WE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA
Going down the path to town bitterly and blindly, I met Murphy. He was
a man with not a gray hair in his head who was a sort of
man-of-all-work for the neighborhood. He took care of my furnace and
fussed about the grounds when I was tied up at the office with night
work. He stopped me with rather a shamefaced air.
"Beg pardon, sor," he began, "but I've got a bill comin' due on the
new house--"
I remembered that I owed him some fifteen dollars. I had in my pocket
just ten cents over my carfare. But what arrested my attention was the
mention of a new house.
"You mean to tell me that you're putting up a house?"
"The bit of a rint, sor, in ---- Street."
The contrast was dramatic. The man who emptied my ashes was erecting
tenements and I was looking for work that would bring me in food. My
people had lived in this country some two hundred years or more, and
Murphy had probably not been here over thirty. There was something
wrong about this, but I seemed to be getting hold of an idea.
"How old are you, Murphy?" I asked.
"Goin' on sixty, sor."
"You came to America broke?"
"Dead broke, sor."
"You have a wife and children?"
"A woman and six childer."
Six! Think of it! And I had one.
"Children in school?"
I asked it almost in hope that here at least I would hold the
advantage.
"Two of them in college, sor."
He spoke it proudly. Well he might. But to me it was confusing.
"And you have enough left over to put up a house?" I stammered.
"It's better than the bank," Murphy said apologetically.
"And you aren't an old man yet," I murmured.
"Old, sor?"
"Why you're young and strong and independent, Murphy. You're----" But
I guess I talked a bit wild. I don't know what I said. I was
breathless--lightheaded. I wanted to get back to Ruth.
"Pat," I said, seizing his hand--"Pat, you shall have the money within
a week. I'm going to sell out and emigrate."
"Emigrate?" he gasped. "Where to?"
I laughed. The solution now seemed so easy.
"Why, to America, Pat. To America where you came thirty years ago." I
left him staring at me. I hurried into the house with my heart in my
throat.
I found Ruth in the sitting-room with her chin in her hands and her
white forehead knotted in a frown. She didn't hear me come in, but
when I touched her arm she jumped up, ashamed to think I had caught
her looking even puzzled. But at sight of my face her expression
changed in a flash.
"Oh, Billy," she cried, "it's good news?"
"It's a way out--if you approve," I answered.
"I do, Billy," she answered, without waiting to hear.
"Then listen," I said. "If we were living in England or Ireland or
France or Germany and found life as hard as this and some one left us
five hundred dollars what would you advise doing?"
"Why, we'd emigrate, Billy," she said instantly.
"Exactly. Where to?"
"To America."
"Right," I cried. "And we'd be one out of a thousand if we didn't make
good, wouldn't we?"
"Why, every one succeeds who comes here from somewhere else," she
exclaimed.
"And why do they?" I demanded, getting excited with my idea. "Why do
they? There are a dozen reasons. One is because they come as
pioneers--with all the enthusiasm and eagerness of adventurers. Life
is fresh and romantic to them over here. Hardships only add zest to
the game. Another reason is that it is all a fine big gamble to them.
They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's the same spirit
that drives young New Englanders out west to try their luck, to
preëmpt homesteads in the Northwest, to till the prairies. Another
reason is that they come over here free--unbound by conventions. They
can work as they please, live as they please. They haven't any caste
to hamper them. Another reason is that, being on the same great
adventure, they are all brothers. They pull together. Still another
reason is that as emigrants the whole United States stands ready to
help them with schools and playgrounds and hospitals and parks."
I paused for breath. She cut in excitedly:
"Then we're going out west?"
"No; we haven't the capital for that. By selling all our things we can
pay our debts and have a few dollars over, but that wouldn't take us
to Chicago. I'm not going ten miles from home."
"Where then, Billy?"
"You've seen the big ships come in along the water-front? They are
bringing over hundreds of emigrants every year and landing them right
on those docks. These people have had to cross the ocean to reach that
point, but our ancestors made the voyage for you and me two hundred
years ago. We're within ten miles of the wharf now."
She couldn't make out what I meant.
"Why, wife o' mine," I ran on, "all we need to do is to pack up, go
down to the dock and start from there. We must join the emigrants and
follow them into the city. These are the only people who are finding
America to-day. We must take up life among them; work as they work;
live as they live. Why, I feel my back muscles straining even now; I
feel the tingle of coming down the gangplank with our fortunes yet to
make in this land of opportunity. Pasquale has done it; Murphy has
done it. Don't you think I can do it?"
She looked up at me. I had never seen her face more beautiful. It was
flushed and eager. She clutched my arm. Then she whispered:
"My man--my wonderful, good man!"
The primitive appellation was in itself like a whiff of salt air. It
bore me back to the days when a husband's chief function was just
that--being a man to his own good woman. We looked for a moment into
each other's eyes. Then the same question was born to both of us in a
moment.
"What of the boy?"
It was a more serious question to her, I think, than it was to me. I
knew that the sons of other fathers and mothers had wrestled with that
life and come out strong. There were Murphy's boys, for instance. Of
course the life would be new to my boy, but the keen competition
ought to drive him to his best. His present life was not doing that.
As for the coarser details from which he had been so sheltered--well,
a man has to learn sooner or later, and I wasn't sure but that it was
better for him to learn at an age when such things would offer no real
temptations. With Ruth back of him I didn't worry much about that.
Besides, the boy had let drop a phrase or two that made me suspect
that even among his present associates that same ground was being
explored.
"Ruth," I said, "I'm not worrying about Dick."
"He has been kept so fresh," she murmured.
"It isn't the fresh things that keep longest," I said.
"That's true, Billy," she answered.
Then she thought a moment, and as though with new inspiration answered
me using again that same tender, primitive expression:
"I don't fear for my man-child."
When the boy came home from school that night I had a long talk with
him. I told him frankly how I had been forced out of my position, how
I had tried for another, how at length I had resolved to go pioneering
just as his great-grandfather had done among the Indians. As I
thought, the naked adventure of it appealed to him. That was all I
wished; it was enough to work on.
The next day I brought out a second-hand furniture dealer and made as
good a bargain as I could with him for the contents of the house. We
saved nothing but the sheer essentials for light housekeeping. These
consisted of most of the cooking utensils, a half dozen plates, cups
and saucers and about a dozen other pieces for the table, four
tablecloths, all the bed linen, all our clothes, including some old
clothes we had been upon the point of throwing away, a few personal
gimcracks, and for furniture the following articles: the folding
wooden kitchen table, a half dozen chairs, the cot bed in the boy's
room, the iron bed in our room, the long mirror I gave Ruth on her
birthday, and a sort of china closet that stood in the dining-room. To
this we added bowls, pitchers, and lamps. All the rest, which included
a full dining-room set, a full dinner set of china, the furnishings of
the front room, including books and book case, chairs, rugs, pictures
and two or three good chairs, a full bed-room set in our room and a
cheaper one in the boy's room, piazza furnishings, garden tools, and
forty odds and ends all of which had cost me first and last something
like two thousand dollars, I told the dealer to lump together. He
looked it over and bid six hundred dollars. I saw Ruth swallow hard,
for she had taken good care of everything so that to us it was worth
as much to-day as we had paid for it. But I accepted the offer without
dickering, for it was large enough to serve my ends. It would pay off
all our debts and leave us a hundred dollars to the good. It was the
first time since I married that I had been that much ahead.
That afternoon I saw Murphy and hired of him the top tenement of his
new house. It was in the Italian quarter of the city and my flat
consisted of four rooms. The rent was three dollars a week. Murphy
looked surprised enough at the change in my affairs and I made him
promise not to gossip to the neighbors about where I'd gone.
"Faith, sor," he said, "and they wouldn't believe it if I told them."
This wasn't all I accomplished that day. I bought a pair of overalls
and presented myself at the office of a contractor's agent. I didn't
have any trouble in getting in there and I didn't feel like a beggar
as I took my place in line with about a dozen foreigners. I looked
them over with a certain amount of self-confidence. Most of them were
undersized men with sagging shoulders and primitive faces. With their
big eyes they made me think of shaggy Shetland ponies. Lined up man
for man with my late associates they certainly looked like an inferior
lot. I studied them with curiosity; there must be more in them than
showed on the surface to bring them over here--there must be something
that wasn't in the rest of us for them to make good the way they did.
In the next six months I meant to find out what that was. In the
meantime just sitting there among them I felt as though I had more
elbow room than I had had since I was eighteen. Before me as before
them a continent stretched its great length and breadth. They laughed
and joked among themselves and stared about at everything with eager,
curious eyes. They were ready for anything, and everything was ready
for them--the ditch, the mines, the railroads, the wheat fields.
Wherever things were growing and needed men to help them grow, they
would play their part. They say there's plenty of room at the top,
but there's plenty of room at the bottom, too. It's in the middle that
men get pinched.
I worked my way up to the window where a sallow, pale-faced clerk sat
in front of a big book. He gave me a start, he was such a contrast to
the others. In my new enthusiasm I wanted to ask him why he didn't
come out and get in line the other side of the window. He yawned as he
wrote down my name. I didn't have to answer more than half a dozen
questions before he told me to report for work Monday at such and such
a place. I asked him what the work was and he looked up.
"Subway," he answered.
I asked him how much the pay was. He looked me over at this. I don't
know what he thought I was.
"Dollar and a half--nine hours."
"All right," I answered.
He gave me a slip of paper and I hurried out. It hadn't taken ten
minutes. And a dollar and a half a day was nine dollars a week! It was
almost twice as much as I had started on with the United; it was over
a third of what I had been getting after my first ten years of hard
work with them. It seemed too good to be true. Taking out the rent,
this left me six dollars for food. That was as much as it had cost
Ruth and me the first year we were married. There was no need of going
hungry on that.
I came back home jubilant. Ruth at first took the prospect of my
digging in a ditch a bit hard, but that was only because she
contrasted it with my former genteel employment.
"Why, girl," I explained, "it's no more than I would have to do if we
took a homestead out west. I'd as soon dig in Massachusetts as
Montana."
She felt of my arm. It's a big arm. Then she smiled. It was the last
time she mentioned the subject.
We didn't say anything to the neighbors until the furniture began to
go out. Then the women flocked in and Ruth was hard pressed to keep
our secret. I sat upstairs and chuckled as I heard her replies. She
says it's the only time I ever failed to stand by her, but it didn't
seem to me like anything but a joke.
"We shall want to keep track of you," said little Mrs. Grover. "Where
shall we address you?"
"Oh, I can't tell," answered Ruth, truthfully enough.
"Are you going far?"
"Yes. Oh--a long, long way."
That was true enough too. We couldn't have gone farther out of their
lives if we'd sailed for Australia.
And so they kept it up. That night we made a round of the houses and
everyone was very much surprised and very much grieved and very
curious. To all their inquiries, I made the same reply; that I was
going to emigrate. Some of them looked wistful.
"Jove," said Brown, who was with the insurance company, "but I wish I
had the nerve to do that. I suppose you're going west?"
"We're going west first," I answered.
The road to the station was almost due west.
"They say there are great chances out in that country," he said. "It
isn't so overcrowded as here."
"I don't know about that," I answered, "but there are chances enough."
Some of the women cried and all the men shook hands cordially and
wished us good luck. But it didn't mean much to me. The time I needed
their handshakes was gone. I learned later that as a result of our
secrecy I was variously credited with having lost my reason with my
job; with having inherited a fortune, with having gambled in the
market, with, thrown in for good measure, a darker hint about having
misappropriated funds of the United Woollen. But somehow their
nastiest gossip did not disturb me. It had no power to harm either me
or mine. I was already beyond their reach. Before I left I wished them
all Godspeed on the dainty journey they were making in their
cockleshell. Then so far as they were concerned I dropped off into the
sea with my wife and boy.