Comrade Yetta Part 46

"Surprise?" Levine said gloomily. "It'll give him apoplexy."

"That's forty-five gone," Mary said. "There's thirty left."

"How much do you need, Nell?" Moore asked the stenographer.

"I'm nearly a month back on my room rent. I'm in a bad hole, but I could get along with ten."

"Oh, make it fifteen," Harry said. "Girls always need money for ribbons and ice-cream sodas."

"That leaves fifteen for us, Harry," Levine wailed. "It's what I call a dog's life."

"Oh, cheer up." Moore pocketed the fifteen dollars. "Come on up to Sherry's for lunch.--It's on me."

Linking his arm in Levine's, he led him, still grumbling, out of the office.

Mary Ames sat down heavily in a chair and began to cry.

"If I wasn't so ugly," she said, "I'd just like to kiss those boys."

She shook the tears out of her eyes and jerked her chair up towards Yetta's desk.

"I know you think I'm a sentimental old flop--crying like this. You're always so calm. But I can't help it. You might think I'm discouraged--rus.h.i.+ng round all week begging money, and every Sat.u.r.day morning having to come in and tell the boys I've failed--that I haven't enough to pay their salaries. But it isn't discouragement that makes me cry, it's just joy! I wouldn't have the nerve to peg through week after week of it if it wasn't for being the ghost on Sat.u.r.days. It's those two boys, Levine always grumbling and Harry Moore making jokes. And--I know--sometimes they don't have enough to eat. And you ought to see the hole they sleep in!"

Her lips began to twitch again, and perfect rivers of tears ran down her cheeks.

"I wish I could stop crying. But it's just too wonderful to work with people like this. I've been a bookkeeper in dozens of offices--everybody selfish and hating each other and trying to get on. I've seen so much of the other. It's hard for me to believe in this.

"I don't know much about Socialism," she went on. "I ain't educated like you young people; I haven't read very much. Keeping books all day is all my eyes are good for. But I just know it's right. If it wasn't the real thing, there'd never be a paper like this. How can you sit there so calm and cold and not cry? It's the biggest thing in the world, and we're part of it."

Yetta put her arms about the older woman.

"I love it, too," she said. "But it doesn't make me cry. Somehow it's too big for me. It matters so little whether I'm part of it or not. It would go on just the same--if I wasn't here. It isn't mine. I could cry over a little baby--if it was mine. But not over this--"

She was surprised to find that her tears were contradicting her words.

Once started, it was hard to stop. It seemed very sad to her that a young woman of twenty-three should have nothing more personal to cry over.

CHAPTER XXIX

WALTER'S HAVEN

While all these things were happening to Yetta, Walter was settling down into the rut of University life easily--almost contentedly. He was employed to be a scholar rather than a teacher. And while conducting cla.s.ses is always a dismal task, study--to one with any bent that way--is a pleasant occupation. He was not dependent on his salary, and so escaped from the picturesque discomfort of the quarters a.s.signed to him in the mediaeval college building, to a "garden cottage." There was a lodge in front and a lawn running down to the river behind. He had found an excellent cook, who was married to an indifferent gardener. And, although his lawn was not so smooth nor his grape crop so plentiful as his neighbors', he was very pleasantly installed.

Sometimes, of course, he thought regretfully of the might-have-been life in New York. But the more he studied the Hakt.i.tes, the more interesting they became. He had also revived his project of a Synthetic Philosophy.

On his return from the Christmas holidays of his second year at Oxford, he found a book in the mail which was waiting him. It was a novel--_The Other Solution_, by Beatrice Maynard. It had been sent to his old New York address. On the fly-leaf she had written, "Merry Xmas." It was an unexpected pleasure to have some one remember him at this holiday season. He had not received a Christmas present in years.

He hurried through his supper to begin it. Beyond occasionally filling his pipe he did not stop until the end.

It was, he decided, just such a book as he would have expected her to write! There was the patience of real art in the way it was done. Not a great book, but packed full of keen observation, and its finish was like a cameo.

It was a simple story of a very rich girl in New York. One hardly realized that it was about the Smart Set. Beatrice knew her people too well to have any illusion about their n.o.bility or their special depravity. The men changed their clothes rather too often, but were on the whole a kindly meaning lot. The women were a bit burdened with their jewellery, but very human, nevertheless. They were all bored by their uselessness. There was a cynical old bachelor uncle, who gave the Girl epigrammatical advice about the virtue of frivolity and the danger of taking things seriously. There was a maiden aunt--the romance of whose life had been shot to pieces at Gettysburg--who had sought solace in a morbid religious intensity. She was always warning the Girl, in the phraseology of Lamentations, against light-mindedness and the Wrath to Come. The "Other Solution" proved to be a very modern kind of nerve specialist, whose own nerves were going to pieces because of overwork and the cooking of an absinthe-drinking Frenchwoman. He was just on the point of beginning to take cocaine, when Beatrice persuaded him to take the Girl, instead.

"Good work," Walter said as he closed it.

For some moments he sat there wondering what sort of an anchorage Beatrice had found. Such a book could not have been written in a hurry nor in unpleasant surroundings. He had never heard from her. At first he had been too heavy of heart to care. But as the months, growing into years, had somewhat healed his hurts, he had often thought of her. But not knowing exactly what sort of memories she held of him, he had felt that if the long silence was to be broken, it should be done by her.

He was glad she had cared enough to do it. He swung his chair around to the table and wrote to her. There was praise of the book and thanks for the remembrance. In a few paragraphs he gave a whimsical description of his bachelor establishment and of his work, and asked news of her. He addressed it in care of her publishers, a London house.

A few days later her answer came to him at breakfast-time. His letter had caught her in London, where she had come over from Normandy to arrange about her new novel. Could he not come up to town during the few days she would be there? If he wired, she would let everything else slip to keep the appointment.

He sent the gardener out with a telegram and went up on an afternoon train. It was tea time when he found her in the parlor of her hotel.

"I hope I haven't begun to show my age, as you have," she greeted him.

"You haven't."

She had both hands busy with the tea things, so he could find no opportunity to be more gallant.

"I see by your note," she said,--"is it two lumps and cream or three and lemon?--that you did not follow my advice."

"No, not exactly. Two lumps, please. I tried to. I've often wondered if you realized what irresponsible and dangerous advice it was."

So he told her about Yetta.

"I never thought she'd be such an idealistic idiot," Beatrice commented.

"Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven."

"Walter, I believe you were in love with her and did not have the sense to say so."

He waved his hands as a Spaniard does when saying, "_Quien sabe?_"

"What's your news?" he asked.

She told him of the charming little village she had discovered in Normandy, of her roses and poppies and of her big writing-room, which overlooked three separate backyards and gave her endless opportunity--when the ink did not flow smoothly--to study the domestic life of her neighbors. What fun it was to write! How happy she was to get back to it again! Altogether she was going to write ten novels, each one was to be an improvement, and the last one really good. And then the Sweet Chariot was going to swing low and carry her home.

"I'm getting into the stride," she said. "_The Other Solution_ came hard. I'm so glad you liked it. I'd go stale on it. Have to lay it aside, so I've three coming out close together, now. I'm just finis.h.i.+ng the proof of number two, _Babel_. It's about those crazy _Transatlantiques_ we played with in Paris. And the next one strikes a deeper note. I think I'll call it _The Mess of Pottage_. It's almost finished--a couple of months' polis.h.i.+ng. I've been working on all three of these at the same time. But from now on it's one a year--regularly."

The conversation rambled back and forth. It jumped from the criminal code of the Hakt.i.tes to Strauss' _Electra_, and that brought them to Mrs. Van Cleave, whom Beatrice had encountered in the foyer of the Paris Opera at _Pelleas et Melisande_. Mrs. Van Cleave reminded them of a thousand things. The two years since they had seen each other fell away, the old intimacy returned. Beatrice suddenly reverted to Yetta.

"Don't blame me if you muddled things up. I advised you to marry her--not to get into a metaphysical discussion with her. I'm not sure but you're the bigger fool of the two. '_De l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace._' They say that Danton was a successful man with the ladies."

"The answer to that is," Walter said, "that you write your next novel in Oxford."

"Oxford! Why, a university town is no place for audacity!"