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?"
"_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 lonesomeness."
"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 lonely any 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.