Brennan had been wondering why Longman had come to the court. He looked at him suspiciously.
"No," he said. "I never saw that man till I got to the strike headquarters."
"Well, Brennan, are you quite sure, are you prepared to swear that when you were kicking Mrs. Muscovitz about this gentleman did not knock you down as you deserved – as any real man would have done?"
"I didn't kick the woman," Brennan said.
"That's not the question. Are you sure it wasn't Professor Longman who laid you out?"
For a moment Brennan hesitated. It was hard for him to believe that Yetta had knocked him senseless. He knew that Braun was trying to catch him in a perjury. And he had a guilty conscience.
"If it was him that hit me," he roared, "I'll have him sent up. I was doing my duty."
"Officer," the judge said, "see that this man does not leave the room."
"It is a useless precaution, Your Honor," Braun said. "Professor Longman was nowhere in the neighborhood. But I think it is quite clear that Brennan does not know who or what hit him."
The reporter who had come with them, not being regularly detailed to the court, was not afraid to laugh out loud.
"I have no other questions to ask," Braun went on. "Will the Court have the defendant's account of what happened?"
The oath was administered to Yetta and she told the story, which Braun had taught her, more calmly and simply than most people tell the truth. The judge did not believe that a person who had just committed a murderous assault could be so cool under the charge. He knew Brennan, and that he was probably lying now. He himself had slipped on the wet pavement that morning, his motor had skidded on the way downtown. He believed Yetta. He had generally believed the strikers against whom Brennan and the other "private detectives" had testified, but, knowing just what was expected of him by those on whom he depended for advancement, he had sent the other girls to jail. He twirled his pencil a moment, asking her a few inconsequential questions, and regretfully came to the conclusion that he could not possibly hold her on the assault charge.
"Are there any other witnesses?" he asked.
"Mrs. Muscovitz, who was picketing with the defendant, is here," Braun said. "She tells me exactly the same story. She will tell it to the Court if Your Honor so directs. But it seems rather a waste of time. There is no case against my client. Brennan has shown the Court that he doesn't know what hit him. Look at the two of them, Your Honor. If you think that any twelve men on earth will believe that this slip of a girl assaulted the complainant, you can of course hold her for the Grand Jury. But I ask the Court to discharge the defendant."
"Not so fast, Mr. Braun," the judge snapped. "Even admitting the truth of her improbable story – which I very much question – admitting there is insufficient evidence to hold her on the assault charge, she confesses to disorderly conduct in interfering with an officer who was making an arrest. Clerk, make out a charge of disorderly conduct. I suppose you'll swear to the complaint, Brennan."
While this detail was being attended to at the clerk's desk, the judge delivered himself of an informal philippic against the strikers. He aimed a good deal of his discourse at Mrs. Muscovitz: it was only the extreme leniency of the Court, he said, which kept him from ordering her arrest; – as a matter of fact it was past his lunch time. His tirade, which he seemed to enjoy immensely, as he saw the reporter taking notes, was interrupted by the Clerk handing him the new papers.
"Yetta Rayefsky, you admit picketing, which means intimidating honest work-people, before the Crown Vest Company this morning; you admit interfering with Officer Brennan, while he was engaged in the performance of his duty. The Court finds you guilty of disorderly conduct. But the officers inform me that this is the first time you have been brought to court. As is my custom, I will discharge you if you promise not to picket any more. Understand that if you are brought before me again, I will send you to prison. Take my advice and go to work. Idleness always breeds trouble. Will you promise not to picket any more?"
"No."
The judge sat up with a jerk.
"Ten days, workhouse," he thundered.
And as they led her away, he rapped on his desk with his gavel, and the clerk announced adjournment.
"That little Jew girl had more spunk than I gave her credit for," the judge said a few minutes later, in his chambers, to his secretary who was helping him on with his fur-lined coat. "I wonder if she did blackjack Brennan." He had to sit down again to laugh at the idea.
"Don't scold me," Yetta said to Braun, when he came into the prison and spoke to her through the grating. "I was tired of lying."
Braun said to himself as he went away that it was just like a woman to get away with a big lie and stumble over a little one.
CHAPTER XV
THE WORKHOUSE
In the afternoon Yetta was loaded into "the wagon" with a lot of "drunks" and prostitutes and taken up to the Department dock to wait for the ferry across to the Island.
She had not realized how the month's strain had tired her until the excitement was over and she was on the tug in midstream. In sheer weariness, she turned round on her seat and, crossing her arms on its back, buried her face in them. Presently she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't take it so hard, Little One," a not unkindly voice said. "It's fierce at first, but you get used to it." She looked up into a face of stained and faded gaudiness.
"Oh," the woman said, somewhat taken aback. "You're one of them strikers. Did they beat you up?"
"No," Yetta replied, "I got off easy."
The woman stood a moment first on one foot and then on the other – she could not think of anything more to say. She went across the boat and told one of her cronies what kind of a shame she thought it was "to run in a nice girl like that."
Yetta was in a strange state of detachment. It surprised her afterwards to remember how little the discomforts of the prison had troubled her. She was hardly conscious of the dirty, rough clothes they gave her. The bitter, hard, and useless work of scrubbing the stone flagging seemed to her unreal. She hardly noticed the food they set before her for supper. She was not hungry. And when they let her go to bed, she plunged so quickly and deeply into the oblivion of sleep that she did not feel the vermin nor hear the sinister whispers of her cell-mates. Her mind, utterly fagged out with all the new thoughts and experiences, was taking a vacation. Even the sense nerves were too tired to record with exactitude their impressions.
Before Yetta fell into this blissful, dreamless sleep her arrest had begun to stir up considerable excitement in New York. When Braun and Longman returned to the strike headquarters from the court-house, they found Mabel preparing to go uptown to the meeting of the Advisory Council. The imprisonment of Yetta seemed to her the crowning outrage of the long list of trivial arrests. She did not dream how nearly the charge came to being true. Dozens of other girls had been sent to the workhouse on perjured evidence. But this seemed different. Yetta was "hers." In the past weeks she had become "her" friend. So are we all constituted. We read in the morning paper that thousands of Chinese or Russians or Moors are dying of famine. Perhaps we mail a check to the Red Cross. But if we should be hungry or one of our dear friends should starve, it would seem extravagantly unjust.
In this ireful frame of mind, Mabel met the ladies of the Advisory Council. To them also Yetta was a much more real personality than the other girls who had been arrested. Their Yetta, their quiet-mannered, sad-eyed, gentle-voiced Yetta, arrested for assaulting a man? It was impossible! With the tears in her eyes, Mabel assured them that it was true.
"We can't permit this," Mrs. Van Cleave said, snapping her lorgnette ominously. "It is preposterous! The young lady has been a guest in my house. I have introduced her to my friends. It can't be permitted."
"Well, what can we do about it?" Mabel asked, for once at a loss.
There was a clamor of wild suggestions. It was at last Mrs. Karner, the woman whom Yetta had liked, and at whose request she had told about Harry Klein, who brought out a practical plan.
"We've got to do it through the newspapers," she said. "Stir up the press."
"Oh," Mabel said in despair, "they laugh when I come into their offices. They're not interested, or they're on the other side."
"They laugh because they're used to you. You haven't any news value," Mrs. Karner went on. "But they would not laugh if Mrs. Van Cleave talked to them."
"Hey? What?" Mrs. Van Cleave asked with a start.
"Oh! you won't even have to go to their offices; you can send for them. I worked on a newspaper once, and I know. You won't have to go to them. They'll come. The editors will eat out of your hand – do anything for you on the chance that you might invite their wives to dinner. Have your secretary call up the papers, and you'll have a hundred special writers camped on your doorstep."
"Well, well! What an idea!" Mrs. Van Cleave snorted.
All the women, with various degrees of obsequiousness, begged her to do it. But it was not the kind of newspaper notoriety she liked.
"No," she repeated a dozen times. "I could not do that. Preposterous! Preposterous!"
But she hardly heard the urgings. She was looking away beyond the room at the vision of a little girl who had died many years ago – the only thing which had not been worldly in all her life. And this little daughter of hers had had eyes very much like Yetta's. Yes. Very much like. In fact they were almost exactly the same. And just when the women were giving up hope she suddenly spoke decisively.
"Yes. I'll do it. My secretary is outside in the motor. Call her in."
"Jane," she said when that very businesslike and faded young woman appeared, "two things. One, a list of all the women who met that little working-girl at my house. Two, telephone all the city editors. I want to give out a statement, a personal statement. My house, to-night. Morning papers. You can use the telephone in the front office. That will do."
Yetta and Mrs. Van Cleave divided the first column the next morning. In the two and three cent papers Yetta got most of the space, in the one cent papers the proportions were reversed. But Yetta's story, more or less diluted with descriptions of Mrs. Van Cleave's drawing-room and gown and diamond tiara – she had given the newspaper men a few minutes as she was leaving for the Opera – was read by almost everybody in Greater New York. Yetta was invariably described as little, in several cases as only thirteen. Pick-Axe was ordinarily spoken of as an ex-prize-fighter – a libel on the profession, which can at least boast of physical courage.
Among others who read the story was the Commissioner of Correction. He called up the warden of the workhouse.
"That jackass, Cornett, has stirred up hell down at Essex Market. Seen the papers? Well, there'll be fifteen hundred reporters bothering you this morning, trying to interview this Rayefsky girl. Don't let them. But they'll get at her when she comes out; she'll be telling her impressions of prison life to everybody. Give her some snap. Feed her. Damn her soul, don't give her no chance to kick. See?"
It was about nine o'clock when this message crossed the wire. A few minutes later the warden entered the women's wing of the workhouse. There were about fifty prisoners on their knees, scrubbing the stone floor.
"Yetta Rayefsky."
She got up in surprise and came towards him, wondering what new thing they were going to do to her.
"Know anything about children?" he asked.
Yetta was too much surprised by the question to answer.
"Well," he said, "you don't look like you'd cut their throats. My wife needs a nurse. Come on."
"Ain't you got any clothes that fits her?" he asked the matron at the door. "Clean ones. Don't want things like that in the house. Wash her up. We don't want bugs. And send her over right away."
"Gee," the matron said with sudden, cringing respect. "Why didn't you tell me you had a pull?"
So Yetta was taken out of the Inferno, before her tired senses had fully waked up to its horrors. The warden's house was outside the prison. It had a pleasant lawn, close-clipped, its flower beds well tended, for the labor of the "trusties" was free. There was already a nurse for the children, and Yetta did not have anything to do. The yesterday's storm had been the end of winter, and an almost midsummer heat had fallen on New York. She spent most of her time on a rustic bench under a great elm. There was a fine open view across the busy river to the busier city.
The real nurse was snobbish and would not speak to her, which saved her from much foolish chatter. Nobody paid any attention to her except the warden's three-year-old boy, who continually escaped from his nurse and tried to climb into Yetta's lap. They gave her good meals and a comfortable bed. It was somewhat unkind of them to jerk the baby out of Yetta's lap whenever he found his way there. But otherwise she was very well treated. The only restrictions they put on her was that she should not leave the lawn and should not read the papers. "It would give her a swelled head," the warden said. His prohibition had the advantage of keeping her from the excitement of contact with the strike.
Above everything else, Yetta needed rest and quiet to think. The first day she dozed. The second day her mind woke up. She had a fear that she would forget something. So many things had happened in the past month. Ten days seemed to her a limitless time, so she began at the beginning. Her earliest recollections were of the dingy little book-store and her father. The morning passed in rearranging her memories of him. When they called her for supper, she had reached, in the review of her life, Rachel's first dance. Afterwards she sat in the little dormer window of her bedroom and looked out at the twilight falling over the city; she watched the lights on the river and the stars in their courses overhead and went over her acquaintance with Harry Klein.
She had learned a great deal during this month out of the shop. From words dropped here and there, from things she had seen, she had come to a clearer understanding of the thing she had escaped. She had thought she was in love with Harry Klein! She went to sleep realizing how hollow had been her conception of love. The word had a very different content now that she had seen Walter and Mabel together and had heard the gossip of the girls. The thought of two such people being in love seemed very wonderful to her.
After breakfast the next morning she took her seat again in the shade of the elm tree and, with her chin in her hands, pondered over the strike. She had a remarkable memory for words and phrases. She could have given a full synopsis of all the speeches she had heard in that month. Most of the people who had talked at the meetings had tried to tell what the strike meant. She went over the various and often contradictory explanations, and, supplementing them with her own experience and observations, reached an interpretation of her own. Much of it came as a direct inheritance from her father. The two speakers who had influenced her most were Longman and Braun. With the former she believed that all those who loved liberty were under a sacred obligation to struggle for it. And Braun's straightforward, concise statement of social organization seemed to her reasonable. As soon as possible she wanted to get a chance to study Socialism.
Meanwhile the storm kicked up by her arrest was growing apace. That morning the papers contained an open letter which the Commissioner of Corrections had addressed to the ladies of the Woman's Trade Union League. He had been forced to this action, because the evening papers had published interviews with other strikers who had been in the workhouse. They gave impressive details of the nauseous place, of the rank food, the vermin, the dark cells, and the debased associations. The Commissioner's letter was a dignified document. It had been written by his secretary. In a sweeping manner he denounced the accusations made by the strikers as malicious libel and referred the ladies of the Advisory Council and the public in general to page 213 of the last report of the Prison Association, which gave just tribute to the modern sanitation, the wholesome dietary, and the healthy régime of the workhouse.
"In regard to the case of Miss Rayefsky, about whom this agitation has centred, the Commissioner begs to point out that he has no manner of responsibility over commitments. It is not within his province to pass judgment on the decisions of the courts. He must accept whomsoever is committed to his custody. In reply to his inquiry, the warden of the workhouse informs him that, instead of suffering the fantastic tortures which certain hysterical lawbreakers have tried to persuade the public are actualities in the workhouse, Miss Rayefsky has been detailed to the work of nurse to the warden's children, and is living – probably in greater comfort than she ever knew before – as a member of his household.
"As the Commissioner does not care to ask the public to take his word in preference to irresponsible newspaper stories, he invites the Woman's Trade Union League to appoint a committee to visit Miss Rayefsky in the workhouse and report to the public."
While Yetta was pondering over the meanings of strikes and industrial warfare, all New York was discussing her case and reading what various society ladies thought about the way their pet had been treated. Pick-Axe lost his job as private detective and had to go back to highway robbery.
After lunch Yetta tackled the hardest problem of all – why had she tried to kill Pick-Axe? Instinctively she felt that Longman would understand. But neither Mabel nor Braun would, – Braun least of all. Her act did not fit in with Socialism. No other speakers had urged the strikers as vigorously as the Socialists to abstain from violence or lawbreaking. Longman was not the only one who would understand. There was Casey, the secretary of the Central Federated Union, and the men of the "Pastry Cooks' Union." She could have told them about it without any hesitancy. She tried for some minutes to decide whether her father would have understood. She was not sure. She wanted to judge herself justly in the matter, but try as hard as she might, she found it impossible to blame herself sincerely. Her speculations were interrupted by Longman's voice.
"What are you thinking about so hard?"
She jumped up in surprise to see that Longman and Mrs. Karner had come across the lawn without her hearing their approach. The warden had established himself in a chair where he could watch them.
Mrs. Karner had happened to be in the office when the Commissioner's letter arrived. She had appointed herself, together with Mabel and Longman, the committee to visit Yetta. They had notified the Commissioner, and he in turn had warned the warden. But just as they were about to start, a representative of the Association of Vest Manufacturers had telephoned to Mabel for a conference. It was too important to miss. So Mrs. Karner and Longman had come alone.
Yetta rushed into Mrs. Karner's arms and had hard work not to kiss Longman. She had not realized that she was lonely until she saw the familiar faces.
"We've only got fifteen minutes," Longman said. "So we must get down to business. Did they bring you to the warden's house at once?"
"No. At first – the first night I was in a cell. It was about nine the next morning the warden came and took me out."
"Just as I was telling you," Longman said to Mrs. Karner. "When they read the newspapers, they got scared and made an exception for her. Your newspaper campaign did it."
"What?"
And Mrs. Karner told Yetta all about it; how angry her friends were to hear of her being accused of assault and how they had made an awful row in the papers. Yetta's face burned. If Longman had been alone, she would have told him the truth in spite of Braun's interdiction. But she was not sure that Mrs. Karner would understand.
"It's hard on you, Yetta," Longman said, "to be locked up. But it's great business for the strike. It was just such a picturesque outrage as this that was needed to attract attention. The papers are full of it, and everybody's for the vest-makers. The girls took a collection on the street yesterday and got nearly a thousand dollars. The bosses are scared. Their organization is breaking up. Two of the shops have settled already. It looks like a victory all round."
For ten minutes more they gave her the hopeful news and loving messages. Then they saw the warden coming across the grass.
"Is there anything you'd like to have me send you?" Longman asked.
"I'd like some books that tell about Socialism."
"Warden," Longman said as the official approached, "we've enjoyed this visit very much. We're greatly obliged to you for your especial kindness to Miss Rayefsky. Would you have any objection to my sending her some books?"
"She can read my books, if she wants to," he said gruffly.
"That's very kind, I'm sure. But she wants to study. It's some books on economics I want to send her."
"I've no objection," the warden said. "Send them to me. But no newspapers."
Mrs. Karner kissed her again, and Longman shook hands. There had been little of such kindness in Yetta's life, and their visit touched her deeply. The thoughts of the last few days had been tinged with bitterness. It was softened by the realization that she had friends. In the great city there beyond the river were people who cared for her. And what wonderful people they were!
The Department tug swung out into the current, and Yetta saw Mrs. Karner waving her handkerchief. She jumped up to wave back.
When Mrs. Karner sat down, there were tears in her eyes.
"Do you suppose she'll keep the faith?" she asked Longman.
He was surprised by the question. He had never heard Mrs. Karner use the word "faith" before. She was ordinarily brilliantly cynical.
"I don't quite understand."
"Oh, yes, you do. Will she have the – what do the long distance runners call it? – 'wind,' 'staying power,' to keep her faith in revolt? In Socialism? It's a long race, this life of ours, and an obstacle race every foot – will she last?"… In a moment she went on. "Oh, I hope she will. It's beautiful! I hope she won't be fooled into something else. Nothing on earth is worth so much as faith – Why don't you say something?"
"I'm – "
"Oh, you're surprised to hear me talk like this. But don't be mean and rub it in, even if I have sold out. Once upon a time – " she broke off suddenly and then began again. "Do you really suppose any one ever lived who has not had some youth and faith? I was a girl once. Time was when there weren't any wrinkles on my soul. Why! Once upon a time, I was going to write the Great American Novel! Sometimes I try to comfort myself by saying that newspaper work was too hard for a woman. I ought to make a pilgrimage somewhere – on my knees – to thank the gods I wasn't born a vest-maker. I did not have the nerve – the staying power. I sold out.
"And when this dinky little boat gets to the dock, I'll ask you to get into my car and come up to Sherry's for tea. It will save me from going to that great Social Institution, that bulwark of America's greatness – The Home. I'd invite you to it, only it would seem like an insult. There's a big room looking out on the Drive – full of Gothic furniture; some of it was made in the Middle Ages and some was made in Milwaukee. Bert has a fad for Gothic. Home's a sort of Musée du Cluny. This isn't my day, but some women are sure to drop in. Some in skirts and some in trousers, and they'll talk nonsense and worse. And once upon a time I was a real woman, and worked with real men and had thoughts. It's so long ago I almost forgot about it till this little vest-maker came along, with her big eyes and her faith."
The boat bumped against the pier.
"Don't be scared at my melodramatics," she said. "Come up to Sherry's and I'll tell you the latest scandal. Some of it is quite untellable. We'll forget the little Jewess with her disturbing eyes. Curses on them! You know, looking into them makes me understand why they crucified Christ at such an early age. – Will you come?"
"Can we stop on the way and get those books for Yetta?"
Late that night Longman took out one of his printed sheets of foolscap and added Mrs. Karner's credo to his collection. It was the first of his questionnaires he had filled out since he had begun preparations for the expedition to Assyria.
The next morning the warden handed Yetta a bundle of books. On the fly-leaf of the smallest one – Thoreau's Essays– Longman had written: "Thoreau lived before Socialism commenced. But I don't think any of the modern writers have bettered 'On the Duty of Civic Disobedience.'"
In the six days which were left of her sentence, Yetta had time to read and reread all the books Walter had sent her, and to think her way to a surer footing in Life.