Harbor (9781101565681) (39 page)

 

“Well, Sally,” said her husband, who had grown restive toward the end, “I guess that'll do. Let's go on home.”

“I'm sure I'm ready,” she quickly replied. Now that she had come out of herself she seemed angry at having told so much.

When they had left there was a silence, which Sue broke with a breath of impatience.

“What a frightful thing it must be for a man in this work,” she exclaimed, “to have a wife like that! A woman so hard and narrow, so wrapped up in her own little life, with not a spark of sympathy for any of his big ideals!”

“I suppose it's the life that has done it,” said Eleanore quietly, looking at Sue.

“I'd like to see some women,” Sue retorted angrily, “who have been in that life for years and years, and
have
sympathy, have
everything
, don't care for anything else in the world!” She turned suddenly to Joe. “You said there were hundreds, didn't you?”

Joe looked back at her a moment. There was a startled, groping, searching expression in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “There are hundreds.”

“Are many of them married?” Eleanore inquired.

“Some of them are,” he answered.

“When a woman who, as Sue has just said, throws herself into this heart and soul, marries a man who is in it, too, how much of their time can they spend together?”

“That depends on the kind of work,” he said. Eleanore held his eyes with hers.

“In some cases, I suppose,” she went on, “like yours, for example, where the man's work keeps him moving—if the woman's work wouldn't let her go with him they would have to be half their time apart.”

“Yes.”

“As Mrs. Marsh and her husband were at the time when her second baby was born.”

“Yes,” said Joe, still watching her.

“Aren't there a good many, too, who don't exactly marry—but marry just a little—one woman here, another there, and so on?”

“Yes,” said Joe, “there are some who do that.”

“I should think,” said Eleanore thoughtfully, “that in a movement of this kind a man ought not to marry at all—or else marry a little a good many times—so as always to be free for the Cause.”

“Unless,” said Joe, quite steadily, “he finds a woman like some I've known, whose feeling for a man, one man, seems to be planted in her for life—who can easily stand not being with him because she herself is deep in her own job, and her job is about the same as his—and because the two of them have decided to see the whole job through to the end.”

His eyes went up to the charcoal sketch.

“It's a job worth seeing through,” he said.

Sue was leaning forward now.

“Where did you get that picture, Joe?” she asked.

“It was an illustration,” he said, “for a thing I once had in a magazine.” And then as though almost forgetting us all, his eyes still upon those immigrant faces, he said with a slow, rough intensity:

“I know every figure in it. I know just where they're strong and where each one of 'em is weak. I've never made gods out of 'em. But I know they do all the real work in the world. They're the ones who get all the rotten deals, the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in time of peace. They're the ones who are ready to go out on strike and risk their lives to change all this. They're the people worth spending your life with. But it's a job for your whole life—and before a man or a woman jumps in they want to be sure they're ready.”

He did not look at Sue as he spoke. He seemed barely able to hold himself in. His relief was plain when we took her away.

Sue took a car to Brooklyn and we started homeward. Eleanore wanted to walk for a while. She walked quickly, her face set.

“What do you think of it?” I asked.

“I wasn't thinking of Sue,” she said. “I was thinking of Mrs. Marsh. I've never tormented a woman like that and I never will again in my life—not for Sue or anyone else—she can marry anybody she likes!”

“Well, she won't marry Joe,” I said. “Did you see his face—poor devil? You've certainly settled that affair.”

“Have I?” she asked sharply. And then her curious feminine mind took a long leap. “And what are
you
going to be,” she asked, “in a year from now?” I smiled at her.

“Not a second Marsh,” I said. “But even if I were the man in the moon, you'd make a success of being my wife.”

“I think I would,” said Eleanore. “It must be so quiet up there in the moon.”

“Come over here at once.” My father's voice over the telephone, one morning a few days later, sounded thick and unnatural.

“What about?” I asked.

“Your sister.”

When I reached the house in Brooklyn he came himself to let me in and took me into the library. I was shocked by his face, it was terribly worn, quite plainly he had been up all night. As he began speaking his voice shook and he leaned forward, every inch of him tense.

Sue had told him the night before that she was going to marry Joe Kramer. In reply to his anxious questions she had given him some of the facts about what Joe was doing. And Dad had stormed at her half the night.

“She wants to marry him, Billy,” he cried. “She's got her mind set on a man like that! What has he got to support her with? Not a cent, not even a decent job! He's not writing now. Do you know what he's doing? Stirring up strikes—of the ugliest kind—of the most ignorant class of men—foreigners! I know such strikes—I've fought 'em myself and I know how they're handled! That young man will land in jail! And it's where he belongs! Do you know what he's up to right here on the docks?”

“Yes, I know——”

“Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let him come to the house?”

“I was doing my best to stop it, Dad.”

“You were, eh—well, you'll stop it now! Understand me, Billy, he's your friend—you brought him here—way back at the start. You've got to put a stop to this——”

“But how?” I asked, trying to steady my voice. “What do you think that I can do?”

“You can talk to her, can't you? God Almighty! Make her see this will ruin her life!”

“I can't do that.”

“Can't you?” He rose and bent over me gripping my arms, and I felt his violent trembling. “If you don't, it's the end of me,” he said.

“Steady, Dad—now steady—this is coming out all right, you know——” I got him back into his chair. “I'm going to do all I possibly can. I'm going to see Joe Kramer now—he's the only one who can influence her. I'm going to get him to come to Sue and help me make her feel what's ahead—the hardest, ugliest parts of his life. Now promise you'll keep out of it, promise you'll leave her alone while I'm gone.”

He agreed to this at last and I left him. But as I went into the hall Sue came to me from the other room. Her face was white and strained.

“Well, Billy?” she said. My throat tightened. She looked so pitifully worn.

“I'm sorry, Sue——”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” she cut in with a quick catch of her breath.

“No, no.” I took her in my arms. “Dear old Sue—don't you know how I feel? I want to see you happy. I'm trying to see what on earth we can do.”

“Why can't you all leave me alone?” she demanded, in low broken tones. “That's all I want—I'm old enough! I love him! Isn't that enough? To be treated like this—like a bad little child! If you'd been here and heard him—Dad, I mean—I tell you he's half out of his mind! I'm afraid to be left alone with him!”

“Sue?” It was our father's voice. He had come out close behind us.

“Leave me alone!” Sue started back, but he caught her arm:

“You'll stay right here with me till he comes.”

“Till who comes?”

“Kramer.”

“Who said he was coming?”

“Your brother.”

“Billy!”

“Now, Sis, I'm going to talk to Joe and try to persuade him to see you and me together, that's all—quietly—over in our apartment.”

“No,” said our father. “He'll see her right here!”

“Now, Dad——”

“Careful, son, don't get in my way. I'm standing about as much as I can. Kramer is to come right here. If there's any seeing Sue to be done it's to be in her home, where she belongs. I won't let her out of it—not for an hour out of my sight!”

“You'll lock me in here?” she panted. He turned on her.

“You can call the police if you want to.” He let go his hold and turned to me. “I'm thinking of her mother. If she sees this man at all again I'll see him too.”

“Can't you leave us?” I implored her. “Sue—please! Go up to your room!”

When she'd gone I tried to quiet him. And now that Sue was out of the way I partly succeeded. But he stuck to his purpose. Joe must come and see Sue here.

“I want to be on hand when she sees him,” he insisted. “I don't want to talk—I've done all that—I won't say a word—but I want to be here. You think you know her better than I do because you're younger—but you don't. We've lived right here together—she's been my chum for twenty-five years, and I know things about her you don't know. She's wilful, she's as wild as a hawk—but she can't hold out, she hasn't it in her.”

“She will if you act as you did just now——”

“But I won't,” he said sharply. “That was a mistake—and I won't let it happen again. When he comes you do the talking, boy—and if we're beaten I won't try to keep her, she goes and it's ended, I promise you that. But, son, don't make any mistake about this—I have an influence over this girl that you haven't got and nobody has. I want her to feel me beside her.”

He went over this again and again, and with this I had to leave him.

 

I found Joe in his office. He rose abruptly when I came in, and reached for his hat.

“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 hell 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 bums—and they feed all the fires at sea.” What was there in common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own.