The Harbor
BOOK III
CHAPTER VII
But on coming home one evening two or three weeks later, I found
Eleanore reading aloud to our son with a most preoccupied look on her
face.
"Joe Kramer is coming to dinner," she said. "He called up this morning
and said he'd like to see us again. Sue is coming, too, as it happens.
She dropped in this afternoon."
Sue arrived a few minutes later, and at once I thought to myself I had
never seen her look so well. For once she had taken time to dress. She
had done her dark hair in a different way. Her color, which had been
poor of late, to-night was most becomingly high, and those fascinating
eyes of hers were bright with a new animation.
"She has found a fine new hobby," I thought.
Her whole attitude to us was one of eager friendliness. She made much of
what we had done for Joe.
"You've no idea," she told me, "how he feels about you both." She was
speaking of this when Joe came in.
He, too, appeared to me different. Into his blunt manner had crept a
certain awkwardness, his gruff voice had an anxious note at times and
his eyes a hungry gleam. Poor old Joe, I thought. It must be hard,
despite all his talk, to see what he had missed in life, to feel what a
sacrifice he had made. He had thrown everything aside, love, marriage,
home, all personal ties—to tackle this bleak business of slums. The
more pity he had such a twisted view. And as presently, in reply to
Sue's questions, he talked about the approaching strike, my irritation
at his talk grew even sharper than before.
"Your stokers and dock laborers," I interrupted hotly,[Pg 262] "are about as
fit to build up a mew world as they are to build a Brooklyn Bridge! When
I compare them to Eleanore's father and his way of going to work"—I
broke off in exasperation. "Can't you see you're all just floundering in
a perfect swamp of ignorance?"
"No," said Joe. "I don't see that——"
"I'm mighty glad you don't," said Sue. Eleanore turned on her abruptly.
"Why are you glad, Sue?" she asked.
"Because," Sue answered warmly, "he's where every one of us ought to be!
He's doing the work we all ought to be doing!"
"Then why don't you do it?" said Joe. His voice was low but sharp as in
pain. The next instant he turned from Sue to me. "I mean all of you," he
added. I looked at him in astonishment. What had worked this change in
Joe? In our last talk he had shut me out so completely. He seemed to
feel this at once himself, for he hastened to explain his remark. He had
turned his back on Sue and was talking hard at me:
"Of course I don't mean you can do it, Bill, unless you change your
whole view of life. But why shouldn't you change? You're young enough.
That look at a stokehole got hold of you hard. And if you're able to
feel like that why not do some thinking, too?"
"I'm thinking," I said grimly. "I told you before that I wanted to help.
But you said——"
"I say it still," J. K. cut in. "If you want to help the people you've
got to drop your efficiency gods. You've got to believe in the people
first—that all they need is waking up to handle this whole job
themselves. You've got to see that they're waking up fast—all over the
world—that they're getting tired of gods above 'em slowly planning out
their lives—that they don't want to wait till they're dead to be
happy—that they feel poverty every day like a million tons of brick on
their chests—it's got so they can't even breathe without thinking! And
you've got to see[Pg 263] that what they're thinking is, 'Do it yourself and do
it quick!' The only thing that's keeping them back is that in these
times of peace men get out of the habit of violence!
"But the minute you get this clear in your mind, then I say you can help
'em. Because what's needed is so big. It's not only more pay and shorter
hours and homes where they needn't die off like flies—they need more
than that—they need a change as much as you—in their whole way of
looking at things. They've got to learn that they are a crowd—and can't
get anywhere at all until all pull together. Ignorant? Of course they
are! But that's where you and me come in—we can help 'em get together
faster than they would if left to themselves! You can help that way a
lot—by writing to the tenements! That's what I meant!"
Joe stopped short. And after his passionate outburst, Eleanore spoke up
quietly.
"This sounds funny from you," she said. "A few weeks ago you were just
as sure that Billy could do nothing. What has made you change so?"
Joe reddened and looked down at his hands.
"I suppose," he said gruffly after a moment, "it's because I'm still
weak from typhoid—weak enough to want to see some one but stokers get
into the job that's become my life. You see," he muttered, "I was raised
among people like you. It's a kind of a craving, I suppose—like
cigarettes." Again he stopped short and there was a pause.
"Rather natural," Sue murmured. Again he turned sharply from her to me.
"I say you can help by your writing," he said. "You call my friends an
ignorant mob. But thousands of 'em have read your stuff!"
I looked up at Joe with a start.
"Oh they don't like it," he went on. "It only makes 'em sore and mad.
But if you ever see things right, and[Pg 264] get into their side of this fight
with that queer fountain-axe of yours, you'll be surprised at the
tenement friends who'll pop up all around you. The first thing you know
they'll be calling you 'Bill.' That's the kind they are—they don't want
to shut anyone out—all they want to know is whether he means business.
If he doesn't he's no use, because they know that sooner or later
they'll do it anyhow themselves. It's going to be the biggest fight
that's happened since the world began! No cause has ever been so fine,
so worth a man's giving his life to aid! And all you've got to decide is
this—whether you're to get in now, and help make it a little easier,
help make it come without violence—or wait till it all comes to a crash
and then be yanked in like a sack of meal!"
Before I could speak, Sue drew a deep breath.
"I don't see how there's any choice about that," she said.
Eleanore turned to her again:
"Do you mean for Billy?"
"I mean for us all," Sue answered. "Even for a person like me!" Sue was
beautiful just then—her cheeks aglow, her features tense, a radiant
eagerness in her eyes. "I've felt it, oh so long," she said. "It's gone
all through my suffrage work—through every speech that I have
made—that the suffragists need the working girls and ought to help them
win their strikes!"
"And what do you think, Joe?" Eleanore persisted. "Were you speaking
of Billy alone just now or did you have Sue, too, in mind?"
Joe looked back at her steadily.
"I don't want to shut out the women," he said. "I've seen too many girls
jump in and make a big success of it. Not only working girls, but plenty
of college girls like you." He turned from Eleanore to Sue—and with a
gruff intensity, "You may think you can't do it, Sue," he said. "But I
know you can. I've seen it done, I tell you, all the way from here to
the Coast—girls like you as speakers, as[Pg 265] regular
organizers—forgetting themselves and sinking themselves—ready for any
job that comes."
"That's the way I should want to do it," said Sue, her voice a little
breathless.
"But how about wives?" asked Eleanore. "For some of these girls marry, I
suppose," she added thoughtfully. "At least I hope they do. I hope Sue
will."
"I never said anything against that," Joe answered shortly.
"But if they marry and have children," Eleanore continued, "aren't they
apt to get sick of it then, even bitter about it, this movement you
speak of that takes you in and sinks you down, swallows up every dollar
you have and all your thoughts and feelings?"
"It needn't do as much as that," Joe muttered as though to himself.
"Still—I'd like to see it work out," Eleanore persisted. "Do you happen
to know the wives of any labor leaders?"
"I do," Joe answered quickly. "The wife of the biggest man we've got.
Jim Marsh arrived in town last night. His wife is with him. She always
is."
"Now are you satisfied, dear?" Sue asked. But Eleanore smiled and shook
her head.
"Is Mrs. Marsh a radical, too—I mean an agitator?" she asked. Joe's
face had clouded a little.
"Not exactly," he replied. Eleanore's eyes were attentive now:
"Do you know her well, Joe?"
"I've met her——"
"I'd like to meet her, too," she said. "And find out how she likes her
life."
"I think I know what you'd find," said Sue, in her old cocksure,
superior manner. "I guess she likes it well enough——"
"Still, dear," Eleanore murmured, "instead of taking things for granted
it would be interesting, I think, in all this talk to have one look at a
little real life."[Pg 266]
"Aren't you just a little afraid of real life, Eleanore?" Sue demanded,
in a quick challenging tone.
"Am I?" asked Eleanore placidly.
Long after Joe had left us, Sue kept up that challenging tone. But she
did not speak to Eleanore now, her talk like Joe's was aimed at me.
"Why not think it over, Billy?" she urged. "You're not happy now, I
never saw you so worried and blue."
"I'm not in the least!" I said stoutly. But Sue did not seem to hear me.
She went on in an eager, absorbed sort of way:
"Why not try it a little? You needn't go as far as Joe Kramer. He may
even learn to go slower himself—now that he has had typhoid——"
"Do you think so?" Eleanore put in.
"Why not?" cried Sue impatiently. "If he keeps on at this pace it will
kill him! Has he no right to some joy in life? Why should you two have
it all? Just think of it, Billy, you have a name, success and a lot of
power! Why not use it here? Suppose it is harder! Oh, I get so out of
patience with myself and all of us! Our easy, lazy, soft little lives!
Why can't we give ourselves a little?" And she went back over all Joe
had said. "It's all so real. So tremendously real," she ended.
"I wonder what's going to happen," said Eleanore when we were alone.
"God knows," I answered gloomily. That hammering from Joe and Sue had
stirred me up all over again. I had doggedly resisted, I had told Sue
almost angrily that I meant to keep right on as before. But now she was
gone, I was not so sure. "I still feel certain Joe's all wrong," I said
aloud. "But he and his kind are so dead in earnest—so ready for any
sacrifice to push their utterly wild ideas—that they may get a lot of
power. God help the country if they do."[Pg 267]
"I wasn't speaking of the country, my love," my wife informed me
cheerfully. "I was speaking of Sue and Joe Kramer."
"Joe," I replied, "will slam right ahead. You can be sure of that, I've
got him down cold."
"Have you?" she asked. "And how about Sue?"
"Oh Sue," I replied indifferently, "has been enthused so many times."
"Billy."
I turned and saw my wife regarding her husband thoughtfully.
"I wonder," she said, "how long it will be before you can write a love
story."
"What?"
"Sue and Joe Kramer, you idiot."
I stared at her dumfounded.
"Did you think all that talk was aimed at you?" my pitiless spouse
continued. "Did you think all that change in Joe's point of view was on
your account?"
I watched her vigilantly for a while.
"If there's anything in what you say," I remarked carefully at last,
"I'll bet at least that Joe doesn't know it. He doesn't even suspect
it."
"There are so many things," said Eleanore, "that men don't even suspect
in themselves. I'm sorry," she added regretfully. "But that summer
vacation we'd planned is off."
"What?"
"Oh, yes, we'll stay right here in town. I see anything but a pleasant
summer."
"Suppose," I said excitedly, "you tell me exactly what you do see!"
"I see something," Eleanore answered, "which unless we can stop it may
be a very tragic affair. Tragic for Sue because I feel sure that she'd
never stand Joe's impossible life. And even worse for your father. He's
not only old and excitable, and very weak and feeble, too, but he's so[Pg 268]
conservative besides that if Sue married Joe Kramer he'd consider her
utterly damned."
"But I tell you you're wrong, all wrong!" I broke in. "Joe isn't that
kind of an idiot!"
"Joe," said my wife decidedly, "is like every man I've ever met. I found
that out when he was sick. He has the old natural longing for a wife and
a home of his own. His glimpse of it here may have started it rising.
I'm no more sure than you are that he admits it to himself. But it's
there all the same in the back of his mind, and in that same mysterious
region he's trying to reconcile marrying Sue to the work which he
believes in—even with this strike coming on. It's perfectly pathetic.
"Isn't it funny," she added, "how sometimes everything comes all at
once? Do you know what this may mean to us? I don't, I haven't the least
idea. I only know that you yourself are horribly unsettled—and that now
through this affair of Sue's we'll have to see a good deal of Joe—and
not only Joe but his friends on the docks—and not even the quiet ones.
No, we're to see all the wild ones. We're to be drawn right into this
strike—into what Joe calls revolution."
"You may be right," I said doggedly. "But I don't believe it."[Pg 269]