, said Annabelle. “Oh, yes!” replied Vee. “For the
chance to be that simple, she slept with her producer, and two angels,
and the director and his assistant; and all five of them told her how an
innocent virgin says her prayers!”
Bunny, who was a rebel in his own line, sat up and took notice of this
conversation; and you may be sure that Vee did not fail to take notice
of the young oil prince, flashing him mischief with her sparkling black
eyes. The footman brought her a plate of soup in a golden bowl, and she
took one glance and cried, “Oh, my God, take it away, it’s got starch in
it! Annabelle, are you trying to drive me out of the profession?” Then,
to Bunny, “They say that nobody can eat a quail a day for thirty days;
but Mr. Ross, what would you say if I told you I have eaten two lamb
chops and three slices of pineapple every day for seven years?”
“I would ask, is that an Egyptian rite, or maybe Scythian?”
“It is the prescription of a Hollywood doctor who specializes in
reducing actresses. We public idols are supposed to be rioting in
luxury, but really we have only one dream—to buy enough Hollywood real
estate so that we can retire and eat a square meal!”
“Don’t you really ever steal one?” asked Bunny, sympathetically.
She answered, “Ours are the kind of figures that never lie. You can ask
Tommy Paley what would happen if they were to see any fat on me when the
gentleman heavy tears my clothes off! They would put me into the comics,
and I’d earn my living being rolled down hill in a barrel!”
VII
Conversation at this dinner-party, as at most dinner-parties in America
at that time, resembled a walk along the edge of a slippery ditch.
Sooner or later you were bound to slide in, and after that you could not
get out, but finished your walk in the ditch. “Mr. Ross,” said
Annabelle, in her capacity as hostess, “I notice you aren’t drinking
your wine. You can trust what we have—it’s all pre-war stuff.” And so
they were in the ditch, and talked about Prohibition.
The law was two years and a half old, and the leisure classes were just
realizing the full extent of the indignity which had been inflicted upon
them. It wasn’t the high prices—they were all of them seeking ways to
spend money rapidly; but it was the inconvenience, and the difficulties
of being sure what you were getting. People escaped the trouble by
pinning their faith to some particular bootlegger; Bunny noticed it as
an incredible but universal phenomenon that persons otherwise the most
cynical, who made it the rule of their lives to trust nobody, would
repeat the wildest stories which men of the underworld had told them,
about how this particular “case of Scotch” had just been smuggled in
from Mexico, or maybe stolen from the personal stock of a visiting duke
in Canada.
They discussed the latest developments in the tragedy which had befallen
Koski, one of the emperors of their screen world, who had had a
priceless stock in the cellar of his country place, and had taken the
precaution to have it walled in with two feet of brick, and guarded by
doors such as you would find on a bank vault; but thieves had come
during the owner’s absence, and bound and gagged the caretaker, and cut
through the floor of the drawing-room, above the cellar, and hauled out
everything with rope and tackle, and carted it away in trucks. Since
then Koski had been raising a row with the authorities; he charged that
they were standing in with the thieves, and he had brought in an outside
detective agency, and threatened a scandal that would shake the pants
off the police department. By this means he had got back the greater
part of his casks and bottles; but alas, the real stuff was gone, they
had all been emptied and refilled with synthetic. And so, after that,
there was a convincing story for your bootlegger to tell you; this was
some of the original Koski stuff! Millions of gallons of original Koski
stuff were being drunk in California, and even in adjoining states.
Suddenly Vee Tracy clapped her hands. “Oh, listen! I have one on Koski!
Him and some others! Has anybody heard The Movie’s Prayer?”
There was a silence. No one had.
“This is something for all of us to teach our children to recite every
night and morning. It is serious, and you mustn’t joke.”
“Let us pray,” said the voice of Bessie Barrie.
“Fold your hands, like good little children,” ordered Vee, “and bow your
heads.” And then with slow and solemn intonation she began:
“Our Movie, which art Heaven, Hollywood be Thy Name. Let Koski come. His
Will be done, in studio as in bed.”
There was a gasp, and then a roar of laughter swept the table; no
explanations were needed, they all knew their emperor, master of the
destiny of hundreds of screen actresses. “Go on!” shouted voices; and
the girl continued to intone an invocation, which echoed in outline and
rhythm the Lord’s prayer, and brought in the names of other rulers of
their shadow world, always with an obscene implication. It was a kind of
Black Mass, and performed the magic feat of lifting the conversation out
of the ditch of Prohibition. They talked for a while about the sexual
habits of their rulers; who was living with whom, and what scandals were
threatened, and what shootings and attempted poisonings had resulted.
There were thrilling crime mysteries, which would provide a topic of
conversation for hours in any Hollywood gathering; you might hear half a
dozen different solutions, each one positive, and no two alike.
VIII
They adjourned to the larger cathedral, where the lights were dim, and
there appeared, very appropriately in place of the altar, a large white
screen. At the far end of the room was a projecting machine, and the
guests distributed themselves in lounging chairs, prepared to pay for
their entertainment by watching the first two reels of Annabelle’s new
picture, and giving their professional judgments on the “cutting.”
“Pangs of Passion” you may recall as a soul-shaking story about a
society bud whose handsome young husband is led astray by a divorcee,
and who, in order to make him jealous, begins a flirtation with a
bootlegger, and is carried off in a rum-running vessel, and made the
victim of the customary pulling and hauling and tearing of feminine
costumes. “My God,” said Vee Tracy, in an aside to Bunny, “Annabelle has
been playing these society flappers since before they were born, and in
all that time she’s never had a story above the intelligence of a twelve
year old child! You’ll think it’s a joke, but I know it for a fact that
Perry Duchane gets a bunch of school children together and tells them
the scenario, and if there’s anything they don’t like, he cuts it out.”
And then to Annabelle she said, “It’s up to standard, my dear; it will
sell all right.” And to Bunny, “That’s one good thing about Annabelle,
you can say that and she’s satisfied—she doesn’t ask you if it’s a work
of art. But others do, and I’ve made mortal enemies because I won’t lie
to them. I say, ‘Leave art out of it, dearie; we all know our stuff is
trash.’”
There was technical discussion, and Bunny had an opportunity to learn
about the tricks of “cutting.” Also he learned what had been the gross
business on a number of Annabelle Ames’ pictures, and the inside figures
on other successes. Tommy Paley had recently indulged in the luxury of
making an artistic and beautiful picture, which the papers had called a
“classic”; he and a group of friends had come out something over a
hundred thousand in the hole, and he had charged it up to education, and
said, “Let the Germans do the art stuff after this!”
All this time there had been a silent spectral figure flitting about the
cathedral, clad in white duck coat and trousers and padded purple
slippers; the Chinese boy, bearing a tray with little glasses full of
pink and yellow and purple and green liquid. He would move from guest to
guest, offering his tray, and they would put down empty glasses and take
up full ones, and during the entire course of the evening the spectre
never made one sound, nor did anyone make a sound to it. Some three
hundred years ago an English poet, long since forgotten by the movie
world, had asked the question why a man should put an enemy into his
mouth to steal away his brains; but here at the Monastery, the anxiety
appeared to be that some one might forget to put the enemy into his
mouth—hence this Chinese spectre to save the need of recollecting.
There were a few who did not drink; Annabelle was one, and Vee Tracy
another. The spectre had apparently been instructed not to go near
Vernon Roscoe, and if Vernon tried to approach the spectre, there would
be a sharp warning, “Now, Verne!” But others drank, and tongues were
loosened, and hearts poured out as the evening passed. Even Fred Orpan
came to life, and revealed a tongue! It was Vernon Roscoe’s habit to
“josh” everybody, and now he got paid back, as the one-time rancher from
Texas sat up in his chair and opened his long horse’s face and demanded,
in a falsetto voice which sounded as if it came from a ventriloquist:
“Anybody here know how this old shyster got his start in life?”
Apparently nobody did know; and Orpan put another question: “Anybody
ever seen him in swimming? I bet you never! When it’s outdoors, he’ll
tell you the water is too cold, and when it’s indoors he’ll tell you
it’s dirty or something. The reason is, he’s got one toe missing, and
he’s afraid to have it proved on him. When he was drilling his first
well, he ran out of money and was clean done for; so he went and took
out an accident insurance policy, and then went rabbit-hunting and shot
off one of his big toes. So he got the cash to finish the well! Is that
true, old socks, or ain’t it?”
The company laughed gleefully and clamored for an answer; and Vernon
laughed as much as anyone. He didn’t mind the story, but you could never
get him to tell. Instead, he countered on his assailant, “You ought to
hear about this old skeezicks, how he got rich leasing oil lands from
Indians. They tell this about a dozen oil men, but Fred was the real one
that done it, I know because I was there. It was Old Chief Leatherneck,
of the Shawnees, and Fred offered him one-eighth royalty, and the old
codger screwed up his eyes and said, ‘No take one-eighth, got to have
one-sixteenth!’ Fred said he couldn’t afford that, and begged him to
take one-twelfth, but he said, ‘One-sixteenth or no lease.’ So they
signed up for a sixteenth, and now it’s the Hellfire Dome, by Jees! Is
that so, old skeezicks, or ain’t it?”
Said Fred Orpan, “You might complete the story by telling what the old
chief does with his royalties. He’s got a different colored automobile
for each day of the week, and he figures to get drunk three times every
day.”
“Oh, take me to the Hellfire Dome!” wailed the voice of Harvey Manning.
“They won’t let me get drunk but one time in a night, and none at all in
the day-time!”
IX
There was a large organ in this cathedral, a magic organ of the modern
style, which played itself when you put in a roll of paper and pressed
an electric switch. It played the very latest jazz tunes from Broadway,
and the company danced, and Vee Tracy came to Bunny and said, “My doctor
allows me only one drink in an evening, and I want a sober partner.”
Bunny was glad to oblige, and so the time passed pleasantly. He danced
with his hostess, and with the blonde fairy, Bessie Barrie. In between
dances they chatted, and the Chinese spectre continued to flit about,
and the deeps of the human spirit were more and more unveiled.
In front of Bunny stood Tommy Paley, super-director, handsome,
immaculate if slightly ruffled, flushed of face, and steady upon his
legs if not in his thoughts. “Look here, Ross,” he said, “I want you to
tell me something.”
“What is it?”
“I want to know what it’s all about.”
“What, Mr. Paley?”
“Life! What the hell are we here for, and where do we go when we get
through?”
“If I knew,” said Bunny, “I would surely tell you.”
“But, lookit, man, I thought you went to college! I never got any
education, I was a newsboy and all that. But I thought when a fellow’s
read a lotta books and goes to college—”
“We haven’t got to it yet,” said Bunny. “Maybe it comes in the last two
years.”
“Well, by God, if they tell you, you come tell me. And find out, old
son, what the hell we going to do about sex? You can’t live with ’em and
you can’t live without ’em, and what sort of a mess is it?”
“It’s very puzzling,” admitted Bunny.
“It’s the devil!” said the other. “I’d pay anybody ten year’s salary if
they’d teach me to forget the whole damn business.”
“Yes,” said Bunny; “but then, what would you direct?”
And the super-director looked at him, bewildered, and suddenly burst out
laughing. “By God, that’s so! That’s a good one! Ho, ho, ho!” And he
went off, presumably to pass the good one on.
His place was taken by Harvey Manning, who was no longer able to stand
up, but sprawled over a chair, and in a voice of the deepest injury
declared, “I wanna know whoze been tellin bout me!”
“Telling what?” asked Bunny.
“Thaz what I wanna know. What they been tellin?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Harvey.”
“Thass it! Why don’t you know? Why don’t you tell me? Mean say I ain’t
askin straight? You think I’m drunk—that it? I say, I wanna know whoze
been talkin bout me an what they been sayin. I gotta take care my
reputation. I wanna know why you won’t tell me. I’m gonna know if I have
to keep askin all night.” And accordingly he started again, “Please, ole
feller, what they been tellin you?”
But just then the Chinese spectre flitted past, and Harvey got up and
made an effort to catch him, and failing, caught hold of a lamp-stand,
slightly taller than himself. It was not built like the lamp-posts that
he was used to clutching on street-corners; it started to fall, and
Bunny leaped and caught it, and Harvey cried, in alarm, “Look out,
you’re upsettin it!”
Then a funny thing happened. Bunny had noticed at the dinner-table a
well-groomed man of the big Western type, polite and unobtrusive; the
superintendent of the estate, and one of the few who kept sober. Now it
appeared that among the duties of superintendent at a monastery was that
of the old-fashioned “bouncer” of the Bowery saloon. He came up, and
quietly slipped his arm about Harvey Manning; and the latter, evidently
having been there before, set up an agonized wail, “I d’wanna go to bed!
I woan go to bed! Dammit, Anderson, lemme lone! If I go to bed now I
wake up in the mornin an I can’t have a drink till evenin an I go
crazy!”
Against that horrible fate poor Harvey fought frantically; but
apparently the material inside the shoulders of Mr. Anderson’s dresscoat
was not the ordinary tailor’s padding, and the weeping victim was
helpless as in the grip of a boa-constrictor. He went along, even while
proclaiming loudly that he wouldn’t. “I’ll get up again, I tell you! I
woan be treated like a baby! I woan come this damn place again! It’s an
outrage! I’m a grown man an I got a right get drunk if I wanna—” and so
his weeping voice died into the elevator!
“Mr. Ross,” said Vee Tracy, “there are two cries that one hears at
Hollywood parties. The first is, I don’t want to go to bed; and the
second is, I do.”
X
When Bunny made his appearance on Sunday morning, he had the Monastery
all to himself. He breakfasted, and read the papers, which had been
delivered from the nearest railroad station; then he went for a stroll,
and renewed his acquaintance with the “reds” in the eagle cage. He
walked down towards the ocean, and discovered a combination of
fire-break and bridle-path, leading over the hills along the coast. He
followed this for a couple of miles, until it led down to a long stretch
of beach. The owner of the Monastery had erected a barrier here, with
signs warning the public to keep out; there was a gate with a spring
lock, and on the inside a board with keys hanging on it, and
instructions to take one with you, so that you could return. Bunny did
this, and continued his walk down the beach.
Presently he came upon a Rhine castle, set upon one of these lonely
hills; and in front of it, coming down to the water, a series of
terraces and gardens. There were paths, and watercourses, “bridal-veil”
falls, and fountains with stone-carved frogs and storks and turtles and
tritons—all suffering from drought, for the water was shut off. You
could guess that the owner was away, because the window-shades in the
Rhine castle were drawn, and here and there throughout the gardens were
great lumps of white sheeting, evidently wrapped about statues. Some of
these were on pedestals, and some perched on the stone walls; and
directly over the head of each hung an electric light.
It was such a curious phenomenon that Bunny took the trouble to climb
into the garden, and lift up the hem of one of these sheets, and was
embarrassed to discover the entirely naked round limbs of a large marble
lady—presumably a Lorelei, or other kind of German lady, because you
could tell by the shape of the cloth, and by feeling through it, that
she had a goblet uplifted in one hand, and behind her head a thick
marble rope, made by her braided hair. With golden comb she combs it,
you remember, and sings a song thereby, das hat eine wundersame
gewaltige Melodei; and Bunny was the fisher-boy whom it seized with a
wild woe. He peered under half a dozen of the sheets, and counted the
rest, establishing the fact that the gardens contained no less than
thirty-two large, fat marble ladies with braided hair hanging down their
backs. An amazing spectacle it must have afforded, at night when all the
lights were turned on—and no one to behold it but seals! Yes; Bunny
looked out over the sea, and there was not a sail in sight, but close to
the shore were clusters of rocks, and on these the seals sat waiting to
see if he were going to unveil the statues, and bring back the merry
days before prohibition ruined America!
He returned to the beach, and walked on. The sun was high now, and the
water tempting; there were more rocks with seals on them, and
green-white breakers splashing over them, not high enough to be
dangerous, but just enough to be alluring. Bunny made sure he was alone,
and then undressed and waded into the water.
The attention of the seals became riveted upon him, and with each step
that he took, one of them would give a hump, hump, and get nearer to the
water’s edge. Some of them were yellow, and some a dark brown, little
ones and big ones, each of them enormously fat—having consumed his own
weight in fish in the course of a day. As Bunny swam near, they slid
silently off the rocks, politely yielding place to him; when he
clambered onto the rocks, they would bob up and form a circle a few
yards away, yellow heads and brown heads sticking out of the water,
whiskers bristling and mild eyes staring. They were strangely human, a
circle of foreign children, watching some visitor who does not know
their language and may or may not be dangerous.
California water is always cold, but California sunshine is always warm;
so Bunny would swim for a while, and then approach a cluster of rocks,
and watch the silent company hump themselves into the water. Whatever he
wanted, they would yield to him, the superior being, and content
themselves with the places he had left. The green-white seas splashed
over him, and underneath their surface was a garden of strange plants,
with anemones and abalones clinging, too tightly to be pried off by
fingers. White clouds drifted by, making swift shadows over the water,
and far out at sea a streak of smoke showed where a steamer was passing.
The world was so beautiful, and at the same time strange, and
interesting to be alive in! What must it be like to be a seal? What did
they think concerning this arrogant being who commandeered their resting
places? Did they see the Rhine castle on the shore, or did they see only
fish to eat, and how did they understand so clearly that they must not
eat a man? Embarrassing if one of them should be a “red,” and rebel
against the genial customs of the phocidae! Thus Bunny—just the same at
the age of twenty-one as when first we met him, driving over the
Guadalupe grade and speculating about the feelings of ground-squirrels
and butcher-birds. He had completed in the meantime a full course at the
Beach City High School, and half a course at Southern Pacific
University, but neither institution had told him what he wanted to know!
XI
The young philosopher decided that he had had enough, and started to
swim in; but then he noticed someone on horseback, galloping down the
beach towards him. The figure was bare-headed and clad in
knickerbockers, and appeared to be a man; but you never could be sure
these days, so he swam and waited, and presently made out that it was
Vee Tracy. She saw him, and waved her hand, and when she was opposite,
reined up her horse. “Good morning, Mr. Ross.”
“Good morning,” he called. “Is this part of the doctor’s prescription?”
“Yes, and it also includes swimming.” There was laughter in her face, as
if she guessed his plight. “Why don’t you invite me to join you?”
“It would embarrass the seals.” He swam in slowly, and stood with the
waves tumbling about his shoulders.
“It is the morning of the world,” said Vee. “Come out, and let us enjoy
it.”
“Look here, Miss Tracy,” he explained, “it so happens that I wasn’t
expecting company. I am the way the Lord made me.”
“O ye sons of men,” she chanted, “how long will ye turn my glory into
shame?” And she explained, “I once acted in ‘King Solomon’—a religious
pageant. We had three real camels, and I was Abishag the Shunammite, the
damsel who cherished the king and ministered unto him; and he sang to
me, Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is
past, and the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is
heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the
vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair
one, and come away. Oh my dove, that art in the cleft of the rocks—”
He was near enough to see the imp of mischief dancing in her black eyes.
“Young woman,” he said, “I give you fair notice. I have been in this
water an hour, and I am cold. I was on my way out.”
She continued, “Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an
armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty
men.”
He took a few steps, until the breakers barely reached his waist. “I am
on the way,” he said.
“Who is this that cometh out of the water? My beloved is white and
ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is as the most fine
gold, his locks are bushy—”
“Fair warning!” he announced. “One—two—three!” And when she gave no
sign of yielding, he strode out from the waves.
“His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold; his
countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.”
He stood confronting her, the water playing about his feet.
“Thou are beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible
as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have
overcome me!”
“If that’s in the Bible, I suppose it’s all right,” said Bunny.
“‘King Solomon’ lost a fortune,” said the lady on horseback, “so it’s
the only pageant I was ever in, and it’s the only poetry I can recite.
But I dare say if I had been in a Greek pageant I could quote something
appropriate, for I read they used to run naked in the games, and it did
not embarrass them. Is that true?”
“So the books say,” said Bunny.
“Well then, let’s be Greek! You are a runner, I have heard. Are you in
training?”
“Partly so.”
“My beloved’s lips are blue and he’s got goose-flesh, so let’s have a
race, you and my horse, and it’ll be a Greek pageant.”
“Anything to oblige a lady.”
“Ready! Set!” she called sharply—and then, to his great surprise,
pulled a little revolver from under her jacket, and fired it into the
air. It was to be a real race!
He started at the rate of twenty miles an hour, or a little better, and
heard the horse loping on the sand behind him. He did not know how long
the race was to last, so presently he settled down to a long distance
gait. He was warm again, and willing to investigate being a Greek. The
sky was blue, and the clouds white, and the sea green, and the sand
sparkling cold; truly, as the girl had said, it was the morning of the
world!
They came to a place where wagon-tracks came down to the beach, and
there were fishermen’s boats, and three men had just shoved out through
the breakers. They rested on their oars, to stare at this amazing
spectacle, an entirely naked youth running a race on the beach with a
woman on horseback. Their swarthy Italian or Portuguese faces wore broad
grins, with white teeth showing. They knew about the Monastery, and this
was the latest freak of the idle rich!
But then came a place where the highway came near to the beach. There
were tents ahead, and automobiles parked, with canvas covers to protect
them from the sun. There were people on the beach; and these, Bunny
knew, would not be primitive foreigners, but ranchmen from the interior,
having brought their families to spend Sunday away from the baking heat.
They would have no toleration for the freaks of the idle rich, neither
would they know about the customs of the ancient Greeks; they were
sober, church-going people, the sort who formed the Ku Klux Klan, and
punished fornications and adulteries by tarring and feathering and
riding on a rail. But Vee had challenged Bunny, and he said to himself
that it was up to her. Did she really want to be pagan and take the
consequences?
He ran on and on. The tents came near, and he saw women stare, and then
dive into shelter; he saw the men, not running away, nor turning their
heads, but glaring with menace in their faces. What would they do? Seize
the obscene intruder, and wrap him perforce in a blanket, and deliver
him over to the police? Bunny’s quick mind leaped to the outcome—a
streamer head across the front page of the “Angel City Evening Howler”—
STAR RACES NUDE OIL RED!
Then suddenly he heard a voice behind him: “I give up! I’m going back!”
So he whirled, and the horse whirled, and away they went, even faster
than they had come, and both of them shaking with laughter in the
morning of the world!
XII
The Greeks had never worn either trousers or shirts, and the process of
getting into these garments did not lend itself to romantic or esthetic
interpretations. Therefore Vee Tracy rode down the beach while Bunny
dressed; and when he rejoined her, she was no longer Greek, but an
American young lady upon her dignity, and it would have been bad taste
to have referred to her crazy prank.
She was leading the horse with the bridle over its head, and Bunny
walked by her side. “Did you notice that nightmare?” she said, as they
passed the thirty-two Loreleis in their grave-clothes. “That was one of
the dreams of old Hank Thatcher. You’ve heard of ‘Happy Hank,’ the
California Grape-king?”
“So that’s his place!” exclaimed Bunny.
“He dreamed of orgies, and kept half a dozen harems; his wife refused
him a divorce to punish him, and when he died she covered up his dream
as a kind of public penance.”
“Nobody seems to see it but the seals.”
“Oh, the papers were full of it; they would never pass up any news about
the Thatchers. They send out a reporter once in a while. One time they
had a scream of a story—the reporter had worn a suit of chain-mail
under his trousers, and the dogs had torn at him in vain!”
“She sets dogs on them?”
“That’s why nobody dares go up there to peek at the statues.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Bunny. “I peeked at half a dozen of them.”
“Well, you were lucky. That’s why I carried this revolver along; they
sometimes come onto the beach, and the neighbors make war on them.”
“Why doesn’t she put up a fence?”
“She’s in a dispute with the county. She claims to own the beach, and
every now and then she puts a barrier across it, and the county sends
men at night to tear it down. They’ve been fighting it out for the past
ten years. Also the state is trying to put a highway through the
tract—it would save several miles of the coast route—but she has spent
a fortune fighting them; she lives in that castle like a beleaguered
princess in the old days—all the shades drawn, and she steals about
from room to room with a gun in her hand, looking for burglars and
spies. Ask Harve about it—he knows her.”
“Is she insane?”
“It’s a reaction from her life with her husband; he was a profligate,
and so she’s a miser. They tell a story about him, he used to pay his
hands in cash, and would drive about the country in a buckboard with
little canvas bags, each containing a thousand dollars in gold. One time
he dropped one bag and didn’t miss it; one of his hands brought it to
him, and old Hank looked at the man with contempt, and put his hand into
his pocket and pulled out a half dollar. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘here’s the
price of a rope; go buy one and hang yourself’!”
“So now she’s taking care of the money!”
“Exactly. She pays all her bills by registered mail, and preserves the
receipts, and insists on having a return receipt from the post office,
and when that comes she files the two together, and when the receipted
bill comes back, she files and indexes that. She won’t let a bookkeeper
do it, because you can’t find any employees who can be trusted to attend
to things properly. She spends hours poring over her business papers,
and discovering other people’s carelessness and incompetence. She
employs lawyers, and then she employs other lawyers to check them up,
and then a detective agency to find out how the lawyers are selling her
out. She’s convinced the county authorities are persecuting her, and
that they’re all a lot of crooks—she mayn’t be so wrong in that. She’s
lean and haggard, and wears herself to a skeleton roaming about the
house, dusting the furniture and nagging at the servants because they
won’t take care of things.”
The two walked on down the beach. “Up over that hill,” said Vee, “lives
old Hank’s sister; he left her part of the estate, and the two women
have quarrelled about the boundary line and the water-rights. Tessie
Thatcher’s an old rake—hires men to work for her, and makes them her
lovers, and writes them tootsie-wootsie letters, and then they try to
blackmail her, and she tells them to go to hell, and they bring suit for
unpaid salaries, and sell the letters to the newspapers, and they’re all
published; but Tessie doesn’t care, she knows that nothing can hurt her
social position, she’s too rich; and besides, she’s an old
booze-fighter, and knows how to forget her troubles.”
“My God!” exclaimed Bunny. “What property does to people!”
“To women especially,” said Vee. “It’s too much for their nerves. I look
at the old women I meet, and think, which of them do I want to be? And I
say, Oh, my God! and jump into my car and drive fifty miles an hour to
get away from my troubles, and from people who want to tell me theirs!”
“Is that what you were doing when the judge sent you to jail for a
week?” laughed Bunny.
“No,” she answered, “that was a publicity stunt, the bright idea of my
advertising man.”