Yetta

“ In the months that followed Rachel's departure Yetta began to lose hope. She could see no promise of escape, and lethargic time gradually faded the colors of her dream. The flame of holy discontent which had blazed for a while in her soul threatened to go out. Sometimes she wondered what had happened to Rachel. But "Speed" eats up a person's power of wondering.
Yetta had been at the machine for a long time now. Her muscles had become hardened. She did not often suffer from weariness any more, but she had, without knowing it, commenced to go downhill. ”

“ No Wise Man of all the ages has learned the trick of keeping her always at his side.
The memories of the day's stark realities would submerge Yetta. Back of her was the squalid flat, the snores of her loveless relatives. In her dark bedroom her one frayed dress was hung over the back of a chair, waiting for her to put it on and hurry through the dawn to Jake Goldfogle's Vest Shop. Routine—hopeless monotony! A prison tread—from the vitiated air and uneasy sleep of the tenement, so many steps to the cruel speed and inhumanity of the Machine. ”

“ In the next few months Yetta learned a new meaning for the word "work." In the sweat-shop, day after day, she had sat before the machine, her mind a blank, three-quarters of her muscles lifeless, the rest speeding through a dizzying routine. Only when a thread broke had there been any thought to it. In the new work there was no repetition, none of this dead monotony. Every act, every word she spoke, was the result of a consciousness vividly alive. In the keen, exhilarating thrill of it she had little time to mope over Walter's absence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Consul made a formal and stilted speech on behalf of the French Colony in New York. Yetta was as much impressed as Walter was bored. When this disturbance was over, he made her talk about herself. The meal was finished before she was half through with her news.
"Come on," he said. "It's too blazing hot to be in town. Let's jump on a ferry and go down to Staten Island."
"I ought to go up to the League."
"Oh! bother the League. One doesn't come home from Persia every day in the year. I want to celebrate." ”

“ 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 cases were full and so was the table and so were some of the chairs and there were books on the floor. Knowledge was a goal which her father had set before Yetta as almost synonymous with "goodness" and "happiness." It was a thing she had forgotten about in the sweat-shop, but for which her recent experience had given her an all-consuming hunger. No one who has been "sent to college," who has had an education thrust upon him, can realize how much she venerated books. When Longman brought her to his room, it seemed to her as if she had entered the home of her dreams. ”

“ And when Yetta seen it was only poker chips she knew the kid couldn't buy candy with 'em—not even in Yonkers; so she didn't think any more about it until it come over her—just like that—how quiet everything was. Oh, that Yetta would certainly be found bone clear to the centre if her skull was ever drilled—the same stuff they slaughter the poor elephants for over in Africa—going so far away, with Yetta right there to their hands, as you might say. ”

“ She had heard Pick-Axe talk before. The girls had told her that the worst thing they had suffered during their imprisonment was what they had had to listen to, insults and obscenity and the mad ravings of the "drunks."
Although Yetta was not afraid nor surprised, her whole being shuddered under it. Her flesh seemed to contract in an effort to escape the contagion of such loathsomeness. For years she would turn suddenly pale at the barest memory of that torrent of abuse. Once Pick-Axe came close as if he was going to strike her, but the detective pulled him away. Yetta was almost sorry. ”

“ She had never been so happy in all her life, but most of the time her eyes were filled with tears. She imagined herself first as one of the girls and then as another. There was one whose shirtwaist seemed especially beautiful. Yetta was convinced that if she were a millionnaire, or if a fairy godmother should offer her one choice, she would choose just such clothes. There was one of the young men, a curly-haired, laughing fellow, whom she had noticed on Thursday nights. Whenever he took part in the debates, all the other men clapped violently. Generally she imagined herself dancing with him. ”

“ CHAPTER XV THE WORKHOUSE
In the afternoon Yetta was loaded into "the wagon" with a lot of "drunks" and prostitutes and taken up to the Department dock to wait for the ferry across to the Island.
She had not realized how the month's strain had tired her until the excitement was over and she was on the tug in midstream. In sheer weariness, she turned round on her seat and, crossing her arms on its back, buried her face in them. Presently she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't take it so hard, Little One," a not unkindly voice said. "It's fierce at first, but you get used to it." ”

“ She had gone through the forms of life, seeking listlessly after distraction. The thing which had come nearest to reality had been her interest in the Woman's Trade Union League. She had gone on the Board because her husband urged her to make friends with Mrs. Van Cleave. It held her interest because her own hunger-years had given her a deep sympathy.
Although she did not realize it, it was Yetta who had at last driven her to leave her husband. She had caught some of Yetta's life-giving faith. It takes us a long time to recover when once we are dead, and Mrs. Karner had been a long time dead. ”

“ I went away—stop and think a moment how very little you know of me—and you made a romance about me. Romance is a very dangerous thing. It's a sort of Lorelei song, Yetta. After all, our business is to push on down the River, not to stop and play with the fairies on the rocks. It's a real world we must live in, Yetta dear, not a dream, and the facts must be faced. Youth is worth more than anything else. Your kisses made me forget to think of you—Isadore reminded me."
"What are you trying to do, Walter?" ”

“ Isadore with his faith in the political party, Yetta in close touch with the trade-unions, and he to furnish a broader, more philosophical expression of the movement of revolt. They were three able, intelligent people who were not afraid. What better thing could he do with the remnant of his life than to weld them into an organized force? Gradually they would attract other brains to their group. Just such an intellectual centre was what the movement needed. The idea at least had the virtue of stirring a wave of true enthusiasm in him. ”

“ Her first effort to escape from the vicious rut into which she had fallen had led her to the brink of a greater shame, a surer disaster. Of all the people with whom life had brought [Pg 114] her into contact, three seemed preëminently good: her father, Longman, and Mabel Train. They all loved Liberty. Once her eyes had been opened, Yetta would gladly have given up much more to the New Cause. As it was, the crusade seemed to her not a sacrifice, but an escape. An irresistible force was pushing her into Revolt—la force majeure of poverty. ”

“ Yetta said, putting her hand to her back—"Es is schon verbei."
[Pg 27]
Mrs. Cohen at the bottom of the table laughed mirthlessly.
"It will come back," she screamed in Yiddish above the din of the machinery. "I know. It begins so. One speeds two, three years—four—with one it is the lungs, with another it is the back, or the eyes." She seized the momentary pause to ease herself with coughs.
Mrs. Levy, who had been long in the trade, had seen many a "speeder" give in; some slowly, some suddenly. ”

“ She wondered how many of them had been to Bryn Mawr.
Mabel called Yetta from the doorway to introduce the Rev. Dunham Denning, the rector of Mrs. Van Cleave's church, who was to act as chairman. And then she was presented to an honorable gentleman named Crossman, who had once been a cabinet member and had gray hair, and a wart on his nose. These [Pg 208] two elderly gentlemen embarrassed Yetta very much by their courtly attentions. ”

“ He paced the room aimlessly for several minutes, then filled his pipe and, turning out the light, went back to the window-seat. He was not exactly suffering. He felt himself miserably inert and dead.
But one thing he saw clearly—and it made him glad. Yetta's romance had come while she was still young. She was only twenty-two. Life would pick her up again. It might be Isadore, it might be some one else. But her pulse was too strong to let her decay. There are many real joys in life if you get rid of romance early enough. ”

“ Broadway she was nearly blown off her feet. All the winds of heaven—the biting, penetrating winds of a late spring storm—were caught in Washington Square as in a funnel, and escaped through the narrow cañon of East Fourth Street. Although Yetta was late, she was surprised to find no other picket before the Crown Vest Company. They were always assigned in couples. Her surprise turned to distress when she recognized the "private detective" in the doorway. His real name nobody knew. He called himself Brennan, but the girls called him "Pick-Axe." He was the one they dreaded more than any other. ”

“ She was not reason's choice, for the intellect is colorless and Yetta was resplendent.
To admit the dominance of this irrational emotion was to abandon all his gods, to turn his back on his only religion. It is hard for most of us to realize the deep tragedy of Isadore's position. Few of us believe ardently in anything. We have a comfortable ability to keep our faith in things we know are false, a lazy credulity for exploded theories. We go on burning our incense at shrines the gods have deserted. We pretend to a love of liberty we do not feel. ”

“ It's too big a task to be accomplished by one brain or one generation."
They fell silent again. Yetta, looking off across the lake,—unconscious of the beauty of the view,—was thinking desperately of this matter of love, and was realizing with pain, as all who try to write must do, her utter inability to express what this Mystery of Love meant to her. She could not even tell Isadore.
Her girlish romance about Walter seemed to her now almost as empty as her affair with Harry Klein. She had at first given herself to Isadore on a rather intellectual basis. ”

“ She walked through life a high-class physical machine, a keen, forthright intellect. But it did not seem to matter very much to her. Nothing did. The moments came when she cursed the Fates for having sent Walter to rescue her from Harry Klein. That could have been no more painful, and it would have been over quicker. The years she had spent studying seemed only to have increased her capacity for suffering.
Each day was a task to be accomplished. The very uncertainty of The Clarion's existence fitted into Yetta's mood. Any moment the flimsy structure might collapse. ”

“ Yetta knew that the narrow red ribbon in his buttonhole was the Legion of Honor. And he was calmly proposing to give up what seemed to her a great renown for the obscure career of Socialist propaganda. Her love put forth blossoms.
"Gee," he interrupted himself at last. "It's long past lunch-time. Let's go over to the Lafayette. Any of the old waiters still there?"
Although Walter insisted that the cooking had deteriorated, it was a resplendent meal to Yetta. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He must get her out on the sidewalk—into his own country.
"Come on," he said gruffly, taking firm hold of her arm. "I've had enough of this. Come on, I say. I ain't going to listen to hot air all night."
In her moment of exaltation, Yetta had almost forgotten the existence of her fiancé. His brusque manner broke into her mood with a suddenness which dazed her. He had led her down the hall, nearly to the door, before she could collect her wits. Beyond the door was the dark night and helplessness and unknown fear. ”