IX
Well, Paul got out, and Bunny was supposed to be satisfied. To be sure, seven other fellows were in, and Bunny knew them all; but it would have cost fifty-two thousand five hundred dollars to release them, and that would certainly be carrying idealism to unreasonable extremes. So Bunny let Vee carry him and Dad off to that "camp" on a lake with a long Indian name, and there they swam, and canoed, and fished, and damped the forests, and took pictures of moose in the water; they had Indian guides, and everything romantic—and at the same time hot and cold water in their bed-rooms, and steam-heat if they wanted it; all the comforts of Broadway and Forty-second Street. Here, if ever, they had a chance to get enough of each other; there were no distractions, no social duties, no visitors dropping in, no dressing to be done; they were together all day and all night. What Bunny found was that they were perfectly happy so long as they were doing physical things: canoe trips to other places, new fishing stunts, hunting with the camera, shooting rapids, learning to make camp, to start a fire like the Indians— anything it might be. But they must be playing all the time, otherwise a great gulf opened between them. If Bunny wanted to read, what was Vee to do? Once a day a little steamer came the length of the lake and put off supplies and a packet of mail. There were papers from Angel City, and also, once a week, the strike bulletin of the oil workers, which Bunny had very unwisely subscribed for. What was the use of running three thousand miles away from trouble, and then having it sent to you in a mail sack? Reading of the scenes that he knew so well—the meetings, the relief work, the raising of funds, the struggles with the guards, the arrests, the sufferings of the men in jail, the beating up of strike pickets, the insolence of the sheriff and other officials, the dishonesty of the newspapers—it was exactly the same as if Bunny were in Paradise. Paul was one of the executive committee, Paul had become Tom Axton's right-hand man, and his speeches were quoted, and his experiences in the San Elido county jail—when Bunny had finished that little paper, he was so shaken he was not the same all day. Vee found out about it, of course, and began trying to persuade him to stop reading it. Had he not done his share by giving the strikers back their leader? And had he not promised to repay her, his darling Vee-Vee, with love and affection for a whole summer? Bunny wrestled it out with his own soul, in such free moments as he could get. He told himself that it was to help his father—a more respectable excuse than entertaining a mistress! But did his father have a right to expect so much? Did any one person have a right to replace all the rest of humanity? If it was the duty of the young to sacrifice themselves for the old, how could there ever be any progress in the world? As time passed, and the struggle in the oil fields grew more tense, the agony of the workers more evident, Bunny came to the clear decision that his flight had been cowardly. He tried to explain his point of view to Vee, but only to run into a stone wall. It was not a subject for reasoning, it was a matter of instinct with her. She believed in her money; she had starved for it, sold herself, body and mind, for it, and she meant to hang onto it. Bunny's so-called "radical movement" meant to her that others wanted to take it away. He discovered a strange, hard streak in her; she would spend money lavishly, for silks and furs and jewels, for motor-cars and parties—but that was all professional, it was part of her advertising bill. But, on the other hand, where no display was involved, where the public did not enter—there she hated to spend money; he overheard her wrangling with a washerwoman over the amount to be charged for the ironing of her lingerie, and those filmy night-dresses in which she seduced his soul. No, he could never make a "radical" out of this darling of the world; he would have to make up his mind to that. She would listen to him, because she loved him, even the sound of his voice talking nonsense; she would make a feeble pretense at agreeing, but all the time it was as if he had the measles and she waiting for him to get cured; as if he were drunk and she trying to get him "on the wagon." She had apologized to Rachel, and had got Paul out of jail, but merely to please him, and in reality she hated both these people. Still more did she hate Ruth, with a cold, implacable hatred—an intriguing minx, pretending to be a simple country maiden in order to win an oil prince! No women were simple, if you believed Vee, and damn few of them were maidens. Nor would Ruth ever stop being a nuisance. In the midst of one of their happiest times, she sent Bunny another telegram—her brother was in jail again, this time it was contempt of court. Bunny considered it necessary to paddle down to the nearest telegraph office and wire Mr. Dolliver, the lawyer, to investigate and report. The answer came that nothing could be done—Paul and others of the strike leaders had disregarded an injunction forbidding them to do this and that, and there was no bail and no appeal, neither habeas corpusses nor counter-injunctions, and Paul would have to serve his three months' sentence. Bunny was bitter and rebellious against judges who issued injunctions, and Vee was afraid to speak, because it seemed obvious to her that somebody had to control strikers. Of course after that there was a shadow over their holiday—Bunny brooding upon his friend shut up in the county jail. He sent Ruth five hundred dollars, to take care of all the prisoners; and in course of time got a letter, saying that the prisoners had refused the money, and Ruth had turned it over to the strike relief. It was a terrible thing to see children without enough to eat; terrible also that men who had power should use it to starve children! Thus the "simple" Ruth— not meaning any hint at Dad!
X
Bunny had to study for his fall examinations, and that looked like a problem, for what was Vee going to do? But fate provided a solution—Dad telegraphed to Harvard University, which sent up a young instructor to do tutoring, and he was the solution. He was tall, and had the loveliest fair blue eyes, and a softly curling golden moustache, and soft golden fuzz all over him like a baby; he wore gold nose-glasses, and had a quiet voice and oh, so much culture—one of those master minds which can tutor you in anything if you give them a week's start! Coming as he did from an old Philadelphia family, and having been trained in the haughtiest centre of intellectual snobbery, you might have thought he would look down upon an ex-mule driver and his son, to say nothing of an actress who had been raised in a patent medicine vender's wagon, and had never read a whole book in her life. But as a matter of fact, young Mr. Appleton Laurence just simply collapsed in the presence of the situation he found at this Ontario camp; it was the most romantic and thrilling thing that a young instructor had encountered since Harvard began. As for the patent medicine vender's daughter, he could not take his eyes off her, and when she came near, the tutoring business was scattered as by a hurricane. Vee of course had put her sparkling black eyes to work at once; all those stunts which Tommy Paley had taught her she now tried out on a new victim, and Bunny, as audience, was in position to study them objectively. Vee would wait till Mr. Laurence had set Bunny his morning's work, and then she and the tutor would go for a walk in the woods, and Bunny would sit with one half his mind on his books, while the other half wondered what was happening, and what he had reason to expect from one who had had so many lovers. She did not leave him long in doubt. "Bunny-rabbit," she said, "you aren't going to be worried about my Appie, are you?"—for the hurricane that struck the tutoring business had swept all dignity away, and Mr. Appleton Laurence was "Appie," except when he was "Applesauce." "I won't worry unless you tell me to," Bunny answered. "That's a dear! You must understand, I'm an actress, that's the way I earn my living, and I simply have to know all about love, and how can I learn if I don't practice?" "Well, that's all right, dear—" "Some of the men they give you in Hollywood are such dubs, it makes you sick, you would as soon be in the arms of a clothing dummy. So I have to tell them how to act, and I have to know how a real gentleman behaves—you know what I mean, the highbrows and snobs. Oh, Bunny, it's the cutest thing you ever saw, he falls down on his knees, and the tears come into his eyes, and you know, he can recite all the poets by heart; I never saw anything like it; you'd think he was an old Shakespearean actor. And it's really a great opportunity for me, to cultivate my taste and get refined." "Well, yes, dear, but isn't it a little hard on him?" "Oh, rubbish, it won't hurt him, he'll go off and put it into sonnets—he's doing it already, and maybe he'll get to be famous, and it'd be great publicity! Don't you bother about him, Bunny, and don't bother about me; there's nobody in the world for me but my Bunny-rabbit—all the rest is just a joke." And she put her arms about him. "I know what it is to be jealous, dear, and I wouldn't cause you that unhappiness for anything in the world. If you really mind, you can send old Applesauce packing, and I won't be cross." Bunny laughed. "I can't do that, I've got to be tutored." Vee told Dad about it, too—lest he should be having any vicarious pangs. When Dad heard about the falling on the knees and the tears, he chuckled. Bunny would get the contents of the tutor's mind, and Vee would get the contents of his heart, and they would send him home like a squeezed orange. It appealed to Dad as good business. Back in Paradise, you remember, he was hiring a chemical wizard, paying him six thousand a year, and making millions out of him!
XI
There came another development, to protect Vee from the possibility of boredom. Schmolsky sent her up the "continuity" of the new picture upon which she was to start work in the fall. And then suddenly it was revealed that the world's darling knew how to read! For a whole hour she sat buried in it, and then she leaped up, ready to start rehearsing—and all the hurricanes that ever swept the province of Ontario were as nothing to the one that came now. Clear the way for "The Princess of Patchouli"! It was a popular musical comedy which was to be made into a moving picture. "Patchouli" was one of the little Balkan kingdoms, though it looked and acted very much like Vienna of the Strauss waltzes. A young American engineer came in to build a railroad, and found himself mistaken for a conspirator, and presently he was rescuing the lovely princess from a revolutionary band— no Bolsheviks, these were aristocratic army conspirators, so Bunny wouldn't have his feelings hurt, would he? Of course the hero carried her off, married her for love only, and then got the kingdom thrown in—the bankers who were financing the railroad bought it for him. So here was Vee, being a princess all over the place. It was amazing to watch her work—Bunny suddenly came to realize that her success hadn't been all money and sex, after all. She pounced onto the role like a tiger-cat, and when she got going the rest of the world ceased to exist—except to the extent that she needed it for a foil. "Now, Dad, you're the king; you walk in here—no, no, for God's sake, kings don't walk so fast! And I have to fall at your feet, and plead for his life, 'Oh, mercy, sire, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so!'" It is one of the peculiarities of motion picture acting that it doesn't matter what you say, so long as you are saying something; so Vee would weep, "And so-and-so," and she would croon "And so-and-so" in passionate love-accents to either Bunny or Appie, and she would shriek "And so-and-so" in deadly terror to an executioner with uplifted axe. And if in the course of the scene the other person didn't do it right, then scolding and commands would serve equally well for a love-song, "Hold it, now, you idiot, I adore you, darling"—or maybe it might be, "Take your hands off me, foul beast—don't let go, you goose, grab! That's better, you don't have to be polite when you're a murderer." If Bunny had wanted to rehearse tempestuous emotions, and shriek and scream and tear his hair, he would have sought refuge in the woods, where only the chipmunks could have heard him. But Vee was utterly indifferent to the existence of other humans. That is something one learns on "the lot"; for there will be cameramen and scene-shifters, and property-boys, and carpenters working on the next set, and some visitors that have managed to break in despite the strictest regulations—and you just go on with your work. The first time the executioner lifted his axe and Vee started screaming, the Indian guides came running in alarm; but she hardly stopped even for a laugh, she went on with the scene, while they stood staring with mouths wide open. She and her two lovers would come in from swimming, and suddenly she would call for a rehearsal of some royal pageantry—she could be a princess just as well in a scanty bathing suit, with a carpet of pine-needles under her bare feet. Mr. Appleton Laurence had never met any princesses, but he had read a great deal of history and poetry, and so he was an authority, and must criticise her way of walking, her gestures, her attitudes, her reaction to the love-advances of a handsome young American engineer. "Just imagine you're in love with me yourself, Appie," she would say—and so his emotions became sublimated into art, and he could pour out his soul to her, right before Bunny and Dad and Dad's secretary and the Indians! "You're much better at it than Bunny," she would declare. "I believe he's got used to me, it's as bad as if we were married." So the time passed pleasantly. Until at last Vee had got to feel perfectly at home in her Appie's conception of royalty; she no longer had to ask questions, not to stop and think, but knew instantly what to do—and forever after, in all her entrances to and exits from Hollywood society, she would be a little of a Harvard instructor's Princess of Patchouli. She was impatient now, wanting to see the sets, and to hear Tommy Paley call, "Camera!" Bunny also was loaded up with answers to all possible exam questions, and ready to get back and unload them onto his professors. Dad had run down to Toronto, and signed the last of the papers for his Canadian corporation; he had telegrams from Verne almost every day—the strikers, having held out for nearly four months, had learned their lesson, and the Federal Oil Board had written them a letter, advising them to go back to work as individuals, and promising there would be no discrimination against union men. Then one day the steamer brought a telegram signed Annabelle, addressed to Bunny, and reading, "Spring lamb for dinner come on home." He explained what that meant, the strike was over; and so the occupants of the camp packed up, and Mr. Appleton Laurence went back to his fair Harvard, with woe in his heart and a packet of immortal sonnets in his suit-case, while Vee Tracy and Dad and Bunny and the secretary made themselves luxurious in compartments on a Canadian-Pacific train bound West.