Comrade Yetta Part 31

"I'm sorry we can't agree on this, Comrade," she said. "We do on most things. Of course I may be making a mistake. But I've got to do what seems right to me--haven't I?"

"Yetta," he said, looking up at her suddenly, "are you in love with Walter Longman?"

She stiffened up at the question, but Isadore cut short her indignation.

"Oh, I know, Yetta. Just loving you doesn't give me a right to ask that question. But sometimes I've thought you loved Walter. He's my best friend. He wouldn't want you to go into this."

He looked at her tensely. It was a minute before she took up his challenge.

"I care a great deal for Walter's good opinion," her voice was low, but even. "I am quite sure he would be glad I had this chance. But even if he thought it was unwise for me to accept it, he would not try to browbeat me."

Isadore had shot his last bolt, it had rebounded on his own head. He fumbled for his hat.

"Good night, Yetta," he said.

"Good night, Mr. Braun."

The first month, Mr. Brace went over Yetta's contributions in detail, cramming into her all the advice he could think of. About the time his stock of journalistic epigrams ran out, the reports from the circulation manager were so favorable, that he decided he could give his attention to other things. Mr. Brace, like all good newspaper men, was a mystic in such matters. G.o.d only knows what the public will like. It was his business to scatter seeds. If they took root and grew into "circulation," he had sense enough to leave them alone. And Yetta's column had "caught on."

At the end of three months the contract was renewed with a substantial increase in salary. The posters which advertised her work became more flamboyant. The size of her mail grew daily. The letters dealt with all the worries working girls are heirs to. Some of them were frivolous, most were commonplace. But once in a while among the misspelt, poorly written scrawls, there would be a throbbing story of life. Such letters tore at Yetta's heart--giving her new determinations, new enthusiasm for her work. As their number increased Yetta knew that her audience, her influence, was growing. The Fates were smiling at her. She was earning more money than she had ever hoped. Better still, she had as much time as before for the League work. She was rarely kept in the office after noon. It did not occur to her that she might have demanded an increase in salary on the ground of the free advertising she was giving _The Star_ by her frequent speeches.

She was disappointed, however, not to be able to establish more cordial relations with her fellow-workers. These newspaper people, men and women, worked under as great a strain as any sweat-shop girls, but they seemed more foreign to her--to her cla.s.s--than the rich uptown women she had met through the League. They had many good qualities which she appreciated--their _esprit de corps_, their hearty, open manners, the camaraderie with which they lent each other money. But they were shot through with a cynicism which shocked her. The whole situation was typified in the case of Maud Ripley, a special story writer, who tried to "take her up."

She was a tired-eyed, meagre woman of near forty. She was brilliant.

Every one in the office referred to her for facts and figures instead of going to the encyclopaedia. Some of the things she wrote appealed strongly to Yetta, others were utterly futile. Besides her signed articles, mostly interviews with prominent foreigners,--she was fluent in half a dozen modern languages,--she composed "The Meditations of a Marriageable Maid." She was rather proud of this cheap wit.

She seemed to like Yetta, but always introduced her as "_The Star's_ new sob-squeezer." Apparently she saw nothing in the new recruit but a successful pathos writer--a rising star in the profitable business of starting tears.

This att.i.tude, which Yetta encountered on all sides, hurt her. She read some of "Lilian Leberwurtz'" writings. She had discovered that the real name of this woman with whom she was expected to compete was Mrs.

Treadway. It was hopeless slush; it sickened her. She tried vainly to picture the type of woman who could write such drivel seriously.

"Dine with me Sunday," Miss Ripley asked her one day. She always talked in the close-packed style of a foreign correspondent who telegraphs at a dollar a word. "My flat. People you ought to know."

Yetta was essentially inclusive, she did not like to turn her back on any proffered friendship. So at one the next Sunday she rang the bell of the uptown flat where Maud lived alone. There was one woman and three men in the parlor.

"Who are they," Yetta whispered as she was brushing her hair in Maud's bedroom.

"Matthews writes 'best sellers'--doesn't expect his friends to read them. Conklin has money--afford to write high-brow books that don't sell. Have to read between the lines. I'm too busy. Potter's a decadent poet. A bore, but all the rage. Mrs. Treadway--Lilian Leberwurtz--motherly old soul. Never know to look at her that she's the best-paid woman in the game--come on."

Of course Yetta was most interested in Mrs. Treadway. She would hardly have called her motherly, although she sometimes referred to her son in Harvard and frequently used the phrase--"when you get to be my age."

She was a large-bosomed, gaudy person with an almost expressionless face. Her gown looked cheap in spite of its evident expensiveness, and her jewellery was ma.s.sive. But it was not her appearance nor her ponderous condescension which troubled Yetta. Mrs. Treadway in her first half-dozen words showed herself to be utterly sophisticated. She did not try to hide the insincerity of her work--she seemed to glory in it. Her first concern was to make it apparent that she was not such a fool as one would judge from her sentimental advice.

Matthews exuded prosperity from his lavender socks up to his insistent tie--but the brilliancy did not seem to go higher. Conklin was apologetic in comparison. His face was spare, and when he was amused, deep curved wrinkles formed on either side of his mouth like brackets.

The parenthetical effect of his smile was heightened by the fact that the rest of his face remained sombre. The poet looked his part.

When Yetta arrived, they were all looking at the latest number of _La vie parisienne_. Mrs. Treadway was shaking--like a gelatine pudding--over the predicament in which one of Fabriano's naked women was portrayed. Potter began a ponderous argument on the humor of Audrey Beardsley's lines and the wit of Matisse's color. He p.r.o.nounced Fabriano "too obvious." He was happily interrupted by the announcement of dinner.

The conversation rambled on through the meal. No one stuck to a subject after their epigrams had run out. n.o.body was deeply interested in anything. Much of it dealt with things about which Yetta was proud of her ignorance.

The dinner was almost a disaster to her. "Of course," she told herself as she walked home, "this group is not typical. There are people, there must be people, who take their writing seriously." But the att.i.tude of Maud Ripley and her friends had shocked Yetta deeply. The worst of it was that they respected her in a way--because she was "making good." But the fact that she was in earnest did not interest them. She would not have dropped the least in their esteem if she had been utterly insincere. She felt as if she had been insulted.

The next day a new incident increased Yetta's feeling of foreignness in the office. She was waiting in the reporters' room for a chance to see Brace. Cowan, the gray-haired sporting editor, was telling whimsical stories of the "old days" when he had been a cub. Although older in years than the others, he was the youngest-hearted of them all. Yetta felt more drawn to him than to any one else on _The Star_.

Suddenly a curly-haired Irishman, O'Rourke, burst in. He always entered a room with a deafening bang.

"Gee," he said--"some story this morning. A greenhorn bank-examiner, who didn't know his A B C, dropped into Ex-Governor Billings' bank yesterday and found a pretty mess. The old boy never had a bank-examiner come in unexpectedly like that before in his long and useful life. It nearly gave him apoplexy. And he just putting up his name for the Senate. But this blundering bank-examiner was not such a fool after all. The story goes that Billings had to come across with an awful wad to hush him up."

"Why? Did the examiner find something wrong?" Yetta asked.

"Yes, my child," O'Rourke said with playful pity. "He was that foolish."

"What did he find?" Yetta persisted.

"Unsecured loans. Billings had been lending himself the depositors'

money, using his calling card as collateral."

"What'll happen to Billings?"

"It's a shame for you to go around town without a nurse," O'Rourke teased her. "It was decided a long time ago that Billings was to be the next United States Senator from the glorious State of New York. A little accident like this can't be allowed to interfere."

"It's a rotten shame," Cowan said. He was old enough not to have to try to appear blase. "They're going too strong--putting over a crook like that on the people. Everybody with any memory knows his record. In the good old days when yellow journalism was just beginning, before we got so respectable we couldn't print the truth, we showed Billings up--how he came through for the railroads on that Death Avenue grade crossing."

"Oh, that's ancient history. It's only six months ago--" another reporter began. One after another they added details to the Ex-Governor's record of infamy. But that afternoon's paper contained a eulogistic article on his patriotic achievement. An editorial which Yetta knew O'Rourke had written praised him to the skies, and said the people of the State were to be congratulated that so worthy a man had consented to accept the nomination. Yetta could not understand the psychology of these men who, having in hand the evidence to defeat an unworthy candidate for public office, did not use it. This was worse than cynicism--it was shameful.

As she was leaving the office a few days later, Cowan rode down in the elevator with her.

"If you don't mind, Miss Rayefsky," he said, when they had dodged the cars and had safely reached City Hall Park, "I'd like to give you a little advice. Perhaps I'm b.u.t.ting in where I'm not wanted. But you see, my youngest daughter is older than you are. And I guess breaking into a new job and a new crowd isn't the easiest thing in the world for a girl. I won't mind if you do snub me."

"Let's sit down a minute," Yetta said. "I'd like to talk to you. I certainly do feel lost."

"Well--" He was evidently embarra.s.sed. He seemed to give up hope of being tactful and dove into his subject. "I overheard one of the men say that you'd been to a dinner at Maud Ripley's. She's a clever woman. But I'd not like to see one of my daughters tie up with her."

"I didn't enjoy myself," Yetta said. "I'm not going again."

"Good. That's all I had to say. She probably wouldn't do you any harm--certainly wouldn't try to. But newspaper men don't think much of her--except her brain. Excuse me for b.u.t.ting in."

He started to get up, but Yetta detained him. She was very deeply touched by his kindly interest in her.

"There are a lot of things I would like to ask you, if you've the time."

She began on the affair of the Ex-Governor. Why did not Cowan and O'Rourke and the others use their knowledge against him? The answer to that was simple. They would lose their jobs. Karner and Billings were friends. But this did not satisfy Yetta. They argued it out for half an hour. n.o.body saw the defects and limitations of journalism more clearly than Cowan, and yet he was utterly loyal.

"If my son doesn't turn out a newspaper man, I'll disown him," he said emphatically. "Now don't you go and get sore on newspaper work because it isn't all honest. It's one whole lot better than when I began. The Press is the hope of Democracy, and it is also its measure. Of course Karner's ethics are a bit queer. But no crookeder than the people will stand for. He'd be honest if it paid.

"The people can have just as good and clean a paper as they really want.

They get better and more democratic ones to-day than they did twenty years ago, and when they want one that is really straight, they'll get that.

"Of course it's bad if you want to look at it that way. It's a compromise game. But there isn't any cla.s.s of people in the country who are doing more for progress than this bunch of cynical newspaper men.