"That's all I've got to say!" she stammered. "I'll try not to be a slave."
Her simple, straightforward story, above all her self-accusation, turned the spirit of the assembly. "That's right," a number of men admitted, and there was considerable applause. She was too confused, too frightened at her own daring, to realize that she had saved the meeting from failure. But Miss Train, who never lost her presence of mind, recognized the Psychological Moment to end the speech making, and she signalled to the orchestra to begin the dance music. Every one got up and began, with a great hubbub, to move the benches back against the walls.
But Harry Klein was in no mood for dancing. In this unfamiliar, disturbing atmosphere, he also was discovering that his companion had a new and unsuspected side. It was something he did not understand, with which he was unprepared to deal. Everything seemed conspiring to tear her away from him. There were limits even to his patience. He must get her out on the sidewalk—into his own country.
"Come on," he said gruffly, taking firm hold of her arm. "I've had enough of this. Come on, I say. I ain't going to listen to hot air all night."
In her moment of exaltation, Yetta had almost forgotten the existence of her fiancé. His brusque manner broke into her mood with a suddenness which dazed her. He had led her down the hall, nearly to the door, before she could collect her wits. Beyond the door was the dark night and helplessness and unknown fear.Here in the hall was the woman who had been in the Settlement, the woman of whom she was not afraid.
"Wait," she said. "I want to talk to Miss Train."
In all that hostile environment, Miss Train's silent disdain had been the most outspoken. Harry would rather have had Yetta talk with Rachel. Rachel at least was afraid of him.
"Come on," he growled, and jerked her nearer to the door.
"No, no. I want to stop."
"Don't you begin to holler," he hissed, with a rough jerk. He tried to subdue her with his hard eyes. "Come on. Don't you make no row. Don't you holler."
They were close to the dark doorway now, and somehow Yetta could not find breath to scream out her fright. He pushed her roughly out into the vestibule. But his progress came to a sudden stop. Some one caught him by the collar and swung him off his feet.
"Not so fast, my man." It was Longman. "Where are you trying to take this young lady?"
Harry's free hand made an instinctive movement towards his hip pocket, but Longman's hand got there first.
"Oh, ho!" he said softly. "Concealed weapons?"
Jake nearly wept with rage. He—the president of a political club, the dreaded leader of a murderous gang—held up in such a manner for the mockery of a lot of working-men!
"I asked you where you were taking this young lady," Longman repeated.
"I brought her here," Jake snarled, trying desperately to regain hissang froid. "I guess I can take her away when she's tired of the show."
"Yes. Of course you can take her away, if she wants to go. But you can't if she doesn't. I didn't catch your name," he continued, turning to Yetta, "but I'd be very glad to see you safely home, whenever you want to go. Would you prefer to go with me or with this—" he looked first at the wilted desperado in his grip and then at the little circle of men who had gathered about. "He's a Cadet, isn't he, comrades?"
There was a growl of assent.
"You ain't going to throw me down now, are you, Yetta," Jake pleaded, the thought of losing her suddenly undoing what he considered his manhood, "just because this gang has picked on me."
"Of course you can go with him if you want to," Longman said kindly. "But really I think you'd better not. You won't do much for Freedom if you go with him."
"I'll stay," Yetta said simply.
And then Jake began to curse and threaten.
"Shut up," Longman said laconically, and Jake obeyed.
"Here," he continued to some of the men, "hand him over to the police. Be careful; he's got a gun in his pocket. Make a charge of 'concealed weapons.' And—what is your name?—Rayefsky. Thanks. Miss Train wanted to speak to you—that's why I happened along just now. Won't you come and we'll find her."
He told her how much he had liked her speech, as he led her across the room and chatted busily about other insignificant things, just as if rescuing a young girl from the brink of perdition was one of the most natural things in the world. Yetta was not at allhysterical, but she had had enough strange emotions to upset any one that night. His quiet steady tone, as if everything of course was all right, was like a rock to lean upon.
He left her in an empty committee-room off the stage and hurried out to find Mabel, who, as a matter of fact, had not sent him to find Yetta. With no small exertions he pried her loose from the swarm of admiring young girls, and, leading her to the door of the committee-room, told her what had happened.
"Good old Walter," she laughed; "warning me not to butt in, and doing the rescue all by yourself."
"I didn't butt in," he said sheepishly, "until the chap began to use force."
"Are muscles the only kind of force you recognize?" she said. "I'll bet he wasn't using half as much force when you interfered as he had other times without touching her."
She went into the committee-room and closed the door. And in a very few minutes Yetta was lost in the wonder of a friend. Hundreds of girls had sobbed out their troubles on Miss Train's shoulder before, but, although she made jokes to her friends about how tears faded her shirtwaists, none of the girls had ever failed to find a ready sympathy. Although the process had lost the charm of novelty to Mabel it was for Yetta a new and entirely wonderful experience. Not since her father had comforted her for a stubbed toe or a cut finger had she cried on anybody's shoulder. And Miss Train, as well as Longman, had the tact, as soon as possible, to lead her thoughts away from the evening's tragedy to the new ideals which the meeting had called to life. As soon as her tears were dried, Mabeltook her out in the main hall and introduced her to her friends. Longman came up and claimed a dance, and after it was over he sat beside her for a time and talked to her about labor unions and the struggle for Liberty. And then he called over Isadore Braun, the socialist lawyer, and had him dance with her. These two were her only partners at her first ball. Every few minutes Mabel managed to escape from her manifold duties and sit beside her.
About midnight they took her home. Longman shook hands with her, and Mabel kissed her good night. Yetta went up the dark stairway very tired and shaken.
"Interesting girl," Longman said as he and Miss Train turned away from Yetta's door.
"Yes. I'll have to keep an eye on her. She may be a valuable recruit."
Longman laughed.
"What's so funny?" she asked sharply.
"Funny isn't just the word, but don't you ever see anything in people except enemies and allies?"
"I don't think much else matters—enemies and allies. There can't be neutrals in a fight for Justice."
"True enough, but I see a lot of interesting things in this little girl of the slums, which haven't anything to do with the fact that she is chuck full of fighting spirit and is sure to be on the right side."
"For instance?"
"Well. To begin with, a sweet and pure character, which in some amazing way has formed itself in this rotten environment—a wonderfully delicate sort of a flower blossoming in the muck heap. The kind of a sensitive plant that the slightest rude touch would blight. It's a marvel how it has escaped being trod upon—there are so many careless feet! I'm not proud of myself as I am, but I hate to think of what I'dbe like if I'd been born in her cradle. It is always a marvel to me when some child of the slum wants to be good. From where in all this sordidness did she get the inspiration? And then it is always interesting to me—sad and interesting—to see how utterly stupid this desire for goodness is—how it is just as likely to lead to utter damnation as anywhere else. This Yetta Rayefsky has a beautiful and quite absurd trust in people. On a very short acquaintance she trusts you completely. I think she trusts me too—just exactly as she trusted that Cadet. And the faith she put in him was just as beautiful as what she has given you."
"Walter, a person who looked at you would never dream that you're such a—"
"Sentimentalist? I suppose you're going to call me that again."
Longman said it bitterly. And she, knowing how the taunt would sting him, with equal bitterness did not reply. They trudged on side by side in silence, across town to Broadway and up that deserted thoroughfare towards Washington Square. They were neither of them happy.
In the bottom of her heart Mabel Train knew that something had been neglected by those fairies who had equipped her for life. They had showered very many talents upon her. But they had forgotten that little knot of nerve cells which had to do with the deeper affections. There were heights and depths of life which she knew she would never visit. It made her feel unpleasantly different. And Longman, whom otherwise she liked very much, was always reminding her of this deficiency. It seemed to her that he was mocking hercold intellectualism. And being supersensitive on this point, she had hurled "sentimentalist" in his face.
Of all the odd types in New York City, Walter Longman was one of the most bizarre. His parents had died while he was in Harvard. They had left him an income of about five thousand a year. He did not make a brilliant record in the University. There were nearly always one or two conditions hanging over his head, but a marked talent for languages and a vital interest in philosophy carried him through. He was not popular with the students because in spite of his immense body he could not muster sufficient interest in football to join the "squad." He preferred to sit in his window-seat and read.
In the course of his junior year he chanced in his haphazard reading upon a German scientific review which contained an account of some excavations in the territory of Ancient Assyria. It told of the discovery of a large quantity of "brick" books, in a language as yet undeciphered. The matter interested him, and he set out to find what the library contained on the subject. He was surprised at the amount of material there was. The story of how Rawlinson and others had deciphered unknown languages fascinated him. He stayed on in Cambridge two months after graduation to finish up this subject. He found more information about the "brick" books which had first caught his attention. Several hundred of them had been brought to a museum in Berlin. Having nothing pressing to do in America, he went over to have a look at them. All the spoil from this expedition had been housed in one room. After studying the bricks for a couple of days, he thought he had found a clew. Hecould get more ready access to them if he was a student, so he went to the University and enrolled. He had no idea of staying long, nor of attending courses in the University, but his only plan for life in America was to write a book on philosophy, and that could wait.
The first "clew" proved to be an illusion. But those rows and rows of ancient bricks, with their cryptic writing which hid the story of a lost civilization, had piqued his curiosity. Again he decided that his work on philosophy could wait.
It was two years before he satisfactorily translated the first brick. Once having found the key, his progress was rapid. If he had been in touch with the Assyriologists of the University, he would probably have confided in them at once. But he knew none of them personally, and he went on with his work single-handed. It took him six months to translate the entire collection. They contained the official records of a certain King of kings, who had ruled over a long-forgotten people called the Haktites. It took him six months more to arrange a grammar and dictionary of the Haktite tongue. Then he remembered the University and took his two manuscripts to the Professor of Assyriology. He was decidedly provoked by the first scepticism which greeted his announcement, even more bored by the hullabaloo which the savants made over him, when investigation proved the truth of his claim. He stayed a year longer in Europe, to see an edition of his work through the press at Berlin and to translate the scattered Haktite bricks in other museums. This took him as far as Teheran and afield to the site of the excavations, where there were numerous inscriptions on thestonework which was too unwieldy to be taken to European museums. Then he came to New York to take up the position of Instructor in Assyriology in Columbia. He had stipulated that he should be granted a great deal of leisure. It was not a hard matter for the University to arrange, as there was no great clamor among the students to learn Haktite. But Longman had insisted on the leisure, so that he would have opportunity to write his book on philosophy, which seemed to him very serious and infinitely more important than the dead lore of his department. He was vexed with himself for having wasted so much time and acquired such fame in so useless a branch of human knowledge.
He established himself in the top floor of a two-story building on Washington Square, East. He took the place on a long lease, and making free with the partitions, had arranged a big study in the front overlooking the Square, a bath, a bedroom, and a kitchenette behind it. Two big rooms in the rear he sublet as storerooms to the carriage painter who rented the ground floor. Having a horror of servants, he made his own coffee in the morning and Signora Rocco, a worthy Italian woman, came in with a latch-key when he was out at lunch and put the place in order. Twice a week he had to go up to the University.
The rest of his time went to what he considered his real work. He was to call his bookA Synthetic Philosophy. Hundreds of would-be sages had cut themselves off from all active communion with life, had retired to the seclusion of a study or cave, and had written solemn tomes on what Man ought to think. Longman was going to discover what his kind reallydid think. He went about it in a systematic, almost statistical way.
He had reduced the more important of the various possible human beliefs to twenty-odd propositions and many subheads, all of which he had had printed on a double sheet of foolscap. It began boldly by raising the question of Deity. From the heights of metaphysical discussion of the Existence, the Unity, and the Attributes of God, it came nearer to earth by inquiring into Heaven and a belief in a future existence. Again it soared up into the icy altitude of Pure Reason and theErkenntniss Theorie. Again it swooped down to more practical questions of Ethics, what one considered thesummum bonumand under what circumstances one conceded the right to suicide, and whether or not one believed that every man has his price. Whenever Longman found willing subjects he cross-questioned them by the hour. From the notes he took he tabulated the victim'scredoon one of the printed questionnaires and filed it away. Almost every one laughed at his idea, but with the same dogged momentum which had kept him bent for months on and over Assyrian bricks, which interested him only slightly, he stuck to this work which interested him deeply.
In a way he was especially fitted for it. Every one liked him and found it easy to talk freely with him. And he was quick to detect any cant or lack of sincerity. If he wrote "yes" after the question, "Do you believe it pays to be honest?" it was the subject's basic belief, not a pretence nor a pose. And he had a knack of putting his questions in simple, comprehensible language. The printed questionnaire bristled withappalling technical words. But he did not use such phrases as "ultimate reality," "the categorical imperative." He did not ask his subject if his idea of God was anthropomorphic. Very few of the people whose faith he analyzed would have understood such terms.
It was the essence of his proposition that he should tabulate the convictions of all sorts and conditions of men. And in his quest for varied points of view he had come into very close contact with a strange mixture of people. Into his "operating room," as Mabel Train derisively called his study, he had enticed college professors and policemen, well-bred young matrons and street-walkers. One of his sheets recorded the intimate convictions of the man downstairs who painted carriages; another, those of a famous opera singer. The Catholic Bishop of New York had undergone the ordeal and a Salvation Army lassie, who had knocked at his door to sell aWar-cry, had come in to try to convert him. She had been very much distressed by his perplexing questions, but like all the rest had quickly fallen captive to his gentle manners and understanding eyes. She had dropped her missionary pose and had talked freely to him, not only of her beliefs, but also of her doubts.
Almost every one who had gone through the ordeal remembered it with a strange, awed sort of pleasure. It is so very rarely that we find any one to whom we can tell the truth.
There was a wreck of a man, an habitué of cheap lodging-houses and gin-mills, who would tell you the story on the slightest provocation. One cold October night when he had no money for a bed and was tryingto live through the night on a park bench with a morning paper for a blanket, a man had asked him if he wanted a drink. Not suspecting the good fortune which had befallen him, he had followed Longman to the "operating room." First there had been a stiff bracer of whiskey—"good Scotch whiskey, sir,"—and then a plentiful cold supper of bread and cheese and sardines and a steaming cup of coffee—"as much as I could eat, sir"—and a cigar—"as long as yer foot, sir. He was a real gentleman, sir, and he talked to me like I was a gentleman."
There was a young wife of an elderly professor. Some of the ladies of the faculty raised their eyebrows when her name was mentioned and did not go to her teas. She had been smitten by Longman's broad shoulders and gentle bearishness and had quite eagerly consented to come to his study. She did not tell anybody about it, but she cried when she thought about it—cried that he had not asked her again.
Whether or not Longman's book promised any great usefulness to humanity, the preparing of it was of undoubted use to him. He had seen life at close quarters, with what Mirabeau called "terrible intimacy." His heart had grown very large there in his "operating room." As well as he could he hid his ever ready sympathy under a surface joviality and flippancy. There were very few people beside Mabel who realized what a sentimentalist he was. He was a brother to Abou ben Adhem. And that love of his fellow-men necessarily brought him into bitter revolt against things as they are. But he had no collective sense; he loved his fellow men individually. He had no feeling for mass movements. Intellectually he realized theneed of united activity, he believed in trade-unions and socialism. But the sight of a crowd always made him angry. He was an ardent apostle of the Social Revolution. But he could not work harmoniously with an organization. So the socialists called him an Anarchist. He did not care what he was called. But most of the difference between his very small living expenses and his liberal income found its way unobtrusively into some socialist or labor organization.
But for three years now Mabel Train had been the "Cause" to which he gave his devotion.
She was also of the class of those who, never having had to work, had volunteered in the cause of those who must. But she had done so in a more intense, thoroughgoing, and practical way than had Longman. She had given not only what money she could spare, but herself.
She was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and having come under the influence of the able and daring group of economists on that faculty had been educated to a position in labor matters which is very nearly as radical as that of the socialists. One of her professors had told her that in all his experience in coeducation he had never encountered a woman with a more masculine brain. At the time she had felt complimented. She had, at twenty, been proud that she did not have hysterics, that her mind did not have "fainting fits," that she could tackle the problems of the class-room in the same graceless, uninspired, direct way that men did. At twenty-seven she was beginning to realize that life was not a class-room exercise and that there were certain inevitable problems of womanhood which could not be solved man-fashion. She felt herself cold in comparison toother women. The romances of the girls in college had rather disgusted her. At twenty-seven she would have given her right hand for the ability to lose her head like some of the shop-girls among whom she worked.
As a matter of fact the professor had been quite wrong in calling her intellect masculine—it was only a remarkably good one. It had the fearlessness to look the folly of our industrial system in the face and understand it. She had a deep womanliness which made it impossible for her to accept a manner of life which was in contradiction to her intellectual convictions. Thinking as she did that the relations between capital and labor were basically unjust, it was necessary for her to spend her life in the fight for justice.
What might be called "the normal mother instinct" had been denied her. Her woman's nature had turned into an ardent desire to "mother" the race. The babes who die unborn, those who are poisoned by bad milk, who wither up from bad air, whose growth is stunted by bad food—all the sad little children of the poor—were her own brood. She wrote rarely to her two blood sisters—she was the big sister of all the girls who are alone.
Her parents were entirely out of sympathy with her interest in working people. Principally to escape their ceaseless nagging, she had come East. For several years she had been the head of the Woman's Trade Union League. Her gentle breeding made her successful with the wealthy ladies on whom the League depended for support, the working girls idolized her, the rather rough men of the Central Federated Union had come to recognize that she never got up in meetingunless she had something to say. And the bosses complimented her ability by hating her cordially.
Most of the young men who tried to court her—and there was a constant stream of them, for she was a very attractive woman—fared badly. She was distressingly illusive. Her intellect was so lively that it was hard to admire her manifold charms. She wanted the people who talked to her to think. And she checked sentimentality with scornful laughter.
Things were further complicated for her would-be suitors by the fact that Mabel, when she was not very busy, was always accompanied by her room-mate Eleanor Mead. Eleanor did not look like a formidable duenna. She was of a pure pre-Raphaelite type. By profession she was an interior decorator, and her business card said, "Formerly with Liberty—Avenue de l'Opera, Paris." She carefully cultivated the appearance of an Esthete. She nearly always dressed in rich greens and old golds and was never truly happy except during the limited season when she could wear fresh daffodils in her girdle. She was clever at her work and gained a very good income, which she augmented by fashionable entertainments where she lectured in French on subjects of Art and sometimes gave mildly dramatic readings of Maeterlinck and other French mystics.
Most men found her style of beauty too watery. But one of the "Younger Choir" had taken her as his Muse and had dedicated a string of Petrarchian sonnets to her. Eleanor had been rather flattered by the tribute until the unlucky bard had been forced by the exigencies of his rhyme to say that she had "eyes of sapphire." People had begun to make sport of her"sapphire" eyes—they did have a rather washed-out look—and had begun to call her "Sapphire." Most of Mabel's lovers shortened it disrespectfully to "Saph." She had given this aspiring versifier the sack, and his long hair was no longer to be seen in the highly decorated apartment on Washington Square, South.
Although her appearance was not at all dreadful, she was feared and hated by all Mabel's admirers. It was impossible to call on Miss Train—it was necessary to call on both of them. Without any open discourtesy, with a well-bred effort to hide her jealousy, Eleanor made the courting of her friend a hideous ordeal. Most aspirants dropped out of the race after a very few calls. But for three years Longman had held on. It had not taken him long to know what was the matter with him, and after two unsuccessful efforts to see Mabel alone and tell her about it, he went one night to the flat with grim resolution.
"Miss Mead," he said abruptly on entering, "I've got something very important I want to say to Miss Train. I want to ask her to marry me. Will you be so kind—?"
He opened the door leading into the dining-room. His manner had been irresistible. And Eleanor with her head in the air had sailed out past him. He shut the door carefully. All the evening long, Eleanor knelt down outside it, with her ear glued to the keyhole. But she heard nothing to distress her.
Longman got no satisfaction. Mabel had rejected his offer as decisively as possible. But he had refused to be discouraged. The third time that he forced a proposal on her, it had made her angry and she had said that she did not care to see him again. A fewdays later she received a very humble letter from him. He pleaded for a chance to be her friend, and solemnly promised not to say a word of love for six months. She had not answered it, but the next Sunday he came to the flat for tea. They had drifted into a close but unsound friendship. Eleanor's dislike for him was so evident—she maintained that the way he had banished her to the dining-room proved that he was no gentleman—that he very rarely went to their apartment. But on every possible occasion he met Mabel outside. The people who saw him at her side, night after night at labor meetings, assumed that they were engaged. This added intimacy only whetted Longman's love. From bodyguard he fell to the position of slave. He ran errands for her.
With the masculine attitude towards such matters he did not believe that she would accept such untiring service if there was no hope.
When at the end of the stipulated six months she refused him again,—just as coldly as at first,—it was a bitter surprise to him. If a man had acted so, Longman would have unhesitatingly called him a cad.
He went away to the mountains to think it out. In a week he was back, proposing again. Once more she became angry. When she said "no," she meant "no." She did not want to marry him and did not think she ever would. He had asked to be her friend. Well. She enjoyed his friendship, but if he was going to bother her every few days with distasteful proposals of marriage it made friendship impossible. For two weeks he struggled with himself in solitude, torn between his desire to see her and his pride. Then hewent to a meeting where he knew she would speak and walked home with her.
So it had recommenced and so it had continued—in all three years. A deep camaraderie had grown between them. They knew each other better than many couples who have been married twice as long. But Longman could see no progress towards the consummation he so earnestly desired. During the three years there had been alternate moods of hope and despair. At times he thought she surely must come to love him. At other times the half loaf of intercourse tasted bitter as quinine. He told himself that he was a weak fool, a spectacle for the gods to laugh at, hanging to the skirts of a woman who had no care for him. At times he said, "Let all the rest go hang, to-day's sweet friendship is better than nothing." There were sad and angry moments when he paced up and down in his study and cursed her and himself and his infatuation—and the next moment he wanted to kiss the dust she had trod upon.
But steadily the torment of their relationship grew worse. More and more insistent had become the idea of going away. Perhaps she would miss his friendship and call him back. But he had been too deeply enslaved to dare so drastic a revolt. However, that morning had brought him mail which had suddenly crystallized this idea. He had resolved to put it to the test.
"Mabel," he said as they entered Washington Square, "if you're not too tired let's go up to the Lafayette for a while. I've got something important to talk over with you."
A look of vexation crossed her face, which, with quick and painful sensitiveness, he interpreted.
"No," he said gravely, "I won't bore you with any professions of affection. It's a business matter on which I'd like your advice."
"Why not come up to the flat; we've some beer, and Eleanor's been making some fudge. It's more comfortable than that noisy café."
"Very well, then," he said stiffly. "I'll leave you at your door."
"Now, Walter—don't be a fool. What are you so sour about to-night? You haven't opened your mouth for six blocks."
"You know very well that I can't talk with "Saph" on the job—she hates me. I'd like to talk this over with you."
"All right," she said, shaking his arm to cheer him up. "But don't be quite so grumpy, just because I called you a sentimentalist."
Over the marble-topped table in the café, he told her that a letter had come inviting him to join an expedition, organized by the French Government, to excavate some Haktite ruins in Persia. From the point of view of an Assyriologist it was a flattering offer; they had selected him as the most eminent American in that department. But it would be a three or four years' undertaking in one of the most inaccessible corners of the globe. They would probably get mail no oftener than two or three times a year. And after all he was more interested in the thoughts of live men than in mummies and cuneiform inscriptions. It would stop his work on philosophy.
"In fact, Mabel," he ended, "there is only one thing that makes me think of accepting. I can't stand this. I don't want to bring up the forbidden subject.But I'm tired—worn out—with hiding it. If I stay here in New York, I'm sure to—bore you."
He tried to smile lightly, but it was not much better than the smile with which we ask the dentist if it is going to hurt. Mabel dug about in hercafé parfaitfor a moment without replying. She understood all the things he had not said. At last she did the unselfish, the kindly thing, which, if she had been a man, she would have done long before. She sent him away.
"It looks to me like a great opportunity. It isn't only an honor for past achievements, but a chance for new and greater ones. Sometimes I poke fun at your Synthetic Philosophy, but seriously I don't think it is as big a thing as your Assyriology. Whether you like it or not the Fates have given you a talent for that. Your wanting to do something else—write philosophy—always seems to me like a great violinist who wants to be a jockey or chauffeur. You're really at the very top as an Assyriologist. It's not only me—but most of your friends—think you have more talent for that. I think you'd best accept it."
Longman swallowed his medicine like a man. A few minutes later he left Mabel at her door.
She found "Saph" stretched outà la Mme. Récamieron the dull green Empire sofa.
"Will you never get out of the habit of staying to sweep up after the ball?" she asked languidly.
"I haven't been sweeping up," Mabel replied; "I've been over at the Lafayette with Walter. Now don't begin to sulk," she went on; "he's been telling me great news. The French Government has asked him to go on one of their expeditions to Central Asia. He's going."
"Goody," Eleanor cried, jumping up. "I'm glad!"
"I'm not," Mabel said; "I'll miss him no end."
"Mabel Train, I believe you're in love with that man."
"No, I'm not. And I'm half sorry I'm not. I'm tired, done up. Good night."
"Don't you want some fudge?—it turned out fine."
"No. Goodnight."
Mabel did not exactly bang her bedroom door, but she certainly shut it decisively, and for more than an hour sat by her window, watching the ceaseless movement in the Square. Once she saw Longman walk under an arc-light. His head was bent, his hands deep in his pockets. Although the sight of him left her quite cold, her eyes filled with tears as they had not done for years. It was just because the sight of him left her cold that tears came.
Yetta did not fall asleep readily after the ball. Her mind was a turmoil. If she tried to fix her attention on this question of Liberty which had stirred her so deeply, she was suddenly thrown into confusion by a memory of the cold fear which Harry Klein's hard eyes and brutal grip had caused her. She felt that she must think out her relationship with him clearly if she was ever to be free from fear, but again this problem would be disturbed by the thought of her wonderful new friends.
Sleep when it came at last was so heavy that she did not wake at the accustomed hour in the morning. When Mrs. Goldstein came into the bedroom to rouse her, she was startled by the sight of the new hat and white shoes, which Yetta had been too excited the night before to hide.
The first thing Yetta knew, there was a great commotion in her room. Her uncle and aunt, neither more than half dressed, were accusing her loudly of her crime and heaping maledictions on her head. It was several minutes before Yetta fully awoke to the situation. And when she did, a strange transformation had taken place within her; she was no longer afraid of the sorry couple.
"Yes," she said, sitting up in bed, drawing the blanket about her shoulders, "I went to a ball. If you don't like it, I'll find some other place to live."
The garrulous old couple fell silent. Goldstein's resentment against his daughter Rachel was fully as much because she had stopped bringing him money to get drunk on as because she had "gone wrong." After a minute's amazement at Yetta's sudden display of independence, they began a sing-song duet about ingratitude. Had they not done everything for her? Taken her in when she was a penniless orphan? Clothed and fed and sheltered her?
"And haven't I paid you all my wages for four years?" she replied. "Go away. I want to get dressed."
At the shop Yetta found that the story of her speech had been spread by one of the girls at the second table who had been at the ball. Fortunately this girl had not witnessed the scene with Harry Klein. Yetta found the women at her table discussing the matter in whispers when she arrived. In the moment before the motor started the day's work, the bovine Mrs. Levy told her that she was a fool.
"You've got a good job," she said. "You'll make trouble with your bread and butter. You're a fool."
"Better be careful," the cheerful Mrs. Weinstein advised. "Don't I know? My husband's a union man. Of course the unions are right, but they make trouble."
"It ain't no use," the sad and worn Mrs. Cohen coughed from the foot of the table. "There ain't nothing that'll do any good. Women ain't got no chance."
The motor began with a roar.
It is a strange fact of life, how sometimes a sudden light will be turned on a familiar environment, making it all seem new and entirely different from what we are accustomed to. Four years Yetta had worked in that shop. She had accepted it all as an inevitability, which no more admitted change or "reform" than the courses of the stars. The speeches to which she had listened made it suddenly appear in its true human aspect. It was no longer a thing unalterable, it was an invention of human greed. It was a laboratory where, instead of base metals, the blood of women and young girls was transmuted into gold. The alchemists had failed to find the Philosopher's Stone. The sweat-shop was a modern substitute. It was a contrivance by which such priceless things as youth and health and the hope of the next generation could be coined into good and lawful money of the realm.
Her nimble fingers flying subconsciously at the terrible speed through the accustomed motions, Yetta saw all the grim reality of the shop as never before. She saw the broken door to the shamefully filthy toilet, saw the closed, unwashed windows, which meant vitiated, tuberculosis-laden air, saw the backs of the women bent into unhealthy attitudes, saw the strained look in their eyes. More vaguely she saw a vision of the might-be life of these women,—clean homes and happy children. And behind her she felt the existence of the "office", where Jake Goldfogle sat and watched them through his spying window, and contrived new fines. And even more clearly than when she had made her speech, she saw her own function in this infernal scheme of greed, saw herself a lieutenant of theslave-driver behind her. She wondered if the other women hated her as she deserved to be hated. But habit is a hard thing to break, and her fingers sped on as of old.
When the day's work was over, a sorry sort of a woman, named Levine, a woman who had had many children and more troubles and very few joys, lingered in the shop and told Goldfogle the gossip about Yetta's speech. She had expected some reward, a quarter—or even a dime—with which to buy a little more food for her children. But she got only curses. During the day one of Jake's loans had been called. What was he to do, hounded by his creditors, threatened from within? If he had been an Oriental despot he would have slain the bearer of these bad tidings.
Yetta, afraid of meeting Harry Klein outside, clung as close as might be to Mrs. Weinstein on her way home. She ran the few blocks she had to go alone.
It was a useless precaution. He had no intention of accosting her that night. The official dispensers of Justice had taken small interest in the charge against him. He had been promptly bailed out and knew the papers would get lost in some pigeonhole. But although he was not worrying about his arrest, he was more unhappy than he had been since the first day he had spent in jail as a boy. Like most crooks he believed in "luck." Apparently his luck had turned. There was only one consolation. It had been a single-handed game. None of his followers knew of his downfall. So he had set about planning a spectacularcoupwhich would restore his prestige if the story of his disgrace got out. His vengeance, to be complete, should have included Longman, but the scent was too faint. He did not know his adversary's name.But he knew just where to put his finger on Yetta. He was a discreet young man, and he wanted to be very sure there would be no slip-up. So this night he trailed along behind her, safely hidden in the crowd. When he saw that she had walked home along the accustomed streets, he smiled contentedly.
"It's a cinch," he told himself.
During the day an event had occurred in the Goldstein flat; a messenger boy had come with a letter and a bundle of pamphlets for Yetta. Even the postman is a rare visitor to such homes, and the arrival of a special messenger is talked about by the whole street. Mr. Goldstein, whose dispute with his niece had driven him out to find solace from his troubles, had, more early than usual, returned to the flat. He had found his wife very much excited over the bundle which reposed in state on the kitchen table. He was not so befuddled but that he saw the tracts were about Trade Unions. So when Yetta returned from her work she found a new storm blowing. As a Tammany man and a pillar in the Temple of Things as They Are—it is doubtful if he realized how important he and his kind are in the maintenance of that imposing structure. Mr. Goldstein had to oppose trade-unions and socialism. They seemed to him more subversive of the order of Society than social settlements, dance-halls, or the Religion of the Goyim. And he was sufficiently intoxicated to have forgotten the mercenary caution which had in the morning kept him from throwing out the chief brandy-winner of the household. All through her supper Yetta had to listen to reproaches—which were not too delicately worded. But they hardly bothered her. As soon as she could find a good placeto live she was going to leave. She was not afraid any more. And when she had crammed sufficient food into herself, she picked up the bigger of the two lamps and escaped to her room with the pamphlets and the letter.
It had taken Mabel Train less than five minutes to dictate the letter, although she had two or three times stopped to attend to things which she thought more important. But of course to Yetta, the letter seemed importance itself. It was the first she had ever received, and it was from the most wonderful woman in the world. Mabel asked some questions about the shop and the chances of organizing the vest trade, and she urged Yetta to come to the office of the League to see her. She gave a list of the meetings at which she was to speak the next few nights, and asked Yetta, if it was impossible to get off in the daytime, to come to one of these meetings. She wanted very much to have a long talk with her—above all she hoped that Yetta would not forget her. It was an informal and affectionate letter. Yetta read it over five times, and each reading made her happier.
Then she turned to the pamphlets and did not go to bed until she had finished them. It was four years since she had read so much. There were hard words here and there which she did not understand, but on the whole they seemed wonderfully clear. Many of the questions which had been perplexing her were answered, many new ones raised. Although the reading made her feel keenly her ignorance—made her cheeks burn with shame over the years when she had brutishly ceased to think—she certainly understood life better, she saw more clearly her place in it.
The last of the pamphlets bit into her. It was called "Speed." It was written in a violent and unjust spirit. The author had failed to realize that the "speeders" were human beings; that few, if any of them, were willing or understanding tools in the hands of the bosses. He spoke of them as "traitors to their comrades," "ignoble creatures—Judases who sold themselves to the oppressors for thirty pieces of silver," "more detestable than scabs." To be a "speeder," this author held, was "a prostitution more shameful than that of the streets." If Mabel had selected the pamphlets, this one would not have been sent to Yetta, but she had told her stenographer to send "half a dozen." And Yetta, not knowing much about stenographers and their blunders, thought that all this was what the wonderful Miss Train thought about her. She felt that some deep expiation was necessary if she wished to look her new friends in the face.
She was in the grip of hurrying forces. She could see but three courses open before her. It was possible to go on as she had been doing, part of the great machine which was robbing mankind of its liberty, a blind tool in the hands of the tyrants—a tool until she was worn out and discarded. She might slip into the hands of some Harry Klein. Or she might risk all in the Cause of Freedom.
It would be easier for us to understand Yetta's outlook on life, if we too had stood on the very brink of that bottomless abyss; if we realized, as she had suddenly come to realize, how very narrow is the margin of safety, which even our greatest caution can give us. It did not seem to her that she was risking much in risking everything she had.
Mabel Train, on the contrary, had joined the ranks of Social Revolt without any compulsion. She and her family were beneficiaries of the system to the overthrow of which she had dedicated her energy. It would have been very easy for her to sink into the smug complacency of the life to which she had been born and bred. Why should she not accept the conventional lies of our civilization as her mother, her sister, and her friends did? She had been given this strangely strong intellect which her professor had called masculine, and she could not help but recognize the "falsehoods." She had also been given a keen sense of ethics and a tremendous pride. She could not bear the thought of being "the kept woman" of Injustice.
With all that is ordinarily called "good" at her command, she had voluntarily chosen a hard and cheerless life, a career which was largely thankless. Instead of cotillions she went to the balls of the Amalgamated Union of Skirt Finishers. She had given up a comfortable home for light-housekeeping in a flat. The hardest of all was that instead of being considered an ordinarily sane young woman, all the people of her old life thought her a crank and a fool.
Yetta's situation was indeed different—less heroic but more tragic. And just in proportion as your own toothache hurts you more than your neighbor's, it was more vital. Her life seemed to her shameful, and as a price of shame it offered her nothing but a gradual rotting into barren uselessness. Her first effort to escape from the vicious rut into which she had fallen had led her to the brink of a greater shame, a surer disaster. Of all the people with whom life had broughther into contact, three seemed preëminently good: her father, Longman, and Mabel Train. They all loved Liberty. Once her eyes had been opened, Yetta would gladly have given up much more to the New Cause. As it was, the crusade seemed to her not a sacrifice, but an escape. An irresistible force was pushing her into Revolt—la force majeureof poverty.
She did not foresee what form her new life would take; she was ignorant of too many important things. But she reached a determination to seek out Miss Train at the earliest opportunity and enlist.
And having cleared up this problem, her mind was freer to face the case of Harry Klein. It was not an easy thing for her to fold away all the emotions and dreams to which he had given life. She was still unenlightened in such matters. She did not see clearly the details of the horrors from which she had escaped. All she knew was that he had lied to her. He had with his honeyed words been plotting to make her "bad." Some of Longman's words at the Skirt-Finishers' ball came back to her and seemed to apply. She had foolishly dreamed that some one could give her freedom. That had been an idle hope; if she was to escape from her dungeon of monotony she must do it herself.
Harry Klein did not go to sleep until his plans were laid. He had had a satisfactory talk with the keeper of a Raines Law hotel on the route which Yetta followed on her way home after she left Mrs. Weinstein. The rooms upstairs would be empty on the morrow, and the ladies' parlor clear of witnesses. He had ordered a dozen of his followers to be in a saloon across the street. At a signal from him they were to rushout and fire their revolvers in the air in imitation of a gang fight. All the homeward hurrying crowd would shriek and run. In the excitement he would jerk Yetta into the dark doorway.
He did not like to use such "strong-arm" methods. It was always safer and generally easy to fool the girl into coming willingly. But this occasion demanded decisive action. He went over the plan carefully, and could find no flaw in it. "It's a cinch," he repeated as he went to sleep.
Jake Goldfogle did not get to sleep at all. He tossed about on the bed in his stuffy tenement room—which he had hoped to leave so soon for a Harlem flat—and tried to think a way out of his difficulties. He had spent his last resources in meeting the unexpectedly called loan. If trouble broke out in his shop, there was very little hope of pulling through. It was his nature to cross all bridges as soon as he heard of them. But this one which seemed so close he could not traverse. Should he appeal to Yetta at once? Or should he trust to luck, to the chance of the storm blowing over? All night long he swung from one decision to the other. His final conclusion was to redouble his spying, and at the first hint of trouble to call Yetta into his office. He had no doubt that an offer of marriage would change her into an ally.
Yetta, having no idea how the powers of darkness were again closing about her, set out to work in the morning in high spirits—her face illumined by her new resolve. But her exaltation was short lived. Mrs. Cohen's lungs were much worse. All through the morning hours she struggled desperately with her cough. Mrs. Levy had seen the same thing so oftenbefore that she gave it no attention. But Mrs. Weinstein's merry eyes turned serious. And every cough tore at Yetta's heart. She was partly to blame. During the noon respite she and Mrs. Weinstein took care of the consumptive woman, tried to tempt her to eat with the choicest morsels of their none too savory lunches. Yetta urged her to go home for the afternoon and rest. But that was impossible. Goldfogle would "fire" her if she left, and she needed the job.
So when the short lull was over, the women took their places about the table. Hardly five minutes had passed when a paroxysm of coughing checked Mrs. Cohen's hands, and the work began to pile up. Yetta broke her thread, and by the time she had mended it Mrs. Cohen had caught up. Jake, hearing the stop, came to the door, but, seeing that Yetta was to blame, went back without speaking. Within half an hour Yetta had to break her thread again. But Mrs. Cohen was past the aid of such momentary rests. Before three the crisis came. She let go her work and dropped her head on her hands, horribly shaken by sobs and coughs. Yetta, feeling that she had helped to kill the woman, stopped her machine. Jake rushed out into the shop.
"Wos hat da passiert?" he demanded of Yetta, nervous and angry. "Did your thread break again?"
"No." Yetta stood up. "I stopped."
"Stopped?" he repeated in amazement.
"Yes. I stopped. It's a shame. Mrs. Cohen is sick and can't keep up."
Jake was only too glad to find some one else to vent his vile temper upon. He ran around the table and grabbed Mrs. Cohen roughly by the shoulder.
"You're fired," he shrieked. "I've had too much from you. You're the slowest woman here. Now you stop the whole table. You're fired."
"No, you don't, Mr. Goldfogle," Yetta cried, as excited as he was. "You don't fire her without you fire me too. See? Ain't you got no heart? She's killed herself working for you. You ought to take care of her now she's sick."
"Vot you tink?" he wailed. "Is it a hospital or a factory I'm running?"
"If it's a slaughter-house, Jake Goldfogle, I won't work in it."
The altercation had stopped all the work. The shop was strangely quiet. And Jake, his hope of success, his dream of love, trembling about his ears, could hardly keep back his tears. Suddenly he found voice and turned on the other women.
"Vot for do you stop? Vork! Vork, or I'll fire you."
And then coming up close to Yetta he said:—"You come vid me to my office. I vant to talk vid you."
"Why don't you say it here?" she asked defiantly. "I don't care who hears me talk. You got to treat Mrs. Cohen right or I'll quit. The other girls will quit too if they ain't cowards."
"No, no, no," he said, trying to hush her. "You come vid me, Miss Rayefsky."
She hesitated. She had expected him to rage and threaten her; his cringing manner disconcerted her. Anyhow it would give Mrs. Cohen time to breathe, so she reluctantly followed him into the dingy little office. He carefully closed the door.
"I've got sometin' to tell you. I. Vell—Yetta, you be a good girl und not make no trouble in the shop. Und ven de rush season is over, Yetta—I'll, yes, Yetta, I luf you. I'll marry you. You be a good girl und not make trouble, Yetta, und I'll marry you."
If he had threatened to kill her, Yetta would not have been so surprised. She was dumbfounded. And Jake, nervous, frightened, amorous Jake, took her amazed speechlessness for consent. He thought the magnificent generosity of his offer had overpowered her.
"Yes, Yetta," he drivelled on, "I luv you already since a long while. I vant to tell you, but the contract is zu close. I need you in the shop. You're the best vorker. It's only a few veeks now, Yetta. Ve'll be rich. Rich! I don't care if you ain't got no money. Ven I seed you first, Yetta, I luved you."
He grabbed one of her hands and tried to kiss her. The slap he received dizzied him.
"You come out in the shop, Jake Goldfogle," she cried, pulling open the door. "You tell them what you told me. What do you think the pig said to me?" she asked the surprised women. "You tell them, Jake Goldfogle, or I will. He wants me to marry him—after the rush season. He loves me so much he wants me to go on speeding for him—slave driving—till after the rush season. Oh, the pig! I'd rather be hustling on the street, Jake Goldfogle, than be married to a sweat-shop keeper."
Jake's temper was never very good; it had been torn by too many and desperate worries. To have his heart's dream thus publicly scoffed at, robbed him of his last shred of self-control. Giving tongue to an incoherent burst of rage and filth, he rushed at Yetta.She thought he was going to strike her. But she was too angry herself to be afraid.
"Don't you hit me, you brute," she screamed at him, shaking her own fists in his face. "I ain't working for you no more, Jake Goldfogle. See? I ain't one of your slaves any more. I'm a free woman. I'll have you arrested, if you hit me. And shut your dirty mouth."
Jake was cowed. His fist unclenched.
"You see what kind of a boss we've been working for," Yetta said to the other women. "He ain't a man. He's a pig! Wanted me to marry him—after the rush season. I've quit him and you ought to quit too."
"Shut up," Jake shrieked.
"I won't shut up. See what you've done to Mrs. Cohen. You've killed her, and now you want to throw her out. We ought to strike."
"Don't you talk strike in my shop, you—"
"Yes. We ought to strike. You know the dirty deal we're getting. Rotten wages and speed. It's because we ain't got no union and don't fight. We ought to strike like the skirt-finishers."
"Police! Police!" Jake howled, rushing to the door. "I'll have you arrested, you dirty little—"
"I don't care if he does have me arrested," Yetta went on more quietly after he had gone. "If he was treating us decent, he wouldn't yell for the police, when somebody says 'strike.' I ain't afraid of jail. I'm afraid of staying here on the job and coughing myself to death. I'm going to quit, and you ought to too."
"You're a fool. You're making trouble," the bovine Mrs. Levy said with conviction.
"No. She ain't," Mrs. Weinstein spoke up. "I guess my man belongs to a union. He's told me lots of times that us working people ain't got no other hope. It's the bosses what make trouble by cheating us. I'll strike, if the rest do."
"I'll strike anyhow," Yetta said. "I won't never work for a pig like that, asking me to marry him after the rush season."
"I'll strike vid you, Yetta," the girl said who had been to the ball. "My sister's a skirt-finisher. But the strike ain't no good unless everybody quits."
"I'll strike," another voice chimed in.
"All right," Mrs. Weinstein said. "We'll all strike."
"It's foolishness," Mrs. Levy protested, rubbing her trachoma-eaten eyes.
But the excitement had caught the rest of the women. And when Jake returned, hatless and breathless, with a phlegmatic Irish policeman, he met all his women coming downstairs. In spite of his frenzied pleading, the policeman refused to arrest them, refused even to arrest Yetta.
"I'll take your number. I'll report you, if you don't arrest her. She's been making trouble."
"Aw! Go on, ye dirty little Jew. I'll smack your face, if ye talk back to me. And you women, move on. Don't stand around here making a noise or I'll run you in."
But on the next corner the group of women did stop. Where should they go? What should they do next?
"Nobody'll go back to work," Yetta said, "unless he'll take Mrs. Cohen, too, when she gets rested."
"I won't never get rested," the coughing woman said.
"Oh, yes, you will, sure," Mrs. Weinstein said. But everybody knew she was lying.
The girl whose sister was a skirt-finisher and who knew all about strikes took down the names and addresses of the twelve women. Mrs. Weinstein promised to look after Mrs. Cohen. And Yetta started uptown to the office of the Woman's Trade Union League. And all the long walk her heart was chanting a glad hosanna. She wasn't a speeder any more. She could look free people in the face.
It was near five in the afternoon when Yetta reached the brown-stone front which held the offices of the Woman's Trade Union League. It had once been a comfortable residence. But Business, ever crowding northward on Manhattan Island, had driven homes away. The house seemed dwarfed between two modern buildings of twelve and eighteen stories.
In what had formerly been the "parlor," Yetta found a rather barren, very businesslike office. Two stenographers were industriously hammering their typewriters, but the chair behind the big roll-top desk was empty.
"Hello," one of the girls greeted her, hardly looking up from her notes. "What do you want?" "I want to see Miss Train."
"Sit down. You'll have to wait. Advisory Council."
She jerked her head to one side to indicate the double doors which in more aristocratic days had led to the dining-room. It was anything but a cordial welcome. To be sure the two girls were "organized." Miss Train had persuaded them to form a union. One was president and the other was secretary, and therewere about six other members. They had done it to please her, just as they would have done anything to please her. Nevertheless they felt themselves on a very much higher social plane than mere shop girls.
Yetta sat down disconsolate. She had not expected to have to wait. She did not appreciate the overwhelming importance of an Advisory Council. In fact, she did not know what it was. And she did not think that there could be anything more important than the strike in her shop. In a few minutes her impatience overcame her timidity.
"Say," she said, getting up and coming over to the girl who had spoken to her. "You tell Miss Train that I'm here. It's important—about a strike."
"Humph," the stenographer snorted, "skirt-finisher?"
"No. I ain't a skirt-finisher. I work bei vests. It's a new strike. Miss Train'll want to know about it right away."
"What do you think?" the stenographer asked her companion. "Can't disturb the Advisory Council, can I?"
The two girls cross-questioned Yetta severely, but at last gave in to her insistence. One of them knocked at the double doors. They were opened from the inside a couple of inches and Mabel looked out.
"We've struck," Yetta cried, rushing towards her.
Mabel turned towards the occupants of the inner room and asked to be excused a moment.
"I'm very busy just now," she said as she sat down beside Yetta. "Tell me about it quickly."
The Industrial Conflict is not logical. At least it does not follow any laws of logic known to theso-called "labor leaders." It is connected with, actuated by, a vague something, which for want of a better term we call "human nature." And labor leaders are just as uncertain what "human nature" will do next as the rest of us. They will spend patient years on end organizing a trade, collecting bit by bit a "strike fund," preparing for a battle which never comes off or miserably fizzles out. In the midst of such discouragement, an unprepared strike in an unorganized trade will break out and with no prospect of success will sweep to an inspiring victory. Mabel had seen such surprising things happen a hundred times.
More than once, since her short talk with Yetta at the ball, she had thought over the possibility of organizing the vest-makers. But the project seemed to hold very little promise. The "skirt-finishers" had lost. She, with her hand on the pulse of things, knew it, even if the strikers did not. And here, once more, a new strike had broken out, just as another was collapsing. It might be only a flash in the pan, a quarrel in one shop. It might spread. She listened closely to Yetta.
Her eyes were also busy. She noted the peculiar charm of the young girl, the big deep eyes with their sudden changes from excited hope to melancholy sadness, her cheeks flushed with the impetuous enthusiasm of a new convert.
Mabel thought of the group of well-to-do women in the other room. She had small respect for most of them, none at all for some. It would have been a very complicated matter to analyze the reasons which caused these "ladies" to interest themselves in the cause of working girls. Some few of them had similar—if less forceful—motives to those which had led Mabel to give her life to the work. Some of them liked to be thought odd, and found in labor unions a piquant fad. Two were suffragists and were seriously interested in all organizations of women. There was one at least whose morbid instincts were tickled by the stories of desperate misery which circulated in the League.
Probably all of them had been somewhat influenced to seek election by the fact that Mrs. Van Cleave was on the Board—she might invite them to one of her functions.
She was a mystery to Mabel. She was very fat and very rich and a leader of the inner circle of "Society." She attended the meetings regularly, and never seemed to take the slightest interest in anything. Every January first she mailed a check for ten dollars. Mabel had never succeeded in getting any other money from her. But her social prestige was of unquestioned value—otherwise she was absolute dead-wood.
Mrs. Karner, the wife of a millionnaire newspaper owner, was the only one of them all who really helped Mabel. She was an intelligent woman and rendered efficient service along many lines.
It was a hard group to work with. The sincere ones were occupied with many other activities. It was difficult to get any enthusiasm into them. But the League could not exist without their financial support. Now that the "skirt-finishers" strike was ending in disaster, how could she keep up their interest, how could she persuade them further to open their pocket-books? Yetta's radiant face gave her a suggestion.
"Wait a minute," she interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. "There are some other people who ought to hear about this. Come along."
She led Yetta through the double doors into the committee-room. It was one of Eleanor Mead's achievements. The room had been extended to the back of the house. Along the sides were piles of cheap folding chairs. When they were put up, they would accommodate about two hundred. By the windows in the back there was a large flat-topped table and ten easy chairs in which the Advisory Council were comfortably installed. Above the table hung a great mezzatone photograph of the Rouen statue of Jeanne d'Arc. The room, all in brown tones, harmonized with it and the half-dozen similar portraits of famous women.
"Ladies," Mabel said, "this is Yetta Rayefsky. She has just come to tell me of a new strike in her trade—vests. We've finished to-day's business. And if you can spare the time, I am sure you will be interested in her story. Begin at the beginning, Yetta," she went on as the ladies nodded assent, "and tell us all about it."
Yetta was utterly confused. She had never seen so much fine raiment nor so many jewels. No one had ever stared at her through lorgnettes in the insolent way that Mrs. Van Cleave did.
"They are all friends, Yetta," Mabel encouraged her. "And if the strike is to succeed, we will need all the help we can get."
Thus prodded, Yetta began. The many books which she had read to her father as a child had familiarized her with good English. But in the last four years she had fallen into the mixture of Yiddish andslipshod English which is the language of the sweat-shop. Now she felt that she must speak correctly, and the search for words added to her self-consciousness and ruined the effect of her story. Mabel was just beginning to regret that she had brought her in, when in some sudden, inexplicable way all the excitement of the last few days came over Yetta with a rush and stimulated her as the wine had on the night of the ball. She began to speak simply, straight out from her heart. It was not an economic exposition of the industrial conflict; not even a coherent explanation of the strike in her shop. It was a more personal story. She wandered off from her main subject, told them about her father and the book-store. She told them about Rachel and Mrs. Cohen. She told them about Jake Goldfogle and his offer of marriage. Now and then Mabel asked a question about the conditions in her trade. God knows they were bad enough, but to Yetta such things seemed insignificant details; she was concerned with the frightful implications of poverty. Long hours and poor food seemed of small moment to her compared to the miserable meagreness of the life of the girls. To be sure they were hungry, but more awful was the fact that they were starving for sunlight. More than once she came back to Rachel and how she had "wanted to be good." Suddenly she stopped and turned to Mabel.
"Ought I to tell them about Harry Klein?"
The roomful of women—ease-loving, worldly women—also turned to Mabel to catch her answer. They had fallen silent under the spell of Yetta's simple eloquence. Some of them Mabel detested. It seemed almost sacrilegious to let this unsophisticated girl strip hersoul naked before them. But she saw that Yetta was moving them more deeply than she ever could.
"It hasn't anything to do with the strike," she said after a slight hesitation. "You don't need to tell it—if you'd rather not."
"Please tell us."
It was Mrs. Karner who had spoken. Yetta had felt that she was the friendliest of all these fine ladies. She had found encouragement in her eyes whenever she had looked at her. So taking a deep breath, she plunged in.
"You see, it was just luck—if it hadn't been for luck, I'd have gone wrong—just like Rachel."