Her dreams of him—thanks to his absence—could not be contradicted. If an act in the life about her seemed good, she did not doubt that Walter could and would have done it better. Of the unpleasant pettinesses which she saw among her associates, she was sure that he was free. The authors she read seemed to her very wise, but their attainments could not be compared to Walter's mystic wisdom. It is very easy to laugh at such folly—and so much easier to cry.
The idolatrous incense which she burned at the altar of the Absent One was a great incentive to her study. Knowledge was not only the road to power, but also to his approbation. But his greatest contribution was the memory of his scorn for intellectual ruts, for cut-and-dried formulæ. "You can't crowd life into a definition," he had said. "Beware of simple explanations. Living is a complex business."
Such phrases—sticking in her memory like illuminated mottoes—held her back from joining the Socialist party. Sooner or later it was inevitable that she should do so. She was a logical Socialist, with the logic of events. It would have been difficult to erect any other structure on the foundations life had laid for her. She was a machine worker who had revolted before the grinding monotony had killed her faith and vision. She could still hope. She had the insight to see beyond the personal pettiness of squabbling dogmatists to the great principles of Justice and Brotherhood, which their heated advocacy sometimes obscures. Her life would have been poorer in any other setting.
But it was a real gain to her that she did not join the party hurriedly. She might have resisted the urgings of Braun longer—even after she had read largely pro and con, even after she had familiarized herself with the traditional theoretical "objections to Socialism," and, weighing them against the facts of life, which she saw about her, the bent and aged women of thirty, the young men smitten with tuberculosis, the thousands of babies that never grow up, had found them light indeed—she might still have held back longer from the personal and entirely illogical reason that Walter had never joined if it had not been for a dramatic meeting with her old boss—Jake Goldfogle.
His shop had failed in her first strike. She had lost all track of him.
About nine o'clock one bitter winter night she was walking home along Canal Street. The row of pushcarts, lit by flaring oil lamps, were doing a scant business. It was too cold for sidewalk bargaining. She was moved by a deep pity for these men and women, who were forced out on such a night, to hawk their wares. It was not only the victims of the sweat-shop who find living a hard matter. Suddenly her notice fell on a dilapidated pedler, who was holding out a meagre tray of notions. He did not have even a pushcart. A heavy black patch hid one side of his face, but she recognized Jake at once. Her first impulse was to hurry past with averted face. But his shivering poverty—he had no overcoat—checked her.
"Hello, Mr. Goldfogle."
He turned his unbandaged eye on her in bewilderment. His frost-bitten face flushed with resentment.
"Come on and have a cup of coffee," she said. "I want to talk with you."