Deeper even than this was a subconscious reaching out for help. Here she could find the strength she needed to go forward. She had tapped it over the telephone wire when she had been tottering on the raw edge of despair. She wanted to keep ever in touch with this indomitable little band of fighters. She had looked down upon them—rather despised them—from the false standard she had acquired uptown. They had seemed to her unkempt. But in her moment of greatest need it was to them she had turned. "Culture" and "gentility" had been no help to her. It was the handclasp of her own people that had given her strength to climb up out of the Slough of Despond.
As a little child in whose brain is as yet no clear concept of "danger" clings, when frightened, to its mother's hand, so Yetta—knowing that her need had not passed, afraid of the future—wanted to keep close to the protecting enthusiasm, the dauntless faith which had proven her only helper—her one hope of salvation.
But it was not until many months had passed that Yetta woke up to a vital, emotional attitude towards her new work. The deeper side of her personality had been stunned by the crash of her romance. She walked through life a high-class physical machine, a keen, forthright intellect. But it did not seem to matter very much to her. Nothing did. The moments came when she cursed the Fates for having sent Walter to rescue her from Harry Klein. That could have been no more painful, and it would have been over quicker. The years she had spent studying seemed only to have increased her capacity for suffering.
Each day was a task to be accomplished. The very uncertainty of The Clarion's existence fitted into Yetta's mood. Any moment the flimsy structure might collapse. She thought of the future as little as possible. Can I get through another day without breaking down? Can we get out another issue? These two questions seemed almost the same to her. She and the paper were struggling desperately to keep going until they found firmer ground underfoot.
CHAPTER XXVIII YETTA TAKES HOLD
But if Yetta did not think her work mattered very much, Isadore and Rheinhardt and Paulding and all those who had the welfare of The Clarion at heart thought very differently about it. Gradually she transformed the labor page into a vital force in the trade-union world.
Organized labor is fighting out the same problem in democracy which our larger community is facing. "How shall elected delegates be made to represent their constituents?" The rank and file of workers cannot attend all the meetings of their central organizations any more than we can spend all our time in watching Congress. Labor bosses, like political crooks, love darkness. Yetta, taking a suggestion from the progressive magazines, turned the light of publicity on the weekly meetings of the Central Federated Union. She made the Monday afternoon labor page a verbatim report of the Sunday session. Among the delegates to the C. F. U. there were many fearless, upright men who were as much opposed to gang politics as any insurgent senator at Washington. Yetta knew them from her old work and drew them into a sort of informal Good Government Club. Every day she tried to run some story dealing with this issue of clean politics. More and more the "labor grafters" denounced The Clarion, and more and more their opponents came to rely on it as their greatest ally. The percentage of "crooked" and "straight" among the unionists is about the same as in any church membership. The circulation grew among the honest workers—the vast majority.
Her influence was not confined to her own department. Her experience in the Woman's Trade Union League had made her an expert beggar; more and more she helped Isadore, relieving him of some of the burden of money-raising. This freed more of his time and energy for his page. He listened more docilely to her suggestions about bettering the style of his editorials—adding snap to them—than he had done when Paulding had tried to help him. The improvement was noticeable. During her apprenticeship under Mr. Brace Yetta had absorbed some of his "sense of make-up." Harry Moore often appealed to her judgment. In time The Clarion began to look almost attractive.
One day Yetta's old friend Cowan, the sporting editor of The Star, met her on the street.
"I hear you're working on this Socialist paper," he said. "How goes it?"
"I like it better than The Star," she replied.
"I've looked over some of the copies," he said. "You people aren't handling local news the way you ought to. Why don't you tear the lid off this Subway scandal? I'm not a Socialist. But I hate to see such good stories going to waste."
Yetta rather wearily went over the long story of their limitations. She had learned to recite it as glibly as Isadore or Paulding.
"It's too bad," Cowan said, as he left her. "I didn't realize you were up against it so hard. I sure hate to see some of these hot stories unused."
A couple of days later, Yetta received a long, unsigned typewritten manuscript. It was a well-written story of a session of the Public Service Commission. A witness had made a statement which seemed to offer the key to the whole situation in the tangled effort of the city to get decent transportation. A few more questions promised to bring out the fact—generally suspected—that a well-known banker was obstructing progress. The chairman had unexpectedly adjourned the sitting. When they reassembled, the old witness—the only one who had ever shown any willingness to remember important things—had left town. Then followed from official court records a list of the cases in which the Chairman of the Commission had served as personal attorney for the banker who was under suspicion. It was a wrought-iron story, hardly a word in it was not public record; chapter and verse were cited for every allegation. Yetta called up Cowan and asked him about it. He denied all knowledge of it so ardently that she was sure he had sent it. They made a screaming front-page story of it. The regular papers denounced it as "a malicious and audacious lie"—which was good advertising for The Clarion. More anonymous stories followed. They attracted a new class of readers. The circulation grew. Gradually Yetta and The Clarion found firmer ground underfoot.
Despite her strenuous work for The Clarion, Yetta did not lose interest in, nor neglect, her vest-makers union. She was not alone in her ambition to see all the garment trades allied in a strong federation. There were many Socialists in the various unions, and there were many who, while not party members, had been influenced by the propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World. As the months passed the sentiment for "One Big Union" grew steadily. At last, when Yetta had been about a year on The Clarion, a convention of all the garment trades was called to consider the matter.
The victory of Yetta's faction was by no means sure. Each union had its own ambitions, which it was loath to sacrifice for the common good. In all the unions there were little groups of "officials"—some of them afraid of losing their salaries in the proposed new arrangement, more who feared to lose their influence. A union man who is elected to the executive committee by his fellows has all the personal pride in the matter that a college graduate has in being on the board of governors of his club. The union man has the same temptation to resort to petty intrigues to hold his place. Officialdom always distrusts innovations—is always conservative. Working-men are surprisingly like the rest of us—especially in these little personal jealousies and meannesses.
There was also the hostility of the American Federation of Labor to overcome. Within that great organization the same struggle between industrialism and the old-fashioned craft-unionism was waxing more bitter every year. A bitter opposition was growing against the rule of Samuel Gompers and his satellites. No one denied that this group had done great service to the cause of labor—ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. But the younger union men—especially those most in sympathy with Socialism or the I. W. W.—said these "leaders" were getting old, that they were out of touch with the times. Naturally these leaders did not look with favor on the spread of such ideas.
Yetta and her friends saw at once that their only hope of success lay in appealing to the rank and file. So during the first days of the convention, while the official delegates were denouncing the principles of Industrial Unionism, Yetta spoke at noon factory meetings, two or three times each evening, and devoted almost all of The Clarion's "Labor Page" to the same subject. This is the secret of democratic politics. If the mass of the people can be stirred into watching and controlling their representatives, Democracy is safe. The mass of the garment workers believed in federation. They made their wishes heard even in the Convention Hall,—it is rare, indeed, that the will of the people control such assemblies,—and when the crucial vote was taken, the resolution of the industrial unionists was carried by an unexpectedly large majority.
For close to five years, Yetta had been working towards this end. At first she had been laughed at and snubbed. The victory made her wild with joy—but also she felt very tired. The meeting did not break up till after one in the morning. The last week had been a ceaseless rush. She felt that if she went to sleep she would not wake up for a month or so. It was important to have the story in the morrow's Clarion, and Isadore ought to write an editorial on the victory. She decided to go to the office, hammer out the "copy," leave a note for Isadore, and then go home to sleep with a clear conscience.
The elevator was not running at this hour, and Yetta had to climb up the six flights to the Clarion's loft in the dark. There is something eerie and weird about a deserted office. The feverish activity of the day haunts the place like a ghost, even in the stillest hours of the night. Although Yetta knew the room was empty there was a very distinct feeling that some one was there. She was not afraid of the dark, but it was a decided relief when, after much fumbling about, she found the way to her table and turned on the light. The electric globe hung low, and the light was so concentrated, by a green glass shade, that it shone glaringly on the table and typewriter, but did not illumine the rest of the room at all.
Once Yetta had a sheet of paper arranged in her machine, the feeling of weirdness left her, and soon the spirit of composition made her forget that she was tired. For an hour she hammered the keyboard without interruption. It was not till she had finished her "story" that the fatigue reasserted itself. She ought to look over the copy to make corrections. She ought also to write a note to Isadore about the convention and to say that she was going home to sleep a week. She stretched herself energetically to drive away the drowsiness and—unconsciously—her arms went down on the table, her head down on her arms, and she was hopelessly asleep.
Isadore was generally the first of the editorial force to come to the office. His "eight-hour" workday was from 4 A.M. till noon. On his way to the office in the morning he picked up the early editions of the other papers, clipped the news he wanted worked up for their afternoon edition, and got his day's editorial finished before the rest of the staff turned up. It was his theory that if he had an evening engagement,—a committee meeting or a speech to make,—he would sleep four hours in the afternoon. If he had work in the afternoon, he went to bed before nine. So he got in seven hours of sleep every day—theoretically. But it so often happened that he had work to do both afternoon and evening that the week was rare when he averaged more than five hours sleep a day.
He generally found the office empty when he arrived. But this morning a light was burning in the back of the loft—"the composing room." One of the linotypers, who was also a mechanic, had come a few minutes before him to repair one of the machines which had gone wrong, and so save the expense of bringing in an expert. It was a violation of the union rules, but this linotyper was a Socialist.
"Comrade," he said, when he saw Braun, "it's a crime. This linotype is worn out. I'm getting it so it will run again, but it's dead slow. And it'll break down again in a couple of days. It ought to be scrapped. It costs more to keep it going than the interest on the price of a new machine. It's uneconomic."
Isadore said he would talk it over with the executive committee. He made his way through the shadowy machines to the front part of the loft, which was by courtesy called "the Editorial Room." No one who has not experienced the expensiveness of poverty can realize how maddening it is to throw money away because you are not rich enough to save it. Isadore knew there was very little chance of buying a new linotype. He turned the end of a long bookcase and suddenly saw the light burning over Yetta's table; he saw her stretched out motionless across her work. He had never seen her asleep. With an awful sinking of the heart the thought came that she might be dead. He sprang towards her and called her name. In the semidarkness he upset a chair with appalling clatter.
Yetta, startled out of profound sleep, sprang to her feet. Her head struck the light, which hung low, broke the glass shade; the jar dislocated the fragile film of the lamp. In the instant before the light went out, the only thing which Yetta realized was that her surroundings were unfamiliar. She had never been so frightened before in her life. When they told her afterwards that she had screamed, she could hardly believe it. She could not recall having done so. The first thing she was conscious of was that some one's arms were about her and Isadore's voice was saying,—ungrammatically but convincingly,—"It's me."
After the hideous nightmare of fright, his accustomed voice, his strong arms about her, were utterly comforting. She told herself afterwards that she must have been partly over the verge of fainting, for Isadore kissed her and she made no motion—had no idea—of resistance. First, in the darkness, his hand had found the way to her neck and face; then she had felt the hot wave of his breath,—murmuring words which made no sense to her,—and then his lips on her cheek and mouth. She was never quite sure if she had kissed him back. Whether she had or not she knew she had been very close to doing so.
But the moment of forgetfulness had been interrupted by the linotyper, running towards them and asking the cause of the commotion. At the idea of an onlooker, Yetta disengaged herself from Isadore's arms—just in time. The linotyper turned on a light. Isadore tried to laugh.
"We scared ourselves nearly to death," he explained. "Comrade Rayefsky had fallen asleep. The sight of her scared me into upsetting a chair. That startled her awake. She jumped up so quick she broke the lamp."
The linotyper was a good fellow. He unscrewed a lamp from another socket and substituted it for the one Yetta had broken, and went decently back to his work.
Isadore seemed on the point of coming towards her, and Yetta retreated back of the chair.
"How stupid of me to fall asleep. We won out at the convention. I came down to write it up. I must have just started to look it over when I went to sleep. You'll have to grind out an editorial on it. I'll finish it up at once."
She sat down to her work.
Isadore found it harder to bring his wits together. But her movement of retreat had been like a blow in the face to him. It steadied him a trifle—but only a trifle. He had kissed Yetta. All these years he had loved her. Suddenly—utterly unexpectedly—the Heavens had opened. He had held her in his arms, he had kissed her.
The foolish idea came to him that he would like to look at his lips, which—after waiting so long—had at last found their goal. As there was no mirror in the office, this was manifestly impossible. But his hand—at least he could look at that—it also had caressed the beloved face. His hand was stained with blood. For an instant he was dazed. Yetta—her cheeks aflame—was bent over her work. A little stream of blood ran down her neck, where a bit of the broken lamp-shade had cut her in its fall.
"Yetta, Yetta!" he cried, "you're wounded."
"What?" she said in amazement. She had been preparing a crushing answer in case he started to make love again. The emotions that were tearing her were too violent to let her take note of a little cut.
"Look," he said, showing her his hand. "Broken glass. On your neck. Let me see."
Impressed by the sight of blood, she bent her head for the examination. But Isadore's ideas of treating such a wound were sentimental rather than scientific.
"Oh, don't. Please!" she protested, agonized by shame. She struggled up to her feet, but somehow she had forgotten the crushing retort she had prepared. "It isn't serious. It doesn't hurt. Please let me finish this work."
Isadore retreated before her distressed eyes.
"Wipe the blood off your lips," she ordered sternly.
Then she sat down again, utterly confused. It seemed such a stupid, inane thing she had said. It was all her fault, she unjustly told herself. If only she had kept her wits that first moment instead of being so childishly frightened. She felt humiliated. It took an extreme effort of will to turn her attention to the garment workers and the article she must correct. It would have helped if she could have heard the scratching of his pen or the rustle of his newspaper. There was not a sound from his desk. She did not dare to look around.
At last the task was finished. She put on her cloak and hat and wrapped the muffler about her throat before she found courage to look at Isadore. He was sunk down in his chair, watching her hungrily. She bit her lip at the sight and had trouble speaking.
"Isad—Comrade, here's the copy. I hope you can make an editorial out of it. It's awfully important for Organized Labor.—This convention has finished me. I'm dead tired. I'll take a vacation to-morrow—I mean to-day—and sleep."
Isadore did not reply. He just looked at her, a dumb plea in his eyes—which she did not want to seem to understand.
"So long," she said.
She was almost out of sight before he spoke.
"You'll come back? When you're rested?"
"Why, yes," she said. "Of course."
It was at least half an hour before Isadore pulled himself together and got to work. But the editorial which he wrote on the Federated Garment Trades was very creditable.
Yetta walked home through the dawn. She was very tired, and she tried not to think. But she could not free herself from the insistent question—"Did I really kiss him?" She looked at herself in the glass, just before she turned out the gas and went to bed. "Did I really kiss him?" she asked her reflected image. She got no answer, and, as though vexed at this silence, she spoke defiantly. "If I did, I'm sorry. I don't love him." This rather comforted her, and she fell asleep at once.
But when she woke up in the early afternoon, she felt worse about the night's adventure than ever. Very emphatically she told herself that she loved Walter. That had been La grande passion. No. Not "had been"; it "was." It was a treason to think of it as "having been." She had told Walter that love had no tenses, that it was "somehow eternally always and now and for ever and ever." Romance still dominated all her thinking. The books and poems said there could only be one real love. She was sure that her love for Walter had been real—hence, in strict logic, she loved him still and always would and could never love any one else.
Although she really believed this—wanted to believe it, felt that life would be impossible on any other hypothesis—she was beginning to realize that somehow the Romantic Explanation of Life does not quite explain. For the poets it was beautifully simple—either you loved or you did not love. It was the crudest sort of dualism. Things were black or white. The gray tones were not mentioned.
But while she did not love Isadore as she had loved Walter, he was certainly in a different category from all the other men whom she did not love. The men at the office, for instance. She was the best of chums with them; she respected them, admired them, liked them—and did not love them. But it was different with Isadore.
The hungry look in his eyes haunted her. The memory of his sudden, unexpected ardor—the rough vehemence of his caresses, his stormy outbreak of passionate tenderness—disturbed and distressed her. She had never taken him quite seriously before. She had deliberately, but unconsciously, refused to look the matter in the face. It is very hard to be sympathetic and just to a love we do not return. It had not occurred to her that Isadore's love was as painful to him as hers for Walter had been. That startling contact in the dark of the office had opened her eyes to the reality of his passion. What a mess it all was! Isadore loved her. She loved Walter. Walter loved Mabel!
The sun was resplendent, and Yetta—having promised herself a holiday—walked over to Washington Square and took a bus up to Riverside Drive. It was zero weather, the sun shone dazzlingly on the blanket of snow, which had given an unwonted beauty to the Jersey shore. Yetta walked up and down the Drive till the sinking sun had reddened the West with an added glory. It was not often that she had such outings. The crisp air stimulated her. She was happy with the pure joy of being alive and outdoors in a way she had not known since Walter went away. To be sure her mood was tinged with melancholy. She was sorry for Isadore. But less sorry than usual for herself. Somehow she felt less bitterly the appalling loneliness.
As she was going downtown in the dusk she noticed a poster of the Russian Symphony Orchestra. It offered a programme from Tchaikovsky. She had some neglected work she ought to finish up. She had barely enough money in her pocket for a ticket—and a hundred things she ought to use it for. But in a sudden daredevil expansiveness, she dropped off the bus, got a scrap of supper at a Childs' restaurant, and went to the concert.
Under the spell of the music she forgot all her preoccupations. Her intellect dropped down into subconsciousness. She did not think—she felt.
Music can be the most decorative of all the Arts—or the most intellectual. The trained musician, who knows the meaning of "theme" and "development," who can recite glibly all the arguments for or against "programme" music, who will tell you offhand in what year this Symphony was written, whether it is a production of the composer's "first period" or a mature work, cannot avoid bringing a large assortment of purely intellectual considerations—historical and technical—to the appreciation of music. But to the naïve listener, like Yetta, music is decorative. It appeals solely to the emotions. It is never interesting—it is either pleasing or displeasing. Yetta sat dreamily through the concert—half the time with closed eyes—and found it wonderful. There was too little chance for the play of sentiments in her life. Every waking hour she had to think. Tchaikovsky laid a caressing hand over the tired eyes of her intellect and showed beautiful things to her heart.
The next morning as Yetta went to the office she thought with some uneasiness of meeting Isadore. As usual in such matters she decided to face the affair frankly.
"Good morning," she said, going at once to his desk; "I'm sorry about what happened the other night. I was startled and bewildered."
Isadore knew that she had been taken unawares—that the kiss did not belong to him by rights.
"If there's any apology necessary," he said, "I'm the one to make it. I was as much startled and bewildered as you were. I'm sorry if you feel bad about it."
"We'll forget it," Yetta said.
Isadore did not look as if he were certain on this point.
They fell again into the accustomed rut of comradeship. Neither of them spoke again of the outburst. No one in the office noticed any change in their relationship.
But there was a change. Isadore could never forget that wonderful moment; he could never be quite the same. And Yetta—when in time the memory of it lost its element of excitement, when she got over being afraid that Isadore might begin again—found that she also had changed. The fact that Isadore loved her passionately had taken a definite place in her consciousness. She could not ignore this any more, as she had done before. In a way it made him more interesting. She did not for a moment think of marrying him—she loved Walter. But she was sorry for Isadore. They had this added thing in common—the pain of a hopeless love.
It seemed wildly unjust to her that she might not in any way show her sympathy to him without encouraging his love—making him "hope." She knew when he was tired and discouraged; she would have liked to cheer him. She sometimes sewed on a button for Harry Smith. She ordered Levine about severely. She did not like either of them half as much as she did Isadore, but she must not show him any of these womanly attentions. It was stupid and vexatious that just because Isadore loved her, she must be carefully and particularly unfriendly to him.
Paulding was raising Yetta's salary among his personal friends, and his check came to her directly without passing through the general treasury. Her work kept her out of the office most of the time, and it was not until her second year that she chanced to be at her desk on a Saturday morning. About twelve-thirty Harry Moore came in from the composing-room, where he had been attending to the lock-up. He leaned back in his chair and stretched wearily.
"About time for the 'ghost' to walk," he said.
"Not much of a ghost this week," the pessimistic Levine growled.
A few minutes later Mary Ames, the treasurer, bustled in. Her face was round and unattractive; she was short and had been fat, but her clothes hung about her loosely as though she had lost much flesh.
"It's a bad week, Comrades," she announced cheerfully. "Thought I wasn't going to be able to meet the union pay-roll to-day. Six dollars short. But the ten o'clock mail brought in twenty. Isadore went out and touched Mrs. Wainwright for fifty, and Branch 3 just sent in eleven from a special collection. So I've seventy-five for you. Who comes first?"
"Locke's wife is sick," Levine said mournfully.
"That's twenty dollars, isn't it?" Mary said, counting off the bills. "And you know Isadore hasn't had full pay for months. We must be a hundred and fifty back on his salary."
"Twenty-five to him," the stenographer said. "It'll give him a surprise."
"Surprise?" Levine said gloomily. "It'll give him apoplexy."
"That's forty-five gone," Mary said. "There's thirty left."
"How much do you need, Nell?" Moore asked the stenographer.
"I'm nearly a month back on my room rent. I'm in a bad hole, but I could get along with ten."
"Oh, make it fifteen," Harry said. "Girls always need money for ribbons and ice-cream sodas."
"That leaves fifteen for us, Harry," Levine wailed. "It's what I call a dog's life."
"Oh, cheer up." Moore pocketed the fifteen dollars. "Come on up to Sherry's for lunch.—It's on me."
Linking his arm in Levine's, he led him, still grumbling, out of the office.
Mary Ames sat down heavily in a chair and began to cry.
"If I wasn't so ugly," she said, "I'd just like to kiss those boys."
She shook the tears out of her eyes and jerked her chair up towards Yetta's desk.
"I know you think I'm a sentimental old flop—crying like this. You're always so calm. But I can't help it. You might think I'm discouraged—rushing round all week begging money, and every Saturday morning having to come in and tell the boys I've failed—that I haven't enough to pay their salaries. But it isn't discouragement that makes me cry, it's just joy! I wouldn't have the nerve to peg through week after week of it if it wasn't for being the ghost on Saturdays. It's those two boys, Levine always grumbling and Harry Moore making jokes. And—I know—sometimes they don't have enough to eat. And you ought to see the hole they sleep in!"
Her lips began to twitch again, and perfect rivers of tears ran down her cheeks.
"I wish I could stop crying. But it's just too wonderful to work with people like this. I've been a bookkeeper in dozens of offices—everybody selfish and hating each other and trying to get on. I've seen so much of the other. It's hard for me to believe in this.
"I don't know much about Socialism," she went on. "I ain't educated like you young people; I haven't read very much. Keeping books all day is all my eyes are good for. But I just know it's right. If it wasn't the real thing, there'd never be a paper like this. How can you sit there so calm and cold and not cry? It's the biggest thing in the world, and we're part of it."
Yetta put her arms about the older woman.
"I love it, too," she said. "But it doesn't make me cry. Somehow it's too big for me. It matters so little whether I'm part of it or not. It would go on just the same—if I wasn't here. It isn't mine. I could cry over a little baby—if it was mine. But not over this—"
She was surprised to find that her tears were contradicting her words. Once started, it was hard to stop. It seemed very sad to her that a young woman of twenty-three should have nothing more personal to cry over.
CHAPTER XXIX WALTER'S HAVEN
While all these things were happening to Yetta, Walter was settling down into the rut of University life easily—almost contentedly. He was employed to be a scholar rather than a teacher. And while conducting classes is always a dismal task, study—to one with any bent that way—is a pleasant occupation. He was not dependent on his salary, and so escaped from the picturesque discomfort of the quarters assigned to him in the mediæval college building, to a "garden cottage." There was a lodge in front and a lawn running down to the river behind. He had found an excellent cook, who was married to an indifferent gardener. And, although his lawn was not so smooth nor his grape crop so plentiful as his neighbors', he was very pleasantly installed.
Sometimes, of course, he thought regretfully of the might-have-been life in New York. But the more he studied the Haktites, the more interesting they became. He had also revived his project of a Synthetic Philosophy.
On his return from the Christmas holidays of his second year at Oxford, he found a book in the mail which was waiting him. It was a novel—The Other Solution, by Beatrice Maynard. It had been sent to his old New York address. On the fly-leaf she had written, "Merry Xmas." It was an unexpected pleasure to have some one remember him at this holiday season. He had not received a Christmas present in years.
He hurried through his supper to begin it. Beyond occasionally filling his pipe he did not stop until the end.
It was, he decided, just such a book as he would have expected her to write! There was the patience of real art in the way it was done. Not a great book, but packed full of keen observation, and its finish was like a cameo.
It was a simple story of a very rich girl in New York. One hardly realized that it was about the Smart Set. Beatrice knew her people too well to have any illusion about their nobility or their special depravity. The men changed their clothes rather too often, but were on the whole a kindly meaning lot. The women were a bit burdened with their jewellery, but very human, nevertheless. They were all bored by their uselessness. There was a cynical old bachelor uncle, who gave the Girl epigrammatical advice about the virtue of frivolity and the danger of taking things seriously. There was a maiden aunt—the romance of whose life had been shot to pieces at Gettysburg—who had sought solace in a morbid religious intensity. She was always warning the Girl, in the phraseology of Lamentations, against light-mindedness and the Wrath to Come. The "Other Solution" proved to be a very modern kind of nerve specialist, whose own nerves were going to pieces because of overwork and the cooking of an absinthe-drinking Frenchwoman. He was just on the point of beginning to take cocaine, when Beatrice persuaded him to take the Girl, instead.
"Good work," Walter said as he closed it.
For some moments he sat there wondering what sort of an anchorage Beatrice had found. Such a book could not have been written in a hurry nor in unpleasant surroundings. He had never heard from her. At first he had been too heavy of heart to care. But as the months, growing into years, had somewhat healed his hurts, he had often thought of her. But not knowing exactly what sort of memories she held of him, he had felt that if the long silence was to be broken, it should be done by her.
He was glad she had cared enough to do it. He swung his chair around to the table and wrote to her. There was praise of the book and thanks for the remembrance. In a few paragraphs he gave a whimsical description of his bachelor establishment and of his work, and asked news of her. He addressed it in care of her publishers, a London house.
A few days later her answer came to him at breakfast-time. His letter had caught her in London, where she had come over from Normandy to arrange about her new novel. Could he not come up to town during the few days she would be there? If he wired, she would let everything else slip to keep the appointment.
He sent the gardener out with a telegram and went up on an afternoon train. It was tea time when he found her in the parlor of her hotel.
"I hope I haven't begun to show my age, as you have," she greeted him.
"You haven't."
She had both hands busy with the tea things, so he could find no opportunity to be more gallant.
"I see by your note," she said,—"is it two lumps and cream or three and lemon?—that you did not follow my advice."
"No, not exactly. Two lumps, please. I tried to. I've often wondered if you realized what irresponsible and dangerous advice it was."
So he told her about Yetta.
"I never thought she'd be such an idealistic idiot," Beatrice commented.
"Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Walter, I believe you were in love with her and did not have the sense to say so."
He waved his hands as a Spaniard does when saying, "Quien sabe?"
"What's your news?" he asked.
She told him of the charming little village she had discovered in Normandy, of her roses and poppies and of her big writing-room, which overlooked three separate backyards and gave her endless opportunity—when the ink did not flow smoothly—to study the domestic life of her neighbors. What fun it was to write! How happy she was to get back to it again! Altogether she was going to write ten novels, each one was to be an improvement, and the last one really good. And then the Sweet Chariot was going to swing low and carry her home.
"I'm getting into the stride," she said. "The Other Solution came hard. I'm so glad you liked it. I'd go stale on it. Have to lay it aside, so I've three coming out close together, now. I'm just finishing the proof of number two, Babel. It's about those crazy Transatlantiques we played with in Paris. And the next one strikes a deeper note. I think I'll call it The Mess of Pottage. It's almost finished—a couple of months' polishing. I've been working on all three of these at the same time. But from now on it's one a year—regularly."
The conversation rambled back and forth. It jumped from the criminal code of the Haktites to Strauss' Electra, and that brought them to Mrs. Van Cleave, whom Beatrice had encountered in the foyer of the Paris Opera at Pelleas et Melisande. Mrs. Van Cleave reminded them of a thousand things. The two years since they had seen each other fell away, the old intimacy returned. Beatrice suddenly reverted to Yetta.
"Don't blame me if you muddled things up. I advised you to marry her—not to get into a metaphysical discussion with her. I'm not sure but you're the bigger fool of the two. 'De l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace.' They say that Danton was a successful man with the ladies."
"The answer to that is," Walter said, "that you write your next novel in Oxford."
"Oxford! Why, a university town is no place for audacity!"
"It's the place for you," he said decisively. "To-morrow I'll rent the cottage next to mine—it's bigger. I noticed a 'To Let' sign on it this morning. It's a love of a place. And quiet! There isn't a corner of Philadelphia that's as quiet Sunday morning as Oxford is."
But Beatrice refused to consider his suggestion.
"I'm doing very well as I am, thank you. Having just got on my feet at last—no more entanglements for me!"
But two days after the summer recess began, Walter dropped off the train in her little Norman village.
"It's no use struggling, Beatrice," he said, before she had recovered from her surprise at his invasion. "You're going to write your next novel in Oxford. I've rented the larger house, and as soon as the French law allows we'll get married."
"Nonsense!" she said.
He came over and stood in front of her chair and talked to her in a quiet third personal tone—as if he were the family lawyer.
"B., here we are, two unattached and lonely individuals of the opposite sexes. You said that morning in Paris that we were a sorry couple who had messed things up frightfully and wanted to cry. Well, we've got a bit more used to the mess, don't want to cry as much as we did—but—well, we want to live.
"I was a fool to ask Yetta to marry me, and she was very wise to run away. After all, she and I were strangers. She did not understand me any more than I did her. She was in love with a very nebulous sort of a dream—which I didn't resemble at all.
"It's different with us. At least we've 'the mess' in common. I don't know whether you've tried to forget our—escapade. I haven't. It seems to me, when I think of it, an immensely solemn thing—a memory I want to treasure. Somehow out of our misery a sudden understanding and sympathy was born. I'm inclined to think it was the most fundamental, the most spontaneous and real thing that ever happened to me. I'd chatted with you half a dozen times, had had only one real talk with you back in New York. There in Paris, in two minutes—no, it was a matter of seconds—we knew each other better than—well—it's hard to say what I mean, because I'm not much of a mystic. But never before or since have I experienced a deeper feeling of nearness. Two years pass without a word exchanged, and, in a tawdry hotel parlor in London, with a string of people walking past the open doors, I find the same sudden understanding.
"I don't need to tell you that there in London I wished the people were not walking past the door, that right now I wish your bonne would disappear, so I could—
"But I don't want to talk about that. I'd like to get over something a lot deeper. It's this fundamental and immensely worth-while agreement and sympathy.
"And just because I have this conviction of understanding, I'm sure you're lonely, too—just as lonely as I am. We both of us have a desire for 'the accustomed'—for Lares and Penates. Even an escapade as delightful as the last one wouldn't quite satisfy either of us any more. 'The Other Solution' is the big house in Oxford—with a work-room for you, a study for me, and the other rooms for us."
He shook his shoulders as though to shrug off his seriousness.
"You say you don't want to get married again. That's idiotic. Haven't you lived long enough to escape from fear of this 'marriage bond' bugaboo? With all your talk of emancipation, you're still as conventional as Mrs. Grundy. Marriage will save us from tiresome ructions with the neighbors, but as far as being afraid of the ceremony—why—I'd just as lief marry a person as lend her ten dollars.
"Where does the Maire live? I'll go down and tell him to dust his tricolor sash."
"No."
"B., il faut de l'audace."
"It would be foolish after Paris."
"Et encore de l'audace—"
"Besides I've leased this cottage for two years."
"Et toujours de l'audace."
"Well," she said, "if you're as flippant about it as all that, I don't suppose it matters much."
CHAPTER XXX EVALUATION
The first two years on The Clarion were a desperate struggle for Yetta. But after all, struggle is the surest sign of life. To herself she seemed dead. The collapse of her romance had left a hollow place in her spirit, which could not be filled by work—not even the frenzy of work by which each issue of The Clarion was achieved. But all this time life was gathering force within her, preparing to assert itself once more.
Our literature is full of the idea of Man, the Protector—a proposition which crumbles before the slightest criticism. The protective element in life is overwhelmingly feminine. No one of us would have survived the grim dangers of childhood except for mothering. Adult men—even though unconscious of it—are pretty generally dependent on their womenfolk.
A function unused surely turns into an ache. Because Yetta felt no one dependent on her, life seemed barren and painful. The outer wrapper of herself—the hands with which she banged out copy on her typewriter, the feet which carried her about, the eyes and ears with which she watched and listened to the conflict of labor, the tongue with which she argued and pleaded for money, the brain with which she pondered and planned—all were busy. But this hurrying activity did not touch the subtle inner substance of herself. For this there was only the barren, empty ache.
Coming downtown one night from a union meeting in the Bronx, Yetta's eye caught a paragraph in the paper which told that David Goldstein, proprietor of the Sioux Hotel, who had been shot two days before in a gang fight, had died in the City Hospital.
It was the first Yetta had heard of her relatives since she had left them. She stayed on the car until she had reached the centre of the Ghetto. A policeman, who was standing outside the Sioux Hotel, went inside for her and found her aunt's address. It was not far off, and in a few minutes Yetta found herself in the dismalest of three-room flats. Half a dozen dumb, miserable old women sat in the kitchen. It was with some difficulty that Yetta made out which was Mrs. Goldstein.
"Aunt Martha, don't you remember me?" she asked in Yiddish.
But Mrs. Goldstein was too dazed to reply. From the other women, Yetta learned that her aunt was entirely alone and penniless. The son had not been seen for several years. Rosa had disappeared. As soon as might be Yetta drove out the Kovna lands leit, and when they were gone, she knelt down beside the old woman.
"Don't you understand, Auntie Martha? It's little Yetta come back to take care of you. You won't ever have to worry any more. I'll take care of you."
Tears came suddenly to the old woman, the first in a long, long time, and Yetta got her to bed. Two decidedly noisy young men lodged in the front room. Yetta was rather frightened; it took her a long time to fall asleep in the stuffy bedroom beside her aunt.
It was easy to reconstruct the process by which the Goldstein family had disintegrated. Isaac was in prison. Rosa had probably gone off to live by herself—tired of bringing home wages for her father to guzzle. She would be living alone in some dismal furnished room. She had been too poorly endowed by Nature to "go wrong."
But despite the squalor of the flat and the heavy air of the dark bedroom, Yetta woke up with a new and firmer grip on life. She had found some one who needed her. The first of the next month she moved her aunt to a flat nearer The Clarion office. There were four rooms and a bath. The parlor she rented to Moore and Levine. It was a great improvement for them, and Mrs. Goldstein's cooking was less expensive and more nourishing than the restaurant fare on which they had been subsisting. Yetta shared the bedroom with her aunt.
The metamorphosis in the old woman was startling. Yetta remembered her as a very unlovely person, hardened and bitter. It had been a reflection of her environment. Now in clean and decent surroundings, in the midst of those who treated her with respect, under the sunshine of her niece's affection, she changed completely. Yetta was continually surprised to find how much her aunt reminded her of her father.
The struggle in the office was as intense as ever, but now Yetta had a home. Her wounds were healing rapidly.
Some months after her new establishment had been founded, Yetta came into The Clarion office and found confusion. Every one talked at once, and it took some minutes to get a connected story. Isadore had caved in. For several days he had been rather surly—excusing himself on the ground of a headache. That morning about nine o'clock he had tumbled out of his chair, unconscious. Dr. Liebovitz—the Comrade whom Yetta had heard speak at her first labor-meeting—had been called in. He had pronounced it typhoid fever.
"We had him taken up to our room," Harry Moore said; "Levine and I will take his. It's no place for a sick man. And besides, when the nurse goes, your aunt can take care of him."'
A sort of helplessness had fallen on the little group, now that their leader was stricken. But Levine in this crisis changed his character—or let his true character shine through his crust of pessimism. He pushed every one back into their places and set the wheels going again.
When the forms were locked up and the next day's assignment made, the office force was loath to separate. It is regrettable that the virtues of our friends are like our kidneys—we never notice them till something goes wrong. For the first time they were realizing what a tower of strength Isadore had been. As the days had passed they had more often been impressed by his occasional bursts of nervous irascibility, his unaccountable stubbornnesses. He had walked about among them, with his bent shoulder, his wrinkled, lumpy face, as far removed from Mary Ames' sentimentality, or Harry Moore's flippant optimism, as from Levine's ingrowing surliness. His most salient characteristic seemed to have been that he was "always there." Now he was gone.
"He's so modest and simple," Harry said, "that we never noticed how strong he was."
"I wish there was something I could do for him," Nell sniffled.
"Well, I guess the best medicine we can give him," Yetta said, sticking the pin in her hat decisively, "is to report every week that the circulation has jumped."
The accustomed streets were a blur as she walked home. The idea that Isadore was sick, helpless, was as disturbing as if the paper had announced that the Rock of Gibraltar had escaped from its moorings and was floating away.
In the dining-room she found her aunt, with Jewish gloominess, predicting the worst. Yetta went down the hall and knocked lightly at the parlor door. It was opened by a nurse. The room was darkened, but she caught a glimpse—which was to stick in her memory—of Isadore's haggard face above the sheets. The nurse put her finger to her lips and came out into the hall.
"It's typhoid, all right," she said.
"Dangerous?"
"It's always dangerous. But there isn't a better doctor in the city for typhoid than Liebovitz. He'll be in again in a few minutes. I'll go back now."
Yetta stood there in the dim hallway, appalled, looking more closely into the face of Death than she had ever done before. There was something unbelievable in the thought that Isadore might die. All the fibres of her strong young body revolted at the idea. But beyond the closed door the dread fight was in progress. The pale face she had glimpsed was unconscious of it all. As far as Isadore was concerned Death had already won. Liebovitz and the nurse would have to do his fighting for him.
She heard her aunt admitting the doctor. She had never seen him when he was working before. With a curt greeting he strode past her and entered the sick-room. She stood in the doorway unnoticed.
"What's the temperature?"
"105."
There was a string of questions and answers given in an unemotional tone. They seemed almost flippant to Yetta, impious, in the face of the great tragedy. She felt hurt that he did not do something at once.
At last Liebovitz took off his hat and turned abruptly to the bed. After a moment's scrutiny of the patient's face, he turned down the covers. It seemed to Yetta that he was suddenly transformed into a pair of Hands. The rest of him melted away. His half-shut eyes were fixed blankly on the wall as his wonderful, infinitely sensitive hands played about Isadore's heart. Then he knelt down and became an Ear. His eyes were quite shut now, as he listened, listened—the intense strain of it showing on his rigid face—to the almost inaudible rumble of the battle raging within the sick man's chest. Then he straightened up, the mystic appearance left him; he became once more the ordinary, cold-blooded professional man.
"You've a telephone?" he asked the nurse. "Good. You can get Ripley any time this afternoon if you need some one quick. Call me up at the Post Graduate at five minutes to four. I've a lecture—till five. I can leave it if necessary. I'll come down right afterwards, anyhow."
Yetta tried to detain him in the hall to ask about the chances.
"Too busy to talk," he said. "Anyhow I'm no wizard. I can't prophesy. He's pretty sick. But he'll have to get a lot sicker before we let go. Really, I can't stop now. I've got a confinement, a T. B. test, and an operation before four."
Yetta went out into the kitchen and set her aunt to work getting supper for the nurse. Then, feeling suddenly very tired, she went to her room. But she could not sleep. The wonder of a doctor's life had caught her imagination. It dizzied her to try to realize what it must mean to rush, as Liebovitz was doing, from a desperate struggle with death to a childbirth.
Again and again the vision came back to her of Isadore's shrunken, pallid face.
When the doctor came down after his lecture, Yetta asked if she could be of any help in the sick-room.
"No," he replied shortly. "You'd only use up good air."
She had never felt so useless before in her life. The next few days passed—in dread. Most of the time she spent at the office. She had taken on Isadore's editorial work. There was some comfort in that. His other tasks had been divided between Locke and Moore and Levine. A big strike broke out in the Allied Building Trades; it meant extra work—but also increased circulation. After the day's grind, Yetta came back to the hushed home where the great battle was being fought out and where she was perforce a non-combatant.
There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask the doctor, but he was generally too busy to talk. One night after Isadore had been sick more than a week Liebovitz came down from a lecture in a genial mood.
"I hope your aunt has cooked a big supper," he said. "Nothing to eat at home. The good wife is house cleaning."
"Well. How's it going?" Yetta asked, as he came out of the sick-room and sat down to a plate of steaming noodle-soup.
"We've done our part. It's up to him now. We've pulled him through the regular crisis. If he don't take it into his head to relapse and if he really wants to get well, I guess he will."
He answered her questions in monosyllables until he had stowed away the last of Mrs. Goldstein's cooking. Then, lighting a cigarette and putting three lumps of sugar in his coffee, he began joking with the old woman in Yiddish. But Yetta kept interrupting him with more questions.
"You want to know what I think?" he said, turning to her severely. "Well, listen. I think Isadore will get well. I hope so. It wouldn't do any good to have him die. None of you people would read the lesson. But he don't deserve to. For ten years he's been violating all the rules of health regularly. You're all intelligent enough to understand some of Nature's laws, but you're too utterly light-minded to obey them! Isadore started out with a wonderful constitution and now is so run-down that an insignificant little typhoid germ gets into his mouth and nearly kills him. Good God. You all want to blame the germ. But they can't do any harm unless you're already sick—made yourself sick, as Isadore has. I'm not afraid of them—my business takes me right where they live. I'm as hard as nails. And you ought to see my kids. They're as sound as I am."
"What do you mean by his making himself sick? Overwork?"
"Overwork? Thunder! I don't get as much undisturbed sleep as he did. I've been 'overworking' longer than he has. Work doesn't hurt people—not if they are living sensibly. You people—all of you—are abnormal, almost hysterical, in your attitude towards life. You take the little jobs of life too seriously and aren't serious enough about the big job of living.
"Isadore doesn't realize—never has—that a man needs rest and relaxation. He doesn't know what play means. Treats his body as a machine. He ought to be married. Ought to have a wife and children to think about besides his work—some one to play with. Some one to beat him over the head, if necessary, to distract his attention from the rut his mind has fallen into. He thinks too much over the generations of the future, not enough over this one and the next. And then he just naturally ought to have a wife, as every man who wants to be normally healthy does. Living like a monk and trying to do a real man's work! But what's the use of talking? You won't listen. It'll get you, too—just as sure as sunrise. Then you'll come yelping to me to help you out."
"Why, I'm well," Yetta protested. "I don't know any one in better condition than I am."
"Humph," he snorted.
He finished his coffee, and getting up, stamped about the room impatiently.
"Yetta, why do you suppose Nature divided the race into male and female? For more millions of years than we can count Nature has been at work making women, shaping their bodies by minute steps, forming intricate organs within them—for a special task. Back of you are myriad generations of females. You wouldn't be alive to-day, you'd never have been born, if a single one of them had neglected her woman's work. Do you think that all of a sudden you can break this age-old habit? That you can waste all the pain and travail of your myriad mothers with impunity? You're twenty-four now. For more than five years now you've been thwarting life, rendering barren all the vast time, the appalling agony, the ceaseless struggle, it has cost Nature to produce you—with your chance to pass on the flame of life. Out of all these millions of mothers, thousands and thousands have given their life that the line might be preserved. It doesn't matter at all what reason you can give for not having had children. I admit there are a few good reasons. But Nature is insistent in this matter of the next generation—as cold as a sword's edge. It seems almost like human spite. But you can't blame her. It's such appalling waste to throw away all the toiling, suffering generations back of us. You can't expect Nature to be indifferent; it has cost her so much. And she's got this advantage over God, her punishments come in this life. Four, five, perhaps ten years, you can go along without noticing it. Then you'll come to me. 'I have headaches, backaches. I'm irritable. I don't sleep." I can give you drugs to deaden the headache, dope which will make you seem to sleep. I can ward off a little of Nature's revenge—but I can't cure you. There are plenty of accidents and some kinds of sickness that you can't blame a person for, but drying up into barren, unlovely old maidhood ought to be forbidden by law.
"Lord," he exclaimed, looking at his watch, "it's late. I promised to speak at a Socialist meeting up in the Bronx, but I've got to look in at two cases first. So long."
For a moment Yetta sat still, pondering over what the doctor had said. The thing which impressed her most was the stupendous idea of the unbroken line of mothers which stretched back of her to that dim epoch when the new element of life first appeared on the shores of the primordial sea.
But in thinking back about it in after years, it did not seem to her that the doctor's talk had influenced her very much. She was a fearless person and the threat of personal ill-health would not have daunted her. Her feeling towards Isadore had already changed.
It was the long months of common work and mutual aspirations which had drawn her closer and closer to him. The change in their relationship had been so gradual that it needed some shock to open her eyes. The sudden realization, the day he had fallen sick, of the sharp contrast between his former strength and his utter weakness, had been the beginning. At first, when she saw that she had come to love him, it had been hard to believe. But the day after the crisis, while helping the nurse to change the bed linen, she had had to lift him. His emaciation had appalled her. And in his delirium, he had called her name. It was then that she saw clearly.
One night, not long after he had given her the lecture, Liebovitz came out of the sick-room.
"He's clear-headed now, and he's worrying about the paper. Go in and talk to him. Give him good news if you have to lie, and get him to sleep."
Isadore opened his eyes as she leaned over him and smiled when he recognized her. He had forgotten all about The Clarion. But she had to say something to keep back the tears; it was so painfully wonderful to mean so much to another.
"The circulation has gone up to 20,000."
But he had already dropped back to sleep at the bare sight of her.
It had not been a lie. The circulation was growing steadily. Isadore's sickness had seemed a spur to the energy of every one connected with the paper. The news that he was recovering had given them all a new hope, a new determination to put it on a firmer basis against his return.
Isadore gradually fought his way back to life. But it was a long and dreary convalescence. There was snow on the ground when he fell sick. Summer had begun in earnest before he was able to walk across the room. One Saturday afternoon, Yetta came in joyous and found him stretched out on the lounge.
"What do you think, Isadore? When the ghost walked to-day, every pay envelope was full. What do you think of that? It was a revolution. Mary Ames didn't have a chance to cry, and Levine couldn't find anything to grumble about. They were both unhappy."
"I don't see why I worked so hard to get well," he said wearily. "You're getting along better without me than when I was there."
"I hope you're ashamed of yourself," she said, taking off her hat and sitting down beside him. "I bring you home some good news and that's all the thanks I get."
Isadore blinked his eyes hard, but in spite of himself two great tears escaped down his cheeks.
"What's the matter, old fellow?" Yetta asked in dismay.
"Oh, nothing. Only I'm so foolishly weak still. Of course I'm glad. Only it's easy to get discouraged." The tears escaped all control. "It's dreary coming back to life."
Above all other advice, Dr. Liebovitz had insisted that Isadore should not be excited. But Yetta forgot all about that. She knelt down on the floor beside him.
"Isadore, when you were very sick, you talked a good deal in your sleep. Do you know who you talked about?"
"You."
"Is it just the same as ever, Isadore?"
"Far immer und ewig," he said slowly.
Yetta had always shared her father's dislike for Yiddish, but somehow his dropping back into their mother-tongue seemed to her like a caress.
"I guess that," he went on in the same language, "is what makes it seem so dreary to me—the lonesomeness."
"Hush, Isadore," she said breathlessly. "You musn't talk like that. The Pauldings are going to Europe this summer. They told me you could go up to their camp, if there was any one to take care of you.—I'll go with you—we won't either of us be lonely any more—Oh Dear Heart.—Oh, it isn't anything to cry about—just because I've made up my mind to marry you. Dr. Liebovitz will give me an awful scolding if he finds you taking on so."
A Christian Socialist minister married them, by a ceremony of his own concoction. It was quite as fantastic as his creed—but at least it was legal. As soon as Dr. Liebovitz would allow Isadore to be moved, they set out for the mountains.