Oil, p.58
Oil!, page 58
Nobody had got Verne’s nerve, you bet; he was sitting on the top of the world! That investigation—shucks, that was a circus stunt to entertain the yokels. It would blow over and be forgotten in a few months—Verne quoted a chieftain of Tammany Hall who had been up against the same kind of racket, and said, “Dis is a nine-day town. If yez kin stand de gaff fer nine days, ye’re all right.”[1] No, by Jees—and Verne gave his partner another thump—they were getting the oil out of Sunnyside, and the money was going into their bank accounts, and not into anybody else’s, and they were going to have one hell of a lark spending it. What was more, they were going to turn the tables on those blankety-blank red senators—just let Dad wait a few days, and he’d see some stuff that would get on the front pages of the papers, even here in England!
Jim Junior got his due share of backslapping. The boy Bolshevik must take his old man around and show him some of the sights of London; hadn’t he learned about ’em in the history books—the places where men had had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago, and such cheerful spectacles? After the old man had got rested up, then Verne would show him some oil propositions that would make his eyes pop open. Verne hadn’t been losing any time—not he! He had put five million into a project that was to reopen a great oil field in Romania that had been burned during the German invasion, and it was a deal that would beat Sunnyside, and Verne had got fifty-one percent and full control, and was going to bring over a complete American outfit, and show those gypsies or whatever they were what a real oil job looked like. And now he was fighting with some of the British oilmen over the Persian situation, and Verne and the state department between them were waking old John Bull from a long sweet dream.[2]
It was a curious situation that was unveiled to Bunny here. Vernon Roscoe was a fugitive from the oil investigating committee of the Senate, but at the same time he was master of the foreign policy of the United States government concerning oil, and the ambassadors abroad and the secretary of state at home behaved as his office boys. Of course there were other oilmen; Excelsior Pete and Victor and the rest of the Big Five all had their agents, hundreds of them, abroad; but Verne was so active, and had so much the best word in Washington, that the rest had come to follow his lead. President Harding might be dead, but his spirit lived on, and Verne and his crowd had bought and paid for it.
The American magnate came among these Britishers with as much tact and grace as one of his long-horned steers from the southwestern plains. He wasn’t going to put on any society flummery, he was an old cattle-puncher from Oklahoma, and if “Old Spats and Monocle,” as he called Great Britain’s leading oil magnate, didn’t like him, by Jees he could lump him![3] Bunny attended a banquet at which a group of the rivals sat down together, and it seemed to Bunny that Verne was more noisy and more slangy than even at his own dinner table at the Monastery. There was method in it, the younger man suspected; Verne frightened these strangers with his wild western airs, and that was the proper mood for negotiations! They had needed our navy damn bad a few years ago, and had got it free of charge, but they weren’t going to get it that way again, and Verne was the feller to tell them so. The next time, it would be the oil crowd’s say about the battleships—and the same with the dollars, by Jees.
There was a new deal in American diplomacy since the war. The state department had taken charge of foreign investments made by our bankers, and told them where to go and where to stay away from. The bankers had to obey, because they never knew when they might need the help of the marines to collect their interest. What it meant in practice was that a few fighting men like Vernon Roscoe could go to foreign businessmen and say, let me in on this and give me a share of that, or you can whistle for the next loan from Wall Street. The procedure is known to all cattlemen, they call it “horning in”; and after a few of the Britishers had been “horned in on,” they learned what the little fellows had learned back home—who were the real masters of America!
VII
Dad of course had no trace of interest in seeing the place where men had had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago; and Bunny tried it, and found that he didn’t have much either. What Bunny wanted was to meet the men who were in danger of having their heads chopped off now. There was a great labor movement in England, with a well-developed system of workers’ education, supported by the old-line leaders; also a bunch of young rebels making war on it because of its lack of clear revolutionary purpose. The Young Student had been exchanging with the “Plebs,” and now Bunny went to see these rebels, and soon was up to his ears in the British struggle—a wonderful meeting at Albert Hall, and Labour members of Parliament and other interesting people to meet.
A couple of papers published interviews with the young oil prince who had gone in for “radicalism,” as the Americans called it. And this brought an agonized letter from Bertie. She had been begging them to come over to Paris and meet the best people; but now, here was Bunny, six thousand miles away from home, still making his stinks! Couldn’t he for God’s sake stop to think what he was doing to his relatives? Eldon just about to get a promotion, and here his brother-in-law coming in and queering it all! You could see Bertie making a strong moral effort on paper, controlling herself and patiently explaining to her brother the difference between Europe and California. People really took the red peril seriously over here, and Bunny would find himself a complete social outcast. How could Eldon’s superiors trust him in delicate matters of state policy, if they knew that members of his family were in sympathy with the murderous ruffians of Moscow?
Bunny replied that it was very sad indeed, but Bertie and her husband had better repudiate him and not see him, for he had no intention of failing to make acquaintance with the Labour and Socialist movements of the countries he visited. Having got that off his chest, Bunny sat down to write for The Young Student an account of all the red things he had seen and the red people he had met so far.
The little paper was coming, and Bunny was reading it from the upper left-hand corner of page one to the lower right-hand corner of page four, and finding it all good. Yes, Rachel Menzies was going to make a real editor—a lot better one than Bunny himself, he humbly decided. She had started a series of papers called “Justice and the Student,” discussing the problems of the younger generation. She saw it all so clearly, and was so dignified and persuasive in manner—not angry, as the young reds so easily got! Even Dad was impressed, yes, that was a clever girl; you wouldn’t think it to look at her—but those Jews were always smart.
Also the labor press service was coming, with Dan Irving’s Washington letter and other news from the oil scandal. And very soon Bunny saw what Verne had meant by predicting the collapse of the investigation. The whole power of the attorney general’s office had been turned against the insurgent senators. Barney Brockway, backed against the wall, was fighting for the life of himself and his “Ohio gang.” Secret service agents had raided the offices of the senators conducting the investigation and rifled their papers; they were raking up scandals against these men, sending women to try to “get” them, preparing a series of “frame-ups” in their home states—every trick they had rehearsed on the Communists and the IWW now applied to the exposers of the oil steal. Presently they had one of the senators under indictment; and just as Verne had predicted, the big newspapers came to their senses, and took the crimes of the oilmen off the front page, and put the crimes of the reds in their place.
There was quite a bunch of “magnates” now in exile; Fred Orpan, and John Groby, and all those who had formed the Canadian corporation, and distributed two million dollars of bribes in Washington. Dad and Bunny would lunch with them, and they would have confidential telegrams, and it was curious to watch their reactions. They all made a joke of it—“Hello, old jailbird!” would be their greeting; but underneath they were eaten with worry. Among other developments, the new President was preparing to throw them overboard, in anticipation of next fall’s elections. He, Cautious Cal, had never had any oil stains on him—oh, no! oh, no! The oilmen would jeer—the little man had sat in the cabinet all the time the leases were being put through, he had been the bosom friend of all of them. The first time any of Verne’s crowd enjoyed the exposures was when the Senate committee began digging into a file of telegrams which showed the immaculate one as heavily smeared as the other politicians; he had been sending secret messages, trying to stave off the exposure, trying to save this one and that. But now he was getting ready to kick their agents out of the cabinet, and how they did despise him! “The little hoptoad,” was Verne’s regular description of the Chief Magistrate of his country!
VIII
Dad didn’t get well as quickly as they had hoped. Apparently the cold damp darkness of London was not good for him, so Bunny took him to Paris. Bertie relented, and met them at the station; even her husband risked his diplomatic career, and everything was polite and friendly for a few hours. But then the brother and sister got to arguing; Bertie wanted Bunny not to investigate the Socialist movement of France, at least, and Bunny said he had already promised Rachel an article about it. There was a “youth” paper here that was on their exchange list, and there was to be a Socialist meeting that very week which Bunny was going to attend. Bertie said that settled it, he would never meet the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and Bunny was so ignorant, he didn’t know what he was missing.
Paris was wet and cold also, and Dad had a cough, and sat around in a hotel lobby and was so forlorn it made your heart ache. He would let you drive him around, and would look at public buildings—yes, it was very fine, a beautiful city; people had been working on it a long while, we hadn’t had time to get anything so good at home. But all the while you could see that Dad didn’t really care about it; he didn’t like this strange people with their jabber, the men looked like popinjays and the women immoral, and people were always trying to pass off lead money on you, and the food had fancy fixings so you couldn’t tell what it tasted like, and why in the world Americans wanted to come chasing over here was beyond Dad’s power to imagine.[4]
It was decided to take him to the Riviera till spring. And here they were settled in a villa looking over the Mediterranean, and there was sunshine at last, a pale copy of California. Bertie came for a visit, and then Aunt Emma to keep house for them, and it was a sort of a home. Aunt Emma and Bertie got along beautifully, because the elder lady never failed to admire the right things—oh, how perfectly lovely, how refined and elegant, the most magnificent buildings, the most lifelike paintings, the most fashionable costumes! Aunt Emma would meet the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and never injure the diplomatic career of her nephew-in-law!
Bunny got himself a tutor, and rapidly unlearned the French he had acquired at Southern Pacific. Of course he had to pick out a Socialist tutor, a weird-looking, moth-eaten young man who did not seem to have had a square meal in many years—a poet, he was reported to be. Other Socialists came round, and a few Communists and Anarchists and Syndicalists and hybrids of these; they wore loose ties, or none at all, and hair hanging into their eyes, and looked to Dad and Aunt Emma as if they were spying out the premises with intentions of burglary. Even here there were radical meetings, on this Coast of Gold, where the rich of Europe gambled and played; and poor devils dangling always on the verge of starvation roused the pity of a young American millionaire, who lived in luxury and had a guilty conscience. When it was ascertained that he would lend money, there were some to ask, and most of them were frauds—but how was a young American millionaire to know?
Aunt Emma had been escorted from Angel City by Dad’s private secretary, bringing two big briefcases full of reports and letters. And so Dad was busy and happy for a while, he studied these papers, and wrote long instructions, and sent cablegrams in code, and fretted because some of the replies were not clear. Yes, it was a hard matter to carry on an oil business six thousand miles away. They were putting down test wells in the north half of Sunnyside, and you wanted to be there to examine the cores. Why, the damn fools had even failed to send the full text of the geologists’ reports!
Dad wasn’t well enough to go into the big new deals with Verne; he must rest first. But the rest didn’t help him, because he fretted for something to do, and for his secretary to do. To go driving up and down the same coast was monotonous; while to sit at tea parties and chatter with fashionable idlers—Dad had unutterable contempt for these people, they weren’t even crude and healthy, like the rich in California, no, they were rotten to the core, vicious and terrible people. The ex-mule-driver took one look into their gilded gambling palace, that was famed all over the world, and he went outside and spit on the steps—faugh! He was even willing to consider Bunny’s argument, that such people were made by generations of hereditary privilege; let things go as they were going in California, and Dad’s grandchildren would be giving this crowd lessons in depravity. For that matter, some of them were giving it now right here on the Riviera—rich Americans setting the pace in frivolity and ostentation.
Anyhow, said Dad, give him Americans! He wandered out and found a retired department store proprietor from Des Moines, just as desperately bored as himself, and the two would sit for hours on the esplanade and tell about their business and their troubles. Presently there was added a banker from South Dakota, and then a farmer who had struck oil in Texas. The womenfolks insisted on these fool European tours, and all the fathers could do was to get off by themselves and grumble at the bills. But here were four of them, and they gave one another courage, and fixed up a little place to pitch horseshoes—and in their shirtsleeves, by heck, just as if they had never made the mistake of making too much money and ruining their family life!
IX
The weather grew hot, and they went back to Paris. Dad liked it better now, he could stroll on the boulevards, and sit in those outdoor cafés, where you sipped things to drink; there was always a waiter who understood English, and maybe he had been in God’s country and would chat about it. There were numbers of Americans to meet; Dad found the express company office where they got their mail, and he even ran into people from Angel City there! The newspapers from home came twice a week, and lasted a long time.
Also, friends turned up—Annabelle Ames, for example, to attend the London premiere of A Mother’s Heart, and to visit Romania with Verne, and also Constantinople. It appeared that Verne was backing the Turkish government, as a means of squeezing a bigger share of the Mosul oil out of the British.[5] A funny thing—Excelsior Pete, Verne’s bitterest rival at home, had offered to take him in on these concessions. Yes, you were getting something when you bought the leading cabinet members of the United States government! Excelsior Pete’s action showed how much real importance they attributed to the oil scandals, and to the new President’s public attitude.
Annabelle was a businesswoman, and understood these matters, which made her a comfort to Dad. She pleaded with Bunny, in her gentle, loving way—it was all right for him to set up new standards in business, but was it fair to judge his father by them? Certainly no big businessmen followed such standards. And surely America was entitled to its share of the world’s oil; but there was no way to take it from these greedy foreign rivals, except to mass the power of the government against them.
Annabelle had lots of news from home. Not gossip, she didn’t tell mean things; but there was one story she couldn’t help telling, it was so funny, and caused Dad many a chuckle. A sudden fit of modesty had struck the O’Reilly family; they had taken down all those bronze and brass signs that had announced their progress about the world! No name on their front gates, none on the Conqueror, their yacht, none on the private car with its Circassian walnut and blue satin upholstery! No longer was it a glorious thing to be an oil magnate’s wife—some fanatic might throw a bomb at you!
Congress had adjourned for the summer, and Verne was going back. But he wanted Dad to stay for a while, because that Canadian corporation was the most vulnerable of all the oilmen’s actions; it had never done anything except to distribute that two million dollars of bribes. It was more than ever important to keep the story down, because the government was proceeding to bring suits for the return of all the naval reserves. That would tie up the profits in the courts—all that good money, by Jees, it was terrible!
Dad would stay, of course; and Bunny would have to stay with him. To make matters easier, the great Schmolsky came along, fresh from the job of buying most of the great German moving picture stars—another step in the process of taking over the industry. Annabelle appealed to him, and he was a good sport, he said yes, it was a damn shame the way old Jim had been treated, and it was fine of the kid to stick by him—the Jews are strong for the family; so Schmolsky would arrange several premieres for The Golden Couch in Europe, and Vee might spend a long holiday with her Bunny-rabbit. Lest Schmolsky should forget about the matter, Annabelle made him dictate a cablegram right then; so Bunny saw a demonstration of what it means to have influential friends! It was good business as well as good nature, of course; because, when the world’s darlings have these glory-progresses, a publicity man precedes them from one great capital to the next, and the news of the crowds and the clamor is cabled back to the United States, and takes the front page every time.
Bunny could salve his conscience, because nobody needed him at home. The magazine was getting along all right. Fifty-two issues had been published, more than half of them of Rachel’s own editing; it was something to count upon, the same as the sunrise—and it was the most interesting paper in the world!
