Comrade Yetta. Edwards Albert

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      "Well," Miss Brail continued bravely, "we will have a cooking-class too."

      Rosa replied that her mother cooked for them.

      "But don't you want to know how to cook yourself? Some day you'll have a home of your own, and it will be worth while to know how to cook good meals cheaply. Why, if the wife only knows how to buy scientifically and understands a little of food values, you can feed the ordinary family on only – "

      But once more Rosa interrupted her. She had finished her meal and, emptying her tea-cup with a noisy sip, she stood up in her gaunt, twisted unloveliness.

      "Do you think any one's going to marry me?" she asked defiantly.

      Miss Brail did not have the heart to answer the question truthfully. She turned towards Yetta, who – confused by the implication of her look – hung her head and blushed. Rosa laughed scornfully.

      "She ain't got no money. Nobody'd marry a girl for her looks, even if she could cook."

      At this blasphemy against Romance, Miss Brail became eloquent. She was very definitely unmarried herself. But not so much an "old maid" as a new woman. It would have been impossible to picture her fondling a cat. She was almost athletic in her build, her hair was combed to hide the few streaks of gray, her eyes were young and full of fire. Her tailor-made suit was attractive; in a very modern, businesslike way, even coquettish. You could not look at her without feeling that no one was to blame but herself that she was unmarried. She delivered an impassioned harangue on the subject of men. Of course there were soulless brutes who would marry only for money. But the right sort of a man would just as soon take a poor girl as a rich one if he really loved her. She knew lots of that kind. They were going to have clubs and classes for young men in the house across the way – she called it The Neighborhood House. And once a month they would have dances. She invited Rosa and Yetta to come.

      At the word "dance," Mrs. Goldstein stopped sewing, and sticking her needle in her wig, got up threateningly. No! Neither her daughter nor her niece would go to a dance. With her bony hand she pointed emphatically at the door. Miss Brail protested that the Neighborhood House dances would be eminently respectable; only the young men and women they knew personally. She tried to say that it was good to give the girls a chance to meet men in clean, orderly surroundings. But she could not resist the old woman's wrath, and at last, shrugging her shoulders in defeat, she went out.

      Mr. Goldstein, when he heard of the incident, added his curses to those of his wife. Dances had been the ruin of one daughter, and that was enough disaster for a self-respecting family. Besides, these Goyim were trying to undermine the True Religion. David was hardly a religious man. But social settlements always took an interest in reform politics. Tammany Hall had small reason to be friendly with them. And as he could think of no arguments, this religious talk seemed a handy weapon.

      But all her uncle's and aunt's denunciations could not persuade Yetta that Miss Brail was evil. Morning and evening, as she went out to work and came home, she stopped a moment on her doorstep to note the progress of rehabilitation in the house across the way. What the East Side calls the "parlor floor" had formerly been a store. Its great plate-glass window was cleaned and a heavy curtain was stretched across the lower half, so that people on the sidewalk could not look in. White dimity curtains were hung in the upstairs windows. The fine old front door was painted white, the rusted banister of the steps was replaced by a new and graceful one of polished steel. Before long the "residents" moved in. Their arrival coincided with the appearance of beautiful potted plants inside the windows.

      Although the screen hid the front parlor from the street, it was not high enough to hide it from the windows of the Goldstein's flat. From that vantage-point Yetta learned the routine of evening work in the Settlement. A bulletin-board beside the door helped her to put names to the things she saw. On Monday nights there were meetings of "The Martha Washington Club." They were young women of her own age, and Miss Brail presided. There was generally some "uptown woman" who spoke or sang to the girls. This part of the evening's entertainment lasted until nine, then they grouped about Miss Brail at the piano and practised some choral music. They ended with half an hour's dancing and went home a little after ten. Tuesday night there was a club of boys. Wednesday night a class in sewing. Thursday night "The Abraham Lincoln Debating Club" held forth. Most of them were young men in the early twenties, but a few were older. On Friday there was a "Mothers' Club," and on Saturday night a magic-lantern show.

      At last it came time for the monthly dance. Yetta had noticed the announcement on the bill-board several days before. On the eventful night she pretended to be sleepy and went to bed early, but as soon as Rosa began to snore she wrapped herself in her shawl and a blanket and tiptoed out into the front room to watch the ball. The Martha Washington Club had turned out in force, dazzlingly beautiful in their best clothes. The black-suited young men of the debating club also looked very wonderful to the hungry-eyed girl who watched it from afar. As was the strange custom of The Krists, the big window was opened although it was mid-February, and the sound of the four-piece orchestra and the laughter came up, unobstructed, to Yetta's ears.

      She had never been so happy in all her life, but most of the time her eyes were filled with tears. She imagined herself first as one of the girls and then as another. There was one whose shirtwaist seemed especially beautiful. Yetta was convinced that if she were a millionnaire, or if a fairy godmother should offer her one choice, she would choose just such clothes. There was one of the young men, a curly-haired, laughing fellow, whom she had noticed on Thursday nights. Whenever he took part in the debates, all the other men clapped violently. Generally she imagined herself dancing with him.

      After a while the music stopped. Miss Brail and the other settlement women brought in trays loaded with lemonade and sandwiches and cakes. The curly-haired man sat down beside the girl in the resplendent waist. Hot little blushes chased themselves all over Yetta's body. It frightened her even to imagine that she was so gayly dressed, that such a man sat close to her and whispered in her ear, looking at her and laughing all the time.

      The supper fire had not yet burned down in the Goldstein's sordid kitchen-eating-sitting room. It was stuffy and hot, but Yetta, in spite of her shawl and blanket, shivered when the intermission was over. The curly-haired man nonchalantly put his arm about the gorgeous shirtwaist and, with his face rather close to his partner's, swung off into a dizzy two-step. Yetta felt as if she had been suddenly caressed. She had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering.

      A tremendous storm had broken out in the breast of the little sweat-shop girl. Sometimes she had to close her eyes, the beauty of the vision was so dazzling. For a moment she would tear herself away from the blighting memory of reality, and her soul seemed to float away from her body into the brightly lit room across the way. In the most deeply spiritual sense she became part of that gay scene. She was arrayed in gorgeous clothes. Men – even the wonderful curly-haired man – sought her as a partner. And she could laugh!

      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 СКАЧАТЬ