IV

To the four females left behind--odd fragments of two families thrown

into an odder one--the movements of the particular piece, Srul, were

the chief interest of existence. The life in the three-roomed wooden

cottage soon fell into a routine, Leah going daily to the tropical

factory, Biela doing the housework and dreaming of her lover, little

Tsirrele frisking about and chattering like the squirrel she was, and

Srul's mother dozing and criticising and yearning for her lost son and

her unborn grandchildren. By the time Srul's first letter, with its

exciting pictorial stamp, arrived from the Land of Promise, the

household seemed to have been established on this basis from time

immemorial.

"I had a lucky escape, God be thanked," Srul wrote. "For when I arrived

in New York I had only fifty-one roubles in my pocket. Now it seems

that these rich Americans are so afraid of being overloaded with

paupers that they will not let you in, if you have less than fifty

dollars, unless you can prove you are sure to prosper. And a dollar, my

dear Biela, is a good deal more than a rouble. However, blessed be the

Highest One, I learned of this ukase just the day before we arrived,

and was able to borrow the difference from a fellow-passenger, who lent

me the money to show the Commissioners. Of course, I had to give it

back as soon as I was passed, and as I had to pay him five roubles for

the use of it, I set foot on the soil of freedom with only forty-six.

However, it was well worth it; for just think, beloved Biela, if I had

been shipped back and all that money wasted! The interpreter also said

to me, 'I suppose you have got some work to do here?' 'I wish I had,' I

said. No sooner had the truth slipped out than my heart seemed turned

to ice, for I feared they would reject me after all as a poor wretch

out of work. But quite the contrary; it seemed this was only a trap, a

snare of the fowler. Poor Caminski fell into it--you remember the

red-haired weaver who sold his looms to the Maggid's brother-in-law. He

said he had agreed to take a place in a glove factory. It is true, you

know, that some Polish Jews have made a glove town in the north, so the

poor man thought that would sound plausible. Hence you may expect to

see Caminski's red hair back again, unless he takes ship again from

Libau and tells the truth at the second attempt. I left him howling in

a wooden pen, and declaring he would kill himself rather than face his

friends at home with the brand on his head of not being good enough for

America. He did not understand that contract-labourers are not let in.

Protection is the word they call it. Hence, I thank God that my

father--his memory for a blessing!--taught me to make Truth the law of

my mouth, as it is written. Verily was the word of the Talmud (Tractate

Sabbath) fulfilled at the landing-stage: 'Falsehood cannot stay, but

truth remains forever.' With God's help, I shall remain here all my

life, for it is a land overflowing with milk and honey. I had almost

forgotten to tell my dove that the voyage was hard and bitter as the

Egyptian bondage; not because of the ocean, over which I passed as

easily as our forefathers over the Red Sea, but by reason of the

harshness of the overseers, who regarded not our complaints that the

meat was not _kosher_, as promised by the agent. Also the butter and

meat plates were mixed up. I and many with me lived on dry bread, nor

could we always get hot water to make coffee. When my Biela comes

across the great waters--God send her soon--she must take with her salt

meat of her own."

From the first, Srul courageously assumed that the meat would soon

have to be packed; nay, that Leah might almost set about salting it at

once. Even the slow beginnings of his profits as a peddler did not

daunt him. "A great country," he wrote on paper stamped with the Stars

and Stripes, with an eagle screaming on the envelope. "No special

taxes for the Jews, permission to travel where you please, the schools

open freely to our children, no passports and papers at every step,

above all, no conscription. No wonder the people call it God's own

country. Truly, as it is written, this is none other but the House of

God, this is the Gate of Heaven. And when Biela comes, it will be

Heaven." Letters like this enlarged the little cottage as with an

American room, brightened it as with a fresh wash of blue paint.

Despite the dreary grind of the week, Sabbaths and festivals found the

household joyous enough. The wedding-canopy of Srul and Biela was a

beacon of light for all four, which made life livable as they

struggled toward it. Nevertheless, it came but slowly to meet them:

nearly three years oozed by before Srul began to lift his eye toward a

store. The hereditary weaver of business combinations had emerged

tardily from beneath the logic-weaver and the cloth-weaver, but of

late he had been finding himself. "If I could only get together five

hundred dollars clear," he wrote to Leah. "For that is all I should

have to pay down for a ladies' store near Broadway, and just at the

foot of the stairs of the Elevated Railway. What a pity I have only

four hundred and thirty-five dollars! Stock and goodwill, and only

five hundred dollars cash! The other five hundred could stand over at

five per cent. If I were once in the store I could gradually get some

of the rooms above (there is already a parlour, in which I shall

sleep), and then, as soon as I was making a regular profit, I could

send Biela and mother their passage-money, and my wife could help 'the

boss' behind the counter."

To hasten the rosy day Leah sent thirty-five roubles, and presently,

sure enough, Srul was in possession, and a photograph of the store

itself came over to gladden their weary eyes and dilate those of the

neighbours. The photograph of Srul, which had come eighteen months

before, was not so suited for display, since his peaked cap and his

caftan had been replaced by a jacket and a bowler, and, but for the

ear-locks which were still in the picture, he would have looked like a

factory-owner. In return, Srul received a photograph of the

four--taken together, for economy's sake--Leah with her arm around

Biela's waist, and Tsirrele sitting in his mother's lap.

V

But a long, wearying struggle was still before the new "boss," and two

years crept along, with their turns of luck and ill-luck, of bargains

and bad debts, ere the visionary marriage-canopy (that seemed to span

the Atlantic) began to stand solidly on American soil. The third year

was not half over ere Srul actually sent the money for Biela's

passage, together with a handsome "waist" from his stock, for her to

wear. But Biela was too timid to embark alone without Srul's mother,

whose fare Srul could not yet manage to withdraw from his capital.

Leah, of course, offered to advance it, but Biela refused this

vehemently, because a new hope had begun to spring up in her breast.

Why should she be parted from her family at all? Since her marriage

had been delayed these five and a half years, a few months more or

less could make no difference. Let Leah's savings, then, be for Leah's

passage (and Tsirrele's) and to give her a start in the New World. "It

rains, even in America, and there are umbrella factories there, too,"

she urged. "You will make twice the living. Look at Srul!"

And there was a new fear, too, which haunted Biela's aching heart, but

which she dared not express to Leah. Leah's eyes were getting worse.

The temperature of the factory was a daily hurt, and then, too, she

had read so many vilely printed Yiddish books and papers by the light

of the tallow candle. What if she were going blind? What if, while

she, Biela, was happy with Srul, Leah should be starving with

Tsirrele? No, they must all remain together: and she clung to her

sister, with tears.

To Leah the prospect of witnessing her sister's happiness was so

seductive that she tried to take the lowest estimate of her own

chances of finding work in New York. Her savings, almost eaten up by

the journey, could not last long, and it would be terrible to have to

come upon Srul for help, a man with a wife and (if God were good)

children, to say nothing of his old mother. No, she could not risk

Tsirrele's bread.

But the increased trouble with her eyes turned her in favour of going,

though, curiously enough, for a side reason quite unlike Biela's.

Leah, too, was afraid of a serious breakdown, though she would not

hint her fears to any one else. From her miscellaneous Yiddish reading

she had gathered that miraculous eye-doctors lived in Koenigsberg. Now

a journey to Germany was not to be thought of; if she went to America,

however, it could be taken en route. It would be a sort of saving, and

few things appealed to Leah as much as economy. This was why, some

four months later, the ancient furniture of the blue-washed cottage

was sold off, and the quartette set their faces for America by way of

Germany. The farewell to the home of their youth took place in the

cemetery among the high-shouldered Hebrew-speaking stones. Leah and

Biela passionately invoked the spirits of their dead parents and bade

them watch over their children. The old woman scribbled Srul and

Biela's interlinked names over the flat tomb of a holy scholar. "Take

their names up to the Highest One," she pleaded. "Entreat that their

quiver be full, for the sake of thy righteousness."

More dead than alive, the four "pieces" with their bundles arrived at

Hamburg. Days and nights of travelling, packed like "freight" in hard,

dirty wooden carriages, the endless worry of passports, tickets,

questions, hygienic inspections and processes, the illegal exactions

of petty officials, the strange phantasmagoria of places and

faces--all this had left them dazed. Only two things kept up their

spirits--the image of Srul waiting on the Transatlantic wharf in

hymeneal attire, and the "pooh-pooh" of the miraculous Koenigsberg

doctor, reassuring Leah as to her eyes. There was nothing radically

the matter. Even the inflamed eyelids--though incurable, because

hereditary--would improve with care. Peasant-like, Leah craved a

lotion. "The sea voyage and the rest will do you more good than my

medicines. And don't read so much." Not a groschen did Leah have to

pay for the great specialist's services. It was the first time in her

hard life anybody had done anything for her for nothing, and her

involuntary weeping over this phenomenon tended to hurt the very

eyelids under attention. They were still further taxed by the kindness

of the Jewish committee at Hamburg, on the look-out to smooth the path

of poor emigrants and overcome their dietary difficulties. But it was

a crowded ship, and our party reverted again to "freight." With some

of the other females, they were accommodated in hammocks swung over

the very dining-tables, so that they must needs rise at dawn and be

cleared away before breakfast. The hot, oily whiff of the

cooking-engines came through the rocking doorway. Of the quartette,

only Tsirrele escaped sea-sickness, but "baby" was too accustomed to

be petted and nursed to be able suddenly to pet and nurse, and she

would spend hours on the slip of lower deck, peering into the fairy

saloons which were vivified by bugle instead of bell, and in which

beautiful people ate dishes fit for the saints in Heaven. By an effort

of will, Leah soon returned to her role of factotum, but the old

woman and Biela remained limp to the end. Fortunately, there was only

one day of heavy rolling and battened-down hatches. For the bulk of

the voyage the great vessel brushed the pack of waves disdainfully

aside. And one wonderful day, amid unspeakable joy, New York arrived,

preceded by a tug and by a boat that conveyed inquiring officials. The

great statue of Liberty, on Bedloe's Island, upheld its torch to light

the new-comers' path. Srul--there he is on the wharf, dear old

Srul!--God bless him! despite his close-cropped hair and his shaven

ear-locks. Ah! Heaven be praised! Don't you see him waving? Ah, but

we, too, must be content with waving. For here only the _tschinovniks_

of the gilded saloon may land. The "freight" must be packed later into

rigid gangs, according to the ship's manifest, transferred to a

smaller steamer and discharged on Ellis Island, a little beyond

Bedloe's.