Читать книгу Comrade Yetta - Edwards Albert - Страница 7

But the Blessed Angel of Forgetfulness is—like her sister, the Spirit of Delight—an inconstant hussy. No Wise Man of all the ages has learned the trick of keeping her always at his side.

The memories of the day's stark realities would submerge Yetta. Back of her was the squalid flat, the snores of her loveless relatives. In her dark bedroom her one frayed dress was hung over the back of a chair, waiting for her to put it on and hurry through the dawn to Jake Goldfogle's Vest Shop. Routine—hopeless monotony! A prison tread—from the vitiated air and uneasy sleep of the tenement, so many steps to the cruel speed and inhumanity of the Machine. Then so many steps back to the tenement, and all to do over again.

In front of her—in the room across the street—"Life-as-it-might-be." Beauty—thrilling excitement—joy!

The eyes of Yetta's soul swung back and forth from one vision to the other. Through the long evening she knelt there by the window, so forgetful of her body that she did not realize how the dirty window ledge was cutting into her elbows, how her knees were being bruised on the unswept floor.

At last the musicians put away their instruments. Every one clapped insistently and crowded about Miss Brail. But she waved her watch in their face. A distant church-bell tolled midnight. Yetta stayed at her post until the last laughing couple had shaken hands with the ladies at the door. For several minutes more she watched the shadows on the upper windows, while the "residents" talked over the success of the dance. She watched till the last light was out, then she crept back to bed and cried herself to sleep.

The tears she shed that night were not the kind that heal. There was acid in them which ate into the quick. For nearly four years her body had been on the rack. Now her soul was being torn. The questionings which had troubled her after Rachel's disappearance became more and more insistent. Was she never to know what joy meant? Was day to crawl along after day in desolate and weary monotony? Was this dull ache of soul-hunger never to be relieved until some indefinite future was to find her—cheated of everything—cast out useless on the human refuse heap? Was this weary plain of uneventfulness never to be broken by any dazzling mountain peaks nor shady valley?

Shortly after the Settlement Ball, which Yetta had watched as a starveling beggar peers through a baker's window, Life suddenly opened up. The drab monotony was illumined by a lurid display of fireworks. Rockets of glaring, appalling red shot up into the night. There was a great white blaze of hope, and all the sky became suffused by the soft caressing colors of unsophisticated Romance.

The sweat-shop motor broke down. Jake Goldfogle cursed and tore his hair. He kept his "hands" waiting in idleness half through the afternoon, until the electricians had come and said that the damage could not be righted till midnight. Then Jake surlily dismissed his women. It was rare that Yetta had such a holiday. There was no reason for her to go to her dreary home. It was a precocious spring day, the sun shone with a heat that made the streets attractive.

Wandering about aimlessly, Yetta came to Hamilton Fish Park. The faint suggestion of rising sap which came to her in that open space seemed infectious. The questionings which had disturbed her returned with new force. Why? What did it all mean? Was there no escape?

Suddenly her attention was caught by a familiar figure, Rachel, arrayed in cheap finery. Yetta quickened her pace to overtake her and called her. It was a great shock to Rachel when she recognized her. She stared at her in bewilderment, but it was surely Yetta,—Yetta of the old life, of the great sad eyes, with the same old shawl over her head.

"The motor broke in my shop," Yetta explained as they sat down. "I came out for a walk. Where are you working?"

"I ain't working."

Yetta's eyes opened wider.

"Are you married," she asked with awe in her voice.

Shame closed Rachel's lips. How could she explain the grim dirtiness of Life to her ignorant little cousin? She started to get up and go away. But suddenly the heart-break of it all—the memory of the girlish dreams she had confided to Yetta—overcame her. She threw her arms around her cousin and cried, great sobs which shook them both. A few words came to her lips, the same phrase over and over: "Oh! Yetta. I wanted to be good." When the first burst of her grief was spent, she began to tell how it had all come about.

At first everything had gone smoothly. She had taken a furnished room with the girl from her shop who had lent her the hat and white shoes for her first dance. "She had a crush on me," Rachel explained. They had led a joyous but quite innocent life, working hard all day and two or three nights a week going to dances. As far as they knew how to choose they went to respectable places. Several men had paid court to Rachel. A clerk in a dry-goods store on Sixth Avenue had been in love with her. He was serious. But he was earning very little, had a marriageable sister, and wanted to wait a couple of years. She had even become engaged to one man. At first, she said, she had "been crazy about him." She had let him kiss her and make pretty violent love to her. But after a while she saw he was "a spender," too free with his money—like her father. She did not want a man like that, so she had sent him about his business. Then her room-mate "got a crush" on another girl and had left Rachel alone in the furnished room.

"What can you do?"—she began to cry again—"when you ain't got no place to have your friend call except a furnished room? All alone? A girl ain't got no chance—all alone—like that."

She could not tell Yetta what came next, so she asked about the family. As Yetta told her meagre store of news, the flood-gates of Rachel's bitter heart opened. She cursed her family. They were to blame for her disaster. Why had not her father made a decent home for his children? Was it her fault that her brother was a crook? If they had been honest and thrifty, they could have given her a marriage portion. Worse than doing nothing for her, they had even eaten up her wages. If she had been an orphan, she could have put some of her pay in the bank—she could have saved enough money to get married on.

"Don't you let them cheat you, Yetta," she broke out, "the way they cheated me. Perhaps I'm a bad woman, but I never cheated little girls the way they cheated us. I never robbed an orphan like they done to you. You're a fool to stand for it. Why should you give them your wages? Haven't they cheated you enough? They made your poor father pay too much board. The funeral never cost like they said it did. And now they're stealing your wages. I tell you what you do. You find some good woman in your shop, who'll take you to board, and put your money in the bank. But don't go to no 'furnished room.' Furnished rooms is Hell! You—"

"Hello, Ray. Introduce me to your friend."

The intruder's voice sent a convulsive shiver through Rachel. He wore a suit of dove-gray, the cuffs and collar of which were bound with silk braid. There was a large diamond in his scarlet tie. As though he did not wish to be outdone by the sun in its premature glory he wore a slightly soiled Panama hat, shaped after the fashion depicted in photographs of the German Crown Prince.

"I say," he insisted, and there was a twang of menace in his soft voice, a more evident threat in his hard domineering eyes, "I say, introduce me to your friend."

"She's my cousin, Yetta Rayefsky," Rachel replied reluctantly.

"And my name," he said with easy assurance, "is Harry Klein. I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Rayefsky. Do you dance as well as your cousin?"

"I've never been to a dance," Yetta stammered.

She was very much flustered by his stare of frank admiration. No man had ever put a "Miss" to her name before. Again the hot blushes chased themselves over her body. But he did not seem to notice her embarrassment.

"I was walking along the street," he said, "and noticed Miss Goldstein here in the Park. I came to ask her to go to the Tim Sullivan ball with me to-night. Won't you come along?"

"She ain't got no clothes for a ball," Rachel said.

"I'm sure," he said, his eyes turning hard again, "that you could lend her some."

But Yetta was frightened beyond words at the bare idea of going. She refused timidly.

Harry Klein urged her, managing gracefully the while to weave in the story of his life. He was a commercial traveller for a large silk-house on Broadway. Of course it was very good pay, and in a few months he was to be taken into the firm, but it had its inconveniences. He did not get to New York very often. He liked dances, but it was no fun to go alone. Being away so much, he did not know many nice girls. He had no use for the kind you can "pick up" at a ball. He did wish she could come. He knew another travelling man who was also in town—a friend of his. It would be great fun for the four of them to go together.

But he did not push his urgings too far. He was sorry she would not come, but he hoped Miss Goldstein could find a partner for his friend. Would she come now on that errand?

"I'm sorry to run away with your cousin, Miss Rayefsky," he said, signalling Rachel to get up. "And I sure hope I'll have the pleasure of meeting you again."

He bowed very low, made a gallant flourish with his hat, and taking Rachel by the arm, started off gayly. But he turned back after a few steps.

"I'm not going to be discouraged," he said with his very best smile, "because you won't go with me to-night. I like your looks and want to get acquainted with you. I'll see you again."

Once more he flourished his hat, and rejoined Rachel.

Yetta sat still on the park bench for a long time after they had gone. She tried to make some sense out of Life. But it was all very perplexing. What did Rachel's story mean? In a vague way she had heard of the women who are called "bad." She knew their more blatant hall-marks. Rachel's cheeks were painted; she had spoken of herself as "bad." But the term did not mean anything to Yetta which could include a girl like her cousin who "wanted to be good." She understood that Rachel was unhappy, bitter, and very much ashamed, but she could not think of her as sinful or vicious. She tried—but entirely in vain—to imagine what sort of life Rachel was leading. She tried to picture in what sort of acts her "badness" consisted. She had heard somewhere of "selling love," but she had no idea how it was done. It was very perplexing for her—indeed it has perplexed older and wiser heads—to discover that "bad" people may after all be good.

But it was hard for her to keep her mind on this problem of ethics. It was very much easier to think of Harry Klein. She had never talked to so courteous and well dressed a gentleman. The dream of the curly-haired debater was wiped from her mind—Harry Klein was much better looking.

A queer question shot into her mind. Did a girl have to be "bad" to have such enchanting friends? No. That could not be. He had wanted to be friends with her. She knew she was not bad.

He had said he wanted to be her friend! The blood raced through her veins at the thought. She went over again in her mind all her arguments with Rachel. The only possible way to escape from the sweat-shop was to marry. Of course she could not hope to win so debonair a gentleman as Harry Klein. But rescue—if it were to come at all—must come in some such way. It was her only hope.