The Harbor Part 36

"I don't like being so far away from you, dear. Please tell me. Suppose you begin at the start."

It took a long time, for she would let me keep nothing back.

"I wouldn't have thought it could hit me so hard," I said at the end.

"I'm not surprised," said Eleanore.

"I can't be simply angry at Joe," I went on. "He's so intensely and gauntly sincere. It isn't just talk with him, you see, as it is with Sue's parlor radical friends. Think of the life he's been leading, think of it compared to mine. Joe and I were mighty close once"--I broke off and got up restlessly. "I hate to think of him," I said.

"It's funny," said Eleanore quietly. "I knew this was coming sooner or later. Ever since we've been married I've known that Joe Kramer still means more to you than any man you've ever met."

"He doesn't," I said sharply. "Where on earth did you get that idea?"

"From you, my love," she answered. "You can't dream how often you've spoken about him."

"I didn't know I had!" It is most disquieting at times, the things Eleanore tells me about myself.

"I know you don't," she continued, "you do it so unconsciously. That's why I'm so sure he has a real place in the deep unconscious part of you.

He worries you. He gets you to think you've no right to be happy!" There was a bitterness in her voice that I had never heard before. "I believe in helping people--of course--whenever I get a chance," she said. "But I don't believe in this--I hate it! It's simply an insane attempt to pull every good thing down! It's too awful even to think of!"

"We're not going to," I told her. "I'm sorry for Joe and I wish I could help him out of his hole. But I can't--it's too infernally deep. He won't listen to any talk from me--and as long as he won't I'll leave him alone. It's hideous enough--G.o.d knows. But if I ever tackle poverty and labor and that sort of thing it'll be along quite different lines."

The door-bell rang.

"Oh Billy," she said, "I forgot to tell you. Father's coming to dinner to-night." I looked at her a moment:

"Did you ask him here on my account?" Eleanore smiled frankly.

"Yes--I thought I might need him," she said.

I did not talk to her father of Joe--his plans for a strike were his secret, not mine. But with Eleanore pushing me on, I described the h.e.l.l I had seen in the stokehole.

"You're right, it's h.e.l.l," her father agreed. "But in time we'll do away with it."

"I knew it," Eleanore put in.

"How?" I asked.

"By using oil instead of coal. Or if we can't get oil cheap enough by automatic stokers--machines to do the work of men."

I thought hard and fast for a moment, and suddenly I realized that I had never given any real thought to matters of this kind before.

"Then what will become of the stokers?" I asked him.

"One thing at a time." I caught Dillon keenly watching me over his cigar. "Don't give up your faith in efficiency, Bill. If they'll only give us time enough we'll be able to do so much for men."

There was something so big and sincere in his voice and in his clear and kindly eyes.

"I'm sure you will," I answered. "If you don't, there's n.o.body else who can."

In a week or two, by grinding steadily on at my work and by a few more quiet talks with Eleanore and her father, I could feel myself safely back on my ground.

But one morning Sue broke in on me.

"I've just heard from a friend of Joe Kramer's," she said, "that he is dangerously ill. And there's no one to look after him. Hadn't you better go yourself?"

"Of course," I a.s.sented gruffly. "I'll go down at once."

It seemed as though the Fates and Sue were in league to keep Joe in my life.

I went to Joe's office and found the address of the room where he slept.

It was over a German saloon close by. It was a large, low-ceilinged room, bare and cheaply furnished, with dirty curtains at the windows, dirty collars and shirts on the floor. It was cold. In the high old-fashioned fireplace the coal fire had gone out. Joe was lying dressed on the bed. He jumped up as I entered and came to me with his face flushed and his eyes dilated. He gripped my hand.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Kid," he cried. "Glad to see you!" And then with a quick drop of his voice: "Hold on, we mustn't talk so loud, we've got to be quiet here, you know." He turned away from me restlessly. "I've been hunting for hours for that d.a.m.n book. Their cataloguing system here is rotten, Kid, it's rotten!" As he spoke he was slowly feeling his way along the dirty white wall of his room. "They've cheated us, Bill, I'm on to 'em now! That's what college is really for these days, to hide the books we ought to read!"

It came over me suddenly that Joe was back in college, on one of those library evenings of ours. I felt a tightening at my throat.

"Say, Joe." I drew him toward the bed. "The chapel bell has just struck ten. Time for beer and pretzels."

"Fine business! Gee, but I've got a thirst! But where's the door? G.o.d d.a.m.n it all--I can't find anything to-night!" He laughed unsteadily.

"Right over here," I answered. "Steady, old man----"

And so I got him to his bed. He fell down on it breathing hard and I brought him a drink of water. He began to shiver violently. I covered him up with dirty blankets, went down to the barroom and telephoned to Eleanore. Too deeply disturbed to think very clearly, acting on an impulse, I told her of Joe's condition and asked if I might bring him home.

"Why of course," came the answer, a little sharp. "Wait a moment. Let me think." There was a pause, and then she added quietly, "Go back to his room and keep him in bed. I'll see that an ambulance comes right down."

Within an hour after that Joe was installed in our guest room with a trained nurse to attend to him. The doctor p.r.o.nounced it typhoid and he was with us for nine weeks.

The effect upon our lives was sharp. In our small crowded apartment all entertaining was suddenly stopped, and with the sole exception of Sue no one came to see us. Even our little Indian learned to be quiet as a mouse. Our whole home became intense.

Through the thin wall of my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium.

Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. All this was incoherent, only mutterings most of the time. But when the voice rose suddenly it was so full of a stern pain, so quivering with revolt against life, and it poured out such a torrent of commonplace minute details that showed this was Joe's daily life and the deepest part of his being--that as I listened at my desk the ghost I thought I had buried deep, that vague guilty feeling over my own happiness, came stealing up in me again. And it was so poignant now, that struggle angrily as I would to plunge again into my work, I found it impossible to describe the life in those rich gay hotels with the zest and the dash I needed to make my story a success.

But it had to be a success, for we needed money badly, the expenses of Joe's sickness were already rolling in. So I did finish it at last and took it to my successful man, who read it with evident disappointment.

It was not the glory story that I had led him to expect. My magazine editor said he would use it, but he, too, appeared surprised.

"You weren't up to your usual form," was his comment. "What's the matter?"

"A sick friend."

I started another story at once, one I had already planned, about a man who was to build a string of gorgeous opera houses in the leading American cities. This story, too, went slowly. Joe Kramer's voice kept breaking in. From time to time as I struggled on I could feel Eleanore watching me.

"Don't try to hurry it," she said. "We can always borrow from father, you know--and besides, I'm going to cut our expenses."