The Harbor Part 54

"Tell me about him," I said. Sue drew an anxious little breath:

"Oh Billy, he has been getting so queer. It has all been such a strain on his mind. Every day he kept reading the news of the strike--and some days he would stamp and rage about till I was afraid to be with him. He talked about that death cell until I thought that I'd go mad. Sometimes when we were talking I thought that we had both gone mad."

I went upstairs and found him in a chair by the window. With unnatural, clumsy motions he rose and came to meet me.

"I'm all right, my boy." His voice had a mumbling quality and I noticed the strangeness in his eyes. "I'm all right. I'm glad to see you." Then his face clouded and hardened a little, and he tried to speak to me sternly:

"I'm glad you're clean out of that strike and its notions--glad you've come to your senses," he said. "You're lucky in having such a wife.

She's been over here often lately--and she's worth a dozen like you and Sue. Have you seen Sue?"

"Yes."

"Well, _she's_ all right."

I said nothing to this, and he shot a sidelong look at me:

"I had quite a time, my boy--I had to keep right at her." Another quick look. "I suppose she's told you how I went at her."

"Never mind, Dad, it's over now."

"I had to make her feel the noose, I mean the chair," he went on in those thick, mumbling tones, "and that she'd have to choose between that and a decent Christian home--like the home her mother had. She was a wonderful woman, your mother," he wandered off abruptly. "If she'd only understood me--seen what it was I was trying to do--for American shipping--Yankee sails!" He sank down in his chair exhausted, and I noticed he was breathing hard. "I'm all right, my boy, I'm quite all right----"

With a sudden rush of pity and of love and deep alarm, I bent gently over him:

"Of course you are--why Dad, old boy--just take it easy--quiet, you know--we're going to pull right out of this----"

The tears welled suddenly up in his eyes:

"I'm lonely, boy--I'm glad you're here!"

Presently I went down to Sue:

"When is the doctor coming next?"

"Not till this afternoon," she said.

"I'll be home to-night for supper. Phone me what he says."

"All right--where are you going now? To Joe?"

"Yes, Sis," I said.

She turned and went quickly out of the room.

In the Tombs, when Joe was brought out to me, I saw that he, too, had been through a deep change. He had been quiet enough all through the strike, except for that one big speech of his--but he had been _tensely_ quiet. Now the tension appeared to be gone. He seemed wrapped up in thoughts of his own.

"Have you seen Sue?" he asked me at once.

"Yes Joe, I've just been with her."

"What did she say?"

I began to tell him.

"I knew it," he interrupted me. "I made up my mind to this the first night I spent here in my cell. It couldn't have happened, it wouldn't have worked. Tell her I understand all about it, tell her that I'm sure she's right. Tell her--it's funny but it's true--tell her this infernal pen has worked the same way on me as on her. I mean it has made me not want her now. I feel sorry for her and that's all--deeply and infernally sorry. I was a fool to have let her into it. My only excuse for being so blind was that d.a.m.ned fever that left me so weak. At any other time I would have seen what a farce it was. I wasn't booked for a life like that. It doesn't fit in with this job of mine." He smiled a little bitterly. "I used to say," he continued, "that if I had time I'd like to do something yellow enough so that I'd be cut off for life from any chance of church bells. And I guess I've done it this time--no danger of getting respectable now."

"How do you look at this, Joe?" I asked him. "What do you think they'll do to you?"

"I don't know." Again he smiled slightly and wearily. "And I can't say I _care_ a d.a.m.n. I feel like those fellows over in Russia, the revolutionist chaps I met, who didn't know if they'd croak in a month and didn't care one way or the other. But as a matter of fact," he added, "I think this time it's mainly bluff. They wanted to get us away from the crowd and keep us away while they broke the strike. Now that it's over you'll probably find they'll let us all off with light sentences. Of course the murder charge can't hold.... By the way," he added, smiling, "I hear they got you, too."

"Yes," I answered, smiling back. "The Judge fined me ten dollars and let me go. He said he hoped this would be a lesson."

Joe looked at me curiously:

"How much of a lesson, Kid, do you think this strike has been to you?"

"Quite a big one, Joe," I said.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I haven't decided."

"How is Eleanore taking it all?"

"She's not saying much and neither am I. We're both doing some thinking before we talk."

"You're a quiet pair," J. K. remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd nose along quite a distance before you get through--I mean in our direction."

"That's what we're thinking about," I replied. Again he turned to me curiously:

"You two can think together--without talking--can't you?"

"Yes--sometimes we can."

"I never got that far with Sue." All at once he came closer, his whole manner changed: "Say, Bill--tell her all I've said--will you? I'm sorry! Honest Injun! Make her feel how d.a.m.nably sorry I am that I ever let her in for this!"

When I left him I went off for a walk, for I wanted to be alone awhile.

I wondered just how sure Joe felt about his fast approaching trial. It seemed to me that he had a good chance of going where Sue had pictured him.

CHAPTER II

That evening I learned that my father was worse, and I spent the next day by his bedside. He had had a stroke in the morning and was not expected to live through the night.