Comrade Yetta Part 36

"Good," he laughed. "She was never exactly a chum of mine."

"Here are all your business papers," Yetta said, going over to his desk, "receipts and all that."

"Oh! bother the receipts," he said. "I want to talk. How's Isadore's paper getting along?"

"There isn't any money," she said with a grimace. "There's a note on yesterday's editorial page, which says if they can't raise five thousand this week they'll have to stop. I guess one thousand will keep them going. They'll get it. But in a couple of weeks it will be the same thing over again. I guess it's doomed."

"I've been thinking about it," Walter said, "and I've got a scheme.

Isadore tackled too much in a daily. That costs such a frightful lot.

There isn't yet a big enough Socialist audience to support it. A weekly--a good lively, red-hot weekly--is the thing."

He went on to elaborate his idea. Gradually the constraint which Yetta had felt at first wore off. She curled up on the window-seat and listened to his talk as she had done the first day in his room--as she had done ever since in her dreams. She knew it would be hard work to persuade Isadore to give up the daily, but she felt that sooner or later he would have to. And in Walter's scheme was the promise of collaboration and constant a.s.sociation with him. She could hardly be expected to bring forth any serious criticism.

While he talked, she had the opportunity to look him over. After all he was not a G.o.d. The thing which surprised her most was his hair--it was shot through with irregular patches of gray. But this was only a detail.

The soft life of the last few months in Paris had not quite killed the tan which the glare of the Persian sun had given him. He looked very rugged and strong--if his hands had been larger, he might have sat as a model for Rodin. And the halo of fame played about his forehead. The newspapers had given some s.p.a.ce to him, and two or three lurid "Sunday stories" had been run about "the siege." They had recounted the various honors which had been given him. Yetta knew that the narrow red ribbon in his b.u.t.tonhole was the Legion of Honor. And he was calmly proposing to give up what seemed to her a great renown for the obscure career of Socialist propaganda. Her love put forth blossoms.

"Gee," he interrupted himself at last. "It's long past lunch-time. Let's go over to the Lafayette. Any of the old waiters still there?"

Although Walter insisted that the cooking had deteriorated, it was a resplendent meal to Yetta. The proprietor came to their table and asked if he might present the French Consul, who was lunching there and who wanted to congratulate Walter on the red ribbon. The Consul made a formal and stilted speech on behalf of the French Colony in New York.

Yetta was as much impressed as Walter was bored. When this disturbance was over, he made her talk about herself. The meal was finished before she was half through with her news.

"Come on," he said. "It's too blazing hot to be in town. Let's jump on a ferry and go down to Staten Island."

"I ought to go up to the League."

"Oh! bother the League. One doesn't come home from Persia every day in the year. I want to celebrate."

All New York's four millions seemed bent on the same errand, but they managed to crowd into the "elevated," and after a breathless scramble at the Battery fought their way to places on the ferry, and at last found a fairly secluded spot on the beach. He listened through the afternoon to the story of how she had spent the three and a half years of his absence. Just as at first, she still found it easy to talk to him. Sure of his quick understanding, she found herself telling him everything.

She told him of Isadore's proposal. That disturbed him somewhat.

"Will it interfere with the three of us working together?" he asked.

"Why, no," she said, her eyes opening wider with surprise. "Of course not. I guess he's got over it. It was two years ago. But anyhow we've been working together all the time. He wouldn't let a thing like that interfere with work."

And Walter, judging Isadore by himself, decided that it could not have been very serious. Although Yetta did not know it, she was, in almost every word, showing Walter her love. There was a nave directness in all her relations with people. It was always hard for her to act a part. She talked to Walter as a woman naturally talks to a man she loves. Even without Beatrice's hint, he would have understood.

It was a new sensation to feel himself loved so simply and wholly. Such love is rare in this world, and no man sees it offered without a deep feeling of awe. What should he do? Should he turn her loyalty into a derision, as had been the fate of his own? His life counted for very little to him. It had been burnt out. That the love of this fine, clean, loyal young woman might be pleasant to him seemed to count relatively little. He did not feel particularly selfish, he was only a fool. He was sorry for her, and thought he could make her happy.

Beatrice, who knew him better than any other woman did, thought he could. Of course he realized that it was not exactly a romantic proposition. He had small use for romance. But if any one had charged him with planning to seduce Yetta into marriage under pretext of love, he would have indignantly denied it. What does love mean? Undoubtedly his feeling and hers were miles apart. But, after all, he was fond of her. Even in a most impersonal way he admired her immensely. He had liked her spirit from the first. He had not listened unmoved to the story of her struggle of these three years. There was nothing he admired more than such capacity for consistent effort. And it took a serious exercise of will power to think about her impersonally. It was so much easier to lie back on the sand and refresh his senses with the charm of her youth.

Some one might have reminded him that emotionally he was very much of a wreck, that her youth had a right to demand its like, that his wearied disillusionment was no match for her fresh, exuberant faith. He would have answered that she was not a child, she was old enough to choose.

He listened and watched her and the sun slipped down among the Jersey hills.

"It's time to be going back," Yetta said.

"I'm quite happy here, and when we get hungry, there are restaurants about."

"I think Isadore will come to see you to-night. I told him you were due to-day."

"Oh, bother Isadore. Bother everything except this delectable breeze and the smell of the sea and you and me and the moon. Look at it, Yetta. It was at its unforgettable best last night--but it will be better to-night. It's going to be very beautiful right here where we are. And much as I like and admire Isadore, he isn't beautiful.

"Life," he went on in a moment, "and its swirl of duties will grab us soon enough, Yetta. We're going to be too busy on that paper, my friend, to hunt out such places as this. Let's sit very, very still and be happy as long as we may."

They both were very still as they watched the twilight fall over the Bay. The little red and green and white lights of the pa.s.sing boats swayed softly in the gentle swell. A great liner crept up the channel towards the Narrows, row above row of gleaming portholes. Coney Island--section by section--woke to a glare of electricity. The blade of a searchlight at Fort Hamilton cut great slashes in the night. A strident orchestra in a restaurant behind them tried in vain to attract their attention.

Yetta found it easy to be happy; she felt that Walter approved of her.

"Yetta," he said, rolling over closer to where she sat, her back against the rotting beam of a wrecked s.h.i.+p, "Yetta, I didn't expect to find you so good to look at. I wonder if you know how very beautiful you are."

The wreck against which she leaned cast a moon-shadow across her face, and he could not see the desperate blush which flooded her cheeks and neck. Something laid hold of her heart and told it to be quiet, to beat gently and not to make a noise.

"But that's not the way to begin, Yetta. It's hard for me to say what I want to, because--well--I'm past the poetic age. I couldn't sing now--nor play on a lute--if I tried. Perhaps it's just as well to talk prose, because it's all very serious."

"Since I've finished up this Persian job, I've been thinking a lot about what to do next. I could go on with that kind of work very easily. But I want some more concrete kind of usefulness. You'll know what I mean. I want to make my life count at something more than dry scholars.h.i.+p. And the only thing I can think of that seems worth doing is to pitch in and help Isadore on this paper. We'd need you in the combine. And that means thinking about you. I've done a lot of it. Wondering what manner of person you had grown to be. I was sure we'd be able to work well together. But I did not expect to find you so wonderful. Less than four years ago you were only a girl. You've grown amazingly, Yetta, grown in wisdom and in beauty--beauty of soul and face.

"I'm a lonely and rather battered old bachelor, Yetta. And no man really wants to be a bachelor. Sometimes, coming over on the boat, I thought about you--in that connection. But I couldn't help thinking of you as a young girl, lovable and very dear, but very young. And I'm getting old.

My hair is turning gray, and many things turn gray inside, Yetta, before the hair turns. You don't seem so painfully young to me now, and the dream doesn't seem ludicrous. We're going to work together, Yetta, be partners and comrades. I've very little to offer you, but it would be a great thing for me if you would also be my wife."

"I thought you were in love with Mabel," she said.

The cool sound of her words startled her. With the heavens opening, could she speak in so commonplace a voice? They sounded so utterly inadequate that she would have given worlds to have them back, unsaid.

It was a moment before he sat up and answered her.

"I was."

"I told you, Yetta," he went on in a moment, "that I'm a bit dilapidated, getting gray.

"Yetta," he began again, forgetting that he was going to let her choose freely, "you believe in the reformation even of criminals. Isn't there any hope for me?"

Her arms were about him, her sobs shook him, he could feel the moisture of her tears against his cheek. Except for the sharp rasp of her breath, they were very still. Suddenly he felt ashamed of himself. What did he have to give her in exchange for such vibrant love? But gradually the sense of contact, the pressure of her arms and her soft young body brushed aside this feeling that he was cheating her. Taking her face in his hands he turned it towards the moon and kissed her. When he held back her head so that the light fell on her face, its deep solemnity frightened him.

"Can't you smile a little?" he asked.

The tears welled up in her eyes again, but a smile such as he had never seen came, too. A laugh rippled up her throat and rang out into the night.

"Oh, Walter, Walter, I'm such a little fool to cry. But if I hadn't cried, I'd have died."

They forgot all about the moon they had waited out to see. Like dozens of other lovers on the beach that night, they forgot about supper. They missed the one o'clock boat and sat outside of the ferryhouse in the shadow of some packing-cases till two o'clock. They decided that it would be fun to walk home through the deserted streets. When they could think of no further reason to pa.s.s and repa.s.s her door, she kissed him "a really truly good night."

"I'll wake you up by telephone in the morning," she said, "and come round and make your coffee."

For half an hour after she had undressed she sat in her window looking up at the moon above the airshaft. She did not want ever to forget how the moon looked that night. But fearing that she might oversleep and lose the chance to breakfast with him, she at last went to bed.

For an hour more Walter paced up and down in Was.h.i.+ngton Square, between the sleeping figures huddled up on the park benches or stretched uneasily on the hard dry ground. He was ill at ease. He wished he might go to a hotel, some place less saturated with memories of Mabel than his own diggings. Had he lied when he had used the past tense about Mabel?

Did he love her still? Was it fair to talk marriage to Yetta with this uncertainty in his mind?

"Morbid scruples!" he told himself disgustedly, and went to bed. But he dreamed about Mabel.