Comrade Yetta Part 40

"Are you sick, Miss?"

"No"--she s.h.i.+vered as she realized the import of what he had said, how much worse it was than he suspected--"Oh, no! I'm not sick."

But the old man stood still watching her as she turned down McDougal Street. He was half inclined to call a doctor. Soon Yetta realized that she had reached Bleecker Street. She turned across town to the Subway and so down to Newspaper Row and _The Clarion_ office.

It bore no resemblance to that of _The Star_. The loft of a warehouse had been cut in two by a flimsy part.i.tion. In the back was a battery of second-hand, old-style linotypes, a couple of type-frames for the advertis.e.m.e.nt and job work, the make-up slab, the proof tables, and the stereotyping outfit. The stairway opened into this noisy, crowded room.

Yetta had to walk carefully between the machines to reach the editorial room beyond the part.i.tion.

A low railing divided the front room between the "editorial" and "business" departments. To the right was a long reporters' table, smaller ones for the "City" and "Exchange" editors, and a roll-top desk beyond for Isadore.

Levine, a youngster with very curly black hair, a wilted collar, and soaked s.h.i.+rt, jumped up to greet Yetta.

"h.e.l.lo," he shouted above the din of the typewriters and machines.

"Here's a note from Isadore. He's out trying to raise money. I hope to G.o.d you can help us. Locke's sick. I'm running his desk and mine and Isadore's this morning. Harry's covering the Party News and Woman's Page besides his Telegraph and Exchanges, so that Sam can cover the State Convention. How in h.e.l.l they expect us to get out a paper so short-handed is--"

"Oh, stop your croaking," Harry Moore yelled from his table, hardly looking up from a pile of Labor Papers he was clipping. "Things are no worse than usual. We'll get her out somehow. We always do. G.o.d's good to drunks and fools and Socialists."

One of the bookkeepers, from the "business" side of the railing, overhearing this "editorial" controversy, began to count at the top of his voice.

"One! Two! Three!"

At "Three" every one in the room, except Yetta and Levine, chanted in unison:--

"O-o-oh! Cut it out and work for Socialism!"

"You make me tired," Levine growled back at them, and sat down at his table with a despairing gesture.

Isadore's note told Yetta that a small but desperate strike had broken out among some paper-box factories in an out-of-the-way corner of Brooklyn. The workers were recently arrived immigrants who spoke no English. The regular papers had not mentioned the strike, and under cover of this secrecy, the bosses, who were allied with prominent Kings County politicians, were having everything their own way. He thought there was a big story in it. The publicity would certainly help the strikers. There was no one in the office to cover it.

Not a word of their last night's encounter.

"Comrade," Yetta asked Levine, "what time do you go to press?"

"One o'clock. Copy must be in by twelve-thirty. It's idiotic! Our Final Edition is on the streets before the regular papers lock up for their Home Edition. We can't get out a decent sheet in such--"

"One! Two! Three!"

"O-o-oh! Cut it out and work for Socialism!"

"They're fools!"

"Well," Yetta said, smiling for the first time that day, "I'll call you up about noon. Put a stenographer on the wire. That'll give you an opener for to-day. I'll have the whole story for a follow-up to-morrow.

So long."

About the time that Yetta was starting off on this a.s.signment, Isadore came into the office of the Woman's Trade Union League.

"h.e.l.lo," Mabel greeted him. Then, as a second thought, and somewhat less cordially, she added, "Stranger."

She was not in a happy mood. Of late she had felt her grip on life weakening. People upon whom she depended were deserting her. It had begun when Isadore had given up his work for the League to start _The Clarion_. When a new lawyer had been broken in, Mrs. Karner had left. It had been impossible to replace her. The Advisory Council was doubly hard to manage without her. There had been other desertions. Isadore seemed to have started a stampede. And Mabel did not feel these days the same buoyancy in meeting such emergencies. Her few gray hairs she was still able to hide, but there was no getting away from the tired look about her eyes. Her sudden irritabilities frightened her. She was haunted by the idea that she was getting "crabbed."

Isadore pulled up a chair and broke at once into his business. He wanted Mabel to persuade Yetta to take up some regular work on _The Clarion_.

Yetta had a talent for writing which ought not to be wasted. He would give them a column or so daily for their work of organizing women. "It would be helpful all round," he said. "Publicity for you. If it looks good to you, put it up to Yetta."

"It doesn't look good to me," Mabel said decisively. "You forget I'm not interested in your crazy little paper. What good is publicity to us among the couple of thousand hidebound Socialists who buy _The Clarion_?"

"Our circulation is over ten thousand."

"Pooh! n.o.body but party members read it. Most of your circulation is given away--and thrown into the gutter. You think working-men ought to read a Socialist paper. But they don't. They prefer a real paper with news in it and pictures and a funny page. Yetta was a fool to give up her work on _The Star_. That was real publicity.

"You want to get Yetta on _The Clarion_. You surely do need somebody who knows how to write! You want her to drift away from the real work of organization--just as you did. I see through your mutual benefit talk.

Instead of helping our work, you want to get her away from us. Well, the less she gets mixed up with _The Clarion_ and your little closed circle of dogmatists, the better I'll be pleased."

"Come to think of it," Isadore said, changing his tactics, "I would like to see Yetta give all her time to _The Clarion_. As you say, we surely do need good writers. But that wasn't in my mind when I came in.

"I'm worried about Yetta. She needs to be kept busy--busier than she is.

Of course I wouldn't want her to know I was b.u.t.ting in like this. But she's worrying about something--"

Mabel, her mind made up to be disagreeable, interrupted him.

"I knew it wasn't interest in the League that brought you here. I owe this visit to your solicitude about Yetta."

"That's not just, either, Mabel--although it's nearer right than your first guess. Yetta's princ.i.p.al work is with the League. It's natural I should come to you. I am really worried about her. Something's troubling her."

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know." Isadore was surprised at the ease with which he lied.

"You don't have to know what's wrong to see that things aren't right.

You'd have noticed it, too, if you had not been seeing her every day.

But I haven't seen her for a long time"--he expanded his lie. "She came into my office this morning and it scared me. This 'what's-the-use'

look. She's moody, sad. Going through some sort of a crisis. We all have them. Times when we wonder what G.o.d had against us when He made us, and all that. The only thing that helps is work.

"Yetta isn't doing much more for you than when she was studying or working on _The Star_. I guess it's the empty mornings that cause the trouble. Really, the way she looked startled me. I was coming uptown, anyway, and I decided to drop in and put it up to you. I really think the work I suggested--which would fill up her mornings--would help you fully as much as us."

Mabel bit the end of her pencil and looked out at the street. She was sure that Isadore had not told her all he knew. Probably Yetta had found Walter indifferent and was cut up over that. She would find out in the evening when Walter called on her. Perhaps more work would be good for Yetta. Not the job Isadore suggested. She had a decided hostility to him and this wild newspaper fad which had taken him away from "really useful work."

"You may be right about Yetta," she said, trying to soften her ill-humor. "I haven't seen any signs of a soul tragedy. But if she needs more work, I can give her more than she can handle right here--without urging her to waste time on your hobby."

"Your hobby or mine," Isadore said, getting up. "I don't care much which. My idea in coming was to see that Yetta was kept busy. And I think you'll see I was right about it. So long."

He was really glad that things had taken this turn. The impersonal, Socialist side of him would have rejoiced in winning Yetta's support for _The Clarion_. But he knew that in a personal way it would have been harder to have her always about. The sharpest pain in Cupid's quiver is to watch the one you love break heart for some one else.

From the League Isadore went in search of Wilhelm Stringer, the "organizer" of the "branch" of the Socialist local to which Yetta belonged. For near forty years, Stringer had earned what money he needed as a bra.s.s polisher. But his real job was Socialism. He had long been a widower, his own children had died in infancy and his cheated paternal instinct had found an outlet in quiet, intense love for the "young Comrades." He was a kindly "Father Superior" to the whole city organization.

Isadore found him eating his lunch on the sidewalk, in the shade of the factory. They were old friends and could talk without evasions.

"Bill," Isadore said, "this is a personal matter. It's just by chance I know about it. Comrade Yetta Rayefsky is up against it. You can guess the trouble as well as I could tell you. What she needs is to be kept so busy that she'll forget it. She's in your branch. There must be some work which isn't being done that you could unload on her. Work's the best medicine for her."

Very slowly Stringer chewed up his mouthful of cheese sandwich.