And then the folks at home! First, Aunt Emma, horrified tearful, and completely muddled. Bunny had not got that prize after all! Aunt Emma had somehow got it fixed in her head that there had been a prize, and that Bunny might have got it if it had not been for the reds. This awful peril of Bolshevik agents, right in one’s home! Aunt Emma had heard hair-raising stories from lecturers to her club-ladies, but had never dreamed that these emissaries of Satan might be seducing her darling nephew! “Watch out, auntie!” said the nephew. “You may be next!”
And then Bertie. Bertie was just wild! She had been invited to a house-party of the very desirable Atherton-Stewarts, but now she would be ashamed to show her face among decent people. That was the way every time, no sooner did she achieve a social triumph, than Bunny came along and made one of his stinks. It was the most disgusting thing that could have happened, it showed his tastes were naturally low. Bertie and Bunny were quite fond of each other, and called each other violent names with true brotherly and sisterly frankness.
Finally Dad, who was a perfect brick; never said a word, nor asked a question, and when Bunny started to explain, he said, “That’s all right, son, I know just how it happened.” And that was true; he knew Paul and Harry Seager, he had been inside his boy’s mind. And he knew the tragedy of life, that each generation has to make its own mistakes.
The uproar died away surprisingly soon. In a few days Bunny’s classmates were joshing him, it was all a joke. There was only one serious consequence, that Mr. Daniel Webster Irving received a letter from President Cowper, advising him in advance, as a matter of courtesy, that his contract with Southern Pacific University would not be renewed for next year. The instructor showed it to Bunny, with a dry smile; and Bunny was enraged, and wanted to blackmail the reverend doctor a second time. But Mr. Irving said to forget it, there were too many ways to make life miserable for a teacher who wasn’t wanted. He would file his references with the employment agencies, and write a lot of letters, and move on to pastures new. “That is,” he added, “assuming I can get something. They have a pretty tight organization, and I may find I’m blacklisted for good.”
“How do you suppose they got on to you, Mr. Irving?”
“It was bound to happen,” said the other. “They have so many spies.”
“But we have been so careful! We’ve never mentioned your name, except among our own little group!”
“They’ve probably got a spy right among you.”
“A student, you mean?”
“Of course.” And smiling at Bunny’s incredulity, Mr. Irving reached into his desk and pulled out a mimeographed sheet of paper. “This was handed to me by a business friend of mine,” he said.
It was one of the weekly bulletins of the “Improve America League,” a propaganda organization of the business men of Angel City. It explained how they had their agents at work in colleges and high schools, training students to watch their teachers and fellow students, and report any signs of the red menace. The league boasted its fund of a hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year for the next five years. So here was another chunk of reality, falling with a dull sickening thud upon the head of a young idealist! Bunny sat, running over in his mind the members of the little group. “Who could it be?”
Said Mr. Irving: “Someone who was very ‘red,’ you can be sure. That is how it works—a man is looking for something to report, and when it’s too slow making its appearance, he’s tempted to help it along. So the spy almost always becomes a provocateur. You can tell him by the fact that he talks a lot and does nothing—he can’t afford to have it said that he was a leader.”
“By God!” cried Bunny. “He promised to help us sell those papers, and then he didn’t show up!”
“Who is that?”
“Billy George. We never could be red enough to suit him! He was the cause of that fool poem of Peter Nagle’s going into the paper. And now he’s dropped clean out—he wasn’t mentioned in the scandal.”
Mr. Irving smiled. “Well, Ross, you’ve seen the white terror in action! You’ll find it helps you to understand world history. Fortunately, you’re rich, so it was just a joke. But don’t forget—if you’d been a poor Russian Jew in the slums, you’d be in jail now, with ten thousand dollars bail, and ten or twenty years in state’s prison for your destiny. If you had happened to live in Poland or Finland or Romania, you and all your little bunch would have been buried in one muddy trench a week ago!”
XII
The Siren
I
Springtime had come again, and Bunny was finishing his second year at Southern Pacific. But the bloom was now worn off the peach; he no longer took the great institution at its own valuation. He knew that the courses were dull, and that they taught you masses of facts of little importance, and were afraid of new and original thinking. The one thing he had got was a clue to some worthwhile books; he wanted to read them—but you could do that better at home. He was debating whether he would come back next year.
Things were freer at Paradise, it seemed. Paul had gone back to work as a boss-carpenter for the company; he had recovered a part of his strength,
