The Nine-Tenths Part 21

"Well"--Nathan Latsky (for so he proved to be) shrugged his shoulders--"I'm one myself. But--what's in a name?"

"He's a red revolutionist!" said a voice, and Joe, turning, noticed two men leaning beside him at the counter; one, a fine and fiery Jew, handsome, dark, young; the other, a large and gentle Italian, with pallid features, dark hair sprinkled with gray, and a general air of largeness and leadership about him. The Jew had spoken.

"Why a red?" asked Joe.

"Oh," said Latsky, quietly, "I come from Russia, you know!"

"Well, I'm a revolutionist myself," said Joe. "But I haven't any color yet."

"Union man?" asked the Italian.

"Not exactly. I run a radical newspaper."

"What's the name of it?" asked the Jew.

"_The Nine-Tenths_."

The words worked magic. They were all eagerness, and exchanged names.

Thus Joe came to know Jacob Izon and Salvatore Giotto and Nathan Latsky.

He was greatly interested in Izon, the facts of whose life he soon came to know. Izon was a designer, working at Marrin's, the shirtwaist manufacturer; he made thirty dollars a week, had a wife and two children, and was studying engineering in a night school. He and his wife had come from Russia, where they had been revolutionists.

The three men examined the paper closely.

"That's what we need," said Izon. "You must let us help to spread it!"

Joe added the three to the Stove Circle.

He went to Giotto's house with him, up to the sixth floor of a tenement, and met the Italian's neat, dark-eyed wife, and looked in on the three sleeping children. Then under the blazing gas in the crowded room, with its cheap, frail, shiny furniture, its crayons on the wall, its crockery and cheap clocks, and with the noise of the city's night rising all about them, the two big men talked together. Joe was immensely interested. The Italian was large-hearted, open-minded, big in body and soul, and spoke quaintly, but thoughtfully.

"Tell me about yourself," said Joe.

Giotto spread out the palms of his hands.

"What to tell? I get a good education in the old country--but not much spik English--better read, better write it. I try hard to learn. Come over here, and education no good. n.o.body want Italian educated man. So worked on Italian paper--go round and see the poor--many tragedies, many--like the theater. Write a novel, a romance, about the poor. Wish I could write it in English."

"Good work," cried Joe. "Then what did you do?"

Giotto laughed.

"Imported the wine--got broke--open the saloon. Toughs come there, thieves, to swindle the immigrants. Awfully slick. No good to warn immigrants--they lose all their money. Come in crying. What can I do? I get after the b.u.ms and they say, 'Giotto no good; we will kill him.'

Then I get broke again. Go to West Virginia and work in the coal-mine--break my leg. And that was the baddest place in the world."

"The mine?"

"And the town. Laborers--Italian, n.i.g.g.e.r; saloons and politics--Jews; bosses all Irish--nothing but the saloons and the women to spenda the money. Company own everything--stores, saloons, women. Pay you the money and get it all back. Every day a man killed. h.e.l.l!"

"Then where did you go?"

"Chicago--printing--anything to do I could get. Sometimes make forty cents a day. Little. Have to feed and work for wife and three children.

I try and try. Hod-carrier"--Giotto laughed at the memory--"press coats--anything. Then come back here."

"And what are you doing now?"

"I try to make labor union with Italians. Hard work. Italians live like pigs--ignorant--not--not _social_. Down-stairs live a Calabria man, makes ice-cream--got four rooms--in the four rooms man, wife, mother, five children, fifteen boarders--"

"Go on!" cried Joe. "Why do you stop?"

Giotto laughed.

"So maybe your paper help. Many Italians read English. I make them read your paper, Mr. Joe."

It was not until nearly the end of the week that Joe sought out Sally Heffer. Though every day he meditated stepping down that narrow red side street, each time he had felt unprepared, throbbingly incapable; but this evening as he finished his work and was on the way home it seemed that beyond his own volition he suddenly swerved at her corner, hurried down the lamp-lit pave, searched out the faded number in the meager light, mounted the stoop, and pushed open the unlocked door.

He was very weary--heart-sick and foot-sore--as he climbed the dark steps of the three-story house. He felt pent in the vast pulsations of life about him--a feeling of impossibility, of a task greater than he could bear. He simply had to see the young woman who was responsible for sending him here. He had a vivid mental image of her tragic loveliness, of how she had stepped back and forth before him and suddenly put her hands to her face and wept, of how she had divined his suffering, and impulsively seized his hand, and whispered, "I have faith in you." He expected a sort of self-illumined Joan of Arc with eyes that saw visions, with spirit flaming. And even in the dark top-floor hallway he was awed, and almost afraid.

Then in the blackness, his eyes on the thread of light beneath the rear door, he advanced, reached up his hand, and knocked.

There came, somehow surprising him, a definite, clear-edged voice:

"Come in!"

He opened the door, which swung just free of the narrow cot. Just beyond, Sally Heffer was writing at a little table, and the globed gas burned above her, lighting the thin gold of her spa.r.s.e hair. She turned her face to him quite casually, the same pallid, rounded face, the same broad forehead and gray eyes, of remarkable clarity--eyes that were as clear windows allowing one to peer in. And she was dressed in a white shirtwaist and the same brown skirt, and over a hook, behind her, hung the same brown coat. Yet Joe was shocked. This was not the Sally Heffer of his dreams--but rather a refreshing, forceful, dynamic young woman, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with the joy of life. And even in that flash of strangeness he sensed the fact that at the time he had met her she was merely the voice of a vast insurgent spirit, merely the instrument of a great event. This was the everyday Sally, a quite livable, lovable human being, healthy, free in her actions, pulsing with the life about her.

The very words she used were of a different order.

And as she casually glanced around she began to stare, her eyes lit with wonder, and she arose, exclaiming:

"Mr.--_Blaine_!"

At the sound of her voice the tension snapped within him; he felt common and homely again; he felt comfortable and warm; and he smiled wearily.

"Yes," he said, "I'm here."

She came close to him, more and more incredulous, and the air became electric.

"But what brings you here?"

"I live here--West Tenth."

"_Live_ here? Why?"

Her eyes seemed to search through his.

"You made me," he murmured.

She smiled strangely.

"_That night_?"