"What is this town?" they asked.
"For what are the Customs men looking?"
"Where is our agent—the man they said would be here?"
I entered into conversation with them, and over and over again answered the question, "What is this town?" I told them it was London.
"Is it a beautiful town?" they asked.
"Is it a large town?"
"Do we have to go in a train?"
"How far is it?"
"Look at my ticket; what does it say?"
They made a miscellaneous crowd on the quay-side, and I talked to them freely, answered their questions, and in turn put questions of my own. They came from all parts of Russia, even from remote parts, and were going to just as diverse places in America: to villages in Minnesota, in Michigan, in Iowa; to Brooklyn, to Boston, to Chicago. I realised the meaning of the phrase, "the magic word Chicago." I told them how many people there were in London, how much dock labourers get a week, pointed out the Tower Bridge, and calmed them about the non-appearance of their agent. I knew him, and if he didn't turn up I would lead them to him. They might be calm; he knew Russian, he would arrange all for them.
At last a representative of my East End friend appeared—David the Jew. He was known to all the dockers as David, but he had a gilt I. K. on the collar of his coat, wore a collar, had his hair brushed, and was a person of tremendous importance to the eager and humble emigrants. Not a Jew, no! No Jew has authority in Russia. No Jew looked like David, and so the patient Christians thought him an important official when he rated them, and shouted to them, and cursed them like a herdsman driving home a contrary lot of cows and sheep and pigs.
Another Jew appeared, in a green hat and fancy waistcoat, and he produced a sheaf of papers having the names, ages, and destinations of the emigrants all tabulated. He began a roll-call in one of the empty warehouses of the dock. Each peasant as his name was called was ticked off, and was allowed to gather up his belongings and bolt through the warehouse as if to catch a train. I ran to the other side and found a series of vans and brakes, such as take the East-enders to Happy Hampstead on a Bank Holiday. Into these the emigrants were guided, and they took their seats with great satisfaction. They clambered in from all sides, showing a preference for getting up by the wheels, and nearly pulling away the sides of the frail vehicles.
The vanmen jested after their knowledge of jests, and put their arms round the pretty girls' waists. David rushed to and fro, fretting and scolding. Loafers and clerks collected to look at the girls.
"Why does that old man look at us so? he ought to be ashamed of himself," said a pretty Moscow girl to me. "He is dressed like twenty or twenty-five, but he is quite old. How quizzically he looks at us."
"He is forty," said I.
"Sixty!"
"That's a pretty one," said a young man whose firm imported Koslof eggs.
"What does he say?"
"He says that you are pretty."
"Tell him I thank him for the compliment; but he is not interesting—he has not a moustache."
All the vans filled, and there was a noise and a smell of Russia in the grim and dreary dockyard, and such a chatter of young men and women, all very excited. At last David got them all in order. I stepped up myself, and one by one we went off through the East End of the city.
We went to St. Pancras station. On the way one of the peasants stepped down from his brake and, entering a Jewish hat-shop, bought himself a soft green felt and put his astrakhan hat away in his sack. He was the subject of some mirth, and also of some envy in the crowd that sat down to coffee and bread and butter at the Great Midland terminus. Under the terms of their tickets the emigrants were fed all the way from Libau to New York without extra charge.
They were all going from Liverpool, some by the Allan Line, some by the White Star, and others by the Cunard. As by far the greatest number were going on the Cunard boat, I went to I. K. and booked a passage on that line. There was much to arrange and write, my sack to pack, and many good-byes to utter—all in the briefest space of time.
At midnight I returned to the station and took my seat in the last train for Liverpool. Till the moment before departure I had a compartment to myself; but away down at the back of the train were coach after coach of Russians, all stretched on their sheepskins on the narrow seats and on the floor, with their children in the string cradles of the parcel-racks. They were crowded with bundles and baskets and kettles and saucepans, and yet they had disposed themselves to sleep. As I walked along the corridor I heard the chorus of heavy breathing and snoring. In one of the end carriages a woman was on her knees praying—prostrating and crossing herself. As we moved out of St. Pancras I felt as I did when upon the pilgrim boat going to Jerusalem, and I said to myself with a thrill, "We have mysterious passengers on board." The sleeping Russians gave an atmosphere to the English train. It was like the peculiar feeling that comes to the other people in a house when news is given downstairs that a new baby has arrived.
A man stepped into my compartment just as the train was moving—a jovial Briton who asked me to have a cigar, and said, when I refused, that he was glad, for he really wanted to give it to the guard. He wanted the guard to stop the express for him at Wellingborough, and reckoned that the cigar would put him on friendly terms. He inquired whether I was a Mason, and when I said I was not, proceeded to reveal Masonic secrets, unbuttoning his waistcoat to show me a little golden sphere which opened to make a cross.
At St. Albans he gave the guard the cigar, and the charm worked, for he was enabled to alight at Wellingborough. And I was left alone with my dreams.
In a thunderstorm, with a high gale and showers of blinding hail and snow, with occasional flashing forth of amazing sunshine, to be followed by deepest gloom of threatening cloud, we collected on the quay at Liverpool—English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Swedes, Finns—all staring at one another curiously, and trying to understand languages we had never heard before. Three hundred yards out in the harbour stood the red-funnelled Cunarder which was to bear us to America; and we waited impatiently for the boat which should take us alongside. We carried baskets and portmanteaus in our strained hands; most of us were wearing heavy cloaks, and some had sacks upon their backs, so we were all very ready to rush aboard the ferry-boat and dump our burdens on its damp decks. What a stampede there was—people pushing into portmanteaus, baskets pushing into people! At last we had all crossed the little gangway, and all that remained on shore were the few relatives and friends who had come to see the English off. This pathetic little crowd sang ragtime songs, waved their hats and handkerchiefs, and shouted. There was a bandying of farewells:
"Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta!"
"Wish you luck!"
"Ta-ta-a, ole Lloyd George! No more stamp-licking!"
"Good luck, old boy!"
"The last of old England!"
The foreign people looked on and smiled non-comprehendingly; the English and Americans huzzaed and grinned. Then away we went over the water, and thoughts of England passed rapidly away in the interest of coming nearer to civilisation's toy, the great liner. We felt the romance of ocean travel, and also the tremulous fear which the ocean inspires. Then as we lay in the lee of the vast, steep, blood- and soot-coloured liner, each one of us thought of the Titanic and the third-class passengers who went down beneath her into the abyss.
The vastness of the liner made our ferry-boat look like a matchbox. A door opened in the great red wall and a little gangway came out of it like a tongue coming out of a mouth. We all picked up our bags and baggage and pushed and squirmed along this narrow footway that led into the mouth of the steamer and away down into its vast, cavernous, hungry stomach: English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Swedes, Finns, Flemings, Spaniards, Italians, Canadians, passed along and disappeared—among them all, I myself.
There