Early in the spring the union leaders held a conference, and served notice on the oil board that the defiance of government authority by the operators was beyond endurance; either the board must assert its authority, or else the workers would take matters into their own hands. The board did nothing; and when the union officials addressed letters to the operators’ committee, the letters were ignored. A strike was inevitable; and the longer it was postponed, the worse for the men.
Then a peculiar thing happened. Vee Tracy came to Bunny; she had just completed another picture—no propaganda this time, no, she had laid down the law to Schmolsky, she would never again have anything to do with Russia, or with strikes, or anything that might wound the sensibilities of her oil prince. This time the billboards announced Viola Tracy in “An Eight Reel Comedy of College Capers, entitled Come-Hither Eyes.” Vee was glorious as the flirt of the campus, breaking hearts of football stars by the eleven at a time, and incidentally foiling the plot of a band of bookmakers, who had bet a million dollars on the outcome of the big game, and sought to paralyze the team by kidnapping its mascot and darling. Bunny having no sympathy with either bookmakers or kidnappers, it had been all right for him to watch this picture in the making, and supply local color out of his experience with college capers.
The world premiere of Come-Hither Eyes was to take place in New York, and the star had to attend. “Bunny,” she said, “why not come with me, and have a little fun?”
Now Bunny had never been east, and the idea was tempting. He had two weeks’ Easter vacation, and if he missed a bit of college, it could be made up. He said he would think it over; and later in the day—this was at the Monastery—Annabelle opened up on him, “Why don’t you go with Vee, and take Dad along? The change would be the very thing for him.”
He studied her ingenuous countenance, and a grin came over his own. “What’s this, Annabelle—you and Verne trying to get us out of the way of the strike?”
She answered, “If your friends really care for you, they’ll wish you to be happy.” And when he said something about it’s being cowardly to run away, she made a striking reply. “We’re going to have roast spring lamb for dinner, but you didn’t consider it necessary to visit the slaughterhouse.”
“Annabelle,” he replied, “you are a social philosopher.” And she told him that people went to universities to learn long names for plain common sense!
Evidently the plot was deeply laid; for when Bunny got back home, there was Dad, inquiring, “Did Verne say anything about what he wants me to do?”
“No, Dad, what’s that?”
“There’s a conference in New York that somebody’s got to attend, and he wanted to know if I could get away. I was wondering if it would break you up at the university if you were to take a bit of vacation.”
Bunny debated with himself. What could be accomplished by staying? In the first strike, he had managed to keep the workers in their homes, but he couldn’t do even that much now, for Verne would be in charge, and would not budge an inch. Annabelle’s simile of the spring lamb appeared to fit exactly the position of the oil workers’ union. The job of slaughtering might take weeks, or even months, but it would be done—and all that Bunny could do would be to torment his poor father.
And then Bertie was called into the conspiracy. Bertie wanted him to go. She was to visit the fashionable Woodbridge Riley’s, and after that to be on Thelma Norman’s yacht, and she didn’t want her brother getting mixed up in an oil strike and perhaps making another stink in the newspapers! Wouldn’t he think about Dad for once, and get the old man to take a rest? Bunny was tired of arguing, and said, all right.
V
The proposed trip brought up a curious problem. How did one travel with one’s mistress, in this “land of the pilgrim’s pride?” Bunny remembered vaguely having heard of people being put out of hotels, because of the lack of marriage certificates. Would he and Vee have to meet clandestinely? He asked her about it, assuming that her experience would cover the question; and it did. On the trains one took a compartment, and no questions were asked. As for hotels, you went to the most fashionable, and let them know who you were, and they made no objection to putting you in adjoining suites, with a connecting door. Look at Verne and Annabelle, said Vee; when it suited their convenience they stayed quite openly at the most high-toned of Angel City’s hotels, and there was never a peep from either the management or the newspapers. It had happened more than once that Mrs. Roscoe had been stopping at the same hotel, and the papers would report her doings on the society page, and Annabelle’s on the dramatic page, so there was never any clash.
In truth the land of the pilgrim’s pride no longer existed; in its place was the land of the millionaire’s glory. When a moving picture star went east, with or without a paramour, she always left by daylight, and her publicity man saw to it that the newspapers published the time and place. There would be shouting thousands, and policemen to hold them back, and cameras clicking, and armfuls of flowers to let everybody on the train know who was who. There would be crowds at every station, calling for a glimpse of their darling; and if she had an oil prince travelling in the same compartment, that was not a scandal, it was a romance.
And when they got to New York, there was another crowd, conjured into being by
