The Spirit of the Ghetto Part 13

Her pa.s.sionate nature rebelled at the thought of any compromise with the ideal. She could not endure life otherwise than as her imagination dictated--and here was a pa.s.sion which threatened the existence of all she approved. What in a colder nature would have been a mere intellectual phase was with her an unbearably emotional upheaval; and on the spot she made a resolution conceived in despair but carried out with logical coolness. As the rebellious thought surged over her and filled her being with hot emotion she became aware that the shop was that of an apothecary on East Broadway, whither she had unconsciously wandered. With set lips she entered, aroused the sleeping clerk, a Socialist whom she knew, and bought that which soon allayed her problem without solving it. Early the next morning the clerk found her lying near the doorway, with an expression of impulsive energy on her dark face.

About three days later Blanofsky and his three friends were sitting in the cafe on Grand Street, drinking their eternal Russian tea and talking about Levitzky.

"I never saw a man so broken," said Blanofsky in his soft voice, "as Levitzky was by the death of that girl. For a week I feared for his life, he was so desperate. It seems he met Lefeitkin's clerk, who told him. He disappeared from the quarter for several days, and no one knew where he went. Four days ago he came to my room looking like a madman.

His hair was full of mud and his clothes torn and filthy. His eyes burned in his pale face, and his speech, more voluminous than ever, was broken and incoherent. He stayed all day, refused to eat, but talked all the time of Sabina, of her mind, of her rare personality, of her devotion to the cause. He was interrupted by fits of sobbing. I did not know that this man of intellect was capable of so great personal feeling."

"Levitzky is weak," said Herman Samarovitch, "and inconstant. He has vivid ideas, and imagination, but he never really cared for the cause.

He was a Socialist before he was an Anarchist. Before that he was an atheist, which followed a period of religious mysticism. At one time he was a conventional capitalist in principle, with the English government as his model. He is easily moved by an idea or an emotion, but he easily pa.s.ses to another. He will soon forget this girl's death, to which he should have been superior. He has no steadfastness, and is not one of us."

At this point, Levitzky entered the cafe. With him was the new arrival, the German Anarchist. To him Levitzky was talking with great animation. His words rolled over one another with enthusiasm.

"Do you know," he said eagerly, his face beaming, to Blanofsky and his companions, "that our distinguished friend here has consented to debate to-morrow night with our Socialist friend, Jacob Matz, that mistaken but able man, on the nature of individual right as interpreted by the Anarchist on one side and the Socialist on the other. I have written a poem on liberty which I intend to read at the meeting. Do you wish to hear it?"

He drew a ma.n.u.script from his pocket and read enthusiastically a poem in which a turbulent love for man and nature, for social equality and foaming cataracts was expressed in rich imagery. His face glowed and he seemed transported. He had forgotten Sabina.