[BOOK ONE
EAST]
[I
LONDON WHERE THE KING LIVES]
THE boat-train had disgorged its passengers, who had huddled together in a crowd round the luggage as it was dragged out of the vans, and then had jostled their way out into the London they had been so long approaching. When the crowd scattered it left like a deposit a little knot of strange-looking people in brilliant clothes who stared about them pathetically and helplessly. There were three old men who seemed to be strangers to each other and a handsome Jewess with her family—two girls and three boys. The two elder boys carried on their backs the family bedding, and the youngest clung to his mother’s skirts and was frightened by the noise, the hurrying crowds of people, the vastness and the ugly, complicated angular lines of the station. The woman looked disappointed and hurt. Her eyes searched through the crowds, through every fresh stream of people. She was baffled and anxious. Once or twice she was accosted, but she could not understand a word of what was said to her. At last she produced a piece of paper and showed it to a railway official, who came up thinking it was time these outlandish folk moved on. He could not read what was written on it, for the paper was very dirty and the characters were crabbed and awkwardly written. He turned to the old men, one of whom said excitedly the only English words he knew—“London—Jewish—Society.” The official looked relieved. These people did not look like Jews, and the eldest girl and the little boy were lovely. He went away, and the woman, whose hopes had risen, once more looked disconsolate. The little boy buried his face in her apron and wept.
A suburban train came wheezing into the platform, which was at once alive with hurrying men in silk hats and tail-coats. Catching sight of the brilliantly attired group, the handsome woman and the lovely girl, the boys with their heads bowed beneath the billowing piles of feather bedding, some of them stopped. The little boy looked up with tears in his eyes. One man put his hand in his pocket and threw down a few coppers. Others followed his example, and the little boy ran after the showering pennies as they bounced in the air, and rolled, span, and settled. He danced from penny to penny and a crowd gathered; for, in his bright jerkin and breeches and little top-boots, dancing like a sprite, gay and wild, he was an astonishing figure to find in the grime and ugliness of the station. Silver was thrown among the pennies to keep him dancing, but at last he was exhausted and ran to his mother with his fists full of money, and the men hurried on to their offices.
The official returned with an interpreter, who discovered that the woman’s name was Kühler, that she had expected to be met by her husband, that she had come from Austrian Poland, and that the address written on the piece of paper was Gun Street. The number was indecipherable.
The three old men were given instructions and they went away. The interpreter took charge of the family and led them to a refuge, where he left them, saying that he would go and find Mr. Kühler. With a roof over her head and food provided for her children, Mrs. Kühler sat stoically to wait for the husband she had not seen for two years. She had no preconceived idea of London, and this bleak, bare room was London to her, quite acceptable. The stress and the anxiety of the detestable journey were over. This was peace and good. Her husband would find her. He had come to make a home in London. He had sent for her. He would come.
Hours passed. They slept, ate, talked, walked about the room, and still Mr. Kühler did not come. The peace of the refuge was invaded with memories of the journey, the rattle, rattle, rattle of the train-wheels, the brusque officials who treated the poor travellers like parcels, the soldiers at the frontiers, the wet, bare quay in Holland, the first sight of the sea, immense, ominous, heaving, heaving up to the sky; the stinking ship that heaved like the sea and made the brain oscillate like milk in a pan; the solidity of the English quay, wet and bare, and of the English train, astonishingly comfortable. . . . And still Mr. Kühler did not come.
The girls were cold and miserable. The boys wrestled and practised feats of strength with each other to keep warm, and looked to their mother for applause. She gave it them mechanically as she sat by the little boy, whom she had laid to sleep on the bedding. He would be hungry, she thought, when he woke up, and she must get him food. There was the money which had been thrown to him, but she did not know its value. People do not throw much money away. At home people do not throw even small money away. There such a thing could not happen. There money, like everything else, avoids the poor. But this was rich England, where it rained money.
When the boy woke up she would go out and buy him something good to eat, and if Mr. Kühler did not come to-morrow she would find some work and a room, or a corner of a room, to live in. Perhaps Jacob had gone to America again. He had been there twice, and both times suddenly. People always went to America suddenly. He went out and bought a clean collar, and said he was going and would send money for her as soon as he had enough. . . . Poor Jacob, he could not endure their poverty and he would not steal, but he would always fight the soldiers and the bailiffs when they came to take the bedding. . . . The sea heaved, and it rained money. The two boys began to fight, a sudden fury in both of them. Their sisters rushed to part them and Mrs. Kühler rose.