Isadore was generally the first of the editorial force to come to the office. His "eight-hour" workday was from 4A.M.till noon. On his way to the office in the morning he picked up the early editions of the other papers, clipped the news he wanted worked up for their afternoon edition, and got his day's editorial finishedbefore the rest of the staff turned up. It was his theory that if he had an evening engagement,—a committee meeting or a speech to make,—he would sleep four hours in the afternoon. If he had work in the afternoon, he went to bed before nine. So he got in seven hours of sleep every day—theoretically. But it so often happened that he had work to do both afternoon and evening that the week was rare when he averaged more than five hours sleep a day.
He generally found the office empty when he arrived. But this morning a light was burning in the back of the loft—"the composing room." One of the linotypers, who was also a mechanic, had come a few minutes before him to repair one of the machines which had gone wrong, and so save the expense of bringing in an expert. It was a violation of the union rules, but this linotyper was a Socialist.
"Comrade," he said, when he saw Braun, "it's a crime. This linotype is worn out. I'm getting it so it will run again, but it's dead slow. And it'll break down again in a couple of days. It ought to be scrapped. It costs more to keep it going than the interest on the price of a new machine. It's uneconomic."
Isadore said he would talk it over with the executive committee. He made his way through the shadowy machines to the front part of the loft, which was by courtesy called "the Editorial Room." No one who has not experienced the expensiveness of poverty can realize how maddening it is to throw money away because you are not rich enough to save it. Isadore knew there was very little chance of buying a new linotype. He turned the end of a long bookcase and suddenly saw the lightburning over Yetta's table; he saw her stretched out motionless across her work. He had never seen her asleep. With an awful sinking of the heart the thought came that she might be dead. He sprang towards her and called her name. In the semidarkness he upset a chair with appalling clatter.
Yetta, startled out of profound sleep, sprang to her feet. Her head struck the light, which hung low, broke the glass shade; the jar dislocated the fragile film of the lamp. In the instant before the light went out, the only thing which Yetta realized was that her surroundings were unfamiliar. She had never been so frightened before in her life. When they told her afterwards that she had screamed, she could hardly believe it. She could not recall having done so. The first thing she was conscious of was that some one's arms were about her and Isadore's voice was saying,—ungrammatically but convincingly,—"It's me."
After the hideous nightmare of fright, his accustomed voice, his strong arms about her, were utterly comforting. She told herself afterwards that she must have been partly over the verge of fainting, for Isadore kissed her and she made no motion—had no idea—of resistance. First, in the darkness, his hand had found the way to her neck and face; then she had felt the hot wave of his breath,—murmuring words which made no sense to her,—and then his lips on her cheek and mouth. She was never quite sure if she had kissed him back. Whether she had or not she knew she had been very close to doing so.
But the moment of forgetfulness had been interrupted by the linotyper, running towards them and asking the cause of the commotion. At the idea ofan onlooker, Yetta disengaged herself from Isadore's arms—just in time. The linotyper turned on a light. Isadore tried to laugh.
"We scared ourselves nearly to death," he explained. "Comrade Rayefsky had fallen asleep. The sight of her scared me into upsetting a chair. That startled her awake. She jumped up so quick she broke the lamp."
The linotyper was a good fellow. He unscrewed a lamp from another socket and substituted it for the one Yetta had broken, and went decently back to his work.
Isadore seemed on the point of coming towards her, and Yetta retreated back of the chair.
"How stupid of me to fall asleep. We won out at the convention. I came down to write it up. I must have just started to look it over when I went to sleep. You'll have to grind out an editorial on it. I'll finish it up at once."
She sat down to her work.
Isadore found it harder to bring his wits together. But her movement of retreat had been like a blow in the face to him. It steadied him a trifle—but only a trifle. He had kissed Yetta. All these years he had loved her. Suddenly—utterly unexpectedly—the Heavens had opened. He had held her in his arms, he had kissed her.
The foolish idea came to him that he would like to look at his lips, which—after waiting so long—had at last found their goal. As there was no mirror in the office, this was manifestly impossible. But his hand—at least he could look at that—it also had caressed the beloved face. His hand was stained with blood. For an instant he was dazed. Yetta—her cheeksaflame—was bent over her work. A little stream of blood ran down her neck, where a bit of the broken lamp-shade had cut her in its fall.
"Yetta, Yetta!" he cried, "you're wounded."
"What?" she said in amazement. She had been preparing a crushing answer in case he started to make love again. The emotions that were tearing her were too violent to let her take note of a little cut.
"Look," he said, showing her his hand. "Broken glass. On your neck. Let me see."
Impressed by the sight of blood, she bent her head for the examination. But Isadore's ideas of treating such a wound were sentimental rather than scientific.
"Oh, don't. Please!" she protested, agonized by shame. She struggled up to her feet, but somehow she had forgotten the crushing retort she had prepared. "It isn't serious. It doesn't hurt. Please let me finish this work."
Isadore retreated before her distressed eyes.
"Wipe the blood off your lips," she ordered sternly.
Then she sat down again, utterly confused. It seemed such a stupid, inane thing she had said. It was all her fault, she unjustly told herself. If only she had kept her wits that first moment instead of being so childishly frightened. She felt humiliated. It took an extreme effort of will to turn her attention to the garment workers and the article she must correct. It would have helped if she could have heard the scratching of his pen or the rustle of his newspaper. There was not a sound from his desk. She did not dare to look around.
At last the task was finished. She put on her cloak and hat and wrapped the muffler about her throat beforeshe found courage to look at Isadore. He was sunk down in his chair, watching her hungrily. She bit her lip at the sight and had trouble speaking.
"Isad—Comrade, here's the copy. I hope you can make an editorial out of it. It's awfully important for Organized Labor.—This convention has finished me. I'm dead tired. I'll take a vacation to-morrow—I mean to-day—and sleep."
Isadore did not reply. He just looked at her, a dumb plea in his eyes—which she did not want to seem to understand.
"So long," she said.
She was almost out of sight before he spoke.
"You'll come back? When you're rested?"
"Why, yes," she said. "Of course."
It was at least half an hour before Isadore pulled himself together and got to work. But the editorial which he wrote on the Federated Garment Trades was very creditable.
Yetta walked home through the dawn. She was very tired, and she tried not to think. But she could not free herself from the insistent question—"Did I really kiss him?" She looked at herself in the glass, just before she turned out the gas and went to bed. "Did I really kiss him?" she asked her reflected image. She got no answer, and, as though vexed at this silence, she spoke defiantly. "If I did, I'm sorry. I don't love him." This rather comforted her, and she fell asleep at once.
But when she woke up in the early afternoon, she felt worse about the night's adventure than ever. Very emphatically she told herself that she loved Walter. That had beenLa grande passion. No. Not "hadbeen"; it "was." It was a treason to think of it as "having been." She had told Walter that love had no tenses, that it was "somehow eternally always and now and for ever and ever." Romance still dominated all her thinking. The books and poems said there could only be one real love. She was sure that her love for Walter had been real—hence, in strict logic, she loved him still and always would and could never love any one else.
Although she really believed this—wanted to believe it, felt that life would be impossible on any other hypothesis—she was beginning to realize that somehow the Romantic Explanation of Life does not quite explain. For the poets it was beautifully simple—either you loved or you did not love. It was the crudest sort of dualism. Things were black or white. The gray tones were not mentioned.
But while she did not love Isadore as she had loved Walter, he was certainly in a different category from all the other men whom she did not love. The men at the office, for instance. She was the best of chums with them; she respected them, admired them, liked them—and did not love them. But it was different with Isadore.
The hungry look in his eyes haunted her. The memory of his sudden, unexpected ardor—the rough vehemence of his caresses, his stormy outbreak of passionate tenderness—disturbed and distressed her. She had never taken him quite seriously before. She had deliberately, but unconsciously, refused to look the matter in the face. It is very hard to be sympathetic and just to a love we do not return. It had not occurred to her that Isadore's love was as painful to him ashers for Walter had been. That startling contact in the dark of the office had opened her eyes to the reality of his passion. What a mess it all was! Isadore loved her. She loved Walter. Walter loved Mabel!
The sun was resplendent, and Yetta—having promised herself a holiday—walked over to Washington Square and took a bus up to Riverside Drive. It was zero weather, the sun shone dazzlingly on the blanket of snow, which had given an unwonted beauty to the Jersey shore. Yetta walked up and down the Drive till the sinking sun had reddened the West with an added glory. It was not often that she had such outings. The crisp air stimulated her. She was happy with the pure joy of being alive and outdoors in a way she had not known since Walter went away. To be sure her mood was tinged with melancholy. She was sorry for Isadore. But less sorry than usual for herself. Somehow she felt less bitterly the appalling loneliness.
As she was going downtown in the dusk she noticed a poster of the Russian Symphony Orchestra. It offered a programme from Tchaikovsky. She had some neglected work she ought to finish up. She had barely enough money in her pocket for a ticket—and a hundred things she ought to use it for. But in a sudden daredevil expansiveness, she dropped off the bus, got a scrap of supper at a Childs' restaurant, and went to the concert.
Under the spell of the music she forgot all her preoccupations. Her intellect dropped down into subconsciousness. She did not think—she felt.
Music can be the most decorative of all the Arts—or the most intellectual. The trained musician, who knows the meaning of "theme" and "development," who canrecite glibly all the arguments for or against "programme" music, who will tell you offhand in what year this Symphony was written, whether it is a production of the composer's "first period" or a mature work, cannot avoid bringing a large assortment of purely intellectual considerations—historical and technical—to the appreciation of music. But to the naïve listener, like Yetta, music is decorative. It appeals solely to the emotions. It is never interesting—it is either pleasing or displeasing. Yetta sat dreamily through the concert—half the time with closed eyes—and found it wonderful. There was too little chance for the play of sentiments in her life. Every waking hour she had to think. Tchaikovsky laid a caressing hand over the tired eyes of her intellect and showed beautiful things to her heart.
The next morning as Yetta went to the office she thought with some uneasiness of meeting Isadore. As usual in such matters she decided to face the affair frankly.
"Good morning," she said, going at once to his desk; "I'm sorry about what happened the other night. I was startled and bewildered."
Isadore knew that she had been taken unawares—that the kiss did not belong to him by rights.
"If there's any apology necessary," he said, "I'm the one to make it. I was as much startled and bewildered as you were. I'm sorry if you feel bad about it."
"We'll forget it," Yetta said.
Isadore did not look as if he were certain on this point.
They fell again into the accustomed rut of comradeship. Neither of them spoke again of theoutburst. No one in the office noticed any change in their relationship.
But there was a change. Isadore could never forget that wonderful moment; he could never be quite the same. And Yetta—when in time the memory of it lost its element of excitement, when she got over being afraid that Isadore might begin again—found that she also had changed. The fact that Isadore loved her passionately had taken a definite place in her consciousness. She could not ignore this any more, as she had done before. In a way it made him more interesting. She did not for a moment think of marrying him—she loved Walter. But she was sorry for Isadore. They had this added thing in common—the pain of a hopeless love.
It seemed wildly unjust to her that she might not in any way show her sympathy to him without encouraging his love—making him "hope." She knew when he was tired and discouraged; she would have liked to cheer him. She sometimes sewed on a button for Harry Smith. She ordered Levine about severely. She did not like either of them half as much as she did Isadore, but she must not show him any of these womanly attentions. It was stupid and vexatious that just because Isadore loved her, she must be carefully and particularly unfriendly to him.
Paulding was raising Yetta's salary among his personal friends, and his check came to her directly without passing through the general treasury. Her work kept her out of the office most of the time, and it was not until her second year that she chanced to be at her desk on a Saturday morning. About twelve-thirty Harry Moore came in from the composing-room,where he had been attending to the lock-up. He leaned back in his chair and stretched wearily.
"About time for the 'ghost' to walk," he said.
"Not much of a ghost this week," the pessimistic Levine growled.
A few minutes later Mary Ames, the treasurer, bustled in. Her face was round and unattractive; she was short and had been fat, but her clothes hung about her loosely as though she had lost much flesh.
"It's a bad week, Comrades," she announced cheerfully. "Thought I wasn't going to be able to meet the union pay-roll to-day. Six dollars short. But the ten o'clock mail brought in twenty. Isadore went out and touched Mrs. Wainwright for fifty, and Branch 3 just sent in eleven from a special collection. So I've seventy-five for you. Who comes first?"
"Locke's wife is sick," Levine said mournfully.
"That's twenty dollars, isn't it?" Mary said, counting off the bills. "And you know Isadore hasn't had full pay for months. We must be a hundred and fifty back on his salary."
"Twenty-five to him," the stenographer said. "It'll give him a surprise."
"Surprise?" Levine said gloomily. "It'll give him apoplexy."
"That's forty-five gone," Mary said. "There's thirty left."
"How much do you need, Nell?" Moore asked the stenographer.
"I'm nearly a month back on my room rent. I'm in a bad hole, but I could get along with ten."
"Oh, make it fifteen," Harry said. "Girls always need money for ribbons and ice-cream sodas."
"That leaves fifteen for us, Harry," Levine wailed. "It's what I call a dog's life."
"Oh, cheer up." Moore pocketed the fifteen dollars. "Come on up to Sherry's for lunch.—It's on me."
Linking his arm in Levine's, he led him, still grumbling, out of the office.
Mary Ames sat down heavily in a chair and began to cry.
"If I wasn't so ugly," she said, "I'd just like to kiss those boys."
She shook the tears out of her eyes and jerked her chair up towards Yetta's desk.
"I know you think I'm a sentimental old flop—crying like this. You're always so calm. But I can't help it. You might think I'm discouraged—rushing round all week begging money, and every Saturday morning having to come in and tell the boys I've failed—that I haven't enough to pay their salaries. But it isn't discouragement that makes me cry, it's just joy! I wouldn't have the nerve to peg through week after week of it if it wasn't for being the ghost on Saturdays. It's those two boys, Levine always grumbling and Harry Moore making jokes. And—I know—sometimes they don't have enough to eat. And you ought to see the hole they sleep in!"
Her lips began to twitch again, and perfect rivers of tears ran down her cheeks.
"I wish I could stop crying. But it's just too wonderful to work with people like this. I've been a bookkeeper in dozens of offices—everybody selfish and hating each other and trying to get on. I've seen so much of the other. It's hard for me to believe in this.
"I don't know much about Socialism," she went on."I ain't educated like you young people; I haven't read very much. Keeping books all day is all my eyes are good for. But I just know it's right. If it wasn't the real thing, there'd never be a paper like this. How can you sit there so calm and cold and not cry? It's the biggest thing in the world, and we're part of it."
Yetta put her arms about the older woman.
"I love it, too," she said. "But it doesn't make me cry. Somehow it's too big for me. It matters so little whether I'm part of it or not. It would go on just the same—if I wasn't here. It isn't mine. I could cry over a little baby—if it was mine. But not over this—"
She was surprised to find that her tears were contradicting her words. Once started, it was hard to stop. It seemed very sad to her that a young woman of twenty-three should have nothing more personal to cry over.
While all these things were happening to Yetta, Walter was settling down into the rut of University life easily—almost contentedly. He was employed to be a scholar rather than a teacher. And while conducting classes is always a dismal task, study—to one with any bent that way—is a pleasant occupation. He was not dependent on his salary, and so escaped from the picturesque discomfort of the quarters assigned to him in the mediæval college building, to a "garden cottage." There was a lodge in front and a lawn running down to the river behind. He had found an excellent cook, who was married to an indifferent gardener. And, although his lawn was not so smooth nor his grape crop so plentiful as his neighbors', he was very pleasantly installed.
Sometimes, of course, he thought regretfully of the might-have-been life in New York. But the more he studied the Haktites, the more interesting they became. He had also revived his project of a Synthetic Philosophy.
On his return from the Christmas holidays of his second year at Oxford, he found a book in the mail which was waiting him. It was a novel—The Other Solution, by Beatrice Maynard. It had been sent to his old New York address. On the fly-leaf she had written, "Merry Xmas." It was an unexpected pleasure to have some one remember him at this holiday season. He had not received a Christmas present in years.
He hurried through his supper to begin it. Beyond occasionally filling his pipe he did not stop until the end.
It was, he decided, just such a book as he would have expected her to write! There was the patience of real art in the way it was done. Not a great book, but packed full of keen observation, and its finish was like a cameo.
It was a simple story of a very rich girl in New York. One hardly realized that it was about the Smart Set. Beatrice knew her people too well to have any illusion about their nobility or their special depravity. The men changed their clothes rather too often, but were on the whole a kindly meaning lot. The women were a bit burdened with their jewellery, but very human, nevertheless. They were all bored by their uselessness. There was a cynical old bachelor uncle, who gave the Girl epigrammatical advice about the virtue of frivolity and the danger of taking things seriously. There was a maiden aunt—the romance of whose life had been shot to pieces at Gettysburg—who had sought solace in a morbid religious intensity. She was always warning the Girl, in the phraseology of Lamentations, against light-mindedness and the Wrath to Come. The "Other Solution" proved to be a very modern kind of nerve specialist, whose own nerves were going to pieces because of overwork and the cooking of an absinthe-drinking Frenchwoman. He was just on thepoint of beginning to take cocaine, when Beatrice persuaded him to take the Girl, instead.
"Good work," Walter said as he closed it.
For some moments he sat there wondering what sort of an anchorage Beatrice had found. Such a book could not have been written in a hurry nor in unpleasant surroundings. He had never heard from her. At first he had been too heavy of heart to care. But as the months, growing into years, had somewhat healed his hurts, he had often thought of her. But not knowing exactly what sort of memories she held of him, he had felt that if the long silence was to be broken, it should be done by her.
He was glad she had cared enough to do it. He swung his chair around to the table and wrote to her. There was praise of the book and thanks for the remembrance. In a few paragraphs he gave a whimsical description of his bachelor establishment and of his work, and asked news of her. He addressed it in care of her publishers, a London house.
A few days later her answer came to him at breakfast-time. His letter had caught her in London, where she had come over from Normandy to arrange about her new novel. Could he not come up to town during the few days she would be there? If he wired, she would let everything else slip to keep the appointment.
He sent the gardener out with a telegram and went up on an afternoon train. It was tea time when he found her in the parlor of her hotel.
"I hope I haven't begun to show my age, as you have," she greeted him.
"You haven't."
She had both hands busy with the tea things, so he could find no opportunity to be more gallant.
"I see by your note," she said,—"is it two lumps and cream or three and lemon?—that you did not follow my advice."
"No, not exactly. Two lumps, please. I tried to. I've often wondered if you realized what irresponsible and dangerous advice it was."
So he told her about Yetta.
"I never thought she'd be such an idealistic idiot," Beatrice commented.
"Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Walter, I believe you were in love with her and did not have the sense to say so."
He waved his hands as a Spaniard does when saying, "Quien sabe?"
"What's your news?" he asked.
She told him of the charming little village she had discovered in Normandy, of her roses and poppies and of her big writing-room, which overlooked three separate backyards and gave her endless opportunity—when the ink did not flow smoothly—to study the domestic life of her neighbors. What fun it was to write! How happy she was to get back to it again! Altogether she was going to write ten novels, each one was to be an improvement, and the last one really good. And then the Sweet Chariot was going to swing low and carry her home.
"I'm getting into the stride," she said. "The Other Solutioncame hard. I'm so glad you liked it. I'd go stale on it. Have to lay it aside, so I've three coming out close together, now. I'm just finishing the proof of number two,Babel. It's about those crazyTransatlantiqueswe played with in Paris. And the next one strikes a deeper note. I think I'll call itThe Mess of Pottage. It's almost finished—a couple of months' polishing. I've been working on all three of these at the same time. But from now on it's one a year—regularly."
The conversation rambled back and forth. It jumped from the criminal code of the Haktites to Strauss'Electra, and that brought them to Mrs. Van Cleave, whom Beatrice had encountered in the foyer of the Paris Opera atPelleas et Melisande. Mrs. Van Cleave reminded them of a thousand things. The two years since they had seen each other fell away, the old intimacy returned. Beatrice suddenly reverted to Yetta.
"Don't blame me if you muddled things up. I advised you to marry her—not to get into a metaphysical discussion with her. I'm not sure but you're the bigger fool of the two. 'De l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace.' They say that Danton was a successful man with the ladies."
"The answer to that is," Walter said, "that you write your next novel in Oxford."
"Oxford! Why, a university town is no place for audacity!"
"It's the place for you," he said decisively. "To-morrow I'll rent the cottage next to mine—it's bigger. I noticed a 'To Let' sign on it this morning. It's a love of a place. And quiet! There isn't a corner of Philadelphia that's as quiet Sunday morning as Oxford is."
But Beatrice refused to consider his suggestion.
"I'm doing very well as I am, thank you. Havingjust got on my feet at last—no more entanglements for me!"
But two days after the summer recess began, Walter dropped off the train in her little Norman village.
"It's no use struggling, Beatrice," he said, before she had recovered from her surprise at his invasion. "You're going to write your next novel in Oxford. I've rented the larger house, and as soon as the French law allows we'll get married."
"Nonsense!" she said.
He came over and stood in front of her chair and talked to her in a quiet third personal tone—as if he were the family lawyer.
"B., here we are, two unattached and lonely individuals of the opposite sexes. You said that morning in Paris that we were a sorry couple who had messed things up frightfully and wanted to cry. Well, we've got a bit more used to the mess, don't want to cry as much as we did—but—well, we want to live.
"I was a fool to ask Yetta to marry me, and she was very wise to run away. After all, she and I were strangers. She did not understand me any more than I did her. She was in love with a very nebulous sort of a dream—which I didn't resemble at all.
"It's different with us. At least we've 'the mess' in common. I don't know whether you've tried to forget our—escapade. I haven't. It seems to me, when I think of it, an immensely solemn thing—a memory I want to treasure. Somehow out of our misery a sudden understanding and sympathy was born. I'm inclined to think it was the most fundamental, the most spontaneous and real thing that ever happened to me. I'd chatted with you half adozen times, had had only one real talk with you back in New York. There in Paris, in two minutes—no, it was a matter of seconds—we knew each other better than—well—it's hard to say what I mean, because I'm not much of a mystic. But never before or since have I experienced a deeper feeling of nearness. Two years pass without a word exchanged, and, in a tawdry hotel parlor in London, with a string of people walking past the open doors, I find the same sudden understanding.
"I don't need to tell you that there in London I wished the people were not walking past the door, that right now I wish yourbonnewould disappear, so I could—
"But I don't want to talk about that. I'd like to get over something a lot deeper. It's this fundamental and immensely worth-while agreement and sympathy.
"And just because I have this conviction of understanding, I'm sure you're lonely, too—just as lonely as I am. We both of us have a desire for 'the accustomed'—for Lares and Penates. Even an escapade as delightful as the last one wouldn't quite satisfy either of us any more. 'The Other Solution' is the big house in Oxford—with a work-room for you, a study for me, and the other rooms for us."
He shook his shoulders as though to shrug off his seriousness.
"You say you don't want to get married again. That's idiotic. Haven't you lived long enough to escape from fear of this 'marriage bond' bugaboo? With all your talk of emancipation, you're still as conventional as Mrs. Grundy. Marriage will save us from tiresome ructions with the neighbors, but asfar as being afraid of the ceremony—why—I'd just as lief marry a person as lend her ten dollars.
"Where does theMairelive? I'll go down and tell him to dust his tricolor sash."
"No."
"B.,il faut de l'audace."
"It would be foolish after Paris."
"Et encore de l'audace—"
"Besides I've leased this cottage for two years."
"Et toujours de l'audace."
"Well," she said, "if you're as flippant about it as all that, I don't suppose it matters much."
The first two years onThe Clarionwere a desperate struggle for Yetta. But after all, struggle is the surest sign of life. To herself she seemed dead. The collapse of her romance had left a hollow place in her spirit, which could not be filled by work—not even the frenzy of work by which each issue ofThe Clarionwas achieved. But all this time life was gathering force within her, preparing to assert itself once more.
Our literature is full of the idea of Man, the Protector—a proposition which crumbles before the slightest criticism. The protective element in life is overwhelmingly feminine. No one of us would have survived the grim dangers of childhood except for mothering. Adult men—even though unconscious of it—are pretty generally dependent on their womenfolk.
A function unused surely turns into an ache. Because Yetta felt no one dependent on her, life seemed barren and painful. The outer wrapper of herself—the hands with which she banged out copy on her typewriter, the feet which carried her about, the eyes and ears with which she watched and listened to the conflict of labor, the tongue with which she argued andpleaded for money, the brain with which she pondered and planned—all were busy. But this hurrying activity did not touch the subtle inner substance of herself. For this there was only the barren, empty ache.
Coming downtown one night from a union meeting in the Bronx, Yetta's eye caught a paragraph in the paper which told that David Goldstein, proprietor of the Sioux Hotel, who had been shot two days before in a gang fight, had died in the City Hospital.
It was the first Yetta had heard of her relatives since she had left them. She stayed on the car until she had reached the centre of the Ghetto. A policeman, who was standing outside the Sioux Hotel, went inside for her and found her aunt's address. It was not far off, and in a few minutes Yetta found herself in the dismalest of three-room flats. Half a dozen dumb, miserable old women sat in the kitchen. It was with some difficulty that Yetta made out which was Mrs. Goldstein.
"Aunt Martha, don't you remember me?" she asked in Yiddish.
But Mrs. Goldstein was too dazed to reply. From the other women, Yetta learned that her aunt was entirely alone and penniless. The son had not been seen for several years. Rosa had disappeared. As soon as might be Yetta drove out the Kovnalands leit, and when they were gone, she knelt down beside the old woman.
"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 ina 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 nearerThe Clarionoffice. 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 intoThe Clarionoffice 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, asfrom 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 canleave 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 drugsto 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 aboutThe 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 lonelyany 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.
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, exceptThe 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 faredbetter 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 shewas 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.
"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 orNot-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 vocabularyà 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 vocabularyà deuxhad 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 suchmisunderstanding—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 ofRomeo and Julietany 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.