Comrade Yetta

"No," he said laconically.

He rowed on in silence for several minutes. He did not understand, but he sensed, Yetta's trouble. She was trembling on the threshold of the Great Mystery. When he spoke again, it was to calm and reassure her. Ashore, they sat for a long time in the moonlight, hand in hand. He did nothing to frighten her, and she felt flooded by his tenderness.

A week later he brought up the subject again. They had climbed a mountain in the morning. To be sure, it was a small one, but still a mountain. He had slept most of the afternoon. When supper was over, she read to him a while, and then sent him to bed. When she came to his room to kiss him "good night," he put his arms about her and – as though to show that he was really strong again – he crushed her tightly in his embrace.

"Dearie," he said. "Is your name Yetta or Not-yetta?"

"Not-quite-yet-ta," she panted.

* * * * *

The black fly season had passed, the leaves had begun to turn, before they packed up their meagre belongings to go back to the city and work. It had commenced to get cold, but on their last day the sun came out as if it were July.

They rowed across the lake to bid farewell to a great pine tree they had come to love. It stood alone on a little promontory, a hundred feet above the water. Its mates had fallen before the storms. Its loneliness emphasized its magnificent grandeur. There was a rich cushion of needles at its foot, and the view across the lake was exquisite.

The last month of their stay in the woods had been a veritable honeymoon. There was no spot on the lake so closely associated with their ardent emotions as this giant pine tree. Many times during the hot spell of August they had brought rugs and pillows and spent the night at its foot – bathing in the water below at sunrise.

When they had moored their boat and clambered up the steep bank, Isadore sat down, leaning against the trunk of their tree. Yetta stretched out on the carpet of pine needles and rested her head on his knee. Isadore ran his hand through her hair and now and again caressed her cheek. For some time they were silent – both rather oppressed by the idea that on the morrow they must go back to the city. They would no longer be alone together; much of this dear intimacy would have to be sacrificed to work.

Yetta suddenly turned and looked up into his face.

"Ib," she began. This name which she had concocted out of his initials – in spite of its absurdity – had the most tender connotation of any word in their vocabulary à deux– "Ib, there is something I want to tell you."

And then she stopped. Isadore, impressed her by seriousness, waited patiently for her to speak.

"It's hard to find words for it," she went on at last. "But I want you to know that I've been happier these weeks than I ever dreamed any one could be. This – " their vocabulary à deux had many lacunae – "It's been so different from what I expected. It isn't that I was afraid – only I was a little. I didn't think love would be like this. You see I hate to darn my own stockings – but I really enjoy darning yours. I guess that's inherently feminine. No service is really unpleasant when it's for the one we love. And I was ready to do any service for you – gladly. Can you understand what I'm trying to say? Well. It's been a surprise – a dizzying, joyous surprise. It isn't a service at all. It's – " Once more words failed her. "You remember one night you asked me if I really loved you. I thought I did then. I didn't know what I was talking about. But now – now that I know" – she brushed the foolish tears out of her eyes and reached up her hand to his cheek – "I really, really love you.

"Please. I don't want to be loved just now. I want to talk.

"What bothers me," she went on in a moment, "is that I was ignorant. Why? Why didn't I know about this? I knew about the physiology of love, but that is only so very little of it. I'd read Forel; everybody says that is the best book on sex. But that did not tell me. I've talked with a few women. They either haven't said anything or they've been hostile – they spoke of the 'burden of sex' or of 'woman's sacrifice to man.' Why did not some one tell me the truth, so that I would not have been dismayed? So I might have been altogether glad? It seems so evident that ignorance is bad – and dangerous."

"Of course it's dangerous," he replied. "There is only one thing more dangerous than ignorance – that's misinformation. That's where young men suffer. I've thought about this a lot, Yetta. It's hideous. Long before any one ever told me anything that was true, I had learned so much that was false. Men learn their first lessons of sex from women – poor, pallid women who have never known what love was. It doesn't matter whether a boy goes to them or not. Indirectly, if not directly, he learns their lore. The older boys who tell him about women have learned from them.

"Prostitution is the blackest blot on this civilization we Socialists are trying to overthrow. In spite of the hypocrisy which tries to ignore its existence it is just as fundamental an institution as the churches and armies. Present society could not exist without these women any more than it could without its warships and worships. It's hideous in so many ways. But the point we don't hear about so often is that these women, whom we despise and consistently degrade, are the teachers who instruct our youth in this business of sex. It is the holiest thing in life. Its priestesses are the most polluted class in the community. Not that I blame them. They are victims. But they get their revenge – a horrible revenge.

"Our girls are kept in ignorance about sex. It's very few of them, Yetta, who have read a book like Forel's. And the boys are sent to school in the brothels. Most brides come to this business of sex, thinking of it – a bit timorously – as a Great White Sacrifice to Love. Most men think of sex as the climax of a spree. That any such marriages are happy is a wonder to me."

"But why doesn't some one have the courage to tell the truth?" Yetta exclaimed.

"It isn't as simple as that," he replied. "It isn't so much a question of courage as it is of ability. You, – if a young woman asked you, – could you tell her? I couldn't if a boy asked me. I could tell him about the mechanism of sex – just as Forel and a dozen writers have done. There are plenty of technical words. But I'd have to stop there. The reality can't be expressed in scientific language – and the gutter words are false when you talk of love. I'll warrant that you wouldn't like to tackle the job."

"It would be hard," she admitted. And then – "But isn't there any hope? Must there always be this misunderstanding?"

"Oh, no! At first, with primitive man, there wasn't any such misunderstanding – there was just lack of understanding. Love is such a new thing in the history of life that we are just vaguely beginning to understand it. Man – we say – is an animal who has gained consciousness of self. But this did not happen suddenly. It must have taken thousands and thousands of years. The process is not yet complete. Out of general consciousness the animal that was becoming man, gradually, in one point after another, won self-consciousness. Gradually sex became a little more than the simple reflex act that we see in the lower animals to-day – forgotten as soon as accomplished. It was not until what we call the Middle Ages that man became conscious of something more in love than physical passion. The love affairs of Mary, Queen of Scots, would seem very unspiritual to us to-day. And think how very recent that was compared to the date of the Stone Age. It was only in the last century that the romantic idea took possession of literature. Like all new ideas it was full of extravagances. Now we call ourselves Realists – the necessary reaction. But there is more of the new spirit of love in Zola than Shakespeare ever dreamed of. I doubt if he would recognize a modern production of Romeo and Juliet any more than Christ would recognize his service in a High Mass.

"As we begin to get used to this startlingly new concept of love, we'll develop the words to express it. It's too big a task to be accomplished by one brain or one generation."

They fell silent again. Yetta, looking off across the lake, – unconscious of the beauty of the view, – was thinking desperately of this matter of love, and was realizing with pain, as all who try to write must do, her utter inability to express what this Mystery of Love meant to her. She could not even tell Isadore.

Her girlish romance about Walter seemed to her now almost as empty as her affair with Harry Klein. She had at first given herself to Isadore on a rather intellectual basis. She knew him profoundly before she had married him. She had been quite sure of a life of loving comradeship and mutual understanding. From a matter of fact, work-a-day point of view the marriage was to be as satisfactory as she could imagine. And to all this had been added an unexpected element – this mystic, unexpressible joy of sex. Yetta had the sense to know that she was fortunate above most women. She looked up at the dear face above her, hoping to find some gesture to express the overflowing happiness for which she could find no words. She was struck by the look of intense thought on his face.

"What are you thinking about, Ib?"

He started, as he came back from his revery.

"I've been thinking," he said, "that we'll have to be awfully tactful when we get back to the office. Smith and Levine have been running things so long by themselves that it's only human for them to be a bit jealous about our coming back."

These words caused a very complicated mix-up in Yetta's mind.

The hereditary woman in her, the part of her which was formed by the myriad wives who had been her ancestors, shuddered as though under the lash at the idea that on this very last day his thoughts had gone so far away. Every cell in her brain had been intent on him. She had just decided that no one had ever loved any one as much as she loved him – and he had been thinking of the office. A tidal wave of tears started instinctively towards her eyes.

But all that was modern about Yetta, all that part of her which had learned to reason, was suffused with tenderness, as the other part of her would have been by a caress. She was proud of the single-minded devotion of her man. She was not surprised at the tangent along which his thoughts had flown. She had the immense advantage over most brides, that she knew her husband. She knew the depth of sincerity which was sometimes obscured by his pedantic phrases. She had learned to love him. She had been spared the pain of discovering a reality back of a dream of love. The only new thing she had learned about him since their marriage was the wealth of tenderness back of his rather rough exterior, – the gentle consideration that lay under his rugged manners, – the undreamed-of sweetness which was hidden to most eyes by his evident force. She was not disillusioned by intimacy.

For a few minutes she let him talk about the work that was awaiting them. She was as much interested in it as he. But at last the hereditary woman within her reminded her that after all this was their last day of solitude. She stopped listening to him and considered the matter from this point of view for a moment. Then she shamelessly interrupted him in the midst of a ponderous sentence.

"Ib," she said, "I love you."

They had been back in the city many months before their faces lost the mark of the sun. In due course of time Comrade Yetta Braun qualified to edit the "Mother's Column."

CHAPTER XXXII

OLD FRIENDS MEET – AND PART

Four years after their marriage Yetta and Isadore received a tangible token of the respect in which they were held by their Comrades. They were chosen among the delegates to the International Socialist Congress which was to meet in London. No one who is not an active worker in the Socialist party can appreciate how much this election means to the Comrades. Every three years the party has to choose half a dozen of its members as most worthy to represent them in the international councils. It is a real honor.

They were, after their four years of unremitting work on The Clarion, in need of a vacation. They had not had one since their honeymoon in the woods. But, except for the eight lazy days in the second cabin of a slow steamer, they found very little rest at the Congress. Besides the regular sessions, so much time went to getting acquainted with the European Comrades, whose names they had long revered, whose books they had read. It took a big effort to escape long enough to have a look at the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey. That was all the sight-seeing they did in London.

The next to the last day, when Yetta reached her seat in the convention hall, she found a letter on her desk. She did not at first recognize the handwriting.

"Dear Yetta.

I suppose you've quite forgotten me. But try to remember.

Can't you and Isadore come down to Oxford for a few days after the Congress? Walter noticed your name in the paper among the delegates. We are both anxious to renew the old friendships. When can we expect you?

Sincerely,Beatrice Longman."

Yetta was glad that Isadore had been detained in the corridor. She put the letter in her pocket before he joined her. All day long this invitation was flitting back and forth from the back of her brain to the front. In every moment of half leisure she thought about it, and more and more she wanted to go. It was partly curiosity to see what sort of a life Walter had made for himself, partly a desire to exhibit her own happiness. She did not want him to think she was still broken-hearted. And it was partly a very real tenderness for these old friends who very long ago had meant so much to her. But it was not until they were alone together in their modest hotel room at night that she spoke to Isadore about it.

"Oh, I forgot. Here's a letter that came from Mrs. Longman. – You remember she used to be Mrs. Karner."

"Well," he said, when he had read it, "that's simple. We're too busy."

"But I'd like to see them again."

"You would?" he asked in surprise – and a little hurt. "All right; of course, if you want to. I've got to rush back. But there's no reason why you shouldn't stay."

"Don't be foolish, dear," she said. "You know I won't stay a minute longer than you. I wouldn't think of going alone. We could leave here after lunch Thursday and stay in Oxford for dinner and catch our boat all right. You see, dearest, it's sort of like dying never to see people who meant so much once. You don't know how much I grieve about Mabel. She was my first friend – the first real friend I ever had. It was my fault that we quarrelled. I wouldn't like to feel that it was my fault if I lost all touch with Walter and Mrs. Karner – I mean Mrs. Longman. They've asked us to come in a friendly spirit. I think we ought to go."

"Very well," he said. "Wire that we'll come. But it sounded to me like a sort of duty note – not exactly cordial."

As a matter of fact it had not been in an entirely cordial spirit that Beatrice had written.

One morning Walter, who very rarely disturbed his wife when she was writing, knocked at the door of her work-room.

"May I interrupt a minute," he asked apologetically.

"What is it?" she asked.

He came over and laid a newspaper on her table, pointing halfway down a column which was headed, "International Socialist Congress." Among the names of the delegates from the United States were those of Isadore and Yetta Braun.

"You'd like to have me invite them out here?" she asked.

"Yes, if it isn't inconvenient. I'd like to see them again."

For the next few days Beatrice's work went wrong. More often than not she found herself looking up from her paper, staring out through the window, across the lawn to the grape arbor. She would catch herself at it and turn again to her work. Finally she decided that she had best fight it out. So – forgetting to put the cap on her fountain-pen – she walked out into the garden.

There was no possible doubt of it. She was afraid of Yetta – jealous! She tried to laugh at herself, but it hurt too much. Yetta was years younger than she.

Isadore she had scarcely known, was not quite sure whether she had the name attached to the right vague memory, but she held an impression that he was an unattractive person. Yetta had probably married him in discouragement. Undoubtedly she still loved Walter. In these last four years Beatrice had been constantly discovering that he was more lovable than she had realized before. Yes; Yetta was probably still in love with him. Would she accept the invitation?

A telegraph boy turned into their gate. She had not opened a despatch with such unsteady nervousness in a long time.

"Arrive Oxford thursday afternoon four o'clock leave ten for Liverpool Yetta"

Beatrice walked slowly back to the house and into Walter's study. It was as dissimilar from her very orderly work-room as well might be. There were three large tables, but each was too small for the litter of books and charts and drawings and closely written notes it carried.

"They're coming to-morrow at four," she said, handing him the telegram.

"Good."

"I suppose we'd best have tea and then sight-see them around the colleges till dinner."

"I guess the tour is obligatory," he said with a grimace. "Has the Muse been refractory this morning? I saw you rambling round in the garden."

"Yes," her lips twisted into a wry smile. "Had to fight out a new idea. It's provoking. You get things nicely planned out, everything marching placidly to a happy ending – then something unexpected turns up, some eleventh-hour disturbance. Something you've got to take time off to think out."

"Fine," he said. "You're growing into a more realistic vision of life all the time, B. And that means constantly improving novels."

He got up and walked about the room, developing into quite a speech his ideas on the Unexpected Element in Life and how it deserved more recognition in literature. But all the time, while she was appearing to listen in rapture to his wisdom, she was telling herself bitter things about the literal-minded, uncomprehending male.

Thursday afternoon as Yetta and Isadore found their places in the train for Oxford they both had an unusual feeling of tongue-tiedness. They were quite tired and it was a relief to have sleepiness as an excuse for not talking. Yetta was not conscious of any stress between them. She believed that Isadore was as sleepy as he pretended to be. It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world to renew old friendships.

She opened her eyes now and then for a glimpse at the unfamiliar countryside. But most of the time she dreamily lived over again "the old days." She was generally too busy to think these things out leisurely – as you must if you are to think of them at all. She found it hard to recognize the picture of herself which she drew out of her memory. The few years, which had passed since her marriage, seemed to her much longer and fuller than all her life before. She, a mother of two children, found it very hard to sympathize with the jeune fille, who had been so very much in love with this man she had scarcely seen a dozen times. She was half sorry she had accepted the invitation. She was no longer the same person whom Walter and Beatrice had known. Instead of renewing an old acquaintance, her visit to Oxford would be that of a stranger. It would be embarrassing if Walter treated her like the girl he had known. But it never occurred to her that Isadore was suffering from jealous apprehension.

"Oxford's the next station," Isadore said.

It jerked her out of her revery. As they got off the train there was a kaleidoscopic moment, an impression of many people rushing hither and thither in a senseless chaos. Then suddenly the vagueness dissolved, and there were Walter and Beatrice, the blank look on their faces just melting into a smile of recognition. Everybody shook hands, the women kissed each other, and Walter and Isadore rushed off to check the bags.

Yetta's motherhood had changed her subtly. She could not have been called matronly. In fact, Beatrice, who was childless, was poignantly conscious that she looked the more like a regulation matron. The contrast hurt her.

The thing which Yetta saw was that Beatrice had come to reflect the gracious refinement of her surroundings. There was a sudden longing that life might have thrown her into an environment where she too could have given time and thought to being beautiful. It was rare indeed that she could devote ten minutes to "doing her hair." It took all the time she could spare to keep herself clean and neat. Beatrice's appearance suggested that the selecting of even her underwear was a matter of careful thought. Yetta, also, was poignantly conscious of the contrast.

When the men rejoined them, they all – still under the constraint of stock-taking – climbed into the dogcart and drove through the quaint Oxford streets to the house.

Yetta talked busily – a bit raggedly – about her two children. Walter pointed out the towers of some of the colleges. Neither Beatrice nor Isadore added much to the conversation. The tea-table was set on the lawn, but the constraint was still on them. Yetta told with slightly forced enthusiasm of the little house and lot they had taken in a Building and Loan Association on Long Island. Isadore at last rallied in reply to Walter's questions and talked about the International Congress. The thing which had impressed him most was the widespread growth of revolutionary, nonpolitical labor organizations. The growth of industrial unionism in America was closely paralleled by the Syndicaliste movement in Europe.

"I never gave you sufficient credit as a prophet, Walter," he said. "I'm an orthodox party member still, but this 'direct actionism' doesn't seem so much like heresy to me as it did. It's too universal to be all wrong."

When they got up from the table to wander about in the University, he and Walter walked ahead, still in the heat of this discussion. The women brought up the rear. Yetta found that the easiest things to talk about were the babies and Beatrice's novels. She had read and liked them very much.

They sat down together in the grounds of Christ Church, and Isadore began to tell about The Clarion. Yetta joined in the men's talk, and Beatrice felt herself decidedly out of it. She was glad when the time came to go back for dinner. But that was no better, for still the talk clung to The Clarion. It interested them so much that she could not find heart to change the subject.

The moon came up royally as they took their coffee on the terrace. Without any one suggesting it, they strolled down the lawn and along the river. Great trees stretched their branches overhead across the stream. It was a warm night, and many boats were out. Their gay lanterns glistened over the water. Here and there a song floated through the dusk. The predominant note of the scene was laughter.

But the riverside did not seem beautiful to Isadore; Beatrice had never cared less for it. Walter and Yetta were walking on ahead.

Beatrice found a sort of whimsical sympathy for her companion – realizing that he also was troubled by the turn things had taken. The unrest of each infected the other. It required all the social tact she could command to keep up the semblance of a conversation.

Yetta had taken Walter's arm, and for a while they walked in silence. But somehow the constraint suddenly fell away, and she felt in him the old friend to whom it had always been so easy to talk.

"It's strange," she said, "how very often I have taken your advice and found it good. More and more I realize what a big factor you've been in my life. A dozen times I've been on the point of writing to you. But it's so hard to put on paper the deeper sort of thanks."

Walter tried to protest.

"Oh, yes," she insisted. "I've lots of things to thank you for. It's hard to put it into words. But now that it's ancient history, now that the wounds have healed, I want to talk about it. When you told me to marry Isadore, it seemed like the cruelest words that could be spoken. You were right in smashing up my romance. But of all the lessons you ever set me, that was the hardest to learn, the bitterest. I could not take your word for it. I had to learn it for myself. But if you had not driven me to it, I would have been a romanticist still – always weaving dreams. I would never have found the wonder and beauty of life as it is.