CHAPTER IV LIFE CALLS
In the months that followed Rachel's departure Yetta began to lose hope. She could see no promise of escape, and lethargic time gradually faded the colors of her dream. The flame of holy discontent which had blazed for a while in her soul threatened to go out. Sometimes she wondered what had happened to Rachel. But "Speed" eats up a person's power of wondering.
Yetta had been at the machine for a long time now. Her muscles had become hardened. She did not often suffer from weariness any more, but she had, without knowing it, commenced to go downhill. The immense reserve of vitality, which is the blessing of so many of her race, was running low. It was amazing how her strong young body had resisted the strain. But any doctor would have shaken his head over the future. After all there is a limit, beyond which the nerves and muscles of a woman cannot compete with electricity and steel.
One night, a few days after the pain had come in her back, an American woman knocked at the door of the Goldstein flat while Yetta and Rosa were eating supper.
"I'm a neighbor of yours," she said. "My name is Miss Brail. I've come to get acquainted."
Mrs. Goldstein looked up hostilely from her sewing. Rosa, surly as usual, went on with her eating. But Yetta offered the intruder her chair. The visitor seemed used to such cold receptions; she sat down placidly and tried violently to establish more friendly relations.
She and some other women had rented the house across the street and were going to live there. It was to be a sort of a school. First of all they were going to start a kindergarten and day nursery for the children of women who worked. Rosa interrupted harshly that there were no children in their household. Miss Brail refused to be rebuffed. They were also going to have a sewing school for young women. Rosa, who had accepted the responsibility of the conversation, although she had not stopped eating, said that she and Yetta sewed all day long and did not need to learn.
"Well," Miss Brail continued bravely, "we will have a cooking-class too."
Rosa replied that her mother cooked for them.
"But don't you want to know how to cook yourself? Some day you'll have a home of your own, and it will be worth while to know how to cook good meals cheaply. Why, if the wife only knows how to buy scientifically and understands a little of food values, you can feed the ordinary family on only—"
But once more Rosa interrupted her. She had finished her meal and, emptying her tea-cup with a noisy sip, she stood up in her gaunt, twisted unloveliness.
"Do you think any one's going to marry me?" she asked defiantly.
Miss Brail did not have the heart to answer the question truthfully. She turned towards Yetta, who—confused by the implication of her look—hung her head and blushed. Rosa laughed scornfully.
"She ain't got no money. Nobody'd marry a girl for her looks, even if she could cook."
At this blasphemy against Romance, Miss Brail became eloquent. She was very definitely unmarried herself. But not so much an "old maid" as a new woman. It would have been impossible to picture her fondling a cat. She was almost athletic in her build, her hair was combed to hide the few streaks of gray, her eyes were young and full of fire. Her tailor-made suit was attractive; in a very modern, businesslike way, even coquettish. You could not look at her without feeling that no one was to blame but herself that she was unmarried. She delivered an impassioned harangue on the subject of men. Of course there were soulless brutes who would marry only for money. But the right sort of a man would just as soon take a poor girl as a rich one if he really loved her. She knew lots of that kind. They were going to have clubs and classes for young men in the house across the way—she called it The Neighborhood House. And once a month they would have dances. She invited Rosa and Yetta to come.
At the word "dance," Mrs. Goldstein stopped sewing, and sticking her needle in her wig, got up threateningly. No! Neither her daughter nor her niece would go to a dance. With her bony hand she pointed emphatically at the door. Miss Brail protested that the Neighborhood House dances would be eminently respectable; only the young men and women they knew personally. She tried to say that it was good to give the girls a chance to meet men in clean, orderly surroundings. But she could not resist the old woman's wrath, and at last, shrugging her shoulders in defeat, she went out.
Mr. Goldstein, when he heard of the incident, added his curses to those of his wife. Dances had been the ruin of one daughter, and that was enough disaster for a self-respecting family. Besides, these Goyim were trying to undermine the True Religion. David was hardly a religious man. But social settlements always took an interest in reform politics. Tammany Hall had small reason to be friendly with them. And as he could think of no arguments, this religious talk seemed a handy weapon.
But all her uncle's and aunt's denunciations could not persuade Yetta that Miss Brail was evil. Morning and evening, as she went out to work and came home, she stopped a moment on her doorstep to note the progress of rehabilitation in the house across the way. What the East Side calls the "parlor floor" had formerly been a store. Its great plate-glass window was cleaned and a heavy curtain was stretched across the lower half, so that people on the sidewalk could not look in. White dimity curtains were hung in the upstairs windows. The fine old front door was painted white, the rusted banister of the steps was replaced by a new and graceful one of polished steel. Before long the "residents" moved in. Their arrival coincided with the appearance of beautiful potted plants inside the windows.
Although the screen hid the front parlor from the street, it was not high enough to hide it from the windows of the Goldstein's flat. From that vantage-point Yetta learned the routine of evening work in the Settlement. A bulletin-board beside the door helped her to put names to the things she saw. On Monday nights there were meetings of "The Martha Washington Club." They were young women of her own age, and Miss Brail presided. There was generally some "uptown woman" who spoke or sang to the girls. This part of the evening's entertainment lasted until nine, then they grouped about Miss Brail at the piano and practised some choral music. They ended with half an hour's dancing and went home a little after ten. Tuesday night there was a club of boys. Wednesday night a class in sewing. Thursday night "The Abraham Lincoln Debating Club" held forth. Most of them were young men in the early twenties, but a few were older. On Friday there was a "Mothers' Club," and on Saturday night a magic-lantern show.
At last it came time for the monthly dance. Yetta had noticed the announcement on the bill-board several days before. On the eventful night she pretended to be sleepy and went to bed early, but as soon as Rosa began to snore she wrapped herself in her shawl and a blanket and tiptoed out into the front room to watch the ball. The Martha Washington Club had turned out in force, dazzlingly beautiful in their best clothes. The black-suited young men of the debating club also looked very wonderful to the hungry-eyed girl who watched it from afar. As was the strange custom of The Krists, the big window was opened although it was mid-February, and the sound of the four-piece orchestra and the laughter came up, unobstructed, to Yetta's ears.
She had never been so happy in all her life, but most of the time her eyes were filled with tears. She imagined herself first as one of the girls and then as another. There was one whose shirtwaist seemed especially beautiful. Yetta was convinced that if she were a millionnaire, or if a fairy godmother should offer her one choice, she would choose just such clothes. There was one of the young men, a curly-haired, laughing fellow, whom she had noticed on Thursday nights. Whenever he took part in the debates, all the other men clapped violently. Generally she imagined herself dancing with him.
After a while the music stopped. Miss Brail and the other settlement women brought in trays loaded with lemonade and sandwiches and cakes. The curly-haired man sat down beside the girl in the resplendent waist. Hot little blushes chased themselves all over Yetta's body. It frightened her even to imagine that she was so gayly dressed, that such a man sat close to her and whispered in her ear, looking at her and laughing all the time.
The supper fire had not yet burned down in the Goldstein's sordid kitchen-eating-sitting room. It was stuffy and hot, but Yetta, in spite of her shawl and blanket, shivered when the intermission was over. The curly-haired man nonchalantly put his arm about the gorgeous shirtwaist and, with his face rather close to his partner's, swung off into a dizzy two-step. Yetta felt as if she had been suddenly caressed. She had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering.
A tremendous storm had broken out in the breast of the little sweat-shop girl. Sometimes she had to close her eyes, the beauty of the vision was so dazzling. For a moment she would tear herself away from the blighting memory of reality, and her soul seemed to float away from her body into the brightly lit room across the way. In the most deeply spiritual sense she became part of that gay scene. She was arrayed in gorgeous clothes. Men—even the wonderful curly-haired man—sought her as a partner. And she could laugh!
But the Blessed Angel of Forgetfulness is—like her sister, the Spirit of Delight—an inconstant hussy. No Wise Man of all the ages has learned the trick of keeping her always at his side.
The memories of the day's stark realities would submerge Yetta. Back of her was the squalid flat, the snores of her loveless relatives. In her dark bedroom her one frayed dress was hung over the back of a chair, waiting for her to put it on and hurry through the dawn to Jake Goldfogle's Vest Shop. Routine—hopeless monotony! A prison tread—from the vitiated air and uneasy sleep of the tenement, so many steps to the cruel speed and inhumanity of the Machine. Then so many steps back to the tenement, and all to do over again.
In front of her—in the room across the street—"Life-as-it-might-be." Beauty—thrilling excitement—joy!
The eyes of Yetta's soul swung back and forth from one vision to the other. Through the long evening she knelt there by the window, so forgetful of her body that she did not realize how the dirty window ledge was cutting into her elbows, how her knees were being bruised on the unswept floor.
At last the musicians put away their instruments. Every one clapped insistently and crowded about Miss Brail. But she waved her watch in their face. A distant church-bell tolled midnight. Yetta stayed at her post until the last laughing couple had shaken hands with the ladies at the door. For several minutes more she watched the shadows on the upper windows, while the "residents" talked over the success of the dance. She watched till the last light was out, then she crept back to bed and cried herself to sleep.
The tears she shed that night were not the kind that heal. There was acid in them which ate into the quick. For nearly four years her body had been on the rack. Now her soul was being torn. The questionings which had troubled her after Rachel's disappearance became more and more insistent. Was she never to know what joy meant? Was day to crawl along after day in desolate and weary monotony? Was this dull ache of soul-hunger never to be relieved until some indefinite future was to find her—cheated of everything—cast out useless on the human refuse heap? Was this weary plain of uneventfulness never to be broken by any dazzling mountain peaks nor shady valley?
Shortly after the Settlement Ball, which Yetta had watched as a starveling beggar peers through a baker's window, Life suddenly opened up. The drab monotony was illumined by a lurid display of fireworks. Rockets of glaring, appalling red shot up into the night. There was a great white blaze of hope, and all the sky became suffused by the soft caressing colors of unsophisticated Romance.
The sweat-shop motor broke down. Jake Goldfogle cursed and tore his hair. He kept his "hands" waiting in idleness half through the afternoon, until the electricians had come and said that the damage could not be righted till midnight. Then Jake surlily dismissed his women. It was rare that Yetta had such a holiday. There was no reason for her to go to her dreary home. It was a precocious spring day, the sun shone with a heat that made the streets attractive.
Wandering about aimlessly, Yetta came to Hamilton Fish Park. The faint suggestion of rising sap which came to her in that open space seemed infectious. The questionings which had disturbed her returned with new force. Why? What did it all mean? Was there no escape?
Suddenly her attention was caught by a familiar figure, Rachel, arrayed in cheap finery. Yetta quickened her pace to overtake her and called her. It was a great shock to Rachel when she recognized her. She stared at her in bewilderment, but it was surely Yetta,—Yetta of the old life, of the great sad eyes, with the same old shawl over her head.
"The motor broke in my shop," Yetta explained as they sat down. "I came out for a walk. Where are you working?"
"I ain't working."
Yetta's eyes opened wider.
"Are you married," she asked with awe in her voice.
Shame closed Rachel's lips. How could she explain the grim dirtiness of Life to her ignorant little cousin? She started to get up and go away. But suddenly the heart-break of it all—the memory of the girlish dreams she had confided to Yetta—overcame her. She threw her arms around her cousin and cried, great sobs which shook them both. A few words came to her lips, the same phrase over and over: "Oh! Yetta. I wanted to be good." When the first burst of her grief was spent, she began to tell how it had all come about.
At first everything had gone smoothly. She had taken a furnished room with the girl from her shop who had lent her the hat and white shoes for her first dance. "She had a crush on me," Rachel explained. They had led a joyous but quite innocent life, working hard all day and two or three nights a week going to dances. As far as they knew how to choose they went to respectable places. Several men had paid court to Rachel. A clerk in a dry-goods store on Sixth Avenue had been in love with her. He was serious. But he was earning very little, had a marriageable sister, and wanted to wait a couple of years. She had even become engaged to one man. At first, she said, she had "been crazy about him." She had let him kiss her and make pretty violent love to her. But after a while she saw he was "a spender," too free with his money—like her father. She did not want a man like that, so she had sent him about his business. Then her room-mate "got a crush" on another girl and had left Rachel alone in the furnished room.
"What can you do?"—she began to cry again—"when you ain't got no place to have your friend call except a furnished room? All alone? A girl ain't got no chance—all alone—like that."
She could not tell Yetta what came next, so she asked about the family. As Yetta told her meagre store of news, the flood-gates of Rachel's bitter heart opened. She cursed her family. They were to blame for her disaster. Why had not her father made a decent home for his children? Was it her fault that her brother was a crook? If they had been honest and thrifty, they could have given her a marriage portion. Worse than doing nothing for her, they had even eaten up her wages. If she had been an orphan, she could have put some of her pay in the bank—she could have saved enough money to get married on.
"Don't you let them cheat you, Yetta," she broke out, "the way they cheated me. Perhaps I'm a bad woman, but I never cheated little girls the way they cheated us. I never robbed an orphan like they done to you. You're a fool to stand for it. Why should you give them your wages? Haven't they cheated you enough? They made your poor father pay too much board. The funeral never cost like they said it did. And now they're stealing your wages. I tell you what you do. You find some good woman in your shop, who'll take you to board, and put your money in the bank. But don't go to no 'furnished room.' Furnished rooms is Hell! You—"
"Hello, Ray. Introduce me to your friend."
The intruder's voice sent a convulsive shiver through Rachel. He wore a suit of dove-gray, the cuffs and collar of which were bound with silk braid. There was a large diamond in his scarlet tie. As though he did not wish to be outdone by the sun in its premature glory he wore a slightly soiled Panama hat, shaped after the fashion depicted in photographs of the German Crown Prince.
"I say," he insisted, and there was a twang of menace in his soft voice, a more evident threat in his hard domineering eyes, "I say, introduce me to your friend."
"She's my cousin, Yetta Rayefsky," Rachel replied reluctantly.
"And my name," he said with easy assurance, "is Harry Klein. I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Rayefsky. Do you dance as well as your cousin?"
"I've never been to a dance," Yetta stammered.
She was very much flustered by his stare of frank admiration. No man had ever put a "Miss" to her name before. Again the hot blushes chased themselves over her body. But he did not seem to notice her embarrassment.
"I was walking along the street," he said, "and noticed Miss Goldstein here in the Park. I came to ask her to go to the Tim Sullivan ball with me to-night. Won't you come along?"
"She ain't got no clothes for a ball," Rachel said.
"I'm sure," he said, his eyes turning hard again, "that you could lend her some."
But Yetta was frightened beyond words at the bare idea of going. She refused timidly.
Harry Klein urged her, managing gracefully the while to weave in the story of his life. He was a commercial traveller for a large silk-house on Broadway. Of course it was very good pay, and in a few months he was to be taken into the firm, but it had its inconveniences. He did not get to New York very often. He liked dances, but it was no fun to go alone. Being away so much, he did not know many nice girls. He had no use for the kind you can "pick up" at a ball. He did wish she could come. He knew another travelling man who was also in town—a friend of his. It would be great fun for the four of them to go together.
But he did not push his urgings too far. He was sorry she would not come, but he hoped Miss Goldstein could find a partner for his friend. Would she come now on that errand?
"I'm sorry to run away with your cousin, Miss Rayefsky," he said, signalling Rachel to get up. "And I sure hope I'll have the pleasure of meeting you again."
He bowed very low, made a gallant flourish with his hat, and taking Rachel by the arm, started off gayly. But he turned back after a few steps.
"I'm not going to be discouraged," he said with his very best smile, "because you won't go with me to-night. I like your looks and want to get acquainted with you. I'll see you again."
Once more he flourished his hat, and rejoined Rachel.
Yetta sat still on the park bench for a long time after they had gone. She tried to make some sense out of Life. But it was all very perplexing. What did Rachel's story mean? In a vague way she had heard of the women who are called "bad." She knew their more blatant hall-marks. Rachel's cheeks were painted; she had spoken of herself as "bad." But the term did not mean anything to Yetta which could include a girl like her cousin who "wanted to be good." She understood that Rachel was unhappy, bitter, and very much ashamed, but she could not think of her as sinful or vicious. She tried—but entirely in vain—to imagine what sort of life Rachel was leading. She tried to picture in what sort of acts her "badness" consisted. She had heard somewhere of "selling love," but she had no idea how it was done. It was very perplexing for her—indeed it has perplexed older and wiser heads—to discover that "bad" people may after all be good.
But it was hard for her to keep her mind on this problem of ethics. It was very much easier to think of Harry Klein. She had never talked to so courteous and well dressed a gentleman. The dream of the curly-haired debater was wiped from her mind—Harry Klein was much better looking.
A queer question shot into her mind. Did a girl have to be "bad" to have such enchanting friends? No. That could not be. He had wanted to be friends with her. She knew she was not bad.
He had said he wanted to be her friend! The blood raced through her veins at the thought. She went over again in her mind all her arguments with Rachel. The only possible way to escape from the sweat-shop was to marry. Of course she could not hope to win so debonair a gentleman as Harry Klein. But rescue—if it were to come at all—must come in some such way. It was her only hope.
CHAPTER V HARRY KLEIN
When they were out of hearing, Harry Klein tightened his grip on Rachel's arm.
"Say, Kid, that cousin of yours is a peach. Why didn't you put me on before?"
"Oh, Jake," Rachel pleaded, "leave her alone. She ain't got no chance. She's only a kid. She ain't got no father or mother. Oh, Jake, please. Promise me you'll leave her alone. There are lots of other girls. She's only a kid. Please—"
"Oh, shut your face," he growled; "you make me tired."
And he began to whistle a light-hearted ditty. Rachel might just as well have gone to Jake Goldfogle and have asked him, for the same reasons, not to drive her cousin so hard. She might just as well have asked you or me to pay a decent price for our clothes. Harry Klein, just like Mr. Goldfogle—just like you and me—needed the money.
"Where's 'Blow Away'?" he asked, interrupting his whistling.
"He's asleep," Rachel said.
"Well—we'll wake him up."
They turned down a side street.
"Jake," Rachel began again, "I'll find you some other girl—I'll do anything for you. Oh, Jake, please."
"Shut up," he growled. "Tell your troubles to a policeman."
They went up three flights of dirty stairs to a door which Rachel opened with a latch-key. It gave on a long hall. Turning to the left, they entered a parlor fitted out with cheap plush furniture. The windows were closed, the air heavy with the scent of stale beer and cigarette smoke—all the varied stenches of a debauch.
"Wake him up," Jake ordered.
Rachel turned down the hall and opened a bedroom door. The air was even worse than in the parlor. A thin-chested youth of twenty-eight or so was asleep, lying across the bed on his face. The butt of a pistol stuck out of his hip pocket. His coat and vest and shirt were on the back of a chair, his shoes on the floor.
"Charlie," Rachel called.
There was no response. She approached the bed cautiously and gave a pull at his foot, jumping back out of reach as soon as she had touched him. There were a couple of angry grunts.
"Charlie," she called again.
He sat up with a roar of profanity.
"How many times have I told you to leave me alone when I'm sleeping? I'll break your dirty face for you."
"Jake's in the front room," she interrupted him. "Wants to see you."
"Jake?" He lowered the hand he had raised to strike her. "What in Hell does he want?"
"How do I know?"
"You never know nothing," he growled sourly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He shuffled down the hall in his stocking feet. When the great ones of the earth are waiting, you cannot stop to put on shoes.
"Hello, Blow Away," Jake said. "I've got something to say to you. Your bundle"—he indicated Rachel—"steered me up to a honey bunch this afternoon, named Yetta Rayefsky. The little doll took my eye. See? She's Ray's cousin. I just want you to explain to her—as a favor to me—that she mustn't butt in. The less talking she does with her mouth the better it'll be. You'd better impress it on her, so she won't forget? See?"
Charlie—alias Blow Away—saw. And Rachel saw. She cowered down in a corner and promised not to warn Yetta—if only they would not beat her. But it was a basic belief of these two gentlemen that "a beating is never wasted on a woman."... It was from this time that Rachel began to kill herself with "booze." She did not like to remember how she had betrayed Yetta. And drink helped her to forget.
There were few things which Jake, or Harry Klein—it does not matter what name we use for him, for a hundred aliases were on the back of his portrait in the Rogues' Gallery—there were not many things which he enjoyed more than seeing some one cower before him. The servility with which "Blow Away" had obeyed his orders, the wild terror and passionate pleadings of Rachel, had tickled the nerves of his perverted being, and he smacked his lips as he went downstairs and out into the twilight of the open streets.
He was the recognized leader of the principal East Side "gang"—a varied assortment of toughs, "strong-arm men," pickpockets, "panhandlers," and pimps. It must not be supposed, however, that these various professions were sharply differentiated. There is a hoary tradition which says that once upon a time the under world of New York City was divided into rigid classes and cliques, when a "dip" looked down on a beggar, and highway robbers had a professional pride which kept them from associating with panders. But in the year of grace 1903—when Jake's crooked trail ran across Yetta's path—such delicate distinctions, if they ever had existed, were entirely lost. Many a man who claimed to be a prize-fighter sometimes "stuck up a drunk." The "flyest" pickpocket did not disdain the income to be derived from the sale of "phony" jewellery. It was no longer possible to distinguish a "yeggman" from a "flopper," and even bank robbers wrote "begging letters." And of all "easy money," the easiest is from prostitution. There were very few denizens of the under world who did not have one or two women "on the string." Even the legendary aristocracy of forgers had sunk thus low.
The political manifestation of the gang over which Jake ruled was the James B. O'Rourke Democratic Club, of which he was president. This organization maintained, with the help of a subsidy from Fourteenth Street, a shabby parlor floor club-room on Broome Street. They gave one ball and one picnic a year. A central office detective, if he had attended a meeting, could have given a "pedigree" for almost all the members. But the political bigbugs, the members of the city administration, who sometimes came to visit the club, did not bring a detective with them. They saw only a roomful of ardent young Democrats. The good-will of the club was an important asset to aspiring politicians; the members would willingly vote half a dozen times for a candidate they liked.
The social centre of the gang was a "Raines Law" hotel on lower Second Avenue. It had a very glittering back parlor for "ladies." There, and in the Hungarian Restaurant next door, Jake's followers spent their moments of relaxation. The frontier between their territory and that of hostile gangs was several blocks away. The "hang out" was just inside the borders of a police precinct, with whose captain they had a treaty of peace.
The more professional headquarters were in an innocent-looking barber shop on Chrystie Street. In the back there was a pool parlor. The lamps were so shaded that the table was brilliantly illumined and the rest of the room was black. If you walked in from the brightly lighted shop in front, you could not tell how many people were there, nor how many pistols were pointed at you. From the toilet-room in the back there was an inconspicuous door into the alley, which, besides its strategic advantages, led to the back door of Pincus Kahan's pawnshop. Much stolen goods followed this route.
A sort of Robin Hood romance has been thrown around the notorious gang leaders of Lower New York. As usual, the reality back of the romance is a very sorry thing. Jake, for instance, was not an admirably clever, nor strong-willed, nor fearless specimen of the genus homo. To be sure he excelled many of his stunted, defective, and "cocaine-doped" retainers in these qualities, but above all he owed his position to a calculating, patient prudence. Discretion is certainly the better part of valor in knavery, and while most crooks are daredevils, Jake was discreet.
Since his first detention in the House of Refuge, Jake had managed to keep out of jail. On his release he had organized a "mob" of pickpockets. Most of its members were boys he had met in that worthy institution. Neither the House of Refuge nor any of the other "reformatories" are to be blamed for the crimes of those who have passed through them. Many of their inmates are taught honorable trades, and some follow them after release. Nearly half of the juvenile pickpockets who gathered about Jake had never been arrested—and they were every bit as bad as those who had been in the House of Refuge.
Owing to their leader's discretion, this little "mob," which had affiliated with the dominant East Side Gang, enjoyed an almost unbroken run of prosperity. But when he had turned eighteen, Jake retired from the active practice of his profession. There was as much money and more security in women. Nature had endowed him with the necessary external charms. He enjoyed cleanliness, he was good looking, and above all he had a soft, persuasive voice.
His covetousness, joined with a natural ability at organization, was always pushing him into new enterprises. He gathered together the wreck of the notorious Beggars' Trust. He joined "The Independent Benevolent Society," and cornered the business of supplying girls to their "brass check" houses. One after another, he gained control of the gang's most lucrative ventures. Almost any other man of the under world would have made a play for acknowledged leadership long before Jake did. He was modest, or, as his enemies said, a coward. He waited until sudden death or imprisonment had removed his principal rivals—until the leadership was practically forced upon him.
There were cleverer, more strong-willed, braver men in the gang than he. But he was never careless. A civil war within the political machine had given him an opportunity to make explicit and profitable treaties with those "higher up." He had sense enough to leave "dope" alone. He lacked the imagination to have any sentiment of loyalty or any sympathy, and this made him what is called unscrupulous. Like most cowards he was bitter and cruel in revenge. He had never killed a man with his own hands, but he ruled his organization of "thugs" through fear.
It was two days after her encounter with him in the Park before Yetta saw him again. As she came out of the factory, after the day's work, she almost ran into him.
"Why, hello, Miss Rayefsky," he greeted her. "Your cousin Ray told me where you worked. May I walk along with you?"
He walked beside her to the corner of the street where she lived. Glowing stories he told her of the Ball, how much fun he and Rachel had had, and how sorry he was that she had missed it. Really, she ought to have come. What fun was there for working girls if they did not go to dances? To be sure some girls were too crazy about it, went to balls every night and stayed up too late. He disapproved of such doings. He had to work. And he did not want to be sleepy in the office. No, indeed! A serious young man with ambitions could not afford to try the all-night game. He very seldom went to balls except on Saturday night.
Hairy Klein, alias Jake, had sized Yetta up and decided on the "serious" talk.
It was several days before he turned up again. He explained that he had been "out on the road." In the course of half a dozen such walks he opened his heart to her. There was nothing about himself which he did not tell her. She knew all his ambitions and hopes, the names of his influential relatives, the details of his serious, laborious life, and the amount of his balance in the Bowery Savings Bank. Pretty soon the "bosses" would keep their promise and take him into the firm. They would be surprised to find how much capital he had accumulated. Meanwhile he was learning the business from A to Z. What he did not know about silk was not worth knowing.
To all this fairy-story Yetta listened with credulous ears. The young man had a convincing manner; he was courteous and well dressed. And besides, Rachel would have warned her if he had been bad.
If Yetta had grown up with boys, if she had played at courtship,—as most young people happily do,—she might have seen through the surface glitter of this scoundrel. She had no standard by which to judge him.
But in a timidly defensive spirit she refused to go to a dance with him. It was partly the instinct of coquetry, which told her to struggle against capture. It was more her humility. When he said he liked her, thought she was good looking, wanted "to be her steady fellow," and so forth, it made her throb with a strange and disturbing pride. But it also made her distrustful—it was too good to be true. He had somewhat over-colored his romance. If he had only pretended to be a clerk at $11.50 a week and meagre expectations, it would have been easier to accept. But why should this rich and brilliant young conqueror want poor, penniless her?
It was not so much that she doubted Harry's truthfulness; she found her good luck unbelievable. And this uncertainty tormented her. Despite her lack of experience, she had a large fund of instinctive common sense. She realized that she could not compromise with Life. Either this man was good, wonderfully, gorgeously good, in which case the slightest distrust was folly and cruelty, or he was bad—then the smallest grain of trust would be dangerous. She felt herself utterly unable to decide wisely so momentous a question. She longed ardently for some older confidante, some woman whose goodness and wisdom she could trust. She wished she knew Miss Brail and the Settlement women. She was sure they were both wise and good.
There was her aunt. In her desperate extremity she proposed one night that Harry should call at the Goldstein's flat. But when he refused, she could not blame him. His argument was good. Her aunt was sure to oppose any one who threatened to marry Yetta and divert her earnings. He stood on the street-corner and urged her earnestly to leave her relatives. He had wormed from her all the sordid details of that miserable family. Why should she give her money to a drunkard who had no claim on her? He knew a nice respectable place where she could get a room for half her wages. She could buy some nice clothes with her savings. He made quite a pretty speech about how much better she would look in a fine dress. It was his firm conviction that she was the most beautiful girl in New York.
Yetta knew that it was foolish for her to go on living with the Goldsteins. As Rachel had said, they were and always had been cheating her. But a dread of the unknown kept her from at once accepting Harry's advice. The waves of Life were swirling about her dizzyingly, and she felt the need of a familiar haven. She held on in panic to the only home she knew, sparring blindly for time, and hoping that something would happen to convince her definitely whether or not she ought to put trust in the alluring dream.
But all the time her instinctive resistance was weakening; she had begun to give into his seduction. Her growing horror of the "sweated" monotony of her life was forcing her relentlessly into the clutches of this pander. Strain her eyes as she might she could see no door of escape unless some such lover rescued her. Whenever she tried to think of the possible dangers of believing in Harry Klein, a mocking imp jeered at her with the grim certainties of life without him. What risk was there in the dream which was worse than the inevitable barrenness and premature fading of the sweat-shop? She listened eagerly to what he said about the flat they would rent in Harlem. But with more thrilling attention, she listened to his stories of dances. Her heart hungered passionately for a little gayety. And then there was the fear that at some dance he might meet a more attractive girl and leave her.
She was no longer handing over all her wages to her aunt. Under pretext of a slack season she was holding back a couple of dollars a week. She carried these humble savings wrapped in a handkerchief inside her blouse. Every time she felt the hard lump against her body, her heart gave a little jump. She would have some money to buy a hat and some white shoes for her first dance.
Jake, alias Harry Klein, had a more devious psychology. When "Blow Away" asked him one night, in the Second Avenue "hang-out," how things were going with Ray's cousin, Jake's lying face assumed a faraway contented smile. But inwardly he was raging over Yetta's stubbornness. He was not used to such long chases. When he had first seen her, his money-loving soul had revolted at so shameful a waste of earning capacity. A pretty girl like that working in a sweat-shop! He had followed the scent without much enthusiasm. It would be an affair of a couple of weeks. Most pretty girls want good clothes to look prettier. Most of them lost their heads if a well-dressed man made love to them. The grim, hopeless monotony of poverty made most of them hungry for a larger life. It was really sickening to a man of his experience to see how greedily they swallowed his story of the silk firm on Broadway. It was—and this was his expression for supreme easiness—like stealing pennies from a blind beggar.
Yetta by her stubborn caution had won a sort of respect from him. His pride was engaged. His face flushed when he thought of her. She stirred in him something more than vexation. The girl "on his string" who was at the moment enjoying his special favor suddenly seemed stupid and insipid to him. In his distorted way he rather fell in love with Yetta. His day-dreaming moments were filled with passionate lurid pictures of possessing her. Although it was proving a long chase, he knew the odds and was sure of the outcome. Sometimes he thought almost tenderly of the time of victory. Sometimes his face hardened, and he vowed he would make her pay.
The pursuit had dragged on a solid month when quite by chance he stumbled on an argument which won his case.
He began to worry about her health. She ought to get out of the sweat-shop. It would kill her. He told her horrible stories about how women went to pieces in the sweat-shops, how they got "bad lungs," or went blind, or had things happen to them inside. He would, the very next day, find a position for her in a store or some place that would not be so hard on her. It did not matter if the wages were not so good; it broke his heart to think of her ruining her health. As soon as they took him into the firm he was going to marry her. He did not want his wife to be sick or crippled.
In his mind was a dark and sinister plan to entice Yetta from her home and establish her in nominal employment with some complaisant woman. He was really a very stupid young man. He did not realize that in all her life Yetta had never had any one worry about her health. He did not guess how his solicitude, which seemed so unselfish, had choked her throat and filled her eyes with tears. He went on with his evil eloquence, when all the time he might have put his arms about her and kissed her, and carried her off wherever he wished.
The next afternoon in the sweat-shop, the pain smote Yetta in the back once more.
CHAPTER VI THE PIT'S EDGE
This second backache did not cause any noticeable interruption in the day's routine. Yetta gritted her teeth and kept the pace—if anything, increased it. But while her fingers flew back and forth over the accustomed work, her thoughts soared far afield. If there had been persuasiveness in Harry's words, there was ten times as much eloquence in that sudden clutch of pain. As Mrs. Cohen had prophesied, it had come back. How soon would she feel it again?
At last the motor stopped its crazy rattle, the roar of the belts turned to a sob, the day's work was done. Yetta arranged her shawl with trembling fingers and hurried down the stairs. But she hesitated a moment inside the doorway before plunging out into the pack of workers who were hurrying eastward.
The ebb and flow of this tide of tenement dwellers is one of the momentous sights of Manhattan. At five in the morning the cross-town streets are almost deserted. On the Bowery the milk wagons and occasional trucks rattle northward in the false dawn. The intervals between the elevated trains are long. But the side streets are even more lifeless. Now and then shadows flit eastward—women, night workers, who scrub out the great Broadway office buildings. They would be shadows even in broad daylight. Towards six one begins to hear sharper, hurrying footfalls—coming westward. The tide has begun to flow. It grows in volume with the increasing light. The congested tenements have awakened; by six the flood is at its height. So dense is the rush that it is hard to make way against it, eastward. So fast the flow that the observer can scarcely note the faces. It is the backs which catch the eye and leave an impress on the memory. A man who walked like a soldier—upright—in that crowd would seem a monstrosity. Even the backs of the little children are bent. They seem to be carrying portly persons on their shoulders.
Then for close to twelve hours these side streets are almost deserted again—till the ebb begins. It is hard to decide which sight is the more awesome: the flow of humanity hurrying to its inhuman labor or the same crowd ebbing, hurrying to their inhuman, bestial homes.
But Yetta was not thinking of her fellow-workers. With the egoism of youth she was thinking of herself and the pain in her back. Harry had been right—the sweat-shop was killing her. There was a chance of escape and Life might never offer her another. She had come to the now-or-never place. Yetta was not a coward, she was only timid. And the bravery of timid people is sublime. For only a moment she hesitated in the dark hallway, below Goldfogle's Vest Company, and then with a smile—a fearless smile—on her lips she stepped out into the glare of the arc-light. Harry was waiting for her. She slipped her hand confidently into his arm.
"Say, Harry, to-morrow night, let's go to a ball."
"What?" he said, stopping short, to the surprise and discomfort of the home-rushing workers. "What?"
"Sure. I want some fun."
At last she had swallowed the bait! He could hardly believe his ears. But he was afraid to seem too eager. They were swept along by the hurrying crowd almost a block before he spoke.
"How about clothes?"
"I got some," she said. "I'll bring 'em to the shop and put 'em on there."
"Why not to-night."
"No. To-morrow."
They hurriedly talked over the details of her escape. She would tell her aunt the "rush-work story." When the shop closed, Harry could take her somewhere to supper and afterwards to a dance.
"To-morrow night? Sure?" he said when they separated at her corner.
"Sure," she called back.
She ran upstairs and told her aunt that there was a rush order in her shop and she must hurry back; she only had time for a glass of tea and a piece of bread. To-morrow she would take a bigger lunch and not come home for supper. In a few minutes she out was again on the brightly lit streets. From her scant store of savings she bought a hat, a blouse, a pair of stockings and white shoes. She left her bundles at a store near her home, and then started on a pilgrimage.
The shrine she set out to visit was the little second-hand book-store on East Broadway, where she had been so happy with her father. It had hardly changed at all. Only the man who sat on the high stool behind the desk did not look like her father. She stood there aimlessly for a few minutes, and then her eye fell on the first two volumes of Les Miserables. It was the set she had read to her father. The last volume was in her room.
"One volume is gone," the man told her; "you can have them for seventy-five cents."
"I ain't got more'n half a dollar," she said.
"The complete set is worth five dollars."
"I only got fifty cents."
"All right. Take them."
She turned away from him to pull the last of her little horde out of her blouse. When she faced him, there were tears in her eyes.
"What's the matter?" he asked kindly.
"Nothin'. My father used to keep this store. These were the last books I read to him."
"Oh! Is your name Rayefsky? I knew your father—he was a good man. And I guess I used to know you, when you were about so high. Let's see—what was your name?"
"Yetta."
"Oh, yes, little Yetta Rayefsky, grown up into a big woman. I suppose you'll be getting married soon."
"Say, can I sit down here fer a while," she asked, to change the subject.
"Of course you can," he said cordially, bringing her a chair.
She pulled it back into the obscurity and sat there all the evening, watching through wet eyes the old familiar scene, the people who came to buy, and the people who came to talk. One or two she recognized. When she had been a little girl, she used to sit up there behind the desk on a high stool beside her father and fall asleep against his shoulder. There was no one now to lean her head against when she was tired—except Harry. He promised to take care of her.
Memories of her father seemed to crowd the dingy old store. Why were there not more men like him in the world? He would not have wanted her to kill herself over the machine. How glad he would have been that she had found a lover to rescue her. She recalled the sermon he had preached about the wedding across the way. She did not remember many of the words; much of it had been above her childish understanding. But she remembered how he had told her that she must love and trust and cherish her man. She recalled the Vow of Ruth which he had taught her. And now at last the lover had come. The old sad, drab life had ended; she was about to enter into the glory. When it was time to close, the bookseller insisted on giving back her fifty cents.
"You take the books," he said. "And when you get married, you can call them a wedding present from a man who knew your father, and never knew a better man."
Hugging the two volumes of Les Miserables against her breast, she walked home more light hearted because of this evening with ghosts—more light hearted than she had ever been before.
The next morning Yetta left home earlier than usual, so that she could pick up her bundles on her way to work. All the long morning the noisy machinery of the shop seemed to be playing the music of The Song of Songs.
But suddenly The Fates seemed to become ashamed of the way they were treating her. Perhaps Yetta's dreams of her father the night before had pierced through the adamantine walls and stirred him out of the drowsy bliss of Paradise; he may have thrown himself at the feet of The Most High to plead his daughter's cause. Perhaps it was her Guardian Angel which intervened. Or perhaps it was just chance.
When Yetta went down on the sidewalk during the noon rest to get a breath of air,—with the Song ringing in her heart,—her attention was attracted by a group of people about a woman who was speaking. She joined the listening crowd. The woman was talking about a strike of "The Skirt Finishers." The girls had been out now for weeks and were on the point of starvation. The Woman's Trade Union League, to which the speaker belonged, had arranged a ball for that night in behalf of the "skirt finishers."
"Every garment worker ought to come," she said. "It's your fight they are fighting. The garment trades are all 'sweated'—you've got to rise or die together. And every cent from the tickets goes to help the strike. The hall, the orchestra, everything has been donated—all the money goes to the girls. But, more than the money, they need encouragement. Don't buy a ticket and throw it away. Of course the fifty cents will help, but we want more than the money, we want a crowd. It will cheer up the girls a bit if the ball is a success. If you can't come yourself, give a ticket to some one who will."
Now the spirit of her father, or her Guardian Angel, or chance, moved Yetta to give her last fifty cents to the cause of the strikers. The time was so close when she was to leave the sweat-shop forever that her heart went out to all the less fortunate girls who had no such happy prospects. She would not only buy the ticket, but if the strikers needed encouragement, she would persuade Harry to take her there.
When the day's work was over, she hurried into her new finery and downstairs to meet her lover. Harry looked her over approvingly. Yes, she was worth all the time it had taken. But he was too wily a fox to let his evil glee be apparent. The rest was so easy; only a fool would risk frightening her now. A couple of hours more love-making, the intoxication of a few dances, a little wine—if need be a drop or two of chloral—and the trick was turned.
He took her to "Lorber's" for supper. And leaning over the brightly lighted table, over dishes which all together cost less than a dollar, but which seemed to her very wonderful, he solemnly asked her to promise to marry him. Just as solemnly she said "yes." Jove's laughter did not reach her ears to disturb her as she looked trustful and happy into his eyes. One cannot but wish that sometimes the guffaws of Jupiter were louder.
Harry promised to go to a jeweller in the morning and buy her an engagement ring. And when they had finished talking over this important detail, Yetta remembered about her ticket to the Woman's Trade Union League ball. Harry tried to laugh the idea away. He knew nothing about trade-unions except that high-class "crooks" did not belong to them. But the Lyceum Hall, where it was to be held, was a very modest place.
"It's sure to be stupid in that hall," he said. "They never have good balls there. I'm going to take you up to The Palace. There's a swell affair there every night—the real thing. And fifty cents! What fun can you have at a fifty-cent ball? Sometimes the tickets cost five dollars at The Palace."
But Yetta had set her heart on using her own ticket, and it seemed an unimportant detail to Harry. They compromised; they would go to both, first to hers and then to his. She would see that he knew what he was talking about.
He proposed a bottle of champagne. For a moment Yetta was frightened.
"I never drank no wine," she protested.
"Oh, come," he said, "they always drink wine over a marriage contract. I wouldn't ask you to if it would hurt you."
Yetta looked at him out of her big, deep eyes. He had the peculiar kind of nerve which made it possible for him to look straight into them. He reached his hand across the table and put it caressingly on hers. And so she believed him.
"If you says fer me to," she said, "I'll do anything you wants me to, Harry—always." And then Yetta remembered her father and the vow he had taught her. It made her suddenly bold. She took firm hold of the hand Harry had reached to her across the table, and in a singsong but throbbing voice began to recite the wonderful old Hebrew words. The pimp was bewildered. His religious instruction had been neglected; he knew no Hebrew.
"Wot's this yer giving me?" he asked.
And Yetta translated into the vernacular.
"It means: 'Wherever you go, I'll go too, where you sleep, I'll sleep wid you, your folks will be my folks and I'll pray to your God; when you die, I'll die too and be buried beside you. And God can do more to me, if I leave you before I die.' My father taught it to me. Ain't it a swell thing to say when you're engaged?"
When at last the significance of Yetta's avowal had penetrated Harry's thick skull, he moved uneasily on his chair. The business side of him said he was wasting time. It had been a foolish precaution to bring her to this respectable restaurant. He might have taken her straight to the Second Avenue "hang-out"—with its complaisant proprietor and the rooms upstairs. But there was a sweetness—even to him—in such innocent, confiding love. He had acted the part with her so long that it seemed something more than bald pretence. There was a residue of "original decency" left under the hard shell, which living in this world of ours had given him. And this part of him—God knows it was small and weak—wished that it was true. It was strong enough to make him prolong the make-believe. He ordered only a half bottle of champagne—as a really, truly lover would have done. It was nine o'clock when they left.
They walked along Grand Street towards the Bowery. A sudden wave of tenderness flooded Harry.
"Yetta," he said, "you've never kissed me."
Her feet on the roseate clouds, she was quite unconscious of the passers-by; she turned her face up to him unquestioningly. But Harry never lost consciousness of such things. He did not dare to risk the jibes of onlookers. He tightened his grip on her arm and led her into a dark doorway. The late March wind was cold, and no loiterers sat on the steps nor stood about in the hall. Yetta—a bit surprised at his prudence—gave herself freely into his arms. When he kissed her, the last faint shadow of a doubt disappeared. She was sure he really loved her. The blood pounding in her head under his caresses dizzied her—but she was not afraid. Only somehow, the flush in his face and the husky tone of his voice seemed unfamiliar.
"Yetta," he said in a hot whisper. "Did you mean what you said—that stuff your father taught you? Will you come with me to-night—to my room and—never go away?"
This was a new idea to Yetta; she had not thought out the literal meaning of the ancient vow. For a moment she looked into his face, then turned her head aside. After all, that was what her father had told her to do.
"I'll marry you," he said, "as soon as they take me into the firm. It won't be long."
But this aspect of it had not worried Yetta. She did not question his good intentions. She was trying to picture to herself what such a change in her life would mean. There had been so little joy for her that now it was hard to accept it.
Suddenly a familiar figure crossed her range of vision. Her eyes, which had been straining to pierce the future, focussed on the other side of the street.
"Look! look! Harry," she cried. "There's Rachel. Run and call her. Quick."
"No," he said firmly. "That ain't Ray."
"Yes, it is," Yetta insisted. "I guess I knows my cousin when I sees her. Run after her. I'd like to tell her."
But Harry's hand, which before had caressed her, tightened over her arm in a brutal grip. He jerked her along in the other direction to the Bowery.
"I tell you it ain't her. Come on. Get into this car."
The evil look in his eyes terrified her. The sound of his voice hurt even more than his cruel grip. She got into the car without a word. But she knew he had lied. She realized suddenly and with terror that she did not know the man beside her. She had caught a lightning gleam on a new side of his character. She had seen something dark and sinister. And all the joy which had been in her heart shrivelled up and cowered.
For a moment they sat side by side in startled silence. Harry was surprised and angry with himself for having lost his temper. He tried to cover his blunder, to get back to the old intimacy. But Yetta heard the forced note in his suave voice. The sight of Rachel had recalled her warnings about the dangers which life holds for unprotected girls. She did not answer him nor speak till the car passed Fifth Street.
"The Lyceum's on Sixth Street."
And when they reached the sidewalk, she asked him flatly why he had lied.
"Can't you understand, Yetta," he asked, bending his head close to hers, "that I didn't want anybody butting in to-night?"
But she was not reassured. Once a doubt had entered, the whole fabric of her dreams had begun to totter. And while he told her over again the threadbare story of his glowing prospects, she was remembering that she had never seen the "Silk-house" on Broadway. When he spoke of how happy they would be, she felt the sting of his rough grip on her arm. She was a very frightened young person as they reached the door of the Lyceum Hall.
Harry felt the change in her and was raging. All the quasi-tenderness he had felt for her earlier in the evening had gone. He wanted to break her. He cursed himself for the time he had wasted that evening. She would have gone anywhere with him a half hour before. His distorted brain was torn by strange emotions. Yetta had caught hold of the inner fabric of his imagination as no other girl had ever done. And, as is just as true of cadets as of other men, when they begin to care, they lose their sang-froid. He was suddenly afraid of losing her. He felt himself awkward.
His lack of ease was intensified by his strange surroundings. He had never been to a ball like this. He only knew two kinds: the flashy, vicious dances, organized by his own class, the kind he was planning to take Yetta to, and "Greenhorn balls"—sordid but equally vicious—in the back rooms of low-class saloons, patronized by ignorant, newly arrived immigrants.
The entry to the Lyceum Hall was packed with poorly dressed people, but they were not greenhorns. The women were the strangest of all to him. Their kind did not come to the balls he frequented. More than half of them wore shawls; they were of all ages, from fifteen to seventy. They were serious-eyed working women, and many of them looked hungry. He felt that his foppish clothes were conspicuous. He felt hostility in the stares of the men. He would have given anything to be among his own kind, on familiar ground.
Indeed he was conspicuous among that roomful of poorly dressed men. He attracted the attention of a couple who stood near the door, Mabel Train and Walter Longman. In a way they were as conspicuous as he, but the curious glances which turned in their direction were not hostile. Miss Train was secretary of the Woman's Trade Union League. Many of the women and girls, as they entered the room, rushed up to greet her. She was about twenty-seven, tall and slender. In reality her body was an almost perfect instrument. She was never sick, and rarely unpleasantly tired, but in looking at her one was more impressed with nervous than physical energy. She was more graceful than beautiful. Her face was too small, a fault which was emphasized by her great mass of brown hair. But her diminutive mouth was strong in line. Her eyes were keenly alive and unafraid.
Longman was over thirty, big of bone and limb. Although he strongly resembled a tame bear, he was a likable-looking man. And just as it surprised people to find that Miss Train was a hardy horsewoman, and could tire most men at skiing or swimming, so every one wanted to laugh when they were told that this lumbering giant, Longman, was an Instructor of Assyriology at Columbia.
"Look," she said as her eyes fell on Harry and Yetta, "he's a cadet."
The remark, and the matter of fact, decisive way she said it, was typical of Mabel Train. She knew the life of the East Side well enough to recognize Harry's unsavory profession at a glance, and she did not waste time beating about the bush of euphemisms. She never declared a heart or a club when she meant a spade.
Longman's eyebrows went up affirmatively, but he at once opposed the natural deduction from her observation.
"Now, don't you go butting in, Mabel, until you're asked."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"The girl's a stranger. I guess I've got a right to welcome her."
And with Longman lumbering behind her she crossed the hall.
"Good evening," she said to Yetta, elaborately ignoring Harry's existence. "I'm Miss Train, secretary of the League. What's your trade?"
But Yetta replied with a question.
"Didn't you talk to the girls at the Neighborhood House?"
"Yes. I gave them a talk on Trade Unions. Were you there? I don't remember your face."
Yetta started to explain how she had watched the meeting from her window. But suddenly she began to stutter; she saw Miss Train look at Harry, saw the scorn and contempt in her eyes. Yetta could not remember what she was trying to say. Some newcomers rushed up and interrupted them. Mabel Train felt that the short conversation had been a decided failure.
But to Yetta it had had immense significance. In the preceding months the Settlement had come to typify all the good things of life, for which she hungered. Like her cousin Rachel she "wanted to be good." The women whom she watched in the house across the street had seemed to her good, and also they seemed happy. Miss Train was of that world, she bore its stamp. And she did not trust Harry. Down crashed the dream into greater ruin. Yetta was afraid with Harry. Beside such women she would be safe. How could she escape?
A man on the platform clapped his hands for attention and asked the people to take seats close to the stage.
"Aw! Come on," Harry said; "let's beat it. This place is stupid."
"No," Yetta said with the determination of fear; "I want to stay."