The Harbor Part 45

"Let's go out for a walk," he said. Down in the street he turned on me: "Sue has just 'phoned me you were there. She thought you were going to help her, Bill, she thought that you'd stand by her. She didn't get any sleep last night--she's been through h.e.l.l with that father of hers----"

"Oh, I've been all through Sue's sufferings, Joe. Don't give me any more of that."

"You mean you think she's faking?"

"No. But to be good and brutally frank about it, what she suffers just now doesn't count with me. It's what her whole life may be with you."

"That's not exactly your business, is it?"

"It wouldn't be if I didn't know Sue."

"What do you know?"

"I know that in spite of all her talk and the way she acts and honestly feels whenever she's with you," I replied, "Sue wants to hang on to her home and us. She isn't the heroic kind. She can't just follow along with you and leave all this she's used to."

Joe's face clouded a little.

"She'll get over that," he muttered.

"Perhaps she will and perhaps she won't. How do you know? You want to know, don't you? You want her to be happy?"

"No, that's not what I want most. Being happy isn't the only thing----"

"Then tell her so. That's all I ask. I'll tell you what I've come for, Joe. You've always been more honest, more painfully blunt and open than any man I've ever known. Be that way now with Sue. Give her the plainest, hardest picture you can of the life you're getting her into."

"I've tried to do that already."

"You haven't! If you want to know what you've done I can tell you.

You've painted up this life of yours--and all these things you believe in--with power enough and smash enough to knock holes through all I believe in myself. And I'm stronger than Sue--you've done more to her.

What I ask of you now is to drop all the fire and punch of your dreams, and line out the cold facts of your life on its personal side--what it's going to be. I'll help draw it out by asking you questions."

"What's the use of that? I know it won't change her!"

"Maybe it won't. But if it won't, at least it'll make my father give up.

Can't you see? If you and I together--I asking and you answering--paint your life the way it's to be, and she says, 'Good, that's what I want'--he'll feel she's so far away from him then that he'll throw up his hands and let her go. He can rest then, we can help him then--Eleanore and I can--it may save the last years of his life. And Sue will be free to come to you."

"You mean the more ugly we make it the better."

"Just that. Let's end this one way or the other."

"All right. I agree to that."

When Joe and I came into the library my father rose slowly from his chair and the two stood looking at one another. And by some curious mental process two memories flashed into my mind. One was of the towering sails that my father had told me he had seen on his first day on the harbor, when coming here a crude boy from the inland he had thrilled to the vision of owning such ships with crews to whom his word should be law, and of sending them over the ocean world. Such was the age he had lived in. The other was of the stokers down in the bottom of the ship, and Joe's tired frowning face as he said, "Yes, they look like a lot of b.u.ms--and they feed all the fires at sea." What was there in common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own.

"Well, young man, what have you to say to me?"

"Nothing."

Sue came into the room. Briefly I explained to her what our father had agreed upon, that she was to do the deciding and that he would abide by her decision. Then I began my questions to Joe. I felt awkward, painfully the intruder into two other people's lives. And I felt as though I were operating upon the silent old man close by. "The uglier the better," I kept repeating to myself.

"Let's take up first the money side, Joe. Have you any regular salary?"

"No."

"Such as it is, where does it come from?"

"Out of the stokers."

"How much do you get?"

"One week twenty dollars and another ten or five," he said. "One week I got three dollars and eighty-seven cents."

"Is that likely to grow steadier?"

"Possibly--more likely worse."

"But can two of you live on pay like that--say an average of ten dollars a week?"

"I know several millions of people that have to. And most of them have children too."

"And you'd expect to live like that?"

"No better," was his answer. My father turned to him slowly as though he had not heard just right.

"But as a matter of fact," I went on, "you wouldn't have to, would you?

You'd expect Sue to earn money as well as yourself."

"I hope so--if she wants to--it's my idea of a woman's life."

"And the work you hope she'll enter will be the kind you believe in--organizing labor and taking an active part in strikes?"

"Yes. She's a good speaker----"

"I see. And if you were out of a job at times you'd be willing to let her support you?"

Sue angrily half rose from her chair, but Joe with a grim move of his hand said softly, "Sit down and try to stand this. Let's get it over and done with." Then he turned quietly back to me.

"Why yes--I'd let her support me," he said.

"You mean you don't care one way or the other. You'd both be working for what you believe in, and how you lived wouldn't especially count?"

"That's about it."

"What do you believe in, Joe? Just briefly, what's your main idea in stirring up millions of ignorant men?"

"Mainly to pull down what's on top."