I BECOME A SORTER
As the weeks went by, my satisfaction with the progress I was making
was largely tempered by the knowledge that after the completion of my
picture my model would be thrown again on the pavement, and several
times I fancied I detected him gazing at it sadly as if watching its
advancing stages with a sort of hopeless fear. My anxiety about him
and his family grew from day to day, but I could not see any possible
way of helping him. He was touchingly faithful, anxious to please, and
uncomplaining either of cold or hunger. Once I gave him a few
shillings to purchase a second-hand pair of top-boots, which were
necessary for the picture, and these he was able to procure in the
Ghetto Sunday market for a minute sum, and he conscientiously returned
me the balance--about two-thirds.
I happened to have sold an English landscape to Sir Asher Aaronsberg,
the famous philanthropist and picture-buyer of Middleton, then up in
town in connection with his Parliamentary duties, and knowing how
indefatigably he was in touch with the London Jewish charities, I
inquired whether some committee could not do anything to assist
Quarriar. Sir Asher was not very encouraging. The man knew no trade.
However, if he would make application on the form enclosed and answer
the questions, he would see what could be done. I saw that the details
were duly filled in--the ages and sex of his five children, etc.
But the committee came to the conclusion that the only thing they
could do was to repatriate the man. 'Return to Russia!' cried Israel
in horror.
Occasionally I inquired if any plan for the future had occurred to
him. But he never raised the subject of his difficulties of his own
accord, and his very silence, born, as it seemed to me, of the
majestic dignity of the man, was infinitely pathetic. Now and again
came a fitful gleam of light. His second daughter would be given a
week's work for a few shillings by his landlord, a working
master-tailor in a small way, from whom he now rented two tiny rooms
on the top floor. But that was only when there was an extra spasm of
activity. His half-blind daughter would do a little washing, and the
landlord would allow her the use of the backyard.
At last one day I found he had an idea, and an idea, moreover, that
was carefully worked out in all its details. The scheme was certainly
a novel and surprising one to me, but it showed how the art of forcing
a livelihood amid impossible circumstances had been cultivated among
these people, forced for centuries to exist under impossible
conditions.
Briefly his scheme was this. In the innumerable tailors' workshops of
his district great piles of cuttings of every kind and quality of
cloth accumulated, and for the purchase of these cuttings a certain
competition existed among a class of people, known as piece-sorters.
The sale of these cuttings by weight and for cash brought the
master-tailors a pleasant little revenue, which was the more prized as
it was a sort of perquisite. The masters were able to command payment
for their cuttings in advance, and the sorter would call to collect
them week by week as they accumulated, till the amount he had advanced
was exhausted. Quarriar would set up as a piece-sorter, and thus be
able to employ his daughters too. The whole family would find
occupation in sorting out their purchases, and each quality and size
would be readily saleable as raw material, to be woven again into the
cheaper woollen materials. Through the recommendation of his
countrymen, there were several tailors who had readily agreed to give
him the preference. His own landlord in particular had promised to
befriend him, and even now was allowing his cuttings to accumulate at
some inconvenience, since he might have had ready money for them.
Moreover, his friends had introduced him to a very respectable and
honest sorter, who would take him into partnership, teach him, and
allow his daughters to partake in the sorting, if he could put down
twenty pounds! His friends would jointly advance him eight on the
security of his silver candlesticks, if only he could raise the other
twelve.
This promising scheme took an incubus off my mind, and I hastened,
somewhat revengefully, to acquaint the professional philanthropist,
who had been so barren of ideas, with my intention to set up Quarriar
as a piece-sorter.
'Ah,' Sir Asher replied, unmoved. 'Then you had better employ my man
Conn; he does a good deal of this sort of work for me. He will find
Quarriar a partner and professor.'
'But Quarriar has already found a partner.' I explained the scheme.
'The partner will cheat him. Twenty pounds is ridiculous. Five pounds
is quite enough. Take my advice, and let it all go through Conn. If I
wanted my portrait painted, you wouldn't advise me to go to an
amateur. By the way, here are the five pounds, but please don't tell
Conn I gave them. I don't believe the money'll do any good, and Conn
will lose his respect for me.'
My interest in piece-sorting--an occupation I had never even heard of
before--had grown abnormally, and I had gone into the figures and
quantities--so many hundredweights, purchased at fifteen shillings,
sorted into lots, and sold at various prices--with as thorough-going
an eagerness as if my own livelihood were to depend upon it.
I confess I was now rather bewildered by so serious a difference of
estimate as to the cost of a partnership, but I was inclined to set
down Sir Asher's scepticism to that pessimism which is the penalty of
professional philanthropy.
On the other hand, I felt that whether the partnership was to cost
five pounds or twenty, Quarriar's future would be safer from Kazelias
under the auspices of Sir Asher and his Conn. So I handed the latter
the five pounds, and bade him find Quarriar a guide, philosopher, and
partner.
With the advent of Conn, all my troubles began, and the picture passed
into its third and last stage.
I soon elicited that Quarriar and his friends were rather sorry Conn
had been introduced into the matter. He was alleged to favour some
people at the expense of others, and to be not at all popular among
the people amid whom he worked. And altogether it was abundantly clear
that Quarriar would rather have gone on with the scheme in his own way
without official interference.
Later, Sir Asher wrote to me direct that the partner put forward by
the Quarriar faction was a shady customer; Conn had selected his own
man, but even so there was little hope Quarriar's future would be thus
provided for.
There seemed, moreover, a note of suspicion of Quarriar sounding
underneath, but I found comfort in the reflection that to Sir Asher my
model was nothing more than the usual applicant for assistance,
whereas to me who had lived for months in daily contact with him he
was something infinitely more human.
Spring was now nearing; I finished my picture early in March--after
four months' strenuous labour--shook hands with my model, and received
his blessing. I was somewhat put out at learning that Conn had not yet
given him the five pounds necessary to start him, as I had been hoping
he might begin his new calling immediately the sittings ended. I gave
him a small present to help tide over the time of waiting.
But that tragic face on my own canvas remained to haunt me, to ask the
question of his future, and few days elapsed ere I found myself
starting out to visit him at his home. He lived near Ratcliffe
Highway, a district which I found had none of that boisterous marine
romance with which I had associated it.
The house was a narrow building of at least the sixteenth century,
with the number marked up in chalk on the rusty little door. I
happened to have stumbled on the Jewish Passover. Quarriar was called
down, evidently astonished and unprepared for my appearance at his
humble abode, but he expressed pleasure, and led me up the narrow,
steep stairway, whose ceiling almost touched my head as I climbed up
after him. On the first floor the landlord, in festal raiment,
intercepted us, introduced himself in English (which he spoke with
pretentious inaccuracy), and, barring my further ascent, took
possession of me, and led the way to his best parlour, as if it were
entirely unbecoming for his tenant to receive a gentleman in his
attic.
He was a strapping young fellow, full of acuteness and vigour--a
marked contrast to Quarriar's drooping, dignified figure standing
silently near by, and radiating poverty and suffering all the more in
the little old panelled room, elegant with a big carved walnut
cabinet, and gay with chromos and stuffed birds. Effusively the
master-tailor painted himself as the champion of the poor fellow, and
protested against this outside partnership that was being imposed on
him by the notorious Conn. He himself, though he could scarcely afford
it, was keeping his cuttings for him, in spite of tempting offers from
other quarters, even of a shilling a sack. But of course he didn't see
why an outsider foisted upon him by a philanthropic factotum should
benefit by this goodness of his. He discoursed to me in moved terms of
the sorrows and privations of his tenants in their two tiny rooms
upstairs. And all the while Quarriar preserved his attitude of
drooping dignity, saying no syllable except under special appeal.
The landlord produced a goblet of rum and shrub for the benefit of the
high-born visitor, and we all clinked glasses, the young master-tailor
beaming at me unctuously as he set down his glass.
'I love company,' he cried, with no apparent consciousness of impudent
familiarity.
I returned, however, to my central interest in life--the
piece-sorting. It occurred to me afterwards that possibly I ought not
to have insisted on such a secular subject on a Jewish holiday, but,
after all, the landlord had broached it, and both men now entered most
cordially into the discussion. The landlord started repeating his
lament--what a pity it would be if Quarriar were really forced to
accept Conn's partner--when Quarriar timidly blurted out that he had
already signed the deed of partnership, though he had not yet received
the promised capital from Conn, nor spoken over matters with the
partner provided. The landlord seemed astonished and angry at learning
this, pricking up his ears curiously at the word 'signed,' and giving
Quarriar a look of horror.
'Signed!' he cried in Yiddish. '_What_ hast thou signed?'
At this point the landlord's wife joined us in the parlour, with a
pretty child in her arms and another shy one clinging to her skirts,
completing the picture of felicity and prosperity, and throwing into
greater shadow the attic to which I shortly afterwards climbed my way
up the steep, airless stairs. I was hardly prepared for the depressing
spectacle that awaited me at their summit. It was not so much the
shabby, fusty rooms, devoid of everything save a couple of mattresses,
a rickety wooden table, a chair or two, and a heap of Passover cakes,
as the unloveliness of the three women who stood there, awkward and
flushing before their important visitor. The wife-and-mother was
dwarfed and black-wigged, the daughters were squat, with
tallow-coloured round faces, vaguely suggestive of Caucasian peasants,
while the sightless eye of the elder lent a final touch of ugliness.
How little my academic friends know me who imagine I am allured by the
ugly! It is only that sometimes I see through it a beauty that they
are blind to. But here I confess I saw nothing but the ghastly misery
and squalor, and I was oppressed almost to sickness as much by the
scene as by the atmosphere.
'May I open a window?' I could not help inquiring.
The genial landlord, who had followed in my footsteps, rushed to
anticipate me, and when I could breathe more freely, I found something
of the tragedy that had been swallowed in the sordidness. My eye fell
again on the figure of my host standing in his drooping majesty, the
droop being now necessary to avoid striking the ceiling with his
kingly head.
Surely a pretty wife and graceful daughters would have detracted from
the splendour of the tragedy. Israel stood there, surrounded by all
that was mean, yet losing nothing of his regal dignity--indeed the Man
of Sorrows.
* * * * *
Ere I left I suddenly remembered to ask after the three younger
children. They were still with their kind benefactor, the father told
me.
'I suppose you will resume possession of them when you make your
fortune by the piece-sorting?' I said.
'God grant it,' he replied. 'My bowels yearn for that day.'
Against my intention I slipped into his hand the final seven pounds I
was prepared to pay. 'If your partnership scheme fails, try again
alone,' I said.
His blessings pursued me down the steep staircase. His womankind
remained shy and dumb.
When I got home I found a telegram from the Parsonage. My father was
dangerously ill. I left everything and hastened to help nurse him. My
picture was not sent in to any Exhibition--I could not let it go
without seeing it again, without a last touch or two. When, some
months later, I returned to town, my first thought--inspired by the
sight of my picture--was how Quarriar was faring. I left the studio
and telephoned to Sir Asher Aaronsberg at the London office of his
great Middleton business.
'That!' His contempt penetrated even through the wires. 'Smashed up
long ago. Just as I expected.'
And the sneer of the professional philanthropist vibrated
triumphantly. I was much upset, but ere I could recover my composure
Sir Asher was cut off. In the evening I received a note saying
Quarriar was a rogue, who had to flee from Russia for illicit sale of
spirits. He had only two, at most three, elderly daughters; the three
younger girls were a myth. For a moment I was staggered; then all my
faith in Israel returned. Those three children a figment of the
imagination! Impossible! Why, I remembered countless little anecdotes
about these very children, told me with the most evident fatherly
pride. He had even repeated the quaint remarks the youngest had made
on her return home from her first morning at the English school.
Impossible that these things could have been invented on the spur of
the moment. No; I could not possibly doubt the genuineness of my
model's spontaneous talk, especially as in those days he had had no
reason for expecting anything from me, and he had most certainly not
demanded anything. And then I remembered that tragic passage
describing how these three little ones, sheltered and fed by a kindly
soul, hid themselves when their father came to see them, fearing to be
reclaimed by him to hunger and cold. If Quarriar could invent such
things, he was indeed a poet, for in the whole literature of
starvation I could recall no better touch.
I went to Sir Asher. He said that Quarriar, challenged by Conn to
produce these children, had refused to do so, or to answer any further
questions. I found myself approving of his conduct. 'A man ought not
to be insulted by such absurd charges,' I said. Sir Asher merely
smiled and took up his usual unshakable position behind his
impregnable wall of official distrust and pessimism.
I wrote to Quarriar to call on me without delay. He came immediately,
his head bowed, his features care-worn and full of infinite suffering.
Yes, it was true; the piece-sorting had failed. For a few weeks all
had gone well. He had bought cuttings himself, had given the partner
thrust upon him by Conn various sums for the same purpose. They had
worked together, sorting in a cellar rented for the purpose, of which
his partner kept the key. So smoothly had things gone that he had felt
encouraged to invest even the reserve seven pounds I had given him,
but when the cellar was full of their common stock, and his own
suspicions had been lulled by the regular division of the
profits--seventeen shillings per week for each--one morning, on
arriving at the cellar to start the day's work, he found the place
locked, and when he called at the partner's house for an explanation,
the man laughed in his face. Everything in the cellar now belonged to
him, he claimed, insisting that Quarriar had eaten up the original
capital and his share of the profits besides.
'Besides, it never _was_ your money,' was the rogue's ultimate
argument. 'Why shouldn't _I_ profit, too, by the Christian's
simplicity?'
Conn blindly believed his own man, for the transactions had not been
recorded in writing, and it was only a case of Quarriar's word against
the partner's. It was the latter who in his venomous craft had told
Conn the younger children did not exist. But, thank Heaven! his quiver
was not empty of them. He had blissfully taken them home when
prosperity began, but now that he was again face to face with
starvation, they had returned to his hospitable countryman, Nathan
Beck.
'You are sure you could absolutely produce the little ones?'
He looked grieved at my distrusting him. My faith in his probity was,
he said with dignity, the one thing he valued in this world. I
dismissed him with a little to tide him over the next week, thoroughly
determined that the man's good name should be cleared. The crocodile
partner must disgorge, and the eyes of my benevolent friend and of
Conn must be finally opened to the injustice they had unwittingly
sanctioned. Again I wrote to my friend. As usual, Sir Asher replied
kindly and without a trace of impatience. Would I get some
intelligible written statement from Quarriar as to what had taken
place?
So, at my request, Quarriar sent me a statement in quaint
English--probably the landlord's--alleging specifically that the
partner had detained goods and money belonging to Quarriar to the
amount of L7 9s. 5d., and had assaulted him into the bargain. When the
partner was threatened with police-court proceedings, he had defied
Quarriar with the remark that Mr. Conn would bear out his honesty.
Quarriar could give as references, to show that _he_ was an honest man
and had made a true statement as to the number of his children, seven
Russians (named) who would attest that the partner provided by Conn
was well known as a swindler. Though he was starving, Quarriar refused
to have anything further to say to Conn. Quarriar further referred to
his landlord, who would willingly testify to his honesty. But being
afraid of Conn, and not inclined to commit himself in writing, the
landlord would give his version verbally.
Against this statement my philanthropic friend had to set another as
made by the partner. Quarriar, according to this, had received the
five pounds direct from Conn, and had handed over niggardly sums to
the partner for the purchase of goods, to wit, two separate sums of
one pound each (of which he returned to Quarriar thirty-three
shillings from sales), while Quarriar only gave him as his share of
the profits for the whole of the five weeks the sum of seventeen
shillings, instead of the minimum of ten shillings each week that had
been arranged.
The partner insisted further that he had never handled any money (of
which Quarriar had always retained full control), and that all the
goods in the cellar at the time of the quarrel were only of the value
of ten shillings, to which he was entitled, as Quarriar still owed him
thirty-three shillings. Moreover, he was willing to repeat in
Quarriar's presence the lies the latter had tried to persuade him to
tell. As to the children, he challenged Quarriar to produce them.
In vain I attempted to grapple with these conflicting documents. My
head was in a whirl. It seemed to me that no judicial bench, however
eminent, could, from the bare materials presented, probe to the bottom
of this matter. The arithmetic of both parties was hopelessly beyond
me. The names of the witnesses introduced showed that there must be
two camps, and that certainly Quarriar was solidly encamped amid his
advisers.
The whole business was taking on a most painful complexion, and I was
torn by conflicting emotions and swayed alternately by suspicion and
confidence.
How sift the false from the true amid all this tangled mass? And yet
mere curiosity would not leave me content to go to my grave not
knowing whether my model was apostle or Ananias. I, too, must then
become a rag-sorter, dabbling amid dirty fragments. Was there a black
rag, and was there a white, or were both rags parti-coloured? To take
only the one point of the children, it would seem a very simple matter
to determine whether a man has five daughters or two; and yet the more
I looked into it, the more I saw the complexity. Even if three little
girls were produced for my inspection, it was utterly impossible for
me to tell whether they really were the model's. Nor was it open to me
to repeat the device of Solomon and have them hacked in two to see
whose heart would be moved.
And then, if Israel's story was false here, what of the rest? Was
Kazelia also a myth? Did the second daughter ever go to Hamburg? Was
the landlord's detaining me in the parlour a ruse to gain time for the
attics to be emptied of any comforts? Where were the silver
candlesticks? These and other questions surged up torturingly. But I
remembered the footsore figure on the Brighton pavement; I remembered
the months he had practically lived with me, the countless
conversations, and as the Man of Sorrows rose reproachful before me
from my own canvas, with his noble bowed head, my faith in his dignity
and probity returned unbroken.
I called on Sir Asher--I had to go to the House of Commons to find
him--and his practical mind quickly suggested the best course in the
circumstances. He appointed a date for all parties--himself, myself,
Conn, the two partners, and any witnesses they might care to bring--to
appear at his office. But, above all, Quarriar must bring the three
children with him.
On getting back to my studio, I found Quarriar waiting for me. He was
come to pour out his heart to me, and to complain that all sorts of
underhand inquiries were being directed against him, so that he
scarcely dared to draw breath, so thick was the air with treachery. He
was afraid that his very friends, who were anxious not to offend Conn
and Sir Asher, might turn against him. Even his landlord had
threatened to kick him out, as he had been unable to pay his rent the
last week or two.
I told him he might expect a letter asking him to attend at Sir
Asher's office, that I should be there, and he should have an
opportunity of facing his swindling partner. He welcomed it joyfully,
and enthusiastically promised to obey the call and bring the children.
I emptied my purse into his hand--there were three or four pounds--and
he promised me that quite apart from the old tangle, he could now as
an expert set up as a piece-sorter himself. And so his kingly figure
passed out of my sight.
The next document sent me in this _cause celebre_ was a letter from
Conn to announce that he had made all arrangements for the great
meeting.
'Sir Asher's private room in his office will be placed at the disposal
of the inquiry. The original application form filled up by Quarriar
clearly condemns him. The partner will be there, and I have arranged
for Quarriar's landlord to appear if you think it necessary. I may
add that I have very good reason to believe that Quarriar does not
mean to appear. I fancy he is trying to wriggle out of the
appointment.'
I at once wrote a short note to Quarriar reminding him of the absolute
necessity of appearing with the children, who should be even kept away
from school.
I reproduce the exact reply:
'DEAR SIR,
'Referring to your welcome letter, I gratify you very much for
the trouble you have taken for me. But I'm sorry to tell you
that I refuse to go before the committee according you
arranged to, as I received a letter without any name
threatening me that I should not dare to call for the
committee to tell the truth for I will be put into mischief
and trouble. It is stated also that the same gentleman does
not require the truth. He helps only those he likes to. So I
will not call and wish you my dear gentleman not to trouble to
come. Therefore if you wish to assist me in somehow is very
good and I will certainly gratify you and if not I will have
to do without it, and will have to trust the Almighty. So
kindly do not trouble about it as I do not wish to enter a
risk, I remain your humble and grateful servant,
'ISRAEL QUARRIAR.
'P.S.--Last Wednesday a man called on my landlord and asked
him some secrets about me, and told him at last that I shall
have to state according I will be commanded to and not as I
wish. I enclose you herewith the same letter I received, it is
written in Jewish. Please not to show it to anyone but to
tear it at once as I would not trust it to any other one. I
would certainly call at the office and follow your advice. But
my life is dearer. So you should not trouble to come. I fear
already I gratify you for kind help till now, in the future
you may do as you wish.'