Chapter VII

They had an extremely good time at the play, and the very different but very real impulsiveness of all three girls drew them closer together as they laughed and wept at the same things. On the way home Clara confided the fact that the leading juvenile strongly reminded her of her own _innamorato_, who was the best of all possible men, and who had a job in the Chicago Public Library. Edith heard this with satisfaction. Clara was clearly in no danger from Ischl.

During the entire evening Elsie held a long envelope in her hand, and on parting from Edith she handed it over—her first paper on Westermarck. Next day Edith read it, and a baffling thing it was to correct. The author’s most significant phrases were there, the harvest of a discriminating eye, but they were innocently linked by curious slang and un-English idiom. To raise the tone of the one and straighten the deformity of the other took Edith a whole evening. But could she have seen Elsie poring over those corrections and fixing each in mind, Edith would have been well rewarded.

That first paper was about marriage customs. As each division of Dante’s Commedia ended with the stars, so each paragraph of Elsie’s summary ended with the Jews. She focused everything on the enslaved condition of Jewish women. Marriage is indissoluble among such creatures as Papuans, Igorrotes, Veddahs, and Roman Catholics, but a Jew can divorce his wife for any one of many reasons. It would be better to be a Moslem’s wife—divorceable for no reason at all! In like manner every part of the Jewish ceremony came in for ridicule. The custom by which the young men lean against the wall and watch the girls dance was a survival of days when girl slaves were put through their naked paces before being bought. The wearing of a kittel, or white cloak, by the bridegroom, was a device to scare the bride with the thought that even in death he was to be her master. The crushing of the wine-cup on the floor was a similar bit of intimidation. And above all, the use of two ceremonies—one religious and one civil—showed clearly enough that the lofty masculine sentiment was hypocritical. In short, Elsie had embroidered Westermarck with her own red thread.

Edith was therefore not surprised, on the evening of the Shaviro wedding, to see Elsie go through the bridesmaid’s part without the least attempt at charm of manner. A proud oriental figure she made as she stood there by the white canopy, but a certain calm disdain flashed from behind her eyeglasses as she watched Rachel march seven times around her Marcus.

Perhaps if Marcus had been more to her liking, Elsie would have had more patience with the ancient ceremony. But Marcus was what is technically known as an “allrightnik.” He united a profound veneration for antiquity with an insolent adequacy in the clothing business. Rachel was graduating from the dingy flat to a rococo house near Douglas Park.

When the ceremony was over, Marcus made his _Drosche_ speech, and was rewarded at the end of each paragraph by the presentation of a gift for his bride—or himself. Edith listened with amazement as he turned toward her and began to talk about dishes. He quoted from the Talmud concerning clean and unclean. He told how a Jew had turned the tables on a goy by giving him the uncleanest of _tref_ basins to wash in. Then he had the nerve to refer in luscious terms to the friendship of Rebecca and Rowena, and stopped.

Elsie whispered to Edith. “The fool expects you to bring him a cup or something from the set you are giving Rachel.”

Edith flushed, but rose to the occasion with plenty of dignity. As Marcus waved a bit of Limoges in air he cried, “It never came from Klein’s!” and the crowd cheered.

The disgusted Elsie drew her friend away. “I want you to come in my room and see where I live.”

They entered a little rear bedroom. It was doubtless a dark room in the day-time, but it looked very cheerful now.

Edith glanced at two photographs that stood on the dresser, and Elsie advanced and picked one up. “I cut this out of a magazine and pasted it on an old photograph, because it looks so much like you.”

Edith laughed, but she was touched by the little tribute. “You shall have a photograph of me by the very next mail, and I’m going to photograph you myself in about nine different poses.”

“Eyeglasses and all?”

“Yes, indeed. The eyeglasses are a part of your beauty.”

“I’m not beautiful, Edith. I wish I was, but I’m not.”

“I would not hear your enemy say so, honey. When you get a little bit wrought up about socialism, you look like a French aristocrat ready to go to the guillotine. Who is this other person?”

“That’s Marie Sukloff, and they’re scared to death of her in Russia. When I see a farce like that in the other room I wish I was a revolutionist, too.”

“I thought it very impressive.”

“Oh, yes. Mothers have to weep. But it’s a long time since I heard a prayer, and I never want to hear another.”

“Don’t you go to the synagogue?”

“No. I wasn’t to Shul in two years. My folks feel awful about it, but there’s no sense in religion. It keeps people contented with things as they are, and everything is all wrong. Folks think too much about heaven, and not enough about earth. We’ve only got one life.”

“Do all the socialists feel that way?”

“Most all of them. They tell about Christian socialists, but I never saw one. It will be a monstrosity.”

“Would be,” murmured Edith. “I hate to correct you, dear. You say there is no sense in religion, but there is certainly none in idioms.”

“Edith, are you going to try to make me religious? If you are, we can’t be friends. Suppose I got married without any nonsense like that in there, or any marriage certificate. You wouldn’t invite me and my man to your house. You know you wouldn’t.”

“I would if I had a house of my own.”

“Would you come to see me?”

“Of course.”

“But you think marriage is a sacrament, and I think it’s a habit.”

Elsie was sitting on the edge of her little bed, and Edith came and sat down beside her. “My dear, you aren’t going to put me to any such test, are you?”

There was silence for a moment, and then Elsie smote her white hands together. “I don’t suppose so, oh, I don’t suppose so. The right man will not come along. But if he did come—I would go with him even if he was married.”

Edith was silent.

“I know what you’re thinking. Edith Bridgman. You want me to be perfectly respectable like your friends. You say your sister works for suffrage, but people like you and her don’t know anything about it. Russia is the only place where women are alive.”

“I’ve read about them, dear. I’ve read ‘Anna Karenina.’”

“Piffle! I hate to be jabbed with a hatpin.”

Edith was silent again for a little while, but her blood was slowly rising.

“I thought you were a socialist.”

“I am, if there ever was one.”

“Well, I thought socialists stood for peaceful revolution.”

“We do. We believe in the ballot box.”

“Then why do you talk like Emma Goldman?”

“I don’t. I want love, and I want a child. Emma says that the workers have no business to bring children into the world to be slaves. It’s a nasty thing to say, Edith, unless you are going to be a nun. I want a child, and I want him to grow up and fight for the workers. And I’m twenty years old, and haven’t seen a man who has any fight in him. I won’t marry a creature like Marcus. My husband has got to be willing to die for the workers.”

“Well, my dear, I can’t object to that—unless he is already married before you meet him. May I tell you a secret?”

Elsie put an arm around her and drew her close. “Maybe you _are_ a friend,” she murmured.

“It isn’t much, but I have refused two men because they were not the kind I could look up to.”

“I thought it was going to be more of a secret, but it’s quite a good deal. I suppose they were both rich.”

“One was. The other will be.”

“And you didn’t dope yourself with the idea that you could use your husband’s money to help the poor. The poor! Say, Edith, you ran a risk making love to Clara. She was one of the girls who smashed a movie that some of your friends took in the Italian quarter. She’s sweet as sugar, but when she has told you about that stiletto she has told the truth. Oh, what a mixup folks are! Clara’s a Catholic, but what’s the difference between a Catholic with a stiletto and an I. W. W. with a gun?”

“None at all, my little bunch of black pepper. And they are both like a socialist without a wedding certificate.”

Elsie pondered, and saw the point quickly enough—but thought is not always efficacious. “I will make no promise,” she said, haughtily. “You judge everything by your silly New Testament, just as my folks judge by the Talmud. You haven’t any passion or any courage.”

Edith’s love for Elsie was only a week old, and infant loves are easily strangled. “I think you’ll find, Miss Elsie Shaviro, that the New Testament is about as impassioned and daring a book as was ever written. The third of John is the boldest thing ever said on the planet. But you are so wrapped up in Jewish prejudice that you dare not read it.”

Elsie lifted kindling eyes. “You’ve got more stuff in you than I thought, and I won’t take a dare.” She turned and gave Edith a vigorous kiss, and infant love got its breath again.