Comrade Yetta Part 5

But it was a basic belief of these two gentlemen that "a beating is never wasted on a woman."... It was from this time that Rachel began to kill herself with "booze." She did not like to remember how she had betrayed Yetta. And drink helped her to forget.

There were few things which Jake, or Harry Klein--it does not matter what name we use for him, for a hundred aliases were on the back of his portrait in the Rogues' Gallery--there were not many things which he enjoyed more than seeing some one cower before him. The servility with which "Blow Away" had obeyed his orders, the wild terror and pa.s.sionate pleadings of Rachel, had tickled the nerves of his perverted being, and he smacked his lips as he went downstairs and out into the twilight of the open streets.

He was the recognized leader of the princ.i.p.al East Side "gang"--a varied a.s.sortment of toughs, "strong-arm men," pickpockets, "panhandlers," and pimps. It must not be supposed, however, that these various professions were sharply differentiated. There is a h.o.a.ry tradition which says that once upon a time the under world of New York City was divided into rigid cla.s.ses and cliques, when a "dip" looked down on a beggar, and highway robbers had a professional pride which kept them from a.s.sociating with panders. But in the year of grace 1903--when Jake's crooked trail ran across Yetta's path--such delicate distinctions, if they ever had existed, were entirely lost. Many a man who claimed to be a prize-fighter sometimes "stuck up a drunk." The "flyest" pickpocket did not disdain the income to be derived from the sale of "phony" jewellery.

It was no longer possible to distinguish a "yeggman" from a "flopper,"

and even bank robbers wrote "begging letters." And of all "easy money,"

the easiest is from prost.i.tution. There were very few denizens of the under world who did not have one or two women "on the string." Even the legendary aristocracy of forgers had sunk thus low.

The political manifestation of the gang over which Jake ruled was the James B. O'Rourke Democratic Club, of which he was president. This organization maintained, with the help of a subsidy from Fourteenth Street, a shabby parlor floor club-room on Broome Street. They gave one ball and one picnic a year. A central office detective, if he had attended a meeting, could have given a "pedigree" for almost all the members. But the political bigbugs, the members of the city administration, who sometimes came to visit the club, did not bring a detective with them. They saw only a roomful of ardent young Democrats.

The good-will of the club was an important a.s.set to aspiring politicians; the members would willingly vote half a dozen times for a candidate they liked.

The social centre of the gang was a "Raines Law" hotel on lower Second Avenue. It had a very glittering back parlor for "ladies." There, and in the Hungarian Restaurant next door, Jake's followers spent their moments of relaxation. The frontier between their territory and that of hostile gangs was several blocks away. The "hang out" was just inside the borders of a police precinct, with whose captain they had a treaty of peace.

The more professional headquarters were in an innocent-looking barber shop on Chrystie Street. In the back there was a pool parlor. The lamps were so shaded that the table was brilliantly illumined and the rest of the room was black. If you walked in from the brightly lighted shop in front, you could not tell how many people were there, nor how many pistols were pointed at you. From the toilet-room in the back there was an inconspicuous door into the alley, which, besides its strategic advantages, led to the back door of Pincus Kahan's p.a.w.nshop. Much stolen goods followed this route.

A sort of Robin Hood romance has been thrown around the notorious gang leaders of Lower New York. As usual, the reality back of the romance is a very sorry thing. Jake, for instance, was not an admirably clever, nor strong-willed, nor fearless specimen of the genus h.o.m.o. To be sure he excelled many of his stunted, defective, and "cocaine-doped" retainers in these qualities, but above all he owed his position to a calculating, patient prudence. Discretion is certainly the better part of valor in knavery, and while most crooks are daredevils, Jake was discreet.

Since his first detention in the House of Refuge, Jake had managed to keep out of jail. On his release he had organized a "mob" of pickpockets. Most of its members were boys he had met in that worthy inst.i.tution. Neither the House of Refuge nor any of the other "reformatories" are to be blamed for the crimes of those who have pa.s.sed through them. Many of their inmates are taught honorable trades, and some follow them after release. Nearly half of the juvenile pickpockets who gathered about Jake had never been arrested--and they were every bit as bad as those who had been in the House of Refuge.

Owing to their leader's discretion, this little "mob," which had affiliated with the dominant East Side Gang, enjoyed an almost unbroken run of prosperity. But when he had turned eighteen, Jake retired from the active practice of his profession. There was as much money and more security in women. Nature had endowed him with the necessary external charms. He enjoyed cleanliness, he was good looking, and above all he had a soft, persuasive voice.

His covetousness, joined with a natural ability at organization, was always pushing him into new enterprises. He gathered together the wreck of the notorious Beggars' Trust. He joined "The Independent Benevolent Society," and cornered the business of supplying girls to their "bra.s.s check" houses. One after another, he gained control of the gang's most lucrative ventures. Almost any other man of the under world would have made a play for acknowledged leadership long before Jake did. He was modest, or, as his enemies said, a coward. He waited until sudden death or imprisonment had removed his princ.i.p.al rivals--until the leadership was practically forced upon him.

There were cleverer, more strong-willed, braver men in the gang than he.

But he was never careless. A civil war within the political machine had given him an opportunity to make explicit and profitable treaties with those "higher up." He had sense enough to leave "dope" alone. He lacked the imagination to have any sentiment of loyalty or any sympathy, and this made him what is called unscrupulous. Like most cowards he was bitter and cruel in revenge. He had never killed a man with his own hands, but he ruled his organization of "thugs" through fear.

It was two days after her encounter with him in the Park before Yetta saw him again. As she came out of the factory, after the day's work, she almost ran into him.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Miss Rayefsky," he greeted her. "Your cousin Ray told me where you worked. May I walk along with you?"

He walked beside her to the corner of the street where she lived.

Glowing stories he told her of the Ball, how much fun he and Rachel had had, and how sorry he was that she had missed it. Really, she ought to have come. What fun was there for working girls if they did not go to dances? To be sure some girls were too crazy about it, went to b.a.l.l.s every night and stayed up too late. He disapproved of such doings. He had to work. And he did not want to be sleepy in the office. No, indeed!

A serious young man with ambitions could not afford to try the all-night game. He very seldom went to b.a.l.l.s except on Sat.u.r.day night.

Hairy Klein, alias Jake, had sized Yetta up and decided on the "serious" talk.

It was several days before he turned up again. He explained that he had been "out on the road." In the course of half a dozen such walks he opened his heart to her. There was nothing about himself which he did not tell her. She knew all his ambitions and hopes, the names of his influential relatives, the details of his serious, laborious life, and the amount of his balance in the Bowery Savings Bank. Pretty soon the "bosses" would keep their promise and take him into the firm. They would be surprised to find how much capital he had acc.u.mulated. Meanwhile he was learning the business from A to Z. What he did not know about silk was not worth knowing.

To all this fairy-story Yetta listened with credulous ears. The young man had a convincing manner; he was courteous and well dressed. And besides, Rachel would have warned her if he had been bad.

If Yetta had grown up with boys, if she had played at courtship,--as most young people happily do,--she might have seen through the surface glitter of this scoundrel. She had no standard by which to judge him.

But in a timidly defensive spirit she refused to go to a dance with him.

It was partly the instinct of coquetry, which told her to struggle against capture. It was more her humility. When he said he liked her, thought she was good looking, wanted "to be her steady fellow," and so forth, it made her throb with a strange and disturbing pride. But it also made her distrustful--it was too good to be true. He had somewhat over-colored his romance. If he had only pretended to be a clerk at $11.50 a week and meagre expectations, it would have been easier to accept. But why should this rich and brilliant young conqueror want poor, penniless her?

It was not so much that she doubted Harry's truthfulness; she found her good luck unbelievable. And this uncertainty tormented her. Despite her lack of experience, she had a large fund of instinctive common sense.

She realized that she could not compromise with Life. Either this man was good, wonderfully, gorgeously good, in which case the slightest distrust was folly and cruelty, or he was bad--then the smallest grain of trust would be dangerous. She felt herself utterly unable to decide wisely so momentous a question. She longed ardently for some older confidante, some woman whose goodness and wisdom she could trust. She wished she knew Miss Brail and the Settlement women. She was sure they were both wise and good.

There was her aunt. In her desperate extremity she proposed one night that Harry should call at the Goldstein's flat. But when he refused, she could not blame him. His argument was good. Her aunt was sure to oppose any one who threatened to marry Yetta and divert her earnings. He stood on the street-corner and urged her earnestly to leave her relatives. He had wormed from her all the sordid details of that miserable family. Why should she give her money to a drunkard who had no claim on her? He knew a nice respectable place where she could get a room for half her wages.

She could buy some nice clothes with her savings. He made quite a pretty speech about how much better she would look in a fine dress. It was his firm conviction that she was the most beautiful girl in New York.

Yetta knew that it was foolish for her to go on living with the Goldsteins. As Rachel had said, they were and always had been cheating her. But a dread of the unknown kept her from at once accepting Harry's advice. The waves of Life were swirling about her dizzyingly, and she felt the need of a familiar haven. She held on in panic to the only home she knew, sparring blindly for time, and hoping that something would happen to convince her definitely whether or not she ought to put trust in the alluring dream.

But all the time her instinctive resistance was weakening; she had begun to give into his seduction. Her growing horror of the "sweated" monotony of her life was forcing her relentlessly into the clutches of this pander. Strain her eyes as she might she could see no door of escape unless some such lover rescued her. Whenever she tried to think of the possible dangers of believing in Harry Klein, a mocking imp jeered at her with the grim certainties of life without him. What risk was there in the dream which was worse than the inevitable barrenness and premature fading of the sweat-shop? She listened eagerly to what he said about the flat they would rent in Harlem. But with more thrilling attention, she listened to his stories of dances. Her heart hungered pa.s.sionately for a little gayety. And then there was the fear that at some dance he might meet a more attractive girl and leave her.

She was no longer handing over all her wages to her aunt. Under pretext of a slack season she was holding back a couple of dollars a week. She carried these humble savings wrapped in a handkerchief inside her blouse. Every time she felt the hard lump against her body, her heart gave a little jump. She would have some money to buy a hat and some white shoes for her first dance.

Jake, alias Harry Klein, had a more devious psychology. When "Blow Away"

asked him one night, in the Second Avenue "hang-out," how things were going with Ray's cousin, Jake's lying face a.s.sumed a faraway contented smile. But inwardly he was raging over Yetta's stubbornness. He was not used to such long chases. When he had first seen her, his money-loving soul had revolted at so shameful a waste of earning capacity. A pretty girl like that working in a sweat-shop! He had followed the scent without much enthusiasm. It would be an affair of a couple of weeks.

Most pretty girls want good clothes to look prettier. Most of them lost their heads if a well-dressed man made love to them. The grim, hopeless monotony of poverty made most of them hungry for a larger life. It was really sickening to a man of his experience to see how greedily they swallowed his story of the silk firm on Broadway. It was--and this was his expression for supreme easiness--like stealing pennies from a blind beggar.

Yetta by her stubborn caution had won a sort of respect from him. His pride was engaged. His face flushed when he thought of her. She stirred in him something more than vexation. The girl "on his string" who was at the moment enjoying his special favor suddenly seemed stupid and insipid to him. In his distorted way he rather fell in love with Yetta. His day-dreaming moments were filled with pa.s.sionate lurid pictures of possessing her. Although it was proving a long chase, he knew the odds and was sure of the outcome. Sometimes he thought almost tenderly of the time of victory. Sometimes his face hardened, and he vowed he would make her pay.

The pursuit had dragged on a solid month when quite by chance he stumbled on an argument which won his case.

He began to worry about her health. She ought to get out of the sweat-shop. It would kill her. He told her horrible stories about how women went to pieces in the sweat-shops, how they got "bad lungs," or went blind, or had things happen to them inside. He would, the very next day, find a position for her in a store or some place that would not be so hard on her. It did not matter if the wages were not so good; it broke his heart to think of her ruining her health. As soon as they took him into the firm he was going to marry her. He did not want his wife to be sick or crippled.

In his mind was a dark and sinister plan to entice Yetta from her home and establish her in nominal employment with some complaisant woman. He was really a very stupid young man. He did not realize that in all her life Yetta had never had any one worry about her health. He did not guess how his solicitude, which seemed so unselfish, had choked her throat and filled her eyes with tears. He went on with his evil eloquence, when all the time he might have put his arms about her and kissed her, and carried her off wherever he wished.

The next afternoon in the sweat-shop, the pain smote Yetta in the back once more.

CHAPTER VI

THE PIT'S EDGE

This second backache did not cause any noticeable interruption in the day's routine. Yetta gritted her teeth and kept the pace--if anything, increased it. But while her fingers flew back and forth over the accustomed work, her thoughts soared far afield. If there had been persuasiveness in Harry's words, there was ten times as much eloquence in that sudden clutch of pain. As Mrs. Cohen had prophesied, it had come back. How soon would she feel it again?

At last the motor stopped its crazy rattle, the roar of the belts turned to a sob, the day's work was done. Yetta arranged her shawl with trembling fingers and hurried down the stairs. But she hesitated a moment inside the doorway before plunging out into the pack of workers who were hurrying eastward.

The ebb and flow of this tide of tenement dwellers is one of the momentous sights of Manhattan. At five in the morning the cross-town streets are almost deserted. On the Bowery the milk wagons and occasional trucks rattle northward in the false dawn. The intervals between the elevated trains are long. But the side streets are even more lifeless. Now and then shadows flit eastward--women, night workers, who scrub out the great Broadway office buildings. They would be shadows even in broad daylight. Towards six one begins to hear sharper, hurrying footfalls--coming westward. The tide has begun to flow. It grows in volume with the increasing light. The congested tenements have awakened; by six the flood is at its height. So dense is the rush that it is hard to make way against it, eastward. So fast the flow that the observer can scarcely note the faces. It is the backs which catch the eye and leave an impress on the memory. A man who walked like a soldier--upright--in that crowd would seem a monstrosity. Even the backs of the little children are bent. They seem to be carrying portly persons on their shoulders.

Then for close to twelve hours these side streets are almost deserted again--till the ebb begins. It is hard to decide which sight is the more awesome: the flow of humanity hurrying to its inhuman labor or the same crowd ebbing, hurrying to their inhuman, b.e.s.t.i.a.l homes.

But Yetta was not thinking of her fellow-workers. With the egoism of youth she was thinking of herself and the pain in her back. Harry had been right--the sweat-shop was killing her. There was a chance of escape and Life might never offer her another. She had come to the now-or-never place. Yetta was not a coward, she was only timid. And the bravery of timid people is sublime. For only a moment she hesitated in the dark hallway, below Goldfogle's Vest Company, and then with a smile--a fearless smile--on her lips she stepped out into the glare of the arc-light. Harry was waiting for her. She slipped her hand confidently into his arm.

"Say, Harry, to-morrow night, let's go to a ball."

"What?" he said, stopping short, to the surprise and discomfort of the home-rushing workers. "What?"

"Sure. I want some fun."

At last she had swallowed the bait! He could hardly believe his ears.

But he was afraid to seem too eager. They were swept along by the hurrying crowd almost a block before he spoke.

"How about clothes?"