So there were more troubles! What was Rachel going to do? The answer was that she was not going to desert her beloved young Socialists. It was all very well to say wait, but that was the way all compromising began; once you started, you never knew where to stop. No, Rachel would take her chances of the “Ypsels” being raided by the police, or placarded in the newspapers as a conspiracy to undermine the morals of youth! If it turned out that her friend was right, and the bourgeoisie wouldn’t have her as a dispenser of their charities, she would find some sort of job in the labor movement. And Bunny went off to keep an engagement to a dinner party with Vee Tracy; he went with a sober face and a troubled conscience, neither of which he was clever enough to hide!
X
Graduation time was at hand, and all the grave old seniors had the job of choosing their future careers. Dad asked Bunny if he had made up his mind, and Bunny answered that he had. “But I hate to tell you, Dad, because it’s going to make you unhappy.”
“What is it, son?” A look of concern was upon the old man’s round but heavily lined features.
“Well, I want to go away for a year, and take another name, and get myself a job as a worker in one of the big industries.”
“Oh, my God!” A pause, while Dad gazed into his son’s troubled eyes. “What does that mean?”
“Just that I want to understand the working people, and that’s the only way.”
“You can’t ask them what you want to know?”
“No, Dad they don’t know it themselves—except dimly. It is something you have to live.”
“Good Lord, son, let me help you! I’ve been there. It means dirt and vermin and disease—I thought I was saving you from it, and making things easier for you!”
“I know, Dad, but it’s a mistake; it doesn’t work out as you thought. When a young fellow has everything too easy for him, he gets soft, he has no will of his own. I know what you’ve done, and I’m grateful for it, but I have to try something different, for a time.”
“You can’t possibly find anything hard enough for you in the job of running an oil industry?”
“I might, Dad, if I could really run it. But you know I can’t do that. It’s yours; and even if you gave it to me, Verne and the operators’ federation wouldn’t let me do what I’d want to do. No, Dad, there’s something vitally wrong with the oil industry, and I can never play the game with the rest. I want to go off and try something on my own.”
“You mean to go alone?”
“There’s another fellow has the same idea, and we’re going together. Gregor Nikolaieff.”
“That Russian! Couldn’t you possibly find an American to associate with?”
“Well, it just happens, Dad, that none of the Americans are interested.”
There was a long pause. “And you really mean this seriously?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m going to do it.”
“You know, son, the big industries are pretty rough, most of them. Some of the men get badly hurt, and some killed.”
“Yes; that’s just the point.”
“It’s pretty hard on a father that has only one son, and had hopes for him. You know, I’ve really thought a lot about you—it’s been the main reason I worked so hard.”
“I know, Dad; and don’t think I haven’t suffered about it; but I just can’t help doing it.”
Another pause. “Have you thought about Vee?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told her?”
“No, I’ve been putting it off, just as I did with you. I know she won’t stand for it. I shall have to give her up.”
“A man ought to think a long time before he throws away his happiness like that, son.”
“I have thought, all I know how. But I couldn’t spend my life as an appendage to Vee’s moving picture career. I should be suffocated with luxury. I have convictions of my own, and I have to follow them. I want to try to help the workers, and first I have to know how they feel.”
“It seems to me, son, you talk like one of them—I mean the red ones.”
“Maybe so, Dad, but I assure you, it doesn’t seem that way to the reds!”
Again there was a silence. Dad’s supply of words was running short. “I never heard of such a thing in my life!”
“It is really quite an old idea—at least twenty-four hundred years.” And Bunny went on to tell about that young Lord Siddhartha, in far off India, who is known to the western world as Buddha; how he gave up his lands and his treasures, and went out to wander with a beggar’s bowl, in the hope of finding some truth about life that was not known at court. “The palace which the king had given to the prince was resplendent with all the luxuries of India; for the king was anxious to see his son happy. All sorrowful sights, all misery, and all knowledge of misery were kept away from Siddhartha, and he knew not that there was evil in the world. But as the chained elephant longs for the wilds of the jungle, so the prince was eager to see the world, and he asked his father, the king, for permission to do so. And Shuddhodana ordered a jewel-fronted chariot with four stately horses to be held ready, and commanded the roads to be adorned where his son would pass.” And then Bunny, seeing the bewildered look on Shuddhodana’s face, began to laugh. “Which would you rather I became, Dad—a Buddhist or a Bolshevik?”
And truly, Dad wouldn’t have known what to decide!
XI
There has been during the present century a new universe opened up to knowledge—the subconscious mind—and many
