YETTA FINDS HERSELF
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, except _The 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 fared better 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 she was 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 or _Not_-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 vocabulary _à 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 vocabulary _à deux_ had 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 such
_mis_understanding--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 of _Romeo and Juliet_ any 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.
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 knew him profoundly before she had
married him. She had been quite sure of a life of loving comradeship and
mutual understanding. From a matter of fact, work-a-day point of view
the marriage was to be as satisfactory as she could imagine. And to all
this had been added an unexpected element--this mystic, unexpressible
joy of sex. Yetta had the sense to know that she was fortunate above
most women. She looked up at the dear face above her, hoping to find
some gesture to express the overflowing happiness for which she could
find no words. She was struck by the look of intense thought on his
face.
"What are you thinking about, Ib?"
He started, as he came back from his revery.
"I've been thinking," he said, "that we'll have to be awfully tactful
when we get back to the office. Smith and Levine have been running
things so long by themselves that it's only human for them to be a bit
jealous about our coming back."
These words caused a very complicated mix-up in Yetta's mind.
The hereditary woman in her, the part of her which was formed by the
myriad wives who had been her ancestors, shuddered as though under the
lash at the idea that on this very last day his thoughts had gone so far
away. Every cell in her brain had been intent on him. She had just
decided that no one had ever loved any one as much as she loved him--and
he had been thinking of the office. A tidal wave of tears started
instinctively towards her eyes.
But all that was modern about Yetta, all that part of her which had
learned to reason, was suffused with tenderness, as the other part of
her would have been by a caress. She was proud of the single-minded
devotion of her man. She was not surprised at the tangent along which
his thoughts had flown. She had the immense advantage over most brides,
that she knew her husband. She knew the depth of sincerity which was
sometimes obscured by his pedantic phrases. She had learned to love
_him_. She had been spared the pain of discovering a reality back of a
dream of love. The only new thing she had learned about him since their
marriage was the wealth of tenderness back of his rather rough
exterior,--the gentle consideration that lay under his rugged
manners,--the undreamed-of sweetness which was hidden to most eyes by
his evident force. She was not disillusioned by intimacy.
For a few minutes she let him talk about the work that was awaiting
them. She was as much interested in it as he. But at last the hereditary
woman within her reminded her that after all this was their last day of
solitude. She stopped listening to him and considered the matter from
this point of view for a moment. Then she shamelessly interrupted him in
the midst of a ponderous sentence.
"Ib," she said, "I love you."
They had been back in the city many months before their faces lost the
mark of the sun. In due course of time Comrade Yetta Braun qualified to
edit the "Mother's Column."