Dad came home after a few days, and made Bertie still more indignant by telling the members of the family they would have to go slow on expenditures until the strike was over; he was going to have a hard time with his financing. Bertie suggested sarcastically that Bunny might like to sell his car to help his father out in the pinch. Dad told how there had been a little fuss on the property, one of the strikers had got into a fight with a guard at night; it wasn’t clear just whose the blame was, but the captain of the guards had threatened to withdraw them all if Dad did not turn the strikers out of the bunk-house and off the property. They had finally compromised by Dad’s putting up a fence between the rest of the property, and the part near the road which was occupied by the bunk-house and the homes of the men. It was a fence of barbed wire, eight feet high, and Bertie remarked sarcastically that it would be another place where Bunny and “his Ruth” could grow roses. This jibe hurt, because it summed up to Bunny the part he was playing in this struggle—growing roses on the barbed wire fence which separated capital from labor.
Dad rebuked Bertie, saying that the men were not criminals, they were decent fellows, most of them, and good Americans; the Germans had nothing to do with it at all. The trouble was, they were being misled by agitators just now. But that didn’t help matters with Bertie, because “Bunny’s old Paul” was one of the worst of these agitators. And Bertie didn’t think her father ought to sleep up there in that lonely cabin, and let those Watkins people cook for him. She had heard a wild tale about some restaurant workers on strike who had put poison in the soup; and when Dad and Bunny burst into laughter at that, she said she didn’t exactly mean Paul or Ruth would do such a thing, but they certainly couldn’t enjoy cooking for both the strikers and for Dad at the same time, and Dad ought to be indignant with them for deserting him in a crisis. Bunny took occasion to declare that Ruth was a true-hearted girl; and his sister broke in, oh yes, of course, she knew Bunny’s admiration for the wonderful Miss Ruth, the next thing they’d be hearing he was in love with her—or would it be with Meelie, or what was the other one’s name?
Bunny got up and walked out of the room. Bunny was in love with somebody else, and his sister was hateful in this attitude of class-bigotry. And yet, he had to remind himself, within her own circle Bertie was generous, and sometimes tender-hearted. She was loyal to her friends, she would help them if they got into trouble, and would work and scheme to entertain them. You see, Bertie knew these people; they were all rich, and so she considered them her equals, and was willing to enter into their lives. But the oil workers Bertie did not know; they were a lower order of beings, created for her pleasure, and owing her a debt of submission, which they were trying to get out of paying.
And what was Bertie, that the oil workers should support her? She was a dashing and brilliant young person, who knew how to spend a great deal of money in super-elegant ways, in the company of other young persons possessing the same accomplishment; she was racing about with them, and her talk was of what they said and what they did and what they owned. Bertie was going a fast pace, seldom in before the small hours of the morning, and if she was up before lunch, it was because she had an engagement to rush away. What was the use of having a lot of money if you didn’t have a good time with it? That was the doctrine Bertie hammered into her younger brother; and Aunt Emma echoed it; and now came Eunice Hoyt, who had chosen Bunny, and had the most powerful leverage of all. Be young, be young! everybody cried. Why should you carry all the burden of the world upon your shoulders? Especially since there was not a thing you could do—since the world was fixed and ordained, and would not let you touch the least of all its vested and endowed and chartered disharmonies!
VII
The German submarines had sunk one American vessel too many, and America was going to war; Congress had been summoned, and the whole country was on tiptoe with belligerency. The newspapers had pages of despatches from Washington and New York, and from the capitals of Europe; so it was not surprising that the news of the Paradise oil strike got crowded out. Once in a while you saw an inch or two buried in a back page; three strikers had been arrested, charged with beating up a strike-breaker on a dark night; it was declared by the operators that the strikers had attempted to set fires in the district, and that German agents were active among the trouble-makers: some little thing like that, to remind you that three thousand men, and the wives and children of many of them, were waging a desperate struggle with starvation.
Dad of course had daily reports of what was happening, and so Bunny got the news. Little by little the operators had gathered up a supply of men, paying them extra wages, and bringing them to the field. They were seldom skilled men, and there were many accidents; nevertheless, a number of the wells were back on production, and in two or three cases some drilling was being done. But on the Ross tract everything stood idle; and Bunny could see that his father was irritated by this situation. He was losing a fortune every day—and at the same time losing caste with his associates, who thought he was either crack-brained, or a traitor, they could not make out which. Of course, the Big Five were glad enough to see one of the independents cutting his own throat; but they pretended to be indignant, and spread rumors and propaganda against their rival, and magnified the trouble he was causing in the field.
Bunny could see all this, and he got the sting of it from the gossip which Aunt Emma brought home from the clubs, and Bertie from her house-parties and dinner-dances. And then he would think of the men, clinging pitifully to their hope of a better life, and his heart would be torn in half. There was only one thing that could justify Dad’s course, and that was for the men to win; they must win, they must! It was the way Bunny felt when he sat and watched a football game, and cheered himself hoarse for the home-team. He had an impulse to jump into the arena and help the team—but alas, the rules of the game forbade such action!
There had been more trouble with the guards at the Ross tract, and Dad was going up to the field, and Bunny went along for a week-end. It was springtime now, and the hills were green, and the fruit-trees in blossom—oh, beautiful, beautiful! But human beings were miserable, millions of them, and why could they not learn to be happy in such a world? It was springtime all over the country, and yet everybody was preparing to go to war, and form vast armies, and kill other people, also groping for happiness! Everybody said that it had to be; and yet something in Bunny would not cease to dream of a world in which people did not maim and kill one another, and destroy, not merely the happiness of others, but their own.
They came to Paradise, and there was the strange sight of idle men, hanging about the streets; and of guards at the entrances to all the oil properties. There was somebody making a speech on a vacant lot, and a crowd listening. It was a great time for all sorts of cranks with things to teach—itinerant evangelists, and patent medicine venders, and Socialist orators—the people heard them all impartially. Bunny found that his reading-room was being patronized now, there were men who had read all the magazines, even to the advertisements!