CHAPTER XXIX
WALTER'S HAVEN
While all these things were happening to Yetta, Walter was settling down into the rut of University life easily – almost contentedly. He was employed to be a scholar rather than a teacher. And while conducting classes is always a dismal task, study – to one with any bent that way – is a pleasant occupation. He was not dependent on his salary, and so escaped from the picturesque discomfort of the quarters assigned to him in the mediæval college building, to a "garden cottage." There was a lodge in front and a lawn running down to the river behind. He had found an excellent cook, who was married to an indifferent gardener. And, although his lawn was not so smooth nor his grape crop so plentiful as his neighbors', he was very pleasantly installed.
Sometimes, of course, he thought regretfully of the might-have-been life in New York. But the more he studied the Haktites, the more interesting they became. He had also revived his project of a Synthetic Philosophy.
On his return from the Christmas holidays of his second year at Oxford, he found a book in the mail which was waiting him. It was a novel —The Other Solution, by Beatrice Maynard. It had been sent to his old New York address. On the fly-leaf she had written, "Merry Xmas." It was an unexpected pleasure to have some one remember him at this holiday season. He had not received a Christmas present in years.
He hurried through his supper to begin it. Beyond occasionally filling his pipe he did not stop until the end.
It was, he decided, just such a book as he would have expected her to write! There was the patience of real art in the way it was done. Not a great book, but packed full of keen observation, and its finish was like a cameo.
It was a simple story of a very rich girl in New York. One hardly realized that it was about the Smart Set. Beatrice knew her people too well to have any illusion about their nobility or their special depravity. The men changed their clothes rather too often, but were on the whole a kindly meaning lot. The women were a bit burdened with their jewellery, but very human, nevertheless. They were all bored by their uselessness. There was a cynical old bachelor uncle, who gave the Girl epigrammatical advice about the virtue of frivolity and the danger of taking things seriously. There was a maiden aunt – the romance of whose life had been shot to pieces at Gettysburg – who had sought solace in a morbid religious intensity. She was always warning the Girl, in the phraseology of Lamentations, against light-mindedness and the Wrath to Come. The "Other Solution" proved to be a very modern kind of nerve specialist, whose own nerves were going to pieces because of overwork and the cooking of an absinthe-drinking Frenchwoman. He was just on the point of beginning to take cocaine, when Beatrice persuaded him to take the Girl, instead.
"Good work," Walter said as he closed it.
For some moments he sat there wondering what sort of an anchorage Beatrice had found. Such a book could not have been written in a hurry nor in unpleasant surroundings. He had never heard from her. At first he had been too heavy of heart to care. But as the months, growing into years, had somewhat healed his hurts, he had often thought of her. But not knowing exactly what sort of memories she held of him, he had felt that if the long silence was to be broken, it should be done by her.
He was glad she had cared enough to do it. He swung his chair around to the table and wrote to her. There was praise of the book and thanks for the remembrance. In a few paragraphs he gave a whimsical description of his bachelor establishment and of his work, and asked news of her. He addressed it in care of her publishers, a London house.
A few days later her answer came to him at breakfast-time. His letter had caught her in London, where she had come over from Normandy to arrange about her new novel. Could he not come up to town during the few days she would be there? If he wired, she would let everything else slip to keep the appointment.
He sent the gardener out with a telegram and went up on an afternoon train. It was tea time when he found her in the parlor of her hotel.
"I hope I haven't begun to show my age, as you have," she greeted him.
"You haven't."
She had both hands busy with the tea things, so he could find no opportunity to be more gallant.
"I see by your note," she said, – "is it two lumps and cream or three and lemon? – that you did not follow my advice."
"No, not exactly. Two lumps, please. I tried to. I've often wondered if you realized what irresponsible and dangerous advice it was."
So he told her about Yetta.
"I never thought she'd be such an idealistic idiot," Beatrice commented.
"Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Walter, I believe you were in love with her and did not have the sense to say so."
He waved his hands as a Spaniard does when saying, "Quien sabe?"
"What's your news?" he asked.
She told him of the charming little village she had discovered in Normandy, of her roses and poppies and of her big writing-room, which overlooked three separate backyards and gave her endless opportunity – when the ink did not flow smoothly – to study the domestic life of her neighbors. What fun it was to write! How happy she was to get back to it again! Altogether she was going to write ten novels, each one was to be an improvement, and the last one really good. And then the Sweet Chariot was going to swing low and carry her home.
"I'm getting into the stride," she said. "The Other Solution came hard. I'm so glad you liked it. I'd go stale on it. Have to lay it aside, so I've three coming out close together, now. I'm just finishing the proof of number two, Babel. It's about those crazy Transatlantiques we played with in Paris. And the next one strikes a deeper note. I think I'll call it The Mess of Pottage. It's almost finished – a couple of months' polishing. I've been working on all three of these at the same time. But from now on it's one a year – regularly."
The conversation rambled back and forth. It jumped from the criminal code of the Haktites to Strauss' Electra, and that brought them to Mrs. Van Cleave, whom Beatrice had encountered in the foyer of the Paris Opera at Pelleas et Melisande. Mrs. Van Cleave reminded them of a thousand things. The two years since they had seen each other fell away, the old intimacy returned. Beatrice suddenly reverted to Yetta.
"Don't blame me if you muddled things up. I advised you to marry her – not to get into a metaphysical discussion with her. I'm not sure but you're the bigger fool of the two. 'De l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace.' They say that Danton was a successful man with the ladies."
"The answer to that is," Walter said, "that you write your next novel in Oxford."
"Oxford! Why, a university town is no place for audacity!"
"It's the place for you," he said decisively. "To-morrow I'll rent the cottage next to mine – it's bigger. I noticed a 'To Let' sign on it this morning. It's a love of a place. And quiet! There isn't a corner of Philadelphia that's as quiet Sunday morning as Oxford is."
But Beatrice refused to consider his suggestion.
"I'm doing very well as I am, thank you. Having just got on my feet at last – no more entanglements for me!"
But two days after the summer recess began, Walter dropped off the train in her little Norman village.
"It's no use struggling, Beatrice," he said, before she had recovered from her surprise at his invasion. "You're going to write your next novel in Oxford. I've rented the larger house, and as soon as the French law allows we'll get married."
"Nonsense!" she said.
He came over and stood in front of her chair and talked to her in a quiet third personal tone – as if he were the family lawyer.
"B., here we are, two unattached and lonely individuals of the opposite sexes. You said that morning in Paris that we were a sorry couple who had messed things up frightfully and wanted to cry. Well, we've got a bit more used to the mess, don't want to cry as much as we did – but – well, we want to live.
"I was a fool to ask Yetta to marry me, and she was very wise to run away. After all, she and I were strangers. She did not understand me any more than I did her. She was in love with a very nebulous sort of a dream – which I didn't resemble at all.
"It's different with us. At least we've 'the mess' in common. I don't know whether you've tried to forget our – escapade. I haven't. It seems to me, when I think of it, an immensely solemn thing – a memory I want to treasure. Somehow out of our misery a sudden understanding and sympathy was born. I'm inclined to think it was the most fundamental, the most spontaneous and real thing that ever happened to me. I'd chatted with you half a dozen times, had had only one real talk with you back in New York. There in Paris, in two minutes – no, it was a matter of seconds – we knew each other better than – well – it's hard to say what I mean, because I'm not much of a mystic. But never before or since have I experienced a deeper feeling of nearness. Two years pass without a word exchanged, and, in a tawdry hotel parlor in London, with a string of people walking past the open doors, I find the same sudden understanding.
"I don't need to tell you that there in London I wished the people were not walking past the door, that right now I wish your bonne would disappear, so I could —
"But I don't want to talk about that. I'd like to get over something a lot deeper. It's this fundamental and immensely worth-while agreement and sympathy.
"And just because I have this conviction of understanding, I'm sure you're lonely, too – just as lonely as I am. We both of us have a desire for 'the accustomed' – for Lares and Penates. Even an escapade as delightful as the last one wouldn't quite satisfy either of us any more. 'The Other Solution' is the big house in Oxford – with a work-room for you, a study for me, and the other rooms for us."
He shook his shoulders as though to shrug off his seriousness.
"You say you don't want to get married again. That's idiotic. Haven't you lived long enough to escape from fear of this 'marriage bond' bugaboo? With all your talk of emancipation, you're still as conventional as Mrs. Grundy. Marriage will save us from tiresome ructions with the neighbors, but as far as being afraid of the ceremony – why – I'd just as lief marry a person as lend her ten dollars.
"Where does the Maire live? I'll go down and tell him to dust his tricolor sash."
"No."
"B., il faut de l'audace."
"It would be foolish after Paris."
"Et encore de l'audace– "
"Besides I've leased this cottage for two years."
"Et toujours de l'audace."
"Well," she said, "if you're as flippant about it as all that, I don't suppose it matters much."
CHAPTER XXX
EVALUATION
The first two years on The Clarion were a desperate struggle for Yetta. But after all, struggle is the surest sign of life. To herself she seemed dead. The collapse of her romance had left a hollow place in her spirit, which could not be filled by work – not even the frenzy of work by which each issue of The Clarion was achieved. But all this time life was gathering force within her, preparing to assert itself once more.
Our literature is full of the idea of Man, the Protector – a proposition which crumbles before the slightest criticism. The protective element in life is overwhelmingly feminine. No one of us would have survived the grim dangers of childhood except for mothering. Adult men – even though unconscious of it – are pretty generally dependent on their womenfolk.
A function unused surely turns into an ache. Because Yetta felt no one dependent on her, life seemed barren and painful. The outer wrapper of herself – the hands with which she banged out copy on her typewriter, the feet which carried her about, the eyes and ears with which she watched and listened to the conflict of labor, the tongue with which she argued and pleaded for money, the brain with which she pondered and planned – all were busy. But this hurrying activity did not touch the subtle inner substance of herself. For this there was only the barren, empty ache.
Coming downtown one night from a union meeting in the Bronx, Yetta's eye caught a paragraph in the paper which told that David Goldstein, proprietor of the Sioux Hotel, who had been shot two days before in a gang fight, had died in the City Hospital.
It was the first Yetta had heard of her relatives since she had left them. She stayed on the car until she had reached the centre of the Ghetto. A policeman, who was standing outside the Sioux Hotel, went inside for her and found her aunt's address. It was not far off, and in a few minutes Yetta found herself in the dismalest of three-room flats. Half a dozen dumb, miserable old women sat in the kitchen. It was with some difficulty that Yetta made out which was Mrs. Goldstein.
"Aunt Martha, don't you remember me?" she asked in Yiddish.
But Mrs. Goldstein was too dazed to reply. From the other women, Yetta learned that her aunt was entirely alone and penniless. The son had not been seen for several years. Rosa had disappeared. As soon as might be Yetta drove out the Kovna lands leit, and when they were gone, she knelt down beside the old woman.
"Don't you understand, Auntie Martha? It's little Yetta come back to take care of you. You won't ever have to worry any more. I'll take care of you."
Tears came suddenly to the old woman, the first in a long, long time, and Yetta got her to bed. Two decidedly noisy young men lodged in the front room. Yetta was rather frightened; it took her a long time to fall asleep in the stuffy bedroom beside her aunt.
It was easy to reconstruct the process by which the Goldstein family had disintegrated. Isaac was in prison. Rosa had probably gone off to live by herself – tired of bringing home wages for her father to guzzle. She would be living alone in some dismal furnished room. She had been too poorly endowed by Nature to "go wrong."
But despite the squalor of the flat and the heavy air of the dark bedroom, Yetta woke up with a new and firmer grip on life. She had found some one who needed her. The first of the next month she moved her aunt to a flat nearer The Clarion office. There were four rooms and a bath. The parlor she rented to Moore and Levine. It was a great improvement for them, and Mrs. Goldstein's cooking was less expensive and more nourishing than the restaurant fare on which they had been subsisting. Yetta shared the bedroom with her aunt.
The metamorphosis in the old woman was startling. Yetta remembered her as a very unlovely person, hardened and bitter. It had been a reflection of her environment. Now in clean and decent surroundings, in the midst of those who treated her with respect, under the sunshine of her niece's affection, she changed completely. Yetta was continually surprised to find how much her aunt reminded her of her father.
The struggle in the office was as intense as ever, but now Yetta had a home. Her wounds were healing rapidly.
Some months after her new establishment had been founded, Yetta came into The Clarion office and found confusion. Every one talked at once, and it took some minutes to get a connected story. Isadore had caved in. For several days he had been rather surly – excusing himself on the ground of a headache. That morning about nine o'clock he had tumbled out of his chair, unconscious. Dr. Liebovitz – the Comrade whom Yetta had heard speak at her first labor-meeting – had been called in. He had pronounced it typhoid fever.
"We had him taken up to our room," Harry Moore said; "Levine and I will take his. It's no place for a sick man. And besides, when the nurse goes, your aunt can take care of him."'
A sort of helplessness had fallen on the little group, now that their leader was stricken. But Levine in this crisis changed his character – or let his true character shine through his crust of pessimism. He pushed every one back into their places and set the wheels going again.
When the forms were locked up and the next day's assignment made, the office force was loath to separate. It is regrettable that the virtues of our friends are like our kidneys – we never notice them till something goes wrong. For the first time they were realizing what a tower of strength Isadore had been. As the days had passed they had more often been impressed by his occasional bursts of nervous irascibility, his unaccountable stubbornnesses. He had walked about among them, with his bent shoulder, his wrinkled, lumpy face, as far removed from Mary Ames' sentimentality, or Harry Moore's flippant optimism, as from Levine's ingrowing surliness. His most salient characteristic seemed to have been that he was "always there." Now he was gone.
"He's so modest and simple," Harry said, "that we never noticed how strong he was."
"I wish there was something I could do for him," Nell sniffled.
"Well, I guess the best medicine we can give him," Yetta said, sticking the pin in her hat decisively, "is to report every week that the circulation has jumped."
The accustomed streets were a blur as she walked home. The idea that Isadore was sick, helpless, was as disturbing as if the paper had announced that the Rock of Gibraltar had escaped from its moorings and was floating away.
In the dining-room she found her aunt, with Jewish gloominess, predicting the worst. Yetta went down the hall and knocked lightly at the parlor door. It was opened by a nurse. The room was darkened, but she caught a glimpse – which was to stick in her memory – of Isadore's haggard face above the sheets. The nurse put her finger to her lips and came out into the hall.
"It's typhoid, all right," she said.
"Dangerous?"
"It's always dangerous. But there isn't a better doctor in the city for typhoid than Liebovitz. He'll be in again in a few minutes. I'll go back now."
Yetta stood there in the dim hallway, appalled, looking more closely into the face of Death than she had ever done before. There was something unbelievable in the thought that Isadore might die. All the fibres of her strong young body revolted at the idea. But beyond the closed door the dread fight was in progress. The pale face she had glimpsed was unconscious of it all. As far as Isadore was concerned Death had already won. Liebovitz and the nurse would have to do his fighting for him.
She heard her aunt admitting the doctor. She had never seen him when he was working before. With a curt greeting he strode past her and entered the sick-room. She stood in the doorway unnoticed.
"What's the temperature?"
"105. "
There was a string of questions and answers given in an unemotional tone. They seemed almost flippant to Yetta, impious, in the face of the great tragedy. She felt hurt that he did not do something at once.
At last Liebovitz took off his hat and turned abruptly to the bed. After a moment's scrutiny of the patient's face, he turned down the covers. It seemed to Yetta that he was suddenly transformed into a pair of Hands. The rest of him melted away. His half-shut eyes were fixed blankly on the wall as his wonderful, infinitely sensitive hands played about Isadore's heart. Then he knelt down and became an Ear. His eyes were quite shut now, as he listened, listened – the intense strain of it showing on his rigid face – to the almost inaudible rumble of the battle raging within the sick man's chest. Then he straightened up, the mystic appearance left him; he became once more the ordinary, cold-blooded professional man.
"You've a telephone?" he asked the nurse. "Good. You can get Ripley any time this afternoon if you need some one quick. Call me up at the Post Graduate at five minutes to four. I've a lecture – till five. I can leave it if necessary. I'll come down right afterwards, anyhow."
Yetta tried to detain him in the hall to ask about the chances.
"Too busy to talk," he said. "Anyhow I'm no wizard. I can't prophesy. He's pretty sick. But he'll have to get a lot sicker before we let go. Really, I can't stop now. I've got a confinement, a T. B. test, and an operation before four."
Yetta went out into the kitchen and set her aunt to work getting supper for the nurse. Then, feeling suddenly very tired, she went to her room. But she could not sleep. The wonder of a doctor's life had caught her imagination. It dizzied her to try to realize what it must mean to rush, as Liebovitz was doing, from a desperate struggle with death to a childbirth.
Again and again the vision came back to her of Isadore's shrunken, pallid face.
When the doctor came down after his lecture, Yetta asked if she could be of any help in the sick-room.
"No," he replied shortly. "You'd only use up good air."
She had never felt so useless before in her life. The next few days passed – in dread. Most of the time she spent at the office. She had taken on Isadore's editorial work. There was some comfort in that. His other tasks had been divided between Locke and Moore and Levine. A big strike broke out in the Allied Building Trades; it meant extra work – but also increased circulation. After the day's grind, Yetta came back to the hushed home where the great battle was being fought out and where she was perforce a non-combatant.
There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask the doctor, but he was generally too busy to talk. One night after Isadore had been sick more than a week Liebovitz came down from a lecture in a genial mood.
"I hope your aunt has cooked a big supper," he said. "Nothing to eat at home. The good wife is house cleaning."
"Well. How's it going?" Yetta asked, as he came out of the sick-room and sat down to a plate of steaming noodle-soup.
"We've done our part. It's up to him now. We've pulled him through the regular crisis. If he don't take it into his head to relapse and if he really wants to get well, I guess he will."
He answered her questions in monosyllables until he had stowed away the last of Mrs. Goldstein's cooking. Then, lighting a cigarette and putting three lumps of sugar in his coffee, he began joking with the old woman in Yiddish. But Yetta kept interrupting him with more questions.
"You want to know what I think?" he said, turning to her severely. "Well, listen. I think Isadore will get well. I hope so. It wouldn't do any good to have him die. None of you people would read the lesson. But he don't deserve to. For ten years he's been violating all the rules of health regularly. You're all intelligent enough to understand some of Nature's laws, but you're too utterly light-minded to obey them! Isadore started out with a wonderful constitution and now is so run-down that an insignificant little typhoid germ gets into his mouth and nearly kills him. Good God. You all want to blame the germ. But they can't do any harm unless you're already sick – made yourself sick, as Isadore has. I'm not afraid of them – my business takes me right where they live. I'm as hard as nails. And you ought to see my kids. They're as sound as I am."
"What do you mean by his making himself sick? Overwork?"
"Overwork? Thunder! I don't get as much undisturbed sleep as he did. I've been 'overworking' longer than he has. Work doesn't hurt people – not if they are living sensibly. You people – all of you – are abnormal, almost hysterical, in your attitude towards life. You take the little jobs of life too seriously and aren't serious enough about the big job of living.
"Isadore doesn't realize – never has – that a man needs rest and relaxation. He doesn't know what play means. Treats his body as a machine. He ought to be married. Ought to have a wife and children to think about besides his work – some one to play with. Some one to beat him over the head, if necessary, to distract his attention from the rut his mind has fallen into. He thinks too much over the generations of the future, not enough over this one and the next. And then he just naturally ought to have a wife, as every man who wants to be normally healthy does. Living like a monk and trying to do a real man's work! But what's the use of talking? You won't listen. It'll get you, too – just as sure as sunrise. Then you'll come yelping to me to help you out."
"Why, I'm well," Yetta protested. "I don't know any one in better condition than I am."
"Humph," he snorted.
He finished his coffee, and getting up, stamped about the room impatiently.
"Yetta, why do you suppose Nature divided the race into male and female? For more millions of years than we can count Nature has been at work making women, shaping their bodies by minute steps, forming intricate organs within them – for a special task. Back of you are myriad generations of females. You wouldn't be alive to-day, you'd never have been born, if a single one of them had neglected her woman's work. Do you think that all of a sudden you can break this age-old habit? That you can waste all the pain and travail of your myriad mothers with impunity? You're twenty-four now. For more than five years now you've been thwarting life, rendering barren all the vast time, the appalling agony, the ceaseless struggle, it has cost Nature to produce you – with your chance to pass on the flame of life. Out of all these millions of mothers, thousands and thousands have given their life that the line might be preserved. It doesn't matter at all what reason you can give for not having had children. I admit there are a few good reasons. But Nature is insistent in this matter of the next generation – as cold as a sword's edge. It seems almost like human spite. But you can't blame her. It's such appalling waste to throw away all the toiling, suffering generations back of us. You can't expect Nature to be indifferent; it has cost her so much. And she's got this advantage over God, her punishments come in this life. Four, five, perhaps ten years, you can go along without noticing it. Then you'll come to me. 'I have headaches, backaches. I'm irritable. I don't sleep." I can give you drugs to deaden the headache, dope which will make you seem to sleep. I can ward off a little of Nature's revenge – but I can't cure you. There are plenty of accidents and some kinds of sickness that you can't blame a person for, but drying up into barren, unlovely old maidhood ought to be forbidden by law.
"Lord," he exclaimed, looking at his watch, "it's late. I promised to speak at a Socialist meeting up in the Bronx, but I've got to look in at two cases first. So long."
For a moment Yetta sat still, pondering over what the doctor had said. The thing which impressed her most was the stupendous idea of the unbroken line of mothers which stretched back of her to that dim epoch when the new element of life first appeared on the shores of the primordial sea.
But in thinking back about it in after years, it did not seem to her that the doctor's talk had influenced her very much. She was a fearless person and the threat of personal ill-health would not have daunted her. Her feeling towards Isadore had already changed.
It was the long months of common work and mutual aspirations which had drawn her closer and closer to him. The change in their relationship had been so gradual that it needed some shock to open her eyes. The sudden realization, the day he had fallen sick, of the sharp contrast between his former strength and his utter weakness, had been the beginning. At first, when she saw that she had come to love him, it had been hard to believe. But the day after the crisis, while helping the nurse to change the bed linen, she had had to lift him. His emaciation had appalled her. And in his delirium, he had called her name. It was then that she saw clearly.
One night, not long after he had given her the lecture, Liebovitz came out of the sick-room.
"He's clear-headed now, and he's worrying about the paper. Go in and talk to him. Give him good news if you have to lie, and get him to sleep."
Isadore opened his eyes as she leaned over him and smiled when he recognized her. He had forgotten all about The Clarion. But she had to say something to keep back the tears; it was so painfully wonderful to mean so much to another.
"The circulation has gone up to 20,000."
But he had already dropped back to sleep at the bare sight of her.
It had not been a lie. The circulation was growing steadily. Isadore's sickness had seemed a spur to the energy of every one connected with the paper. The news that he was recovering had given them all a new hope, a new determination to put it on a firmer basis against his return.
Isadore gradually fought his way back to life. But it was a long and dreary convalescence. There was snow on the ground when he fell sick. Summer had begun in earnest before he was able to walk across the room. One Saturday afternoon, Yetta came in joyous and found him stretched out on the lounge.
"What do you think, Isadore? When the ghost walked to-day, every pay envelope was full. What do you think of that? It was a revolution. Mary Ames didn't have a chance to cry, and Levine couldn't find anything to grumble about. They were both unhappy."
"I don't see why I worked so hard to get well," he said wearily. "You're getting along better without me than when I was there."
"I hope you're ashamed of yourself," she said, taking off her hat and sitting down beside him. "I bring you home some good news and that's all the thanks I get."
Isadore blinked his eyes hard, but in spite of himself two great tears escaped down his cheeks.
"What's the matter, old fellow?" Yetta asked in dismay.
"Oh, nothing. Only I'm so foolishly weak still. Of course I'm glad. Only it's easy to get discouraged." The tears escaped all control. "It's dreary coming back to life."
Above all other advice, Dr. Liebovitz had insisted that Isadore should not be excited. But Yetta forgot all about that. She knelt down on the floor beside him.
"Isadore, when you were very sick, you talked a good deal in your sleep. Do you know who you talked about?"
"You."
"Is it just the same as ever, Isadore?"