Visionaries Part 19

II

Notwithstanding his vows of heroism, Arthur could not force himself to like the establishment of Schwab, where the meeting was to take place.

It was a beer-saloon, not one of those mock-mediaeval uptown palaces, but a long room with a low ceiling, gaslit and shabby. The tables and chairs of hard, coa.r.s.e wood were greasy--napkins and table-cloths were not to be mentioned, else would the brethren suspect the presence of an aristocrat. At the upper end, beyond the little black bar, there was a platform, upon it a table, a pianoforte, and a stool. Still he managed to conceal his repugnance to all these uninviting things and he sipped his diluted Rhine wine, ate his sandwich--an unpalatable one--under the watchful eyes of his companion. By eight o'clock the room was jammed with working-people, all talking and in a half dozen tongues.

Occasionally Yetta left him to join a group, and where she went silence fell. She was the oracle of the crowd. At nine o'clock Arthur's head ached. He had smoked all his Turkish cigarettes, the odour of which caused some surprise--there was a capitalist present and they knew him.

Only Yetta prevented disagreeable comment. The men, who belonged to the proletarian cla.s.s, were poorly dressed and intelligent; the women wore shawls on their heads and smoked bad cigarettes. The saloon did not smell nice, Arthur thought. He had offered Yetta one of his imported cigarettes, but she lighted a horrible weed and blew the smoke in his face.

At ten o'clock he wished himself away. But a short, stout man with a lopsided face showing through his tangled beard, stood up and said in German:--

"All who are not _our_ friends, please leave the house."

No one stirred. The patron went from group to group saluting his customers and eying those who were not. Whether any pa.s.sword or signal was given Arthur could not say. When the blond, good-natured Schwab reached him, Yetta whispered in his ear. The host beamed on the young American and gave him a friendly poke in the back; Arthur felt as if he had been knighted. He said this to Yetta, but her attention was elsewhere. The doors and windows were quickly shut and bolted. She nudged his elbow--for they were sitting six at the table, much to his disgust; the other four drank noisily--and he followed her to the top of the room. A babble broke out as they moved along.

"It's Yetta's new catch. Yetta's rich fellow. Wait until she gets through with him--poor devil." These broken phrases made him s.h.i.+ver, especially as Yetta's expression, at first enigmatic, was now openly sardonic. What did she mean? Was she only tormenting him? Was this to be his test, his trial? His head was almost splitting, for the heat was great and the air bad. Again he wished himself home.

They reached the platform. "Jump up, Arthur, and help me," she commanded. He did so. But his discomfiture only grew apace with the increased heat--the dingy ceiling crushed him--and the rows in front, the entire floor seemed transformed to eyes, malicious eyes. She told him to sit down at the piano and play the Ma.r.s.eillaise. Then standing before the table she drew from her bosom a scarlet flag, and accompanied by the enthusiastic shoutings she led the singing. Arthur at the keyboard felt exalted. Forgotten the pains of a moment before. He hammered the keys vigorously, extorting from the battered instrument a series of curious croakings. Some of the keys did not "speak," some gave forth a brazen clangour from the rusty wires. No one cared. The singing stopped with the last verse.

"Now La Ravachole for our French brethren." This combination of revolutionary lyrics--ca Ira and Carmagnole--was chanted fervidly. Then came for the benefit of the German the stirring measures from the Scotch-German John Henry Mackay's Sturm:--

Das ist der Kampf, den allnachtlich Bevor das Dunkel zerrinnt, Einsam und gramvoll auskampt Des Jahrhunderts verlorenes Kind.

Yetta waved her long and beautifully shaped hands--they were her solitary vanity. The audience became still. She addressed them at first in deliberate tones, and Arthur noted that the interest was genuine--he wondered how long his fat-witted club friends could endure or appreciate the easy manner in which Yetta Silverman quoted from great thinkers, and sprinkled these quotations with her own biting observations.

"Richard Wagner--who loved humanity when he wrote Siegfried and regretted that love in Parsifal!

"Richard Wagner--who loved ice-cream more than Dresden's freedom--Wagner: the Swiss family bell-ringer of '48!

"To Max Stirner, Ibsen, and Richard Strauss belongs the twentieth century!

"Nietzsche--the anarch of aristocrats!

"Karl Marx--or the selfish Jew socialist!

"La.s.salle--the Jew comedian of liberty!

"Bernard Shaw--the clever Celt who would sacrifice socialism for an epigram.

"Curse all socialists!" she suddenly screamed.

Arthur, entranced by the playful manner with which she disposed of friend and foe, was aghast at this outbreak. He saw another Yetta. Her face was ugly and revengeful. She sawed the air with her thin arms.

"Repeat after me," she adjured her hearers, "the Catechism of Sergei Netschajew, but begin with Herzen's n.o.ble motto: 'Long live chaos and destruction!'"

"Long live chaos and destruction!" was heartily roared.

The terrific catechism of the apostle Netschajew made Arthur shake with alternate woe and wrath. It was b.l.o.o.d.y-minded beyond description. Like a diabolic litany boomed the questions and answers:--

"Day and night we must have but one thought--inexorable destruction."

And Arthur recalled how this pupil of Bakounine had with the a.s.sistance of Pryow and Nicolajew beguiled a certain suspected friend, Ivanow, into a lonely garden and killed him, throwing the body into a lake. After that Netschajew disappeared, though occasionally showing himself in Switzerland and England. Finally, in 1872, he was nabbed by the Russian government, sent to Siberia, and--!

_Ugh!_ thought Arthur, what a people, what an ending! And Yetta--why did she now so openly proclaim destruction as the only palliative for social crime when she had so eloquently disclaimed earlier in the day the propaganda by force, by dagger, and dynamite?--He had hardly asked himself the question when there came a fierce rapping of wooden clubs at door and window. Instantly a brooding hush like that which precedes a hurricane fell upon the gathering. But Yetta did not long remain silent.

"Quick, Arthur, play the Star-Spangled Banner! It's the police. I want to save these poor souls--" she added, with a gulp in her throat; "quick, you idiot, the Star-Spangled Banner." But Arthur was almost fainting. His ringers fell listlessly on the keys, and they were too weak to make a sound. The police! he moaned, as the knocking deepened into banging and shouting. What a scandal! What a disgrace! He could never face his own world after this! To be caught with a lot of crazy anarchists in a den like this!--Smash, went the outside door! And the newspapers! They would laugh him out of town. He, Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz, the Amateur Anarch! He saw the hideous headlines. Why, the very daily in which some of his fortune was invested would be the first to mock him most!

The a.s.sault outside increased. He leaped to the floor, where Yetta was surrounded by an excited crowd. He plucked her sleeve. She gazed at him disdainfully.

"For G.o.d's sake, Yetta, get me out of this--this awful sc.r.a.pe. My mother, my sisters--the disgrace!" She laughed bitterly.

"You poor chicken among hawks! But I'll help you--follow me." He reached the cellar stairs, and she showed him a way by which he could walk safely into the alley, thence to the street back of their building. He shook her hand with the intensity of a man in the clutches of the ague.

"But you--why don't you go with me?" he asked, his teeth chattering.

The brittle sound of gla.s.s breaking was heard. She answered, as she took his feverish hand:--

"Because, you brave revolutionist, I must stick to my colours.

Farewell!" And remounting the stairs, she saw the bluecoats awaiting her.

"I hope the police will catch him anyhow," she said. It was her one relapse into femininity, and as she quietly surrendered she did not regret it.

III

Old Koschinsky's store on the avenue was the joy of the neighbourhood.

For hours, their smeary faces flattened against the gla.s.s, the children watched the tireless antics of the revolving squirrels; the pouter pigeons expand their b.r.e.a.s.t.s into feathered balloons; the goldfish, as they stolidly swam, their little mouths open, their eyes following the queer human animals imprisoned on the other side of the plate-gla.s.s window. Canary birds by the hundreds made the shop a trying one for sensitive ears. There were no monkeys. Koschinsky, whose heart was as soft as b.u.t.ter, though he was a formidable revolutionist--so he swore over at Schwab's--declared that monkeys were made in the image of tyrannical humans. He would have none of them. Parrots? There were enough of the breed around him, he told the gossiping women, who, with their _scheitels_, curved noses, and s.h.i.+ning eyes, lent to the quarter its Oriental quality.

It was in Koschinsky's place that Arthur first encountered Yetta. He was always prowling about the East Side in search of sociological prey, and the modest little woman with her intelligent and determined face attracted him strongly. They fell into easy conversation near a cage of canaries, and the acquaintance soon bloomed into a friends.h.i.+p. A week after the raid on Schwab's, Arthur, very haggard and nervous, wandered into Koschinsky's. The old man greeted him:--

"Hu! So you've just come down from the Island! Well--how did you like it up there? Plenty water--eh?" The sarcasm was too plain, and the young man, mumbling some sort of an answer, turned to go.

"Hold on there!" said Koschinsky. "I expect a very fine bird soon. You'd better wait. It was here only last night; and the bird asked whether you had been in." Arthur started.

"For me? Miss Silverman?"

"I said a bird," was the dogged reply. And then Yetta walked up to Arthur and asked:--

"Where have you been? Why haven't you called?" He blushed.

"I was ashamed."

"Because you were so, so--frightened, that night?"

"Yes."

"But nothing came of the affair. The police could get no evidence. We had no flags--"

"That scarlet one I saw you with--what of it?" She smiled.

"Did you look in your pockets when you got home? I stuffed the flag in one of them while we were downstairs." He burst into genteel laughter.