The Harbor
BOOK II
CHAPTER X
On the following Saturday, when I met her boat at an East River dock, at
once I felt a difference. We were waiting for her father. The moments
dragged and I grew glum, try as I would to be pleasant.
"Here he is," she said at last.
Tall, rather lank and loosely clothed, Dillon was coming down the pier
in easy leisurely fashion, talking to a man by his side. His face
lighted up when he saw us.
"Just a minute," he said.
His voice was low but it had a peculiar carrying quality. His rugged
face was deeply lined, and I noticed a little gray in his hair. He was
smiling straight down into the eyes of his companion, a much younger
man, thin and poorly dressed, whose face looked drawn and tired.
"When I was your age," I heard Dillon remark, "I got into just the same
kind of a snarl." And he began telling about it. A frightfully technical
story it was, full of engineer slang that was Greek to me, but I saw the
younger man listen absorbed, his thin lips parting in a smile. I saw him
come out from under his worries, I saw his chief watching him, pulling
him out.
"All right, Jim," he ended. "See what you can do."
"Say, Chief, just you forget this, will you?" the other said intensely.
"Don't give it a thought. It's go'n' to be done!"
"It's forgotten."
Another easy smile at his man, and then Eleanore's father turned to us.
I could feel him casually take me in.
"The thing I liked most in that sketch of yours," he was saying a few
minutes later, when our boat was on[Pg 148] her course, "was the way you listed
that Dutchman's cargo. 'One baby carriage—to Lahore.' A very large
picture in five little words. I can see that Hindu baby now—being
wheeled in its carriage to Crocodile Park and wondering where the devil
this queer new wagon came from. I've been nosing around these docks for
years, but I missed that part of 'em right along—that human part—till
you came along with your neat writer's trick. 'One baby carriage—to
Lahore.' You ought to be proud, young man, at your age to have written
one sentence so long that it goes half way around the world."
As he talked in that half bantering tone I tried to feel cross, but it
wouldn't do. That low voice and those gray eyes were not making fun of
me, they were making friends with me, they were so kindly, curious, so
open and sincere. Soon he had lighted a cigar and was telling Eleanore
gravely just how she ought to run her boat.
"Why be so busy about it?" he asked.
"Oh, you be quiet!" she replied, as she sharply spun her wheel. Like an
automobile in a crowded street our craft was lurching its way in short
dashes in and out of the rush hour traffic. The narrow East River was
black with boats. Ferries, tugs and steamers seemed to be coming at us
from every side. Now with a leap we would be off, then abruptly churning
the water behind us we would hold back drifting, watching our chance for
another rush. Eleanore's face was glowing now, her hat was off, her neck
was tense—and her blue-gray eyes, wide open, fixed on the chaos ahead,
were shining with excitement. Now and then a long curling wisp of her
hair would get in her eyes and savagely she would blow it back. And her
lank quiet father puffed his cigar, with his gray eyes restfully on her.
"The serenity of her," he murmured to me.
"Oh, now, my dear," he said gently, as we careened to starboard, "that
was a slip. I can't say I would have done it like that."[Pg 149]
"Have you ever run a boat in your life?" came back the fierce rejoinder.
"No," said Dillon calmly, "I can't exactly say I have. Still"—he
relapsed and enjoyed his cigar.
Just a short time after this, we had the only ugly moment that I had
been through in all our rides. A huge Sound steamer was ahead. Dashing
close along under her port, we came suddenly out before her and met a
tug whose fool of a captain had made a rush to cross her bow. It was one
of those sickening instants when you see nothing at all to do. But
Eleanore saw. A quick jerk on her lever, a swift spinning of her wheel,
and with a leap we were right under the steamer's bow. It missed our
stern by a foot as it passed and then we were safe on the other side.
She made a low sound, in a moment her face went deathly white, her eyes
shut and she nearly let go the wheel. But then, her slight form
tightening, slowly opening her eyes she turned toward her father.
"Now?" he asked very softly. And there passed a look between them.
"All right," she breathed, and turned back to her wheel. And for some
time very little was said.
But I understood her love for him now. These two were such companions as
I had never seen before. And though I myself felt quite out of it all,
this did not bother me in the least. For watching her father and feeling
the abounding reserve of force deep under his quiet, I told myself that
here was a big man, the first really big one I'd ever come close to. And
I was so eager to know him and see just what he was like inside, that I
had no room for myself or his daughter—because I wanted to write him
up. What a weird, curious feeling it is, this passion for writing up
people you meet.
On the remainder of the ride, and at supper that night on the porch of
their cottage, a little house perched on a rocky point directly
overlooking the water, I did my best to draw him out, and Eleanore
seemed quite ready[Pg 150] to help me. And later, when he went inside to do
some work, I went on with the same eagerness, obliterating my own small
self, exploring this feeling of hers for him and his dream of a future
harbor.
Soon she was doing all the talking, her voice growing lower and more
intense as she tried to make me feel all he meant when he said, "It's
going to be the first port in the world." She told how up in his tower
he made you see the commerce of this whole mighty world of peace
converging slowly on this port. She told of the night two years before
when he had come home "all shaken and queer" and had said to her
huskily, "Eleanore, child, at last it's sure. There's to be a Panama
Canal." Of other nights when he didn't come home and at last she went
down to his office to fetch him and found him at midnight there with his
men, "all working like mad and gay as larks!"
"When it comes to millions of dollars for his work," she said, "he's so
very keen that he makes you feel like a little child. But when it's
merely a question of dollars for himself to live on, he's a perfect
baby. He won't look at a bill, he always turns them over to me. He won't
enter a shop, he won't go to a tailor. One ready-made clothing store has
his measure and twice a year I order his clothes and then have a fight
to get him to wear them. He never knows what he eats except steak. One
night when we had been having steak six evenings in succession I tried
chicken for a change. At first he didn't know what was wrong. Every now
and then he would seem to notice something. 'What's the matter with me?'
I could see he was asking. Then all at once he had it. 'My dear,' he
said, very coaxingly, 'could we have a nice juicy porterhouse steak for
supper to-morrow evening?'"
From these and many other details slowly I got the feel of my man.
Closer, more intimate he grew. All the work I had done in Paris,
questioning, drawing out[Pg 151] my friends until I could feel their inner
selves coming out of them into me, was counting now. I had never done so
well before, I was sliding my questions in just right, very cautiously
turning her memory this way and that on her father's life, watching her
grow more and more unaware of my presence beside her, although now I had
her bending toward me, eagerly, close.
"And she thinks she's doing it all by herself," I thought exultingly.
But as there came a pause in our talk, she turned slightly in her seat
and glanced in through the window into the lighted room behind. And
instantly her expression changed. A swift look of surprise, a puzzled
frown and a moment of hard thinking—and then with a murmured excuse she
rose and went away quickly into the house. In the meantime I had
followed her look. Sitting close by the lamp, in the room inside, Dillon
was staring straight at this spot where I was invisible in the dark. And
he looked old—and rigid, as though he'd been staring like that for some
time. I caught just a glimpse. Then he heard her step and turned hastily
back to his work. I looked at my watch. It was after twelve.
"And he never knew it was all about him," I said to myself disgustedly.
"I hope this doesn't spoil it all."
But that is precisely what it did. The next morning she was coolly
polite and Dillon determinedly genial. I could feel a silent struggle
between them as to what should be done with me. She wanted to get rid of
me, he wanted to keep us together. Gone was all his quiet strength, in
its place was an anxious friendliness. He made me tell him what I was
writing. He said he was glad that his press agent daughter had taken me
'round and opened my eyes. And as soon as she got through with me he
himself would do all he could.
"I'm through with him," said Eleanore cheerfully. "I've shown him all I
possibly can. What you need[Pg 152] now," she added, turning to me in her old
easy manner, "is to watch the harbor all by yourself and get your own
feelings about it. You might begin at the North River docks."
I spent a wretched afternoon. All my plans for my work and my life
assumed the most gray and desolate hues. Eleanore was taking a nap. At
last she came down and gave me some tea.
"May I come out and see you now and then?" I asked her very humbly. "It
would help me so much to talk over my work."
"No," she answered kindly, "I think you'd better not."
"Why not?" I blurted. "What have I done?"
She hesitated, then looked at me squarely.
"You've made my absurd young father," she said, "think that he is no
longer young."
I lost just a moment in admiration. There wasn't one girl in a hundred
who would have come out with it like that. Then I seized my chance.
"Why, it's perfectly idiotic," I cried. "Here's a man so big he's a
giant beside me, so full of some queer magnetic force that on the way up
here in the boat he made me forget that I was there. I forgot that you
were there," I threw in, and I caught just the sign of a gleam in her
eyes. "No longer young?" I continued. "That man will be young when you
and I are blinking in our dull old age! He's the biggest man I ever met!
And I want to know him, I want to know how he thinks and feels, I want
that more than anything else! And now you come between us!"
"Are you real?" asked Eleanore. I looked back unflinchingly.
"Just you try me," I retorted.
"No," she replied with a quiet smile.
She said good-by to me that night.
The next morning at seven o'clock I met her father[Pg 153] down at the boat. We
had a quick swim together and then climbed on board. And the next
minute, with a sober old seaman called "Captain Arty" at the wheel, the
boat was speeding for New York while we dressed and cooked and
breakfasted.
"This was Eleanore's idea," Dillon said. "It gets me to town by nine
o'clock and takes me back each day at five. So I hardly miss a night at
home.... Did she ever tell you," he went on, "about the first week she
spent in this boat?"
"She said it was a wonderful time."
"It was a nightmare," Dillon said. I looked at him quickly:
"What do you mean?"
"Her fight for her strength. She looked like a ghost—with a stiff upper
lip. She fainted twice. But she wouldn't give up. She said she knew she
could do it if I'd only let her stick it out. She has quite a will, that
daughter of mine," he added quietly.
"You know," he went on, "that idea of hers that you tackle the North
River piers isn't bad. Why don't you put in the whole Summer there,
watching the big liners? I won't ask you to come to my office now, for
our work is still in that early stage where we don't want any
publicity." I could feel his casual glance, and I wondered whether he
noticed my sharp disappointment. "When we are ready," he resumed, "we're
sure to be flooded with writers. I hope there'll be one man in the lot
who'll stick to the work for a year or more, a man with a kind of a
passion in him for the thing we're trying to do. There's nothing we
wouldn't do for that man. I hope he's going to be you."
At once a vision opened of work with Eleanore's father, of long talks
with Eleanore.
"I'll try to get ready for it," I said.
"You've made a fine start," he continued, "and I think you're going to
make good. But first let's see what you'll[Pg 154] do by yourself. Get your own
view of this place as it is to-day before we talk about plans for
to-morrow. And don't hurry. Take your time."
As he said this quietly, I suddenly awoke to the fact that we were
tearing down the river at a perfectly gorgeous speed. The river was
crowding with traffic ahead, all was a rushing chaos of life and we were
rushing worst of all. And yet we did not seem to hurry. Old Captain Arty
sat at the wheel with the most resigned patient look in his eyes. And
drawing lazily on his cigar Dillon was watching a new line of wharves.
"You know I've found," he was saying, "the only way to live in this age
and get any pleasure out of life is to always take more time than you
need for every job you tackle. I'm taking at least seven years to this
job. I might possibly do it as well in five, but I'd miss half the fun
of it all, I'd be glaring at separate parts of it, each one as it came
along, and I'd never have time to see it full size and let it carry me
'round the world—to that baby carriage, for instance, over in Lahore."
We were rounding the Battery now. And in that sparkling morning light,
with billowy waves of sea green all around us, sudden snowy clouds of
spray, we watched for a moment the skyscraper group, the homes of the
Big Companies. The sunshine was reflected from thousands of dazzling
window eyes, little streamers of steam were flung out gaily overhead,
streets suddenly opened to our view, narrow cuts revealing the depths
below. And there came to our ears a deep humming.
"That's the brains of it all," said Dillon. "In all you'll see while
exploring the wharves you'll find some string that leads back here. And
you don't want to let that worry you. Let the muckrakers worry and plan
all they please for a sea-gate and a nation that's to run with its
brains removed. You want to remember it can't be done. You want to look
harder and harder—until you find out for yourself that there are men up
there[Pg 155] on Wall Street without whose brains no big thing can be done in
this country. I'm working under their orders and some day I hope you'll
be doing the same. For they don't need less publicity but more."
He left me at the Battery, and as I stood looking after him I found
myself feeling somewhat dazed. A question flashed into my mind. What
would Joe Kramer say to this? I remembered what he had said to me once:
"Tell Wall Street to get off the roof." Well, that was his view. Here
was another. And this man was certainly just as sincere and decidedly
more wise and sane, altogether a larger size.
Besides, I was in love with his daughter.[Pg 156]