“He won’t send troops, because we’ll have the railwaymen. We’ll have the telegraphers, and they’ll send our messages instead of his. We’ll have the men in all the key industries—we’re going out to organize them, and tell them exactly how to do it—all power to the unions.”
Bunny was contemplating once more the vision which his friend had brought back from Siberia. And Paul went on, with that condescending air that had always impressed Bunny, and infuriated his sister. “It seems dreadful to you, because it means a fight, and you don’t want to fight—you don’t have to. The men for this job are the ones that have had the iron in their souls—men that have been beaten and crushed, thrown into jail and starved there. That’s how Verne makes the revolution, he throws us into jail and lets us rot. We lie there and have bitter, black thoughts. All the Bolsheviks got their training in dungeons; and now the masters are giving the same course in America. It’s not only that we’re tempted and made hard—it’s that we become marked men, the workers know us; the poor slaves that don’t dare move a hand for themselves, they learn that there are fellows they can trust, that won’t sell them out to Vernon Roscoe! I’m going back to Paradise, son, and teach Communism, and if Verne has me arrested again, the Moscow program will go into the court records of San Elido county!”
IV
The newspapers announced a social event of the first importance, the engagement of Miss Alberta Ross, only daughter of Mr. J. Arnold Ross, to Mr. Eldon Burdick, a scion of one of the oldest families of the city, and recently chosen president of the California Defense League. A few days later came the announcement that Mr. Burdick had been appointed a secretary to the American embassy at Paris; and so the wedding was a state occasion, with more flowers than were ever seen in a church before, and Bunny all dolled up for a groomsman, and Dad looking as handsome as the ringmaster of a circus, and Aunt Emma, who considered that she had made this match, assuming the mental position of the bride’s mother, with the proper uncertain expression, half elation and half tears. “Mrs. Emma Ross, aunt of the bride, wore pink satin embroidered in pastel colored beads and carried pink lilies”—thus the newspapers, which set forth the importance of the Burdick family, and all about the Ross millions, and never mentioned that the father of the bride had once been a mule-driver, nor even that he had kept a general store at Queen Center, California!
And when the excitement was all over, and bride and groom had set out for their post of duty, then a funny thing happened; Aunt Emma, uplifted by her success as match-maker, turned her arts upon Bunny! The occasion was the world premiere of “The Princess of Patchouli,” a sort of family event. Had not Dad and Bunny been present at the inception of this sumptuous work of art? Had not Dad been king? By golly, he had, and he had told Aunt Emma about it at least a dozen times—and so, what more natural than that he should escort her upon his arm, following immediately behind the star of the occasion and her Bunny-rabbit? And what more natural than that Aunt Emma should meet Vee Tracy, and fall in love with her at first sight, and tell her darling nephew about her feelings?
In short, Bunny became aware that he was being manipulated by the proverbial tact of woman to think that Vee Tracy made a perfect princess on the screen, she was a natural-born aristocrat in both appearance and manner. It is part of the proverbial intuitive powers of woman, that she will be able to say exactly how an aristocrat will look and act, even though she has never been outside the state of California, and never laid eyes upon a single aristocrat in all her fifty years.
Bunny said, yes, Vee was all right; she was a good-looker. With the proverbial unresponsiveness of the selfish male, he did not warm up to his aunt’s hints and tell about his love-affair. In fact he was rather shocked, because he thought she was too old to know about anything improper. So Aunt Emma had to come right out with it, “Why don’t you marry her, Bunny?”
“Well, but Aunt Emma, I don’t know that she’d have me.”
“Have you ever asked her?”
“Well, I’ve sort of hinted round.”