The Harbor Part 27

"Joe Kramer is coming."

"What?"

"He telephoned me late last night. He's just come from Colorado and he sails to-morrow for England. He's awfully anxious to see you."

Of course he was, and I knew what about! I saw at once by the look on her face that Sue had told him all about me and had begged him to see what he could do. Why couldn't they leave a fellow alone, I said wrathfully to myself.

But my ire softened when I met Joe. In the year and a half since I had seen him the lines in his face had deepened, the stoop of his big shoulders had grown even more p.r.o.nounced, and again I felt that wistful, frowning, searching quality in him. Beneath his gruffness and his jeers he was so honestly pushing on for what he could find most real in life.

A wave of the old affection came over me suddenly without warning.

Vaguely I wondered about it. Why did he always grip me so?

My father too appeared at first delighted to see him. He had shown a keen relish for J. K. from that first time in college when I had brought him home for Christmas. Since then, whenever Joe had come, he and Dad had always managed to retreat to the study together and smoke and have long dogged arguments. But to-night it was not the same. For in his growth as a radical, Joe had gone beyond all arguing now. Lines of deep displeasure slowly tightened on Dad's face. All through dinner he kept attempting to turn the talk from Joe's work to mine. But this I would have none of, I wanted to be let alone. So I nervously kept the conversation on what Joe was up to. And Sue seemed more than eager to learn.

J. K. was up to a good deal.

"This muckraking game is played out," he said. "We all know how rotten things are. All we want to know now is what's to be done." And he himself had become absorbed in what the working cla.s.s was doing. As a reporter in the West he had been to strike after strike, ending with a long ugly struggle in the Colorado mines. He talked about it intensely, the greed of the mine owners, the brutality of the militia, the "bull pens" into which strikers were thrown. Vaguely I felt he was giving us a most distorted picture, and glancing now and then at my father I saw that he thought it a pack of lies. Joe made all the strikers the most heroic figures, and he spoke of their struggle as only a part of a great labor war that was soon to sweep the entire land.

Sue excitedly drew him out, and I felt it was all for my benefit. Joe said that he was going abroad in order that he might write the truth about the labor world over there. The American papers and magazines would let you write the truth, he said, about labor over in Europe, because it was at a safe distance. But they wouldn't allow it here. And then Sue looked across at me as though to say, "It's only stuff like _yours_ they allow."

"Why don't you two go out for a walk?" she suggested sweetly after dinner. And I consented gladly, for there are times when nothing on earth can be worse than your own sister.

We went down to the old East River docks and walked for some time with little said. Then Joe turned on me abruptly.

"Well, Bill," he said, "I've read your stuff. It's d.a.m.n well written."

"Thanks," I replied.

"If I've got any knocking to do," he went on with a visible effort, "I know you'll give me credit for not knocking out of jealousy. I'm not jealous, I'm honestly tickled to death. I was wrong about you in Paris.

You and me were different kinds. What you got over there was just what you needed, it has put you already way out of my cla.s.s, and it's going to give you a lot of power as a spreader of ideas. That's why I hate so like the devil to see you starting out like this, with what I'm so sure are the wrong ideas."

"How are they wrong?"

"Think a minute. Why is your magazine pushing you so? The first story of your series is only just out and they've already boomed you all over the country. Why, Bill, I saw your picture in a trolley car in Denver--and you're only twenty-five years old! It's d.a.m.n fine writing, I'll say it again, but that's not reason enough for this. You've got to go down deeper and look into your magazine's policy--which is to strike a balance for all kinds of middle-cla.s.s readers and for their advertisers too. They've run some radical stuff this year, and they're booming you now to balance off, to show how 'safe and sane' they can be in the way they look at life, at big business and at industry--as you do here in the harbor. You're making G.o.ds out of the men at the top, you've seen 'em as they see themselves, and you've only seen what they see here.

You've missed all the millions of people here who depend on the place for their jobs and their lives. They don't count for you----"

"That's not true at all!" I interrupted hotly. "It's just for them and their children that fellows like Dillon are on the job--to make a better harbor!"

"_For_ them, _for_ the people!" said Joe. "That's what I'm kicking at in you, Bill--you treat us all like a ma.s.s of dubs that need G.o.ds above to do everything _for_ us because we can't do it all by ourselves!"

"I don't believe the people can," I retorted. "From what I've seen I honestly don't believe they count. The fellows that count in a job like this are the fellows with punch and grit enough to fight their way up out of the ranks----"

"I know, and be lieutenants and captains in a regular army of peace, with your friend Dillon in command and Wall Street in command of him!

Isn't that your view?"

"All right, it is! I don't see any harm in that. It's the only safe way that I can see out of this mess of a harbor we've got. These men are the efficient ones--they're the fellows that have the brains and that know how to work--to use science, money, everything--to get a decent world ahead. What's the matter with efficiency?"

"Your latest G.o.d," sneered J. K.

"Suppose it is! What's wrong with it? What's the matter with Dillon? Is he a crook?"

"No," said Joe, "that's just the worst of him. He's so d.a.m.ned honest, he's such a hard worker. I've met men like him all over the country, and they're the most dangerous men we've got. Because they're the real strength of Wall Street--just as thousands of clean hard working priests are the strength of the Catholic church! They keep their church going and Dillon keeps his--he's a regular priest of big business! And he takes hold of kids like you and molds your views like his for life. Look at what he has done with you here. Does he say a word to you about Graft? Does he talk of the North Atlantic Pool or any one of the other pools and schemes by which they keep up rates? Does he make you think about low wages and long hours and all the fellows hurt or killed on the docks and in the stoke holes? Does he give you any feeling at all of this harbor as a city of four million people, most of 'em getting a raw deal and getting mad about it? That's more important to you and me than all the efficiency G.o.ds on earth. You've got to decide which side you're on. And that's what's got me talking now. I see so plain which way you're letting yourself be pulled. I've seen so many pulled the same way. It's so pleasant up there at the top, there's so much money and brains up there and refinement--such women to get married to, such homes to settle down in. Sometimes I wish every promising radical kid in the country could get himself into some scandal that would cut him off for life from any chance of being received by this d.a.m.ned respectable upper cla.s.s!"

He stopped for a moment, and then with a gruff intensity:

"We need you, Bill," he ended. "We need you bad. We don't want you to marry a girl at the top. We don't want you anch.o.r.ed up there for life."

We were standing still now, and I was looking out on the river. Through the grip of his hand on my arm I could feel his body taut and quivering, his whole spirit hot with revolt. The same old Joe, but tenser now, strained almost to the breaking point. But I myself was different. In college he had appealed to me because there I was groping and had found nothing. But now I had found something sure. And so, though to my own surprise a deep emotional part of me rose up in sudden response to Joe and made me feel guilty to hold back, it was only for a moment, and then my mind told me he was wrong. Poor old J. K. What a black distorted view he had--grown out of a distorted life of traveling continually from one center of trouble to another. How could he be any judge of life?

"Look here, Joe," I said. "I'm a kid, as you say, and some day I may see your side of this. But I don't now, I can't--for since I left Paris I've been through enough to make me feel what a job living is, I mean really living and growing. And I know what a difference Dillon has made. He has been to my life what he is to this harbor. And I'm not old enough nor strong enough to throw over a man as big as that and as honest and clean in his thinking, and throw myself in with your millions of people, who seem to me either mighty poor thinkers or fellows who don't think at all. They're not in my line. I believe in men who can think clean, who have trained their minds by years of hard work, who don't try to tear down and bring things to a smash, but are always building, building! You talk about this upper cla.s.s. But they're my people, aren't they, that's where I was born. And I'm going on with them. I believe they're right and I know they're strong--I mean strong enough to handle all this--make it better."

"They'll make it worse," Joe answered. And then as he turned to me once more he added very bitterly, "You'll see strength enough in the people some day."

A few moments later he left me.

I looked at my watch and found it was not yet nine o'clock. I went to Eleanore Dillon. And within an hour Joe and his world of crowds and confusion were swept utterly out of my mind.

CHAPTER XVII

I had often told Eleanore of Joe. She had asked me about him many times.

"It's queer," she had said, "what a hold he must have had on you. I feel sure he's just the kind of a person I wouldn't like and who wouldn't like me. I don't think he's really your kind either, and yet he has a hold on you still. Yes, he has, I can feel he has."

And to-night when I told her that I had been with him,

"What did he want of you?" she asked.

"He wants me to drop everything," I answered. And I tried to give her some idea of what he had said.

But as I talked, the thought came suddenly into my mind that here at last was the very time to settle my life one way or the other, to ask her if she would be my wife. I grew excited and confused, my voice sounding unnatural to my ears. And as I talked on about Joe, my heart pounding, I could barely keep the thoughts in line.

"And I don't want what he wants," I ended desperately. "That nor anything like it. I want just what I've been getting--just this kind of work and life. And I want _you_--for life, I mean--if you can ever feel like that."

Eleanore said nothing. In an instant the world and everything in it had narrowed to the two of us. The intensity was unbearable. I rose abruptly and turned away. I felt suddenly far out of my depth. Confusedly and furiously I felt that I had bungled things, that here was something in life so strange I could do nothing with it. What a young fool I was to have thought she could ever care for a fellow like me! I felt she must be smiling. Despairingly I turned to see.

And Eleanore was smiling--in a way that steadied me in a flash. For her smile was so plainly a quick, strong effort to steady herself.

"I'm glad you want me like that," she said, in a voice that did not sound like hers. "I don't believe in hiding things.... I'm--very happy."

She looked down at her hands in her lap and they slowly locked together.

"But of course it means our whole lives, you see--and we mustn't hurry or make a mistake. Now that we know--this much--we can talk about it quite openly--about each other and what we want--what kinds of lives--what we believe in--whether we'd be best for each other. It's what we ought to talk about--a good many times--it may be weeks."

"All right," I agreed. I was utterly changed. At her first words I had felt a deep rush of relief, and seeing her tremendous pluck and the effort she was making, I pitied, worshiped and loved her all in the same moment. And as we talked on for a few minutes more in that grave and unnaturally sensible way about the pros and cons of it all, these feelings within me mounted so swiftly that all at once I again broke off.

"I don't believe there's any use in this," I declared. "It's perfectly idiotic!"