Comrade Yetta

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.