Harbor (9781101565681) (24 page)

“I will,” I said.

“And that little thing of mine,” he queried modestly, “about the dear old homestead.”

“I've got it,” I replied.

“I hand quite a few little things to writers,” Ab continued cheerfully. “If you'll just give me some idea of what it is you're looking for——”

“I'm looking for the punch,” I answered promptly.

“Then we'll get on fine,” he said. “The editor got me worried some. He said you'd trained in Paris.”

“Oh, that was only a starter,” I told him.

Presently he went into the dockshed on his unending quest of “the punch.” And left to myself I got thinking. What did Paris know about us? De Maupassant's methods wouldn't do here. I noticed two painters in overalls at work on that large freighter. With long brooms that they held in both hands they were slapping a band of crude yellow paint along her scarred and rusted side. That was what I needed, the broom! All at once the harbor took hold of me hard. And exulting in its bigness, the bold raw splattering bigness of my native Yankee land, “Now for some glory stories,” I said.

I went into the dockshed, and there I stayed right through until night, till my mind was limp and battered from the rush of new impressions. For in this long sea station, under the blue arc-lights, in boxes, barrels, crates and bags, tumbling, banging, crashing, came the products of this modern land. You could feel the pulse of a continent here. From the factories, the mines and mills, the prairies and the forests, the plantations and the vineyards, there flowed a mighty tide of things—endlessly, both day and night—you could shut your eyes and see the long brown lines of cars crawl eastward from all over the land, you could see the stuff converging here to be gathered into coarse rope nets and swept up to the liners. The pulse beat fast and furious. In gangs at every hatchway you saw men heaving, sweating, you heard them swearing, panting. That day they worked straight through the night. For the pulse kept beating, beating, and the ship must sail on time!

And now I too worked day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here, making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at home—slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean ship, in their immaculate “stalls de luxe,” came two black Arab horses, glistening, quivering creatures, valued by the customhouse at twenty thousand dollars each. And into the same ship that week, as though in payment for these two, in dust and heavy smell of sweat I saw a thousand cattle driven, bellowing and lowing.

I exulted in these symptoms of our crude and lusty youth. I watched my countrymen going abroad. Not only through the Summer but straight on into the Fall they came by tens of thousands out of the West, people who had made some money and were going to blow it in, to buy things and to see things, to learn things and to eat things. One day at noon, on the end of a dock, when the ship was already far out in midstream and all the crashing music and cheers had died away, a meek old lady wiped her eyes and murmured very tearfully, “I suppose they'll be eating their luncheon soon.” And then the loud voice of her daughter replied:

“Eat? Why, ma, God bless their hearts, they'll sit on that boat and eat all day!”

And I echoed her wish with a keen delight. God bless their hearts and stomachs. Oh, hungry vigorous Yankee land, so mightily young—eat on, eat on!

And the land ate on.

 

My work here rose to a climax a week or two before Christmas, when the newest liner of then all pulled off a new world's record for speed. With the company's publicity man, who had become a friend of mine, I went on the health officer's tug down the Bay to meet her, on the coldest, darkest night I've ever known on water. Shortly after nine o'clock the big boat's light gleamed off the Hook and she bore down upon us. She came close, slowed down and towered by our side, weird as a ghost with snow and ice in glimmering sheets on her steel sides. She did not stop. We caught a rope ladder and scrambled up, and at once we felt her speeding on.

And she was indeed a story that night. Bellowing hoarsely now in warning to all small craft to get out of her way, she was rushing into the harbor. Suddenly she slowed again, and three dark mail tugs ranged alongside, and through canvas chutes four thousand sacks of Christmas mail began to pour down while the ship moved on. Up her other side came climbing gangs of men who began to make ready her winches and open up her hatches. Now we were moving in close to the pier, with a whole fleet of tugs around us. Faint shouts rose in the zero night, toots and sharp whistles. One of the gang-planks was down at last and two hundred dockers came up on the run. Off went the passengers and the luggage, reporters skurrying through the crowds. But the ship did not rest. For she was to sail again the next night. This was to be a world's record for speed!

All night long the work went on, and I watched it from a deck above, going in now and then for food and hot drinks. On her dock side, forward, Christmas boxes, bales and packages were being whipped up out of her hold to the rattle of her winches. One sharp whistle and up they shot into the air till they swung some seventy feet above. Another whistle and down they whirled into the dockshed far below from which a blaze of light poured up. At the same time she was coaling. Along the black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal heaps and the lapping water. It was an inferno of shifting lights and long leaping shadows.

I watched till daylight blotted out the yellow glare of the lanterns. Then I went home to get some sleep. And late that night when I came back I found her almost ready to sail.

Out of taxis and automobiles chugging down in front of the pier, the passengers were pouring in. Many were in evening clothes, some just come from dinners and others from box parties. The theaters had just let out. The rich warm hues of the women's cloaks, the gay head dresses here and there and the sparkling earrings, immaculate gloves and dainty wanton slippered feet, kept giving flashes of color to this dark freezing ocean place. Most of these people went hurrying up into the warm, gorgeous café of the ship, which was run from a hotel in Paris. What had all this to do with the sea?

“Come on,” said the genial press agent. “You're the company's guest to-night.”

And while we ate and drank and smoked, and the tables around us filled with people whose ripples and bursts of laughter rose over the orchestra's festive throb, and corks kept popping everywhere, he told me where they were going, these gay revellers, for their Christmas Day—to London, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Algiers.

“Now come with me,” he said at last, and he took me along warm passageways to the row of cabins de luxe.

First we looked into the Bridal Suite, to which one of the Pittsburgh makers of steel, having just divorced a homely old wife, was presently to bring his new bride, a ravishing young creature of musical comedy fame. They had been married that afternoon. A French maid was unpacking dainty shimmering little gowns, soft furry things and other things of silk and lace, and hanging them up in closets. It was a large room, and there were other rooms adjoining and two big luxurious baths. The cost of it all was four thousand dollars for the five days. There were tall mirrors and dressing tables, there were capacious easy chairs. Low subdued lights were here and there, and a thick rug was on the floor. Over in one corner was a huge double bed of cream colored wood with rich soft quilts upon it. Beside the bed in a pink satin cradle there lay a tiny Pekinese dog.

“Next,” he whispered. We peeped into the next stateroom, and there divided from her neighbors by only one thin partition, a sober, wrinkled little old lady in black velvet sat quietly reading her Bible. Soon she would be saying her prayers.

“Next,” he whispered. And in the cabin on her other side we caught a glimpse of two jovial men playing cards in gay pajamas with a bottle of Scotch between them.

“Next.” And as we went on down the row he gave me the names of an English earl, a Jewish clothing merchant, a Minnesota ranchman, a banker's widow from Boston, a Tammany politician, a Catholic bishop from Baltimore, a millionaire cheese maker from Troy and a mining king from Montana.

“How about that,” he asked at the end, “for an American row de luxe?”

“My God, it's great,” I whispered.

“There's only one big question here,” he added. “Your long respectable pedigrees and your nice little Puritanical codes can all go to blazes—this big boat will throw 'em all overboard for you—if you can answer, ‘I've got the price.' ”

Meanwhile, in the late Autumn, Eleanore had come back to town. I had a note from her one day.

“Come and tell me what you are writing,” she said.

I went to see her that afternoon, and I was deeply excited. I had often felt her by my side when I was watching the harbor life and as often behind me while I wrote. We had had long talks together, absorbing talks about ourselves. And though now in her easy welcome and through all her cheerful questions there was not a suggestion that we two had been or ever would be anything but genial friends, this did not discourage me in the least. No fellow, I thought, could be happy as I and have nothing better than friendship ahead. The Fates could never be so hard, for certainly now they were smiling.

Here was her apartment, just the place I had felt it would be, only infinitely more attractive. High up above the Manhattan jungle, it was quiet and sunny and charming here. From the low, wide living-room windows you could see miles out over the harbor where my work was going so splendidly, and all around the room itself I saw what I was working for. Eleanore's touch was everywhere. An intimate, lovable feminine home with man-sized views from its windows—just like Eleanore herself, from whom I found it difficult to keep my hungry eyes away. To that soft bewildering hair of hers she had done something different—I couldn't tell what, but I loved it. I loved the changing tones of her voice—I hate monotonous voices. I watched the smiling lights in her eyes. She was at her small tea table now. Her motorboat, thank Heaven, was laid up for the winter, and I had her right here in a room, with nothing to do with her eyes but pay a decent amount of attention to me. Then by some chance remark I learned that she had been reading what I wrote, almost all of it, in fact. And at the slight exclamation I made I saw her color slightly and bite her lip as though she were angry with herself for having let that secret out.

“What do you want to write,” she asked, “when you get through with the harbor?”

“Fiction,” I said. “I want it so hard sometimes that it seems like a long way ahead. It seems sometimes,” I added, “like a girl I'd fallen in love with—but I couldn't even ask her—because I'm so infernally poor.”

Over the tea cup at her lips Eleanore looked thoughtfully straight into and through and behind my eyes.

“Fiction is such a broad field,” she remarked. “What kind do you think you're going to try?”

“I don't know,” I answered. “It still seems so far ahead. You see, I have no name at all, and this harbor at least is a good safe start. I'm afraid I'm rather a cautious sort. When I find what I want—and want so hard that it's the deepest part of me—I like to go slow. I'm afraid to risk losing it all—deciding my life one way or the other—by taking a chance.” I made a restless movement. “I wasn't speaking of my work just then,” I added gruffly.

I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror back of Eleanore's chair. And I glared at myself for the fool that I was to have said all that. I hadn't meant to—not in the least! What a paltry looking cuss I was—small, tough and wiry, hair sandy, eyes of no color at all, snub nose and a jaw shut tight as in pain.

“You're a queer person,” said a voice.

“I am,” I agreed forlornly. “I'm the queerest fellow I ever met.” I caught a grim twinkle in my eyes. Thank God for a sense of humor.

“Sometimes,” she went on, reflectively, “you seem to me as old as the hills—and again so young and obvious. I'm so sorry to hear you say that you weren't talking of your work. I like to hear men talk of their work.”

“I know you do,” I said hungrily. “And that's one of the reasons why you're going to mean so much some day—to somebody's work—and to his whole life.”

Why couldn't I stop? Had I gone insane? I rose and moved about the room. A low rippling laugh brought me back to my senses.

“But how about
me
and
my
life?” she asked. “That ought to be thought of a little, you know.”

I came close beside her:

“Let me say this. Won't you? I'll promise never to say it again. Your life is going to be all right. It's going to be quite wonderful—you'll be tremendously happy. I'm sure of that. It's not only the way you always—look—it's the way you always think and feel. It's everything about you.”

She had looked down at her hands for a moment. Now she looked up suddenly.