Bartholdi's mighty Liberty loomed high above the vessel as she grandly
swept her way among the crowded shipping of the Upper Bay. On the
huddled steerage-deck Moresco, quickly and mysteriously free from
durance and not at all abashed by what had happened to him, led a
little cheering, in which his countrymen joined somewhat faintly. On
the promenade-deck Vanderlyn was acting as the leader of enthusiastic
rooters for his native land.
With his mother, whose interest in the old German and his daughter he now
fostered very eagerly, he stood close by the rail across which he had
vaulted when Moresco had assaulted the old man. Not even the enthusiasm of
partings from new friends, ship made, could draw him from this point as
the vessel neared her dock. From it he watched the workings of the
health-and customs-officers among the steerage-passengers, while he tried
to definitely decide upon what means he might employ to keep from losing
sight of the two people in whom his interest had grown to be so great,
after they were diverted by the formalities of immigration laws from the
line of travel he would naturally follow when the ship tied up.
"The immigrants are sent to Ellis Island," he explained to Mrs.
Vanderlyn. "A case of sheep and goats, all right, according to the
tenets of this land of liberty and lucre. If you've got money you're a
sheep. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, has wide-open arms for you. No
one tries to stop your entrance. If you've none, why you're the goat
and everybody butts you."
"Your English is as hard to understand as any of the foreign
languages!" his mother chided. "Every other word is slang. I haven't
an idea what you mean." Down upon the steerage-deck Moresco, after
the faint cheering, was declaiming loudly, now, about the towering
statue and the liberty she symbolizes.
Towards the mighty effigy the old flute-player's eyes were also
turned, but the emotions it aroused in him were very different from
those which the Italian laid his claim to. To him she did not stand
for license, but for a freedom from that mysterious worry, which, in
London, had been so horridly persistent, which had reached an
intolerable climax in Hyde Park, that day when he had run across the
German with the turned-up moustache, and from which the journey to
America was a veritable flight. The Giant Woman of the Bay would prove
to be to him, the old musician fondly hoped, what her designer had
intended her to be to all the worried, fleeing people of all the
balance of the earth--a great torch-bearer who would light the way to
peace and plenty, free from the social and political turmoil and
oppression of the worn-out lands across the sea. He drew a breath of
crisp air into his lungs, held his daughter closer to his side, took
off his hat and stood agaze while the brisk wind, strengthening for
the moment, blew the folk around him free of steerage odors, waved his
long grey hair about his forehead and flapped his long grey coat about
his legs until its tails snapped.
An instant later and combined assaults of manifold officials, pregnant
with prying questions and suspicious glances, had driven all thoughts
from his mind and those of other steerage passengers that America
meant freedom. Never had he been so suddenly and vigorously deluged
with such an avalanche of legal interference and investigation. Many a
Russian, fleeing here in search of liberty, has been dismayed into
concluding that he has but stumbled into a new serfdom, when
blue-coats and brass-buttons have descended on him as his ship
reached New York Bay.
One arm clasped tight in one of his, the other holding M'riar closely
to her side in the dense, swaying crowd, his daughter, as he pondered
on these matters, answered questions, worried, was thinking of far
different things. Ever since the champion of her cause and her
father's against the common enemy, Moresco, had sprung lightly to the
steerage-deck from back of the first-cabin rail, her thoughts had been
more of that champion than of all other combined details of these most
exciting days. Shy and delighted, venturing on new and untried paths
they had been, till now; but now, as the long voyage was ending, she
was filled with blank dismay. She had heard the talk about the
separation of the steerage passengers from the first-cabin passengers,
before they landed, and this gave birth to painfully defined
convictions that the dream, which, almost without her knowledge, had
sprung into being in her heart, must now abruptly end. She would never
see her champion again! The thought led on to others, equally
disturbing. For the first time in her life her heart was asking
questions of her reason.
Who was she? What was she? Why had her father kept her, all her life,
in such seclusion? In London she had noted it and wondered at it, but
had been content to make no inquiries, because she had not had the
wish to go about and do as, from behind the lattice of the close
seclusion which confined her, she saw other girls of her age do. She
had never had a close friend in her life, except her father, unless
one counted M'riar, humble and devoted worshiper, a friend, or unless
some memories of bygone days, so faint that they might well be dreams,
and which, sometimes, she thought _were_ dreams, were truth instead of
waking fancies. Vague, they were, and shadowy, including visions of a
merry life, as a small tot, in a far country, and a lovely woman who
sometimes, while propped up with the pillows of a bed, held her to her
breast. Then it seemed as if all these delightful things had been
brought to an end in one short day. Vaguely she recalled a dreadful
time when the great bed on which the lovely woman had reclined was
empty.
All that her brain presented in the way of record of the weeks which
followed, were, first, a series of dim pictures of a hurried journey,
partaking of the nature of a flight from some impending danger. Her
father, she remembered, held her almost constantly against his breast,
while they were on this journey, so tightly that the clasp of his
strong arms was, sometimes, almost painful, and watched continually
from carriage windows, from the deck of a small vessel, and,
afterwards, from the windows of a railway train, when they paused at
stations in the pleasant English country, as if he ever feared that
someone would appear to intercept them and carry her away from him.
Then her home had been of a kind new to her--the lodging-house.
Instead of being in the midst of splendid lawns and mighty trees, she
had been hedged about by grimy streets and dull brick buildings; the
air which had been all a-sparkle for her in her babyhood, was, through
her youth, dull, smoke-grimed, fog-soaked; for roomy spaciousness and
gentle luxury had been exchanged the dinginess and squalor of the
place in Soho. The occasional visits to the theatre where her father
played the flute, now and then a Sunday walk with him when the weather
was sufficiently urbane (marred, always, by his peering watch of every
passing face, which had never been rewarded till they met the staring
stranger in Hyde Park) had been almost the only variations of a dull
routine of life, until this journey had begun which had just brought
them to the mighty New World harbor. She was vastly puzzled by
existence as she stood there in the stuffy crowd and let her mind roam
back in retrospect. Her life was all a mystery to her.
This journey was the one tremendous episode of her career; her life in
London had been singularly bare of real events; there had only been
her daily grind at books which her father wished to have her
diligently study, the bi-weekly visits of a woman who had taught her
languages and needlework and never talked of anything but youth and
romance, although she, herself, was old, and, presumably, beyond the
pale of romance. Except for this old woman and the landlady of the
cheap lodging-house she had had no friends except poor M'riar.
From such a dull existence, to be thrust into the whirl of this
amazing voyage, had been very wonderful, for what might not the new
life in the new land mean? Anything, to her young and keen
imagination. In this marvelous new country the old Frenchwoman had
assured her women were as free as men. What would such freedom bring
to her? Riches, possibly, would here reward her father for his
artistry upon the flute, and luxuries surround them both, in
consequence. And romance! Her heart began to flutter at mere thought
of the word, and her mind, against her modest maiden will,
involuntarily turned to the youth who had so splendidly sprung to
their rescue from the malign Moresco. Ah, how strong, how handsome he
had been as he had thrown himself upon the big Italian! She blushed
before her own brain's boldness. In that youth undoubtedly might, even
now, be found the hero of the romance which the new world would
undoubtedly unfold for her delighted eyes to read! Singularly innocent
and ignorant of many things which most girls of her age know well,
she did not stop to reason any of this out--she merely felt the firm
conviction of its certainty, and, for a time, was glad.
But as the ship passed slowly up the river, and, finally, was taken
charge of by the grimy tugs which nosed her with much labor into place
at a great dock, the officers began to hustle all the steerage
passengers into more compact masses on the deck and her attention once
more centered on the matters of the moment. The building on the dock
shut off the free salt breeze and quickly the unclean breath of the
crowd distressed her lungs. The worried immigrants trod on one
another's heels, fell across their huddled trunks and bundles,
chattered, gayly or in fright, close in each other's ears. There was a
long delay, in which, if one of the poor throng dared move beyond the
boundaries set for them by the burly officers in charge, loud
language, not too nice to hear, was the result, and, even, once or
twice, a blow. She heard an English-speaking veteran of many voyages
explaining to his uncomfortable fellows what Vanderlyn had told his
mother about them: that because they had come in the steerage they
could not land upon the dock, as did the passengers of the
first-cabin, but would be borne to some far spot for further
health-inspection and examination as to their ability to earn their
livelihoods.
This worried her, as it had Vanderlyn. Suppose her father should not
satisfy these stern examiners? Would the authorities consider that
ability to play a flute divinely was sufficient ground for thinking
that a man could earn his way? And, if they were landed in two
different places, how would the young man know just where to look for
her? She almost paled at thought that, possibly, she might be whisked
beyond his ken; but then there came the thought of his ability in an
emergency, as evidenced by his flying leap down to her rescue, and,
shyly smiling, she comforted herself with the reflection that that
wondrous youth could make no failures. That he thought of her she
could not doubt, for she had never missed one of his frank, admiring
glances, although, apparently, she had missed most of them. She
finally became quite sure he would not lose sight of her, and this was
comforting.
For a full hour, after the ship had tied up to her dock, all on that
deck were forced to stand in stuffy quarters, odorous and almost dark.
Between Anna and her father huddled M'riar, frightened, now, and
snuffling, clinging desperately to the hand of the loved mistress she
had run away to serve. The flute-player, almost fainting from the heat
and weariness, strove bravely to conceal this from his daughter, and,
with pitiful assumption of fine strength, smiled down at her, through
the thick gloom, from time to time, with reassurance, attempting to
instill in her a courage which he, himself, she plainly saw, was
losing rapidly.
Clearly some of his oldtime worry had returned to him. It might be, he
was reflecting, that this far America was not as far as he had
thought, and that he stood as much chance of encountering that danger
which had made him fly from London, as he had stood there! This
troubled her intensely.
The odors of that crowded steerage gangway, the pressing of the weary
women, the wailing of the frightened babies, the cursing of the men,
as time passed, made the place seem an inferno. M'riar, weak from
seasickness, terrified by conversation which she heard around her
about the deportation of such immigrants as had no money or too
little, and fearful that she might be torn from the dear side of her
beloved mistress in spite of all which she had done to follow her,
shivered constantly and sometimes shook with a dry sob. The hours
were hours of nightmare.
Many of the women were half-fainting when, at last, the barges of the
government were drawn up at the ship's side for the transfer of the
immigrants to Ellis Island, and across the narrow planks which
stretched from them to the dingy little liner the motley crowd trooped
wearily. Kreutzer was near to absolute exhaustion, and shouldered
their heavy trunk, lifted their heaviest bag, with difficulty. His
knees, it seemed to him, must certainly give way beneath him. Seeing
this gave M'riar something other than her fears to think of.
"Gimme th' bag, now, guvnor," she said quietly, although both she and
Anna already were well burdened.
"Nein," said the old man, gravely. "Child, you could not carry it."
"_I_ could," said Anna, quickly, and tried to take it from his hand,
abashed that the small servant should have been more thoughtful of
him than she was.
"Not much yer cawn't," said M'riar, positively. "I 'yn't goin' ter let
yer, miss. Ketch me! _Me_ let yer carry _bags_! My heye!"
"But M'riarrr," Anna answered. "You are so very little and it iss so
very big!"
"Carry ten of 'em," said M'riar, nonchalantly and nobly rose to the
occasion despite the protests of both Anna and the flute-player.
There was little time for argument, for, an instant later, they were
forced forward irresistibly by the pressure of the crowd behind them
and soon found themselves, to their inexpressible relief, in the clear
air of an open-sided deck on one of the big barges. In another quarter
of an hour they had started on their little voyage to the landing
station upon Ellis Island, where Uncle Sam decides upon the fitness of
such applicants for admission to his domain as have reached his
shores "third-class."
The ordeal at Ellis Island was less formidable, for Kreutzer and his
daughter, than the gossip of the steerage had led them to expect. Both
were in good health, he had the money which the law requires each
immigrant to bring with him, letters avowed his full ability to make a
living for himself and daughter, he had not come over under contract.
But poor M'riar! Her skinny little form, weak eyes, flat chest, barely
passed the medical examination; Herr Kreutzer did not understand some
of the questions put to her and thus she nearly went on record as
being without friends or means of winning her support. Indeed he did
not realize the situation until a uniformed official had begun to lead
the screaming child away and then he made things worse by letting his
rare German temper rise as he protested. Had not Anna laid restraining
fingers on his arm he might have found himself charged with a serious
offense, upon the very threshold of the new land he had journeyed to.
They now formed a thoroughly dismayed, disheartened group of three
there under the high, girdered roof of Uncle Sam's reception chamber
for prospective children by adoption. Anna, alarmed for both the
threatened child and angry flute-player, stood, woefully distressed
between the two, a hand upon the arm of each and big, alarmed and
wondrously appealing eyes fixed on the gruff official, who stirred
uneasily beneath the power of their petition; Kreutzer was frightened,
also, now that his wrath was passing and he took time to reflect that
if he should involve himself with this new government inquiries would
certainly be started which would result in the revelation of his
whereabouts to those whom he had hoped utterly to evade; M'riar, the
cause of all the trouble, wept like a Niobe, quite soundlessly,
shaking like an aspen, managing to maintain her weight upon her
weakening knees with desperate effort only.
"Sorry, Miss," said the official, with gruff kindness. "But law's law,
you know, and she's against it."
"Little M'riarrr is against your laws?" said Anna, much surprised.
"She's likely to become a public charge," the man said, anxious to
defend himself and his government before the lovely girl. "We've got
enough of European paupers to support, here in this country, now."
"But she would live with us," said Anna.
"Sure--until you fired her," said the man with a short laugh.
"Firrred her?" Anna said, inquiringly, not guessing at his meaning.
"Firrred her? We should be very kind to her. We would not burn her,
hurt her in the slightes' way. I promise, sir; I promise."
The official laughed again. "Oh, that's all right, Miss," he
explained. "I know you wouldn't hurt her. That ain't what I meant. I
meant until you let her go, discharged her, turned her off, decided
that you didn't need her help around the house, found somebody who'd
work better for you for less money, or something of that sort. She'd
never get another job. She's too skinny and too ignorant."
"Hi'll fat up, 'ere, Hi swears Hi will," Maria interrupted hopefully.
"Hi'm _certain_ to fat up."
"Yes, yes," said Anna, "I am certain that she will be very fat. She
will not have so much to do and will have much to eat. She shall fat
up at once." She spoke with honest earnestness. Could leanness be
against the law, too, here?
And M'riar, also, had understood exactly what he meant when he had
said she was too ignorant. "An' Hi'm that quick to learn!" she said.
"You cawn't himagine! W'y, 'yn't Hi halmost learnt me letters off
from bundle carts an' 'oardings? M, he, hay, t--that spells 'beef.'
The bobby on hour beat, 'e told me, an' Hi 'yn't fergot a mite. T,
haych, he, hay, t, r, he, spells 'show.' 'E told me that, too. Hi
'yn't one as would _st'y_ hignorant, Hi 'yn't."
"Fer Gawd's sake!" said the officer, entirely nonplussed by this
display of the girl's erudition. "Say--well--now--come here, Bill!" He
beckoned to another man in blue and shiny buttons. "Spell them words
ag'in, Miss, won't you?" he implored.
Anna looked at him reproachfully. "No, no," she said, and made him
feel ashamed with her big eyes, "please, sir, not. It is not
funny--not for us. Please, please do not send our M'riarrr back to
England. It was her love which brought her with us. Real love. You
would not punish any one for being truly loving, eh?"
Subdued and made, again, uneasy by her lovely eyes, the man did not
complete the exposition of the joke to the newcomer, but took refuge
in an attitude of most regretful, but impregnable officialism. "I
ain't got a word to say about it, Miss," he hurried to assure the
eyes. "Law's law, and law says that the likes of her has got to be
sent back. The only way that you could keep her here would be to put
up bonds to guarantee th' gover'ment against her goin' on th' town or
anything like that."
She did not understand him in the least. "What is it that you mean?"
she asked.
Laboriously he made things clear to her, Herr Kreutzer helping and
coming to an understanding just before she did.
"Ach!" said the old flute-player, "We cannot. We have not so much."
"Sure. I know that," the man replied. "That is why I say th' girl has
got to be sent back."
Argument proved unavailing, and, ten minutes later, poor M'riar,
screaming as if red-hot irons were begrilling her most tender spots,
was being led into the "pen."
"We'll keep her here a while," the man explained, as he endeavored to
avoid the child's astonishingly skilful and astonishingly painful
kicks. "Maybe you can find somebody to go bond for her. There ain't no
other way. There really ain't, Miss."
During all this speech he still was under the strong influence of
Anna's wondrous eyes, else he would never have been able to articulate
with such unruffled calm. His charge was doing agonizing things to his
official shins, and even pinching him just over the short ribs on his
left side with a forefinger and a thumb which showed amazing strength
and malice quite infernal.
Anna and her father turned away, perforce, to attend to their own
business, after having promised M'riar that they would never let her
be sent back; that they would come and take her from the pen tomorrow.
Neither had the least idea of a way in which to make this possible,
but both swore in their hearts that it should be accomplished.
"Ach!" said Anna, "if only he had traveled in the third class, too! He
then would have been with us and would never have permitted it."
"But who, mine liebschen?"
Anna, realizing what she had been saying, colored vividly, but never
in her life had she deceived her father, hidden anything from him, or
in the slightest way evaded with him, so she summoned courage and said
softly: "Why, the--the young gentleman."
"What gentleman?"
"The one on the ship who sprang down when that wicked man caught me to
dance with him."
Herr Kreutzer slowly nodded, seeing no significance in her quick
thought of Vanderlyn, save that the thought was rare good sense. Being
an American, the young man naturally would have been better able to
explain the matter to the officers, and, had the matter been enough
explained, he thought, they could not, possibly, have had the heart to
hold the child. "Ach, yes," said he. "If he was here! He certainly
would know."
Luck, that day, as usually in his wealth-smoothed life, was with young
Vanderlyn, for, just as Anna and her father were regretting that he
was not there, lo, he appeared! It had been through his bull-dog
persistence that the elder Vanderlyn had won the wealth which son and
wife were spending now, since he had passed on to a shore where wealth
of gold may not be freighted. That same bull-dog persistence had the
son applied to the momentous problem which confronted him. Not only
had he won his difficult mother over to a friendly interest in the
lovely German girl who had so utterly enthralled him, but he had made
her eager to keep track of her, see more of her. Thus had he readily
been freed from the small services which a mother might expect of her
grown son on landing day; not only freed, but urged to go upon the
search for which his heart craved avidly.
He had had some difficulty in obtaining, quickly, an official permit
to repair to Ellis Island, but an opened pocketbook had solved it, in
due course of time, and, now, here he was, trying to "frame up," as he
expressed it to himself, "some really fair reason for having followed
these whom he was seeking."
The excitement of poor M'riar's sad predicament made it unnecessary
for him to present the reason which he had, with careful pains at
length devised. Kind Fate had wondrously well timed his eager coming.
"What seems to be the trouble?" he asked easily, as he hurried forward
with his hat in hand, much comforted by seeing that there was a
trouble of some sort.
The matter was explained to him.
"That's easy," he said gaily. "Let me fix it;" and, forthwith, the
thing was fixed. Without the slightest hesitation he made himself
responsible for M'riar in every way which an ingenious government had
managed to devise through years of effort.
The gratitude of the three travelers was earnest and was volubly
expressed in spite of his determined efforts to prevent them from
expressing it. M'riar would have thrown her arms about his neck and
kissed him had not Anna thoughtfully prevented it, after one quick
glance at the astonishing appearance of the delighted child's tear-and
lunch-stained face.
And so it came about that the Herr Kreutzer and his daughter Anna,
with her humble slave and worshiper, M'riar, were ferried back from
Ellis Island to New York within a half-a-dozen hours of the moment
when they landed on it. As they went Moresco, himself, apparently a
citizen, and free to go at once, was still there in the building,
working with his boasted "pull" to help his countrymen. He shook his
fist at them as they departed and cried insults after them. Few
immigrants have ever been passed through in briefer time than was the
flute-player; few government inspectors at the landing station have
ever been enabled, by a stroke of good luck from a cloudless sky, to
take home to their wives, at night, as large a roll of crisp, new
money (yellow-backed) as an inspector took home to his wife that
night.
"Gee, Bill!" the wife exclaimed when she had finished choking. "When
do you expect the cops?"
"What cops?" he naturally asked.
"Them that'll come to pinch you for bank-robbery," she answered,
fondling the certificates with reverent, delighted fingers.
An episode of their return from Ellis Island to Manhattan much puzzled
Vanderlyn. Puffing and blowing from his hurry (which had been less
adroit than Vanderlyn's) they met Karrosch on the New York pier,
about to start in search of Kreutzer.
"Ah," he said cordially, "I wish to talk with you. I have the largest
orchestra in all America and wish to offer you the place of my first
flute. You are very lucky to have had me on the ship with you. I shall
be glad to pay--"
Kreutzer interrupted him with courteous shaking of the head. "I thank
you, sir," he said, with firm decision. "I cannot play first flute in
your large orchestra."
"But," said the astonished Karrosch, "I will pay--"
"I much regret," said Kreutzer, "that I cannot play first flute in
your large orchestra."
Vanderlyn, not less than Karrosch, was bewildered by this episode.
Only Anna was not in the least surprised by it, although she did not
understand it. She knew that he had many times refused alluring
offers of the sort in London, always without an explanation of his
reasons for so doing.
In the little rooms which they had found for temporary lodging place,
Herr Kreutzer sat that evening, with a well-cleaned M'riar standing by
and trying to devise some way of adding to his comfort. He had never
given much thought to the child, before, he realized; he had accepted
her as one of many facts of small importance. Now, though, he noted
the devoted gaze with which her eyes were following Anna as she moved
about the room, arranging little things.
"You love her, eh?" he asked.
"_Love_ 'er!" said M'riar, breathlessly. "My heye! Love _'er_! Ou, Hi,
sye!"
Herr Kreutzer reached an arm out with a thrill of real affection and
drew the little waif close to him. Never in her life had she been
offered a caress, before, by anyone but Anna. It took her by surprise,
and, without the slightest thought of doing so, she burst into a
flood of tears. He did not fail to understand the workings of her
soul. He drew the tiny creature to him and softly pressed a kiss upon
her perfectly clean forehead.
"You vould not want to leave her, M'riar?"
"Hi'd die, Hi would," sobbed M'riar.
Herr Kreutzer held her head back and smiled into her eyes with a good
smile which made her very happy. "Ach, liebling, do not worry."
"W'y wouldn't yer go with the toff and pl'y in ther big horchestra?"
she made bold to ask. "You'd set 'em _cryzy_, you would! _My_ 'art
turns somersets, it does, w'en you pl'ys on yer flute."
He pushed the child away, almost as if she angered him; then, seeing
her remorseful, frightened look, he took her back again and held her
close beside his knee.
"I have no love for crowds, my M'riar," he said slowly. "No; not even
in America. I have no love for crowds."