Comrade Yetta Part 25

"I'm going away to-morrow--for a very long while--and I want to tell you, before I go, that you're a saint, a heroine. Did books mean so much to you? And you decided to work instead of going to college? Books?" He grabbed one from the table and hurled it violently across the room.

"Books? They are only paper and ink and dead men's thoughts. Truth and wisdom don't come from books. They can't teach you those things in college. Yes. I've had books all my life. I live with them." He stamped up and down and shook his fists at the unoffending shelves. "If I know anything Real, if I've got the smallest grain of wisdom, I didn't get it from them. There's only one teacher--that's Life, and before you can learn you've got to suffer. I don't know much because things have been easy for me. How old are you? Nineteen? Well, I'm over thirty. You talk about getting down on your knees to me! Good G.o.d! I've ten years start and every advantage, but I don't know--Capital K-N-O-W--as much as you.

And good? I ought to ask your pardon for kissing your hands. I'm _no_ good! G.o.d! I want to break something!"

He looked around savagely for something which would make a great noise.

But he suddenly changed his mind, and pulling up a chair to the window-seat, where Yetta was sitting bolt upright, he began again in a quieter tone.

"Yetta, I'm a lazy, self-indulgent imbecile. I've never done anything in all my life that I didn't want to do. I've never sacrificed anything for any cause, not my easy-chairs, nor my pipe, nor my good meals, nothing.

Nothing but automobiles and yachts which I didn't want. G.o.d gave me a brain which I am too lazy to use. And besides my general uselessness and selfish waste, I'm a coward. Why am I going off to Persia? Is it because I think it will ever do anybody any good, ever make life sweeter or finer for any one, to have me decipher the picture puzzles of the people who worshipped that stupid-faced cow on the mantelpiece? No. I'm not that foolish. Is it because I don't know what I might do, if I was as wise as you are--wise enough to know that we must give our lives to win our souls? No! I know that just as well as you do, Yetta. But I'm a coward. I'm running away, because I'm afraid of life."

He jumped up again and began to pace the room.

"Oh, well!" he groaned. "Enough heroics for one afternoon. But don't let books hypnotize you, Yetta. Schopenhauer said once that the learning of the West crumples up against the wisdom of the East like a leaden bullet against a stone wall. There's nothing in books but 'learning.' And you've got some of the Eastern wisdom, Yetta. It's part of your Semitic heritage. Treasure it. Don't ever let books come between you and your intimacy with life. One pulse beat of a live heart is worth all the printed words in a thousand books. I--"

But he interrupted himself and sat down gloomily and looked out over Yetta--who had curled up once more--at the budding green tree tops of Washington Square.

His tirade had disturbed Yetta much more than he dreamed. It was not until long afterwards that she was to bring out his words from the treasure-house of her memory and come to understand what he meant by all his talk of Knowledge and Wisdom. She would never think as lightly of book learning as he did. She even less appreciated his ardently expressed admiration of her, and his self-condemnation. It was his pain which impressed her. He had fallen from his G.o.dlike majesty. He was no longer a calm-browed Olympian, who deigned to let her drink from the fountain of his wisdom. He was just a simple man, who suffered. And so Yetta began to love him.

In the wonder of it she forgot that he was going away.

"Yetta," he said abruptly. "Where are you planning to live? Are you going to stay on with Mabel and Miss Mead?"

"Why, no," she rushed dizzily down through the cold s.p.a.ces which separate Dreamland from New York City. "I--I don't suppose so. I'll find a room somewhere. On the East Side, I guess."

"That's not a good plan," he said in a businesslike tone, for in spite of all he had been saying about heartbeats, he did not suspect the disturbing rate of Yetta's pulse. "The intellectual life on the East Side is too feverish. You'll get into their very bad habit of all-night discussions, which lead only to brain-f.a.g. And besides you'd be living too near your work. You're going to study, and you'll need a place where you'll be undisturbed. I've got a suggestion. I think it would be good for you; it certainly would be a favor for me. Why not live here? I've got a long lease on the place. I wouldn't want to give it up, even if I could. I'd been planning to leave the key with Mrs. Rocco and have her come in once a month to air the rooms and chase the moths. Then I was going to pay one of the stenographers up at the University to attend to my mail. There are a few bills coming in every month, and the letters must be forwarded to me. Not half an hour's work a week, but somebody's got to do it. If you would care to, it would save me a little expense, and you'd save room rent. It's a good place to study--better than the East Side. And some of the books are worth reading. What's the matter?"

"Everybody's so kind to me," Yetta said, blinking her eyes to drive away the tears.

"This isn't kindness," he protested. "It will save me about ten dollars a month."

Taking her silence for consent, he went on to explain to her how she was to open the letters and mail a printed card explaining his absence to the writer and every week forward the bundle of mail to the French Legation in Teheran. And then he explained the money matters, how she was to pay the rent and his subscriptions to various learned and philanthropic societies and so forth.

All the while, Yetta, curled up on the window-seat, was trying to realize how very empty her life would be after he left. It would at least be some comfort to live here in his room with his ghost.

While he was still explaining the details about his mail and the bank account he would open in her name, a couple of waiters arrived laden with linen and dishes. They were from the Lafayette, where Walter was a regular patron. He knew the _chef_ and the _garcons_ by their first names and they had laid themselves out to make his farewell dinner memorable. The books and papers on the table were piled on the floor.

And just as one waiter was giving a last pat to the cloth and the other was lighting the candles, Mabel and Isadore arrived.

CHAPTER XVIII

WALTER'S FAREWELL

Mabel had come to the dinner with some reluctance. She feared that the farewell might take too personal a line for pleasure. Walter's heart was so full of bitterness that he was glad when things went to the other extreme and turned into a celebration of the strike victory.

When at last the waiters had removed the debris of the feast, and Walter was nursing the coffee urn, Mabel and Isadore began to discuss Yetta's plans. They had a great deal to say about her work in trying to ally the garment trades. But Walter, when he had distributed the coffee, broke into the conversation abruptly.

"You people seem to think," he challenged them, "that Yetta's princ.i.p.al job is to organize the garment workers."

"Well, isn't it?" Mabel asked.

"No! And I hope she won't let you two bluff her into thinking it is. Her main job for the next few years is study. The garment workers will be organized and reorganized fifty times before they get a definite formation. She's only one opportunity to form her intellect. It must last her all her life. It's more important than this work you talk about because it's to be the basis of the bigger jobs to come. All the time she's going to be torn by what looks like conflicting duties. Every day she'll wake up with the feeling that there's something she can do which would or might help in this immediate campaign. The temptation to give all her time to the union work is the worst one she'll have to face. If she yields to it, she'll regret it all her life. Three years hence the work she did in the mornings will look very small indeed and the study she neglected will look very, very big.

"When you talk about 'sweat-shops,' Mabel, you curse the bosses for robbing the girls of leisure and all chance of culture. Watch out that you don't 'sweat' Yetta, that you don't let her 'sweat' herself. It's criminal nonsense to talk work, work, work. Plenty of people will be saying that to her. I think she's got sense enough to keep her head, but you who are her friends ought to be telling her study, study, study."

"You're right, Walter," Mabel said with unusual humility.

"What we ought to do," he went on, "is to outline a course of study for her. What do you suggest, Isadore?"

"We've just published a new pamphlet which outlines a course of reading," he said. "It's called 'What to read on Socialism.'"

"That's a fine idea of a liberal education." Mabel snorted. "She isn't going to be a Socialist spellbinder. Her job's with the unions. The Webbs' _Industrial Democracy_ would help her a lot more than your Socialist tracts."

"It's just as iniquitous to sweat her intellect as her body," Longman groaned. "Can't you two blithering idiots realize that before you read any of these books you read hundreds of others, studied for years? I hope she won't specialize--in her study--on Socialism or trade-unions, either, for several years. She needs to keep her mind open and absorb a background. She ought to read Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_ before she tackles Bebel's _Woman_. She ought to read Lecky and Gibbon and John Fiske and Michelet and a lot of astronomy and geology and physics and biology--a person's an ignoramus to-day who hasn't a broad knowledge of biology--and she ought to know something about psychology before she tackles the Webbs. She ought to put in some time on pure literature. You people are thinking about Yetta Rayefsky, the labor organizer of the next few years. Well, I hope she's going to live still three score years and more than ten. It's going to do her more good to read Marcus Aurelius than Marx and Engels. She wants to know something of the traditions of the race, the great men of the past, Homer and Shakespeare and Rabelais and Swift. And above all she needs to know the ideas of our own times, Ibsen and Tolstoi, Shaw and Anatole France.

She'll pick up the Socialist and trade-union dope as she goes along.

It's the background we, her friends, can give her."

And so for an hour or more they squabbled over a large sheet of paper and at last evolved a course of reading for her. There were to be two mornings a week to natural science, two to history, two to social science and psychology, and one to literature. Yetta sat back and listened to it all, very much impressed by the way these three intellectual giants hurled at each other's heads the t.i.tles of books of which she had never heard. There was indeed very much for her to learn.

Mabel generally concurred in Walter's suggestions, but Isadore doggedly insisted that more Socialist matter should be included. He was especially rabid on the question of history.

"What's the use of learning a lot of rot you've got to unlearn? Why read Michelet and Carlyle on the French Revolution? These old idealists did the best they knew how. Carlyle really thought Mirabeau made the Revolution and Michelet thought it was Danton. But n.o.body, not even the antisocialists, believes in the 'great man theory' any more. All our history has got to be rewritten from the modern point of view. It hasn't been done yet, and the only way to get things straight is to saturate yourself in the social idea, get it into your head that this is a world of economic cla.s.ses, not individuals, then you can read anything without danger--you know how to discount it.

"You talk about 'background'--well, that's what I'm insisting on. Let's get it right. It's the lack of a deeply social background that makes so many of our well-intentioned modern reformers sterile. People still believe that great changes can be made by strong individuals. A lot of peace advocates believe that Mr. Carnegie is going to abolish war. But most seem to think that things can be reformed piecemeal. This crusade against infant mortality is a good example. Its ideal is fine. But it tries to isolate it from all the rest of the social problem and cure it alone. It can't be done. It's tied up with rotten tenements and landlordism, with bad milk and commercialism, with poor wages and industrialism. Just like war, it is a natural, inevitable part of capitalism.

"It's the same thing with the trade-unions. They try to separate their economic struggle with their bosses from the political aspect of the social problem, and it can't be done. The unionists make a pitiful showing just because they are still slaves to the old culture; they lack broad insight. The actual things they try to do are good, but they're barren because their background is wrong."

"Thanks," Mabel said sarcastically. "I'm so glad to know what's wrong with us."

"Now, Yetta," Longman said, with the gesture of a circus man introducing his curiosities, "the show is about to commence. On your right you see the 'pure,' the hidebound, the uncompromising Socialist, Isadore Braun.

To your left you see the 'suspect,' the 'bourgeoise,' step-by-step reformer, Miss Mabel Train. They are about to engage in a b.l.o.o.d.y combat."

"But," interposed Yetta, "what are you?"

"Yes," Braun echoed. "What are you?"

"That's an uninteresting detail. I'm only the referee of this bout."

"He can poke fun at a serious position," Braun said. "But he's afraid to or can't define his own."

"I'll tell you what he is, Yetta," Mabel volunteered. "He's a--"

"No, I'll tell her myself," Walter interrupted. "If you want it in one word, I'm a _syndicaliste_. We haven't any English word for it."

"He believes in a general strike," Mabel explained, "although not one trade strike in ten really succeeds."

"Exactly and because," Walter a.s.sented emphatically.