With Poor Immigrants in America. Stephen Graham
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Territorials, I learned to shoot, I can ride a horse."
"Why didn't you go into the army?"
"That's not the place for a decent fellow. Besides, my people wouldn't allow it, and my girl's folks would be cut up. And I reckon there's something better to do than be drilled and wait for a war. My people wanted me to be something respectable, to go into the Civil Service, or a bank, or an insurance office, or even into the wholesale fruit business. I was put into Jacob's, the fruit firm, but I couldn't work their rate. I've been hunting for work the last five months. That takes it out of you, don't it? How mean I felt! Everybody looked at me in such a way—you know, as much as to say 'You loafer, you lout, you good-for-nothing,' so that I jolly well began to feel I was that, too, especially when my clothes got shabby and I had nothing decent to put on to see people."
As my acquaintance talked he rapidly became simpler, more child-like, confiding, and tears stole down his cheek. The reserved and surly lad became a boy. "What a life," said he, "to search work all day, beg a shilling or so from my mother in the evening, meet my girl, tell her all that's happened, then at night to finish the day lying in bed trying to imagine what I'd do if I had a thousand a year!
"I reckon I could have earned a living with my hands, but my people were too proud; yes, and I was too proud also, and my girl might not have liked it. Still, I'd have done anything to earn a sovereign and take her to the theatre, or go out with her to the country for a day, or make her a nice present and prove I wasn't mean. I used to be generous. When I had a job I gave plenty of presents; but you can't give things away when you have to borrow each day. You even walk instead of taking a car, and you are mean, mean, mean—mean all day. Then in the evening you talk of marrying a girl, of having a little home, and you dare to kiss her as much as you can or she will let, and all the while you have in the wide world only a few coppers—and a mother."
"ONE OF THE YOUNG LADIES WAS BEING TOSSED UP IN A BLANKET WITH A YOUNG IRISH LAD."
We went and leaned over the ship and stared down at the sea.
Tears! I suppose millions had come there before and made that great salt ocean of them.
The boy now lisped his confidence to me hurriedly, happily, tenderly.
"But I reckon I've got a good mother, eh? She loved me more than I dreamed. How she cried on Friday! how she cried! It was wild. Sometimes I used to say I hated her. I used to shout out angrily at her that I'd run away and never come back. That was when she said hasty things to me, or when she wouldn't give me money. I used to think I'd go and be a tramp, and pick up a living here and there in the country, and live on fruit and birds' eggs, sleeping anywhere. It would be better than feeling so mean at home. But then, my girl—every night I had to see her. I felt I could not go away like that, never to come home with a fortune—never, never to be able to marry her. Every night she put her arms round my neck and kissed me, and called me her old soldier, her dear one—all sorts of sweet things. I reckon we didn't miss one night all this last year.
"Her father's all right. I had thought he would be different. I was a bit afraid of what he'd say if he got to hear. But she told him on her own, and one night she took me home. They had fixed it up themselves without asking me, and he was very kind. I told him I wanted a job, and I thought p'raps he was going to get me one. But no; he was a queer sort, rather. 'I'm going to wipe out that story of yours,' he says. Then he goes to his bureau and writes a note and puts it in an envelope and addresses it to me. 'Here you are, young man,' says he. I opened the envelope and read one word on a slip of paper—America. 'Millions have told your story before,' says he, 'and have had that word given them in answer. You get ready to go to America; I'll find you your passage-money and something to start you off in the new country. You'll do well; you'll make good, my boy,' and he slapped me on the back.
"You bet I felt excited. He saw my mother and told her his plan. She said she couldn't stand in my way. I got the Government Handbook on the United States, and the emigration circular. I read up America at the public library. I wonder I hadn't thought of it before. America is a great country, eh? They look at you differently, I bet, and a strong young man's worth something there. My word, when I come back. …
"I wonder if I shall come back or if she'll come out to me. I wonder if her father would let her. I guess he would. …
"She loves me. My word, how she loves me! I didn't dream of it before. I used to think the harder you kissed, the more it meant; but she kissed me in a new way, so softly, so differently. She said I was hers, that I would be safe wherever I went in the wide world, and I was never to feel afraid. I've got to do without her now. I reckon no other girl is going to mean much to me."
He looked rather scornfully at a troop of pretty Swedes who had invaded our sanctuary.
"It is queer how sure I feel of good luck because of her and what she did. I feel as if everything must turn my way. Downstairs yesterday they challenged me to play a game of cards, and I won fifty cents; but I felt it was wrong to spend my luck that way. The chap wouldn't play any more; he said I was in a lucky vein. He was quite right. Whatever I turn my hand to, I'm bound to have unexpected good luck. I feel so sure I'm going to get a job, and a real good one, too. I shan't play any more cards this journey."
The sun had come out, and the bright light blazed through our smoke, and I felt that the boy's faith was blazing just that way through his regrets.
The sun crept on and overtook us on his own path, and then at last went down in front of us, far away in the waste of waters.
My acquaintance and I went away to the last meal of the day, to the strangely mixed crowd of prospective Americans at the table, where men sat and ate with their hats on, and where no grace was said. "What matter that they throw the food at us?" I asked. "We are men with stout hearts in our bosoms; we are going to a great country, where a great people will look at us with creative eyes, making the beautiful out of the ugly, the big and generous out of the little and mean, the headstone out of the rock that the builders rejected."
After supper I left my friend and went upstairs alone. The weather had changed, and the electric lights of the ship were blazing through the rain, the decks were wet and windswept, and the black smoke our funnels were belching forth went hurrying back into the murky evening sky. The vessel, however, went on.
Downstairs some were dancing, some singing, some writing home laboriously, others gossiping, others lying down to sleep in the little white cabins. There was a satisfaction in hearing the throbbing of the engines and feeling the pulse of the ship. We were idle, we passed the time, but we knew that the ship went on.
Going above once more at nine, I found the rain had passed, the sky was clear and the night full of stars. In the sea rested dim reflections of the stars, like the sad faces we see reflected in our memory several days after we have gone from home. I stood at the vessel's edge and looked far over the glimmering waves to the horizon where the stars were walking on the sea. "What will it be like in America?" whispered the foolish heart. "What will it be like for him?" Then sadness came—the long, long thoughts of a boy. I whispered the Russian verse:
"There is a road to happiness,
But the way is afar."
And yet, next morning, I saw the Englishman dancing for hours with a pretty Russian girl from a village near Kiev—Phrosia, the sister of Maxim Holost, a fine boy of eighteen going out to North Dakota. I had noticed the Englishman looking on at the dancing, and then suddenly, to my surprise, at a break in the tinkling of the accordion, he offered his arm to the Russian and took her down the middle as the music resumed. …
I was much in demand among the Russians on Friday and Saturday, for they wanted to take the English language by storm at the week-end. I taught Alexy by writing out words for him, and six or seven peasants had copied from him and were busy conning "man," "woman," "farm," "work," "give me," "please," "bread," "meat," "is," "Mister," "show," "and," "how much," "like," "more," "half," "good," "bad," the numbers, and