III
Old Koschinsky's store on the avenue was the joy of the neighbourhood. For hours, their smeary faces flattened against the glass, the children watched the tireless antics of the revolving squirrels; the pouter pigeons expand their breasts 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-glass 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 butter, 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 shining 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 friendship. 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.
"No, I threw off my clothes in such disgust that night that I vowed I would never get into them again. I gave the suit to my valet."
"Your valet," she gravely returned; "he may become one of us."
"Fancy, when I reached the house—I went up in a hansom, for I was bareheaded—my mother was giving the biggest kind of a ball. I had no end of trouble trying to sneak in unobserved."
She regarded him steadily. "Isn't it strange," she went on, "how the bull-dog police of this town persecute us—and they should be sympathetic. They had to leave their own island because of tyranny. Yet as soon as they step on this soil they feel themselves self-constituted tyrants. Something of the sort happened with your own ancestors—" she looked at him archly—"the Pilgrim Fathers were not very tolerant to the Quakers, the Jews, Catholics, or any sect not their own. Now you do not seem to have inherited that ear-slicing temperament—"
"Oh, stop, Yetta! Don't make any more fun of me. I confess I am cowardly—I hate rows and scandals—"
"'What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his liberty?'"
"Yes, I know. But this was such a nasty little affair. The newspapers would have driven me crazy."
"But suppose, for the sake of argument," she said, "that the row would not have appeared in the newspapers—what then?"
"What do you mean? By Jove, there was nothing in the papers, now that I come to think of it. I went the next morning out to Tuxedo and forgot—what do you mean by this mystery, Yetta?"
"I mean this—suppose, for the sake of further argument, I should tell you that there was no row, no police, no arrests!" He gasped.
"O-h, what an ass I made of myself. So that was your trial! And I failed. Oh, Yetta, Yetta—what shall I say?" The girl softened. She took both his hands in her shapely ones and murmured:—
"Dear little boy, I treated you roughly. Forgive me! There was a real descent by the police—it was no deception. That's why I asked you to play the Star-Spangled Banner—"
"Excuse me, Yetta; but why did you do that? Why didn't you meet the police defiantly chanting the Marseillaise? That would have been braver—more like the true anarchist." She held down her head.
"Because—because—those poor folks—I wanted to spare them as much trouble with the police as possible," she said in her lowest tones.
"And why," he pursued triumphantly, "why did you preach bombs after assuring me that reform must come through the spiritual propaganda?" She quickly replied:—
"Because our most dangerous foe was in the audience. You know. The man with the beard who first spoke. He has often denounced me as lukewarm; and then you know words are not as potent as deeds with the proletarians. One assassination is of more value than all the philosophy of Tolstoy. And that old wind-bag sat near us and watched us—watched me. That's why I let myself go—" she was blushing now, and old Koschinsky nearly dropped a bird-cage in his astonishment.
"Yetta, Yetta!" Arthur insisted, "wind-bag, you call your comrade? Were you not, just for a few minutes, in the same category? Again she was silent.
"I feel now," he ejaculated, as he came very close to her, "that we must get outside of these verbal entanglements. I want you to become my wife." His heart sank as he thought of his mother's impassive, high-bred air—with such a figure for a Fifth Avenue bride! The girl looked into his weak blue eyes with their area of saucer-like whiteness. She shook her stubborn head.
"I shall never marry. I do not believe in such an institution. It degrades women, makes tyrants of men. No, Arthur—I am fond of you, perhaps—" she paused,—"so fond that I might enter into any relation but marriage,—that never!"
"And I tell you, Yetta, anarchy or no anarchy, I could never respect the woman if she were not mine legally. In America we do these things differently—" he was not allowed to finish.
She glared at him, then she strode to the shop door and opened it.
"Farewell to you, Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz, amateur anarchist. Better go back to your mother and sisters! Mein Gott, Schopenhauer, too!" He put his Alpine hat on his bewildered head and without a word went out. She did not look after him, but walked over to the old bird-fancier and sat on his leather-topped stool. Presently she rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin with her gloveless hands. Her eyes were red. Koschinsky peeped at her and shook his head.
"Yetta—you know what I think!—Yetta, the boy was right! You shouldn't have asked him for the Star-Spangled Banner! The Marseillaise would have been better."
"I don't care," she viciously retorted.
"I know, I know. But a nice boy—so well fixed."
"I don't care," she insisted. "I'm married to the revolution."
"Yah, yah! the revolution, Yetta—" he pushed his lean, brown forefinger into the cage of an enraged canary—"the revolution! Yes, Yetta Silverman, the revolution!" She sighed.