"Telegraph how many pieces you have."
In this wise did the Steamship Company convey to the astute agent its desire to know how many Russian Jews he was smuggling out of the Pale into the steerage of its Atlantic liner.
The astute agent's task was simple enough. The tales he told of America were only the clarification of a nebulous vision of the land flowing with milk and honey that hovered golden-rayed before all these hungry eyes. To the denizens of the Pale, in their cellars, in their gutter-streets, in their semi-subterranean shops consisting mainly of shutters and annihilating one another's profits; to the congested populations newly reinforced by the driving back of thousands from beyond the Pale, and yet multiplying still by an improvident reliance on Providence; to the old people pauperized by the removal of the vodka business to Christian hands, and the young people dammed back from their natural outlets by Pan-Slavic ukases, and clogged with whimsical edictsand rescripts—the astute agent's offer of getting you through Germany, without even a Russian passport, by a simple passage from Libau to New York, was peculiarly alluring.
It was really almost an over-baiting of the hook on the part of the too astute agent to whisper that he had had secret information of a new thunderbolt about to be launched at the Pale; whereby the period of service for Jewish conscripts would be extended to fifteen years, and the area of service would be extended to Siberia.
"Three hundred and seventy-seven pieces," ran his telegram in reply. In a letter he suggested other business he might procure for the line.
"Confine yourself to freight," the Company wrote cautiously, for even under sealed envelopes you cannot be too careful. "The more the better."
Freight! The word was not inexact. Did not even the Government reports describe these exploiters of the Muzhik as in some places packed in their hovels like salt herrings in a barrel; as sleeping at night in serried masses in sties which by day were tallow or leather factories?
To be shipped as cargo came therefore natural enough. Nevertheless, each of these "pieces," being human after all, had a history, and one of these histories is here told.
Nowhere was the poverty of the Pale bitterer than in the weavers' colony, in which Srul betrothed himself to Biela. The dowries, which had been wont to kindle so many young men's passions, had fallen to freezing-point; and Biela, if she had no near prospect of marriage, could console herself with the knowledge that she was romantically loved. Even the attraction ofkest—temporary maintenance of the young couple by the father-in-law—was wanting in Biela's case, for the simple reason that she had no father, both her parents having died of the effort to get a living. For marriage-portion andkest, Biela could only bring her dark beauty, and even that was perhaps less than it seemed. For you scarcely ever saw Biela apart from her homely quasi-mother, her elder sister Leah, who, like the original Leah, had "tender eyes," which combined with a pock-marked face to ensure for her premature recognition as an old maid. The inflamed eyelids were the only legacy Leah's father had left her.
From Srul's side, though his parents were living, came even fainter hope of the wedding-canopy. Srul's father was blind—perhaps a further evidence that the local hygienic conditions were nocuous to the eye in particular—and Srul himself, who had occupied most of his time in learning to weave Rabbinic webs, had only just turned his attention tocloth, though Heaven was doubtless pleased with the gear ofGemarahe had gathered in his short sixteen years. The old weaver had—in more than one sense—seen better days before his affliction and the great factories came on: days when the independent hand-weaver might sit busily before the loom from the raw dawn to the black midnight, taking his meals at the bench; days when, moreover, the "piece" of satin-faced cloth was many ells shorter. "But they make up for the extra length," he would say with pathetic humour, "by cutting the pay shorter."
The same sense of humour enabled him to bear up against the forced rests that increasing slackness brought the hand-weavers, while the factories whirred on. "Now is the proverb fulfilled," he cried to his unsmiling wife, "for there are two Sabbaths a week." Alas! as the winter grew older and colder, it became a week of Sabbaths. The wheels stood still; in all the colony not a spool was reeled. It was unprecedented. Gradually the factories had stolen the customers. Some sat waiting dazedly for the raw yarns they knew could no longer come at this season; others left the suburb in which the colony had drowsed from time immemorial, and sought odd jobs in the town, in the frowning shadows of the factories. But none would enter the factories themselves, though these were ready to suck them in on one sole condition.
Ah! here was the irony of the tragedy. The onecondition was the one condition the poor weavers could not accept. It was open to them to reduce the week of Sabbaths to its ancient and diurnal dimensions, provided the Sabbath itself came on Sunday. Nay, even the working-day offered them was less, and the wage was more than their own. The deeper irony within this irony was that the proprietor of every one of these factories was a brother in Israel! Jeshurun grown fat and kicking.
Even the old blind man's composure deserted him when it began to be borne in on his darkness that the younger weavers meditated surrender. The latent explosives generated through the years by their perusal of un-Jewish books in insidious "Yiddish" versions, now bade fair to be touched to eruption by this paraded prosperity of wickedness; wickedness that had even discarded the caftan and shaved the corners of its beard.
"But thou, apple of my eye," the old man said to Srul, "thou wilt die rather than break the Sabbath?"
"Father," quoted the youth, with a shuddering emotion at the bare idea, "I have been young and now I am old, but never have I seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread."
"My son! A true spark of the Patriarchs!" And the old man clasped the boy to his arms and kissed him on the pious cheeks down which the ear-locks dangled.
"But if Biela should tempt thee, so that thoucouldst have the wherewithal to marry her," put in his mother, who could not keep her thoughts off grandchildren.
"Not for apples of gold, mother, will I enter the service of these serpents."
"Nevertheless, Biela is fair to see, and thou art getting on in years," murmured the mother.
"Leah would not give Biela to a Sabbath-breaker," said the old man reassuringly.
"Yes, but suppose she gives her to a bread-winner," persisted the mother. "Do not forget that Biela is already fifteen, only a year younger than thyself."
But Leah kept firm to the troth she had plighted on behalf of Biela, even though the young man's family sank lower and lower, till it was at last reduced from the little suburban wooden cottage, with the spacious courtyard, to one corner of a large town-cellar, whose population became amphibious when the Vistula overflowed.
And Srul kept firm to the troth Israel had plighted with the Sabbath-bride, even when his father's heart no longer beat, so could not be broken. The old man remained to the last the most cheerful denizen of the cellar: perhaps because he was spared the vision of his emaciated fellow-troglodytes. He called the cellar "Arba Kanfôs," after the four-cornered garment of fringes which he wore: and sometimes he said these were the "Four Corners" from which, according to the Prophets, God would gather Israel.
In such a state of things an agent scarcely needed to be astute. "Pieces" were to be had for the picking up. The only trouble was that they were not gold pieces. The idle weavers could not defray the passage-money, still less the agent's commission for smuggling them through.
"If I only had a few hundred roubles," Srul lamented to Leah, "I could get to a land where there is work without breaking the Sabbath, a land to which Biela could follow me when I waxed in substance."
Leah supported her household of three—for there was a younger sister, Tsirrélé, who, being only nine, did not count except at meal-times—on the price of her piece-work at the Christian umbrella factory, where, by a considerate Russian law, she could work on Sunday, though the Christians might not. Thus she earned, by literal sweating in a torrid atmosphere, three roubles, all except a varying number of kopecks, every week. And when you live largely on black bread and coffee, you may, in the course of years, save a good deal, even if you have three mouths. Therefore, Leah had the sum that Srul mentioned so wistfully, put by for a rainy day (when there should be no umbrellas to make). And as the sum had kept increasing, the notion that it might form the nucleus of an establishment for Biela and Srul had grownclearer and clearer in her mind, which it tickled delightfully. But the idea that now came to her of staking all on a possible future was agitating.
"We might, perhaps, be able to get together the money," she said tentatively. "But—" She shook her head, and the Russian proverb came to her lips. "Before the sun rises the dew may destroy you."
Srul plunged into an eager recapitulation of the agent's assurances. And before the eyes of both the marriage-canopy reared itself splendid in the Land of Promise, and the figure of Biela flitted, crowned with the bridal wreath.
"But what will become of your mother?" Leah asked.
Srul's soap-bubbles collapsed. He had forgotten for the moment that he had a mother.
"She might come to live with us," Leah hastened to suggest, seeing his o'erclouded face.
"Ah, no, that would be too much of a burden. And Tsirrélé, too, is growing up."
"Tsirrélé eats quite as much now as she will in ten years' time," said Leah, laughing, as she thought fondly of her dear, beautiful little one, her gay whimsies and odd caprices.
"And my mother does not eat very much," said Srul, wavering.
In this way Srul became a "piece," and was dumped down in the Land of Promise.
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 Tsirrélé 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) fulfilledat 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 notkosher, 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 likethis 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 itselfcame 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 Tsirrélé sitting in his mother's lap.
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 moreor less could make no difference. Let Leah's savings, then, be for Leah's passage (and Tsirrélé'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 Tsirrélé? 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 Tsirrélé'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 nothint her fears to any one else. From her miscellaneous Yiddish reading she had gathered that miraculous eye-doctors lived in Königsberg. 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" ofthe miraculous Königsberg 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 Tsirrélé 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, Leahsoon returned to her rôle 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 thetschinovniksof 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.
And at Ellis Island a terrible thing happened, unforeseen—a shipwreck in the very harbour.
As the "freight" filed slowly along the corridor-cages in the great bare hall, like cattle inspected at ports by the veterinary surgeon, it came into the doctor's head that Leah's eye-trouble was infectious. "Granular lids—contagious," he diagnosed it onpaper. And this diagnosis was a flaming sword that turned every way, guarding against Leah the Land of Promise.
"But it is not infectious," she protested in her best German. "It is only in the family."
"So I perceive," dryly replied America's Guardian Angel, who was now examining the obvious sister clinging to Leah's skirts. And in Biela, heavy-eyed with sickness and want of sleep, his suspicious vision easily discovered a reddish rim of eyelid that lent itself to the same fatal diagnosis, and sent her to join Leah in the dock of the rejected. The fresh-faced Tsirrélé and the wizen-faced mother of Srul passed unscrutinized, and even the dread clerk at the desk who asked questions was content with their oath that the wealthy Srul would support them. Srul was, indeed, sent for at once, as Tsirrélé was too pretty to be let out under the mere protection of a Polish crone.
When the full truth that neither she nor Biela was to set foot in New York burst through the daze in Leah's brain, her protest grew frantic.
"But my sister has nothing the matter with her—nothing. Ognädiger Herr, have pity. The Königsberg doctor—the great doctor—told me I had no disease, no disease at all. And even if I have, my sister's eyes are pure as the sunshine. Look,mein Herr, look again. See," and she held up Biela's eyelids and passionately kissed the wet bewildered eyes."She is to be married, my lamb—her bridegroom awaits her on the wharf. Sendmeback,gnädiger Herr; I ought not to have come. But for God's sake, don't keep Biela out, don't." She wrung her hands. But the marriage card had been played too often in that hall of despairing dodges. "Oh,Herr Doktor," and she kissed the coat-tail of the ship's doctor, "plead for us; speak a word for her."
The ship's doctor spoke a word on his own behalf. It was he who had endorsed the two girls' health-certificates at Hamburg, and he would be blamed by the Steamship Company, which would have to ship the sisters back free, and even defray their expenses while in quarantine at the dépôt. He ridiculed the idea that the girls were suffering from anything contagious. But the native doctor frowned, immovable.
Leah grew hysteric. It was the first time in her life she had lost her sane standpoint. "Your own eye is affected," she shrieked, her dark pock-marked face almost black with desperate anger, "if you cannot see that it is only because my sister has been weeping, because she is ill from the voyage. But she carries no infection—she is healthy as an ox, and her eye is the eye of an eagle!" She was ordered to be silent, but she shrieked angrily, "The German doctors know, but the Americans have noBildung."
"Oh, don't, Leah," moaned Biela, throwing her arms round the panting breast. "What's the use?" But the irrepressible Leah got an S.I. ticket ofSpecial Inquiry, forced a hearing in the Commissioners' Court.
"Let her in, kind gentlemen, and send back the other one. Tsirrélé will go back with me. It does not matter about the little one."
The kind gentlemen on the bench were really kind, but America must be protected.
"You can take the young one and the old one both back with you," the interpreter told her. "But they are the only ones we can let in."
Leah and Biela were driven back among the damned. The favoured twain stood helplessly in their happier compartment. Even Tsirrélé, the squirrel, was dazed. Presently the spruce Srul arrived—to find the expected raptures replaced by funereal misery. He wormed his way dizzily into the cage of the rejected. It was not the etiquette of the Pale to kiss one's betrothed bride, but Srul stared dully at Biela without even touching her hand, as if the Atlantic already rolled again between them. Here was a pretty climax to the dreams of years!
"My poor Srul, we must go back to Hamburg to be married," faltered Biela.
"And give up my store?" Srul wailed. "Here the dollar spins round. We have now what one names a boom. There is no land on earth like ours."
The forlornness of the others stung Leah to her senses.
"Listen, Srul," she said hurriedly. "It is all my fault, because I wanted to share in the happiness. I ought not to have come. If we had not been together they never would have suspected Biela's eyes—who would notice the little touch of inflammation which is the most she has ever suffered from? She shall come again in another ship, all alone—for she knows now how to travel. Is it not so, Biela, my lamb? I will see you on board, and Srul will meet you here, although not till you have passed the doctor, so that no one will have a chance of remembering you. It will cost a heap, alas! but I can get some work in Hamburg, and the Jews there have hearts of gold. Eh, Biela, my poor lamb?"
"Yes, yes, Leah, you can always give yourself a counsel," and Biela put her wet face to her sister's, and kissed the pock-marked cheek.
Srul acquiesced eagerly. No one remembered for the moment that Leah would be left alone in the Old World. The problem of effecting the bride's entry blocked all the horizon.
"Yes, yes," said Srul. "The mother will look after Tsirrélé, and in less than three weeks Biela will slip in."
"No, three weeks is too soon," said Leah. "We must wait a little longer till the doctor forgets."
"Oh, but I have already waited so long!" whimpered Srul.
Leah's eyes filled with sympathetic tears. "Iought not to have made so much fuss. Now she will stick in the doctor's mind. Forgive me, dear Srul, I will do my best and try to make amends."
Leah and Biela were taken away to the hospital, where they remained isolated from the world till the steamer sailed back to Hamburg. Herein, generously lodged, they had ample leisure to review the situation. Biela discovered that the new plan would leave Leah deserted, Leah remembered that she would be deserting little Tsirrélé. Both were agreed that Tsirrélé must go back with them, till they bethought themselves that her passage would have to be paid for, as she was not refused. And every kopeck was precious now. "Let the child stay till I get back," said Biela. "Then I will send her to you."
"Yes, it is best to let her stay awhile. I myself may be able to join you after all. I will go back to Königsberg, and the great doctor will write me out a certificate that my affliction is not contagious."
At the very worst—if even Biela could not get in—Srul should sell his store and come back to the Old World. It would put off the marriage again. But they had waited so long. "So let us cheer up after all, and thank the Lord for His mercies. We might all have been drowned on the voyage."
Thus the sisters' pious conclusion.
But though Srul and his mother and Tsirrélé got on board to see them off, and Tsirrélé gave graphic accounts of the wonders of the store and the roomsprepared for the bride, to say nothing of the great city itself, and Srul brought Biela and Leah splendid specimens of his stock for their adornment, yet it was a horrible thing for them to go back again without having once trodden the sidewalks of the Land of Promise. And when the others were tolled off, as by a funeral bell, and became specks in a swaying crowd; when the dock receded and the cheers and good-byes faded, and the waving handkerchiefs became a blur, and the Statue of Liberty dwindled, and the lone waste of waters faced them once more, Leah's optimism gave way, a chill sinister shadow fell across her new plan, some ominous intuition traversed her like a shudder, and she turned away lest Biela should see her tears.
This despair did not last long. It was not in Leah's nature to despair. But her wildest hopes were exceeded when she set foot again in Hamburg and explained her hard case to the good committee, and a member gave her an informal hint which was like a flash of light from Heaven—its answer to her ceaseless prayer. Ellis Island was not the only way of approaching the Land of Promise. You could go round about through Canada, where they were not so particular, and you could slip in by rail from Montreal without attracting much attention. True, there was the extra expense.
Expense! Leah would have gladly parted with her last rouble to unite Biela with her bridegroom. There must be no delay. A steamer for Canada was waiting to sail. What a fool she had been not to think that out for herself! Yes, but there was Biela's timidity again to consider. Travel by herself through this unknown Canada! And then if they were not so particular, why could not Leah slip through likewise?
"Yes, but my eyes are more noticeable. I might again do you an injury."
"We will separate at the landing-stage and the frontier. We will pretend to be strangers." Biela's wits were sharpened by the crisis.
"Well, I can only lose the passage-money," said Leah, and resolved to take the risk. She wrote a letter to Srul explaining the daring invasion of New York overland which they were to attempt, and was about to post it, when Biela said:—
"Poor Srul! And if I shall not get in after all!" Leah's face fell.
"True," she pondered. "He will have a more heart-breaking disappointment than before."
"Let us not kindle their hopes. After all, if we get in, we shall only be a few days later than our letter. And then think of the joy of the surprise."
"You are right, Biela," and Leah's face glowed again with the anticipated joy of the surprise.
The journey to Canada was longer than to theStates, and the "freight" was less companionable. There were fewer Jews and women, more stalwart shepherds, miners, and dock-labourers. When after eleven days, land came, it was not touched at, but only remained cheeringly on the horizon for the rest of the voyage. At last the sisters found themselves unmolested on one of the many wharves of Montreal. But they would not linger a day in this unhomely city. The next morning saw them, dazed and worn out but happy-hearted, dodging the monstrous catapults of the New York motor-cars, while a Polish porter helped them with their bundles and convoyed them toward Srul's store. Ah, what ecstasy to be unregarded units of this free chaotic crowd. Outside the store—what a wonderful store it was, larger than the largest in the weavers' colony!—the sisters paused a moment to roll the coming bliss under their tongues. They peeped in. Ah, there is Srul behind the counter, waiting for customers. Ah, ah, he little knows what customers are waiting for him! They turned and kissed each other for mere joy.
"Draw your shawl over your face," whispered Leah merrily. "Go in and ask him if he has a wedding-veil." Biela slipped in, brimming over with mischief and tears.
"Yes, Miss?" said Srul, with his smartest store manner.
"I want a wedding-veil of white lace," she said in Yiddish. At her voice Srul started. Biela couldkeep up the joke no longer. "Srul, my darling Srul!" she cried hysterically, her arms yearning to reach him across the counter.
He drew back, pale, gasping for breath.
"Ah, my dear ones!" blubbered Leah, rushing in. "God has been good to you, after all."
"But—but—how did you get in?" he cried, staring.
"Never mind how we got in," said Leah, every pock-mark glistening with smiles and tears. "And where is Tsirrélé—my dear little Tsirrélé?"
"She—she is out marketing, with the mother."
"And the mother?"
"She is well and happy."
"Thank God!" said Leah fervently, and beckoned the porter with the bundles.
"But—but I let the room," he said, flushing. "I did not know that—I could not afford—"
"Never mind, we will find a room. The day is yet high." She settled with the porter.
Meantime Srul had begun playing nervously with a pair of scissors. He snipped a gorgeous piece of stuff to fragments.
"What are you doing?" said Biela at last.
"Oh—I—" he burst into a nervous laugh. "And so you ran the blockade after all. But—but I expect customers every minute—we can't talk now. Go inside and rest, Biela: you will find a sofa in the parlour. Leah, I want—I want to talk to you."
Leah flashed a swift glance at him as Biela, vaguely chilled, moved through the back door into the revivifying splendours of the parlour.
"Something is wrong, Srul," Leah said hoarsely. "Tsirrélé is not here. You feared to tell us."
He hung his head. "I did my best."
"She is ill—dead, perhaps! My beautiful angel!"
He opened his eyes. "Dead? No. Married!"
"What! To whom?"
He turned a sickly white. "To me."
In all that long quest of the canopy, Leah had never come so near fainting as now. The horror of Ellis Island was nothing to this. That scene resurged, and Tsirrélé's fresh beauty, unflecked by the voyage, came up luridly before her; the "baby," whom the unnoted years had made a young woman of fifteen, while they had been aging and staling Biela.
"But—but this will break Biela's heart," she whispered, heart-broken.
"How was I to know Biela wouldeverget in?" he said, trying to be angry. "Was I to remain a bachelor all my life, breaking the Almighty's ordinance? Did I not wait and wait faithfully for Biela all those years?"
"You could have migrated elsewhere," she said faintly.
"And ruin my connection—and starve?" His anger was real by now. "Besides I have marriedinto the family—it is almost the same thing. And the old mother is just as pleased."
"Oh, she!" and all the endured bitterness of the long years was in the exclamation. "All she wants is grandchildren."
"No, it isn't," he retorted. "Grandchildren with good eyes."
"God forgive you," was all the lump in Leah's throat allowed her to reply. She steadied herself with a hand on the counter, striving to repossess her soul for Biela's sake.
A customer came in, and the tragic universe dwindled to a prosaic place in which ribbons existed in unsatisfactory shades.
"Of course we must go this minute," Leah said, as Srul clanked the coins into the till. "Biela cannot ever live here with you now."
"Yes, it is better so," he assented sulkily. "Besides, you may as well know at once. I keep open on the Sabbath, and that would not have pleased Biela. That is another reason why it was best not to marry Biela. Tsirrélé doesn't seem to mind."
The very ruins of her world seemed toppling now. But this new revelation of Tsirrélé's and his own wickedness seemed only of a piece with the first—indeed, went far to account for it.
"You break the Sabbath, after all!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "We are not in Poland any longer. No dead flies here. Everybodydoes it. Shut the store two days a week! I should get left."
"And you bring your mother's gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave."
"My mother's gray hairs are no longer hidden by a stupid blackShaitel. That is all. I have explained to her that America is the land of enlightenment and freedom. Her eyes are opened."
"I trust to God, your father's—peace be upon him!—are still shut!" said Leah as she walked with slow steady steps into the parlour, to bear off her wounded lamb.