Comrade Yetta Part 24

"And aren't you in love with him?"

"Not a bit. You Little Foolish, can't people be good friends without being in love?"

Yetta went to sleep trying to think out this proposition. She hardly remembered the choice she had made between college and work, nor the strain of the great meeting. It was very hard to believe that Mabel and Walter were not in love.

CHAPTER XVII

THE OPERATING ROOM

Walter's study seemed to Yetta an ideal room. There was no appearance of luxury about it--nothing to remind one by contrast of the hungry people outside. There were no "decorations," except two portraits of his grandparents and a small reproduction of one of the great cow-faced G.o.ds of the Hakt.i.tes which stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. The rest of the room was made up of comfortable chairs, a well-padded window-seat, and books. The cases were full and so was the table and so were some of the chairs and there were books on the floor. Knowledge was a goal which her father had set before Yetta as almost synonymous with "goodness" and "happiness." It was a thing she had forgotten about in the sweat-shop, but for which her recent experience had given her an all-consuming hunger. No one who has been "sent to college," who has had an education thrust upon him, can realize how much she venerated books.

When Longman brought her to his room, it seemed to her as if she had entered the home of her dreams.

The greatest thing that had come to Yetta in the new life was the gift of friends. In the days since her father's death, with the exception of the few weeks when Rachel had given her confidences, she had had only loveless relatives and shopmates. And now she could hardly count her friends. From the very first she had given Longman the niche of honor in this gallery. The reason was something more subtle than his dramatic entrance into her life. She seldom thought of him as her rescuer. But she felt that his regard for her was more personal and direct than that of the others. She could not have explained it coherently to herself, but she felt it no less keenly. Mrs. Van Cleave was fond of her because she had eyes like those of the long-dead daughter. Mrs. Karner was attracted to her because she typified her own lost youth. Isadore Braun and Mabel valued her because of her flaming spirit of revolt.

Over on "the Island," the warden's little three-year-old son, in spite of her prison dress, in spite of the jealousy of his own nurse, had run into her arms at first sight. Instinctively she felt that Walter liked her in a similar fas.h.i.+on. If, during the strike, she had sold out, turned "scab," Braun and Mabel would no longer have been her friends.

But Longman would have come to her in his gentle, lumbering way and asked her about it. He might have been disappointed, even angry, but still he would have been her friend.

Yetta wanted to begin at once with some questions about Socialism.

"You'd better save them till Isadore and Mabel come," Longman laughed.

"He's got all the answers down by heart--the orthodox ones. And Mabel isn't a Socialist. I'm neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It will start a beautiful s.h.i.+ndy if you spring those questions to-night."

He told her about his projected book on Philosophy, and how he would like to add her credo to his collection. The big scope of the idea caught her fancy, and she said she was willing.

It was slow work at first. The earlier questions on his list led her into unfamiliar fields. She had never troubled her mind over metaphysics. She was not sure what kind of a G.o.d she believed in--nor whether It really ought to be called "G.o.d." She had given no thought to the question whether this is the best or worst possible world. The prophecies, which her father had loved so much, inclined her strongly to the idea that it might be made a better one. But she had never even tried to determine whether the Universe is an elaborate and precise mechanical instrument, a personally conducted puppet show, or a roulette wheel. Her inability to answer these questions--and the way he put them made them seem very important--shamed her. He seemed to be sounding the depths of her ignorance. Did she believe in a future life? She threw up her hands.

"I don't know."

"n.o.body knows. It's a question of belief. You loved your father very much, and when you were a little girl he died. Was that the end of him?"

She shook her head. He waited patiently for words.

"No. It wasn't the end of him. Anyhow the memory lasts."

"Do you ever talk to him now?"

"Sometimes. I pretend to."

"Is it as good as if he was really here?"

"Almost--sometimes."

"Well. After you die do you think you'll meet him?"

Yetta curled herself up a little tighter on the window-seat, her forehead puckered into deep wrinkles.

"Yes," she said after a while. "I think--once, anyhow--I'll have a chance to talk to him--tell him everything and ask him what was right and wrong--and he'll tell me."

"How will he look?"

"I don't know. But I'll know it's him."

The ordeal became easier as the questions began to deal with more mundane problems. But before long they got into deep water again.

"Do you believe that honesty is the best policy?"

That took a lot of thinking and brought back the wrinkles.

"Honesty--telling the truth," she said at last. "I guess it's the best something, but it ain't always the best policy. If I hadn't perjured myself, we wouldn't have won this strike."

"What?"

"I don't mind telling you. I lied in court. I swore I didn't hit Pick-Axe; but I tried to kill him."

Longman whistled softly.

"Tell me about it."

When she had told him all,--what Pick-Axe had said and done, how suddenly blind rage had overcome her, how at length Braun had persuaded her to lie,--she asked him if he thought honesty would have been the best policy in this case.

"I'm asking questions this afternoon, not answering them," he said gravely. "This interests me a lot. So you think it's sometimes right to lie in a good cause."

"No," she said quickly. "I don't think it's never right to lie. But I guess sometimes you've just got to. If I'd told the truth, they'd have sent me to prison, instead of the workhouse. I wouldn't have cared. It ain't nice to lie, and like Mr. Th.o.r.eau says, there's worse things than being in the worst prison. But it would have been awful for the others.

Just because I told the truth all the papers would have lied and said all the girls were murderers. We'd have lost the strike. I'd have felt better if I'd told the truth. But there's more than two thousand girls in our trade.

"It's like this, I think. If you make up your mind that something is good, you got to fight for it; you can't be afraid of getting beat up, or arrested, or killed, and you can't be afraid of hurting your conscience either. Mr. Th.o.r.eau has got an essay about John Brown and how he fought to free the black slaves. Well, suppose somebody'd come to him and told him how he could do it, if he'd commit a big sin himself. I guess he'd have done it. If he'd said, 'You can beat me or put me in prison or hang me for those black men, but I won't sin for them,' he'd have been a coward. I'd rather go to prison than tell a lie like I done.

But I ain't afraid to do both."

She had sat up stiffly on the window-seat while she was trying to say all this. Again she curled up. She watched Walter, as he sat there in deep thought, absent-mindedly drumming on the table with his pencil. She could not have talked like this to any one else in the world. She had expressed herself poorly; in her intensity she had slipped back into her old ways of speech, but she knew he did not care about doubled negatives, nor "ain't's." She knew he had understood. And just when she had found this wonderful friend, she was losing him. He was going away in the morning for years and years. Central Asia sounded far away and dangerous. Something might happen to him and he never come back. She was afraid she would cry if she kept silence any longer.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"I was wondering if you are afraid of anything."

"Oh, yes. Lots of things."

"For instance?"

"Well, I'm afraid of the Yetta Rayefsky who tried to kill Pick-Axe. And I'm afraid of myself for not blaming her for it. And I'm afraid of being useless. I'm afraid of waste. I'm afraid--more than anything else--of ignorance." She sat up again. "Yes. That's the worst thing the bosses do to us--they keep us ignorant. I don't think even you can understand that. You've had books all your life. You've been to school and college, you're a professor,"--the awe grew in Yetta's voice,--"your room is full of books. I sit here and look at them and try to think what it must mean to know all that's in so many books and I want to get down on my knees, I'm so ignorant."

"Good G.o.d! Yetta," he said savagely, jumping up. "Don't talk like that.

I'm not worth your stepping on."

He came over and took her hand and surprised her by kissing it humbly.