Comrade Yetta

"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 lone-someness."

"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.

CHAPTER XXXI

YETTA FINDS HERSELF

The first days in the woods were distressing for Yetta. The strain of the journey had prostrated Isadore; she was afraid he was going to have a serious relapse. But he slept off the fatigue – fourteen and eighteen hours a day at first. And he soon regained his appetite. They got fresh milk and eggs and garden truck from a near-by farmer, and three times a week a man came in a boat with other provisions from the town at the foot of the lake. Isadore began to put on flesh and very gradually to regain his strength.

When the first worry was over, Yetta entered into a period of perfect peace. The conviction which had grown on her gradually – unnoticed at first – that she "really loved" Isadore, solidified. She had counted on finding it pleasant to take care of him; she had found it so in the city, it proved unexpectedly sweet here in the woods. In New York she had been only an accident; a dozen others could have nursed him just as well. Here she was all he had. Here too she could give all her time to him. He was as helpless as a baby at first, and submitted docilely to her loving tyranny. She had never "kept house" for any one before. In the kitchen of the little cabin – walking about on tiptoe, so as not to disturb his health-bringing sleep – she found a very real delight in the new experience of cooking a meal for her man, in washing and mending his clothes.

Even more pleasant to her was the utter intimacy which their isolation forced on them. Whenever he was awake, they talked – of everything under the sun, except The Clarion. They had agreed to forget that. After a couple of weeks, when he had grown a little stronger, she read to him. She found it embarrassing at first, almost as if it were immodest. She had never read aloud before. The joy of books had been something entirely individual. She was unaccustomed to launch out on the adventure of a new point of view in company. But after the first diffidence had worn off, it proved an undreamed-of delight. Now and again one or the other would interrupt the reading to think out loud. "Let's hear that again," he would say. Or, "I must read that passage over. Isn't it fine?" she would break out.

Almost all of Isadore's reading had been historical or scientific. He had no idea of grace in writing. "Force" and "Truth" were the only literary qualities he recognized. Meredith, who had been one of Yetta's favorites rather weakened under his incisive criticism. Zola's "Labor" they both liked. Poetry generally went wrong. Swinburne, whose luxurious music hypnotized Yetta past all comprehension of what he was talking about, disgusted Isadore – until Yetta came to "The lie on the lips of the priests and the blood on the hands of the Kings."

"That's good business," Isadore said. "Why didn't he stick to that style?"

It was the other way round with Henley. He fared better at first. Isadore liked the hospital verses. But when they came to "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul," Isadore revolted.

"Do you really suppose he believed that rot?"

"Of course," Yetta said. "Don't you?"

"Not for a minute. You've been the master of my fate these last few years."

Naturally Yetta forgave him for disagreeing with Henley.

But there was a cloud in the sky – even these delicious, peaceful days. Yetta vaguely dreaded the time when Isadore would be quite well. She was no longer the unsophisticated girl who had promised to live with Harry Klein without knowing what it meant. She knew it was impossible to continue this pleasant relationship of nurse and patient. Sooner or later he would revolt from his rôle – he would want something quite different from nursing.

Contrary to her custom Yetta did not face this situation frankly. She tried to avoid thinking of it. When it forced itself on her, she told herself, "Of course I want children." Almost every time she had heard this business of maternity referred to, its painful side had been emphasized. She had heard a great deal about the "heroism of motherhood." Her attitude towards the sexual side of marriage was very like her attitude to the dentist. And no matter how firmly we have decided to go to the dentist, we are a bit reluctant about starting. Yetta did what she could to postpone the duty she had firmly decided to perform stoically and gamely.

She really thought about this matter surprisingly little. All she had read in the poets about the joys of passionate love she thought of as romantic, and she was in full reaction against romance. In real life she had never encountered any one who even remotely resembled Heloïse or Francesca or Melisande or the Queen Isolde. The married women she knew, the mothers of children, did not give any sign of such dizzying emotions.

The reality of love she had decided was a spiritual matter. The night Isadore had kissed her in the dark of the office, she had been too frightened to appreciate it as a caress. He had never stirred her emotions as Walter had. She was not afraid to think of them both at the same time any more. She calmly knew that her love for Isadore was the more real. But still she could not look forward to his complete recovery without a slight tremor.

When Isadore seemed on the point of talking about this, she adroitly changed the subject. She always came to his room to kiss him "good night," and the first thing in the morning after she was dressed she came to his bedside and kissed him "good morning." But although she was naturally demonstrative, she carefully avoided any disturbing caresses.

As Isadore gained strength the crisis inevitably approached. One moonlight night, out on the Lake in their guide boat, Isadore, who had been lazily rowing, rested on his oars.

"Yetta," he said. "Sometimes I have a horrible thought – I wonder if you really love me."

Yetta, stretched out on the cushions in the stern-sheets, had been perfectly happy – at least as happy as she knew how to be – before he spoke. She knew at once what he meant, and it troubled her.

"Why, what do you mean?" she said, to gain time.

"I wonder if you know what it means – what love means – to a man?"

"I know what it means to a well man," she said.

Isadore began rowing again. Of course Yetta did not know what love means to a well man. She knew that she did not know. She was shocked at herself for the spirit of hostility which had shown in her answer.

"Isadore," she said in a few minutes, "dearest, I love you very, very much. Aren't you content? It seems so sweet to me, just to be together like this. Aren't you content?"

Isadore – like many men of his race – was instinctively wise in regard to women. He did not have to think over his reply.