The Harbor
BOOK I
CHAPTER VIII
It was with an unpleasant shock of surprise that I found Joe liked the
harbor.
When I took him home for Christmas he spent half his time down there on
the docks. He explored the whole region for miles around, in a week he
spoke in familiar terms of slips and bays and rivers that to me were
still nothing but names. Moreover, he liked my father. And my father,
opening up by degrees, showed an unmistakable relish for Joe.
They had long talks in the study at night, where I could hear them
arguing about the decline of our shipping, the growth of our trusts and
railroads, graft and high finance and strikes, the swift piling up of
our troubles at home—and about the great chance we were losing abroad,
the blind weak part we were playing in this eager ocean world where
every nation that was alive was rushing in to get a place. As their
voices rose loud and excited, even my young sister Sue, who was just out
of high school now and doing some groping about of her own, would go
into the study to listen at times. But I kept out. For already I was
tired again of all these harbor problems, I wanted to get at life
through Art! And I felt besides that if I entered into long talks with
my father, sooner or later he would be sure to bring up the dreaded
question of my going into his business. And this I was firmly resolved
not to do. For my dislike of all his work, his deepening worries, his
dogged absorption in his tiresome hobby of ships, was even sharper than
before.
"That dad of yours," Joe told me, "is a mighty in[Pg 67]teresting old boy. He
has had a big life with a big idea."
"Has he?" said I. "Then he's lost it."
"He hasn't! That's just the trouble. He thinks he's a comer when he's a
goer—he can't see his idea is out of date. It's a pity," he added
sadly. "When a man can spend his days and nights hating the trusts and
the railroads as he does, it's a pity he's so darned old in his views of
what ought to be done about it. Your father believes that if only we'd
get a strong navy and a large mercantile marine——"
"Oh, cut it, J. K.," I said pettishly. "I tell you I don't care what he
believes! The next thing you'll be telling me is that I ought to take a
job in his warehouse!"
"You might do worse," said Joe.
"What?" I demanded indignantly.
"That's just what I said. If you'd go on a paper and learn to write like
a regular man I'd be tickled to death. But if all you want to be in life
is a young Guy de Maupassant and turn out little gems for the girls,
then I say you'd be a lot better off if you went into your father's
warehouse and began telling Wall Street to get off the roof!"
"Thank you," I said stiffly.
From that talk Joe and I began drifting apart. I never brought him home
again, I saw less of him at college. And at the end of the college year
he went to New York, where he found a job on a paper.
And so all through my senior year I was left undisturbed to "queer"
myself in my own sweet way, which was to slave for hours over Guy de
Maupassant and other foreign authors, write stories and sketches by the
score, and with two other "Ishmaelites" plan for a year's work in Paris.
The French prof was delighted and spurred us on with glowing accounts of
life in "the Quarter." One of us wanted to be a painter. No place for
that like Paris! Another an architect—Paris! Myself a writer[Pg 68]—Paris!
For what could American writers to-day, with their sentimental little
yarns covering with a laugh or a tear all the big deep facts of life,
show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers
over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it
really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it
up to my mother—the last time she came to college.
I soon found she was on my side. If only she could bring father around.
I still remember vividly that exciting night in June when the three of
us, back there at home, sat on the terrace and fought it out. I remember
the beauty of the night, I mean of the night up there in the garden
under the stars, my mother's garden and her stars, and of the hideous
showing put up by my father's harbor below.
Of course he opposed my going abroad. His old indifference to me had
vanished, I saw he regarded me now as worth while, grown up, a business
asset worth fighting for. And my father fought. He spoke abruptly,
passionately of the great chance on the docks down there. I remember
being surprised at his talk, at the bigness and the intensity of this
hunger of his for ships. But of what he said I remembered nothing, I did
not hear, for I was eyeing my mother.
I saw she was watching him pityingly. Why? What argument had she still
to use? I waited in increasing suspense.
"So that's all there is to it," I heard him end. "You might as well get
it right out of your head. You're not going over to Europe to fool away
any more of your time. You're going to buckle down right here."
"Billy, leave us alone," said my mother.
What in the name of all the miracles did she do to him that night—my
mother so frail (she had grown so of late), my father so strong? The
next day she told me he had consented.[Pg 69]
I saw little of him in the next two weeks. He left me alone with her
every evening. But when I watched him he looked changed—beaten and
broken, older. In spite of myself I pitied him now, and a confused
uneasiness, almost remorse, came over me at the way I had opposed him.
"What's come over Dad?" I wondered. Once I saw him look at my mother,
and his look was frightened, crushed. What was it she had told him?
Those evenings I read "Pendennis" aloud for the third time to my mother.
It had been our favorite book, and I took anxious pains to show her how
I loved it still. But once chancing to look quickly up, I caught my
mother watching me with a hungriness and an utter despair such as I'd
never seen before. It struck me cold, I looked away—and suddenly I
realized what a selfish little beast I was, beside this woman who loved
me so and whom I was now leaving. My throat contracted sharply. But when
I looked back the look was gone, and in its place was a quiet smile.
"Oh, my boy, you must do fine work," she said. "I want it so much more
than anything else in my whole life. In my whole life," she repeated. I
came over to her chair, bent over her and kissed her hard.
"I'm sorry I'm going! I'm sorry!" I whispered. "But mammy! It's only for
a year!"
Why did that make her cling to me so? If only she had told me.
But what young egotists we sons are. It was only a few days later that
with my two college chums, from the deck of an ocean liner, I said
good-by to the harbor.
"Thank God I'm through with you at last."[Pg 70]