Of the other two men, one, Jacob Hessler, a labor leader in the Ghetto, an eloquent speaker, of more commanding presence, but less sensitive and impressive at short range than either Blanofsky or Samarovitch, was silent, for the most part. He talked only to crowds, partly because it was exciting, but mainly because his limited intelligence put him at a disadvantage in intimate talk with men of concentrated intellectual character. The fourth man in the café, Abraham Gudinsky, was a simple admirer of Blanofsky. He was born in Jerusalem, had studied law in Constantinople, had lived in Paris as a bohemian, and, after a few years passed in the commonplace, dissipated gayety of youth, had come to New York, where his sympathetic and idealistic character had come under the influence of the quiet charm of Blanofsky. He had small, live, eyes and a high forehead, and his body perpetually moved nervously.
"I do not believe," said Blanofsky, in Russian, "that anything can be accomplished by force. Our cause is too sacred to tarnish it with blood, and it is too strong in logic and justice not to conquer peaceably in the end; and that, too, without leaving behind it the ill-breeding weeds of a violent course. I have nothing but pity for the misguided wretch who took the life of King Humbert, thinking he was acting for the cause. It is the acts of such madmen as he that make us appear to the public as merely irrational monsters."
"Nevertheless," said Samarovitch, his dark eyes glowing, "it is natural that the crimes of society against the individual should irritate us sometimes into violent acts. I am not sure but that it is good that it should be so. Those devoted men, in the great movement in Russia, at the time the Czar was killed, were as clearheaded as they were devoted; and they felt that the governmental evil pressing in Russia could be relieved only by a kind of terrorism. And they were right," he concluded, with gloomy emphasis.
A YOUNG MAN AND A YOUNG WOMAN JUST ENTERED THE CAFÉ
Blanofsky shook his head, and was about to speak of Tolstoy, whom he regarded as the great interpreter of genuine anarchy, when he was interrupted by the approach of a young man and a young woman who had just entered the café. Sabina, as she was familiarly known to the faithful, dark and slender, with very large, emotional eyes and a mobile mouth, had just come from her lecture to a crowd of workingmen, to whom she had spoken eloquently of their right to lead a life with greater light and beauty in it. The emotions expressed by her eloquence, and stirred by it, still lay in her deep eyes as she entered the café. Her companion, who had walked with her from the lecture, was a young poet, whose words followed one another with turbulent energy. His head was set uncommonly close to his compact, stout shoulders, seeming to have a firmer rest than usual on the trunk, and thus better to support the strain of his thick-coming fancies. His habitual attitude was to hold his closed fist even with his shoulder, and punctuate with it the transitions of his thought. Even in winter the perspiration rolled down his face as he spoke, for thought with him was intense to the point of pain. He was the perfect type of the intellectual debauchee of the Russian-Jewish colony. He drank nothing but tea and coffee, but within him burned his ideas. He made his living by writing an occasional poem or article for a Yiddish paper, and when he had gathered together a few dollars he repaired again to the cafés, seeking companions to whom he could confide his exuberant thoughts, which were always expressed in poetic images. He slept whenever and wherever he was tired, but he slept seldom, and unwillingly. Unrest was his quest and unhappiness his dearest consolation. The type of his mind was as Russian as his name, which was Levitzky. The girl looked and listened to him, fascinated. They sat down at the table with the others, and while the waiter was bringing their tea and lemon, Levitzky continued his discourse:
"No, I do not like America. The people here are satisfied. Things seem frozen here—finished. Great deeds have been done, great things have been created. Wall Street and Broadway fill me with wonder. The outside is great, showing energy that has been. But at the core, all is dead. The imagination and the heart are extinguished. Content and comfort eat up the nation. New York seems to me an active city of the dead, where there is much movement, but no soul. Russia, which I love, is just the opposite. There nothing is done, nothing finished. One sees nothing, but feels warmth and vitality at the heart. In love it is the same way. The American wants a legal wife and a comfortable home, but the Russian wants a mistress behind a mountain to whom he can not penetrate but towards whom he can strive, for whom he can long and dream. It is better to hope than to attain."
Sabina looked at him, her bosom heaving. His last words seemed to trouble her, but she sat in silence and appeared to listen to the conversation, which turned on a recent strike in the Ghetto. Finally she got up to go home, refusing Levitzky's offer to accompany her. Leaving the Anarchists still engaged in talk, she went into the street, which, altho it was after one o'clock, was still far from deserted.
Instead of going to her poor room in the tenement-house on Hester Street she walked slowly along Grand Street, towards the Bowery, deep in reflection. She was thinking of Levitzky and of her life. Ten years before, as a child of twelve, she had come to New York from Russia, with her father, a tailor, who had worked for several years in the sweat-shops. He had died two years before, and since then Sabina had worked in the sweat-shops in the day time and in the evening had devoted herself to the cause. At first she had gone to the Socialistic and Anarchistic meetings merely because they were attended by the only society in the east side which at all satisfied her growing intellectual activity. These rough workingmen sometimes seemed to her inspired, and her ardor and youth were soon deeply interested in the cause of Socialism, partly because of the pity inspired by the sordid poverty about her, but mainly because of the strong attraction any earnest movement has for a young and emotionally intellectual person. As was quite inevitable, she went from an unreserved love for the group of ideas called Socialistic to the quite contrary ones of Anarchy. And this change was not founded on intellectual conviction, but was due to the simple fact that the Anarchistic cause was more extreme and gave greater apparent opportunity for self-sacrifice; and for the reason, too, that the most interesting man she had met, Levitzky, was at that time an Anarchist. These two made, very often, passionate speeches on the same evening to a crowd of attentive laborers, and after the meeting walked the street together or sat over their tea in the café discussing high ideals, not only Anarchy, but all noble subjects that detach the soul from the sordid business of life.
Of course, Sabina loved Levitzky. His robust intellect and exuberant, poetical nature, a nature constant to passion, but inconstant to persons, made her beloved ideas seem real, gave a concrete seal to the creations of her imagination.