Harbor (9781101565681) (35 page)

They became grim enemies, and both of them enjoyed it. She let our small son come and sit by the bed. The Indian promptly worshiped Joe as the “longest” man he had ever seen, and they became boon companions.

“It's pathetic,” Eleanore told me, “the little things that appeal to him here. Poor boy, he has forgotten what a decent home is like.”

As he grew stronger she read the paper to him each morning, and they quarreled with keen relish over the news events of the day. And as at the start, so now, she kept giving him little shocks of surprise by her intimate glimpses into his views. On one of these occasions, after she had come out from his room and was sitting by me reading,

“You're a wonder, Eleanore,” I said. “I don't see how you've done it.”

“Done what, my love?” asked Eleanore.

“Wormed all his views out of poor old Joe.”

“I haven't done anything of the sort. I've learned over half of it from Sue. She comes here often nowadays and we have long talks about him. Sue seems to know him rather well.”

This did not interest me much, so I switched our talk to something that did.

“What bothers me,” I said with a scowl, “is this infernal work of mine. What are you smiling at?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she murmured, beginning to read. “But if I were you I'd stick at my work. You're good at that.”

“Not now I'm not,” I retorted. “This story about the opera man isn't coming on at all! The more I work the worse it gets!”

“It will get better soon,” she said.

“I'm not so sure. Do you know what I think is the matter with me? I was in to-day looking at Joe asleep, and watching the lines in that face of his it came over me all of a sudden what a wretched coward I've been.” Eleanore looked up suddenly. “I know there's something in all his talk, I've known it every time we've met. His view's so distorted it makes me mad, but there's something in it you can't get away from. Poverty, that's what it is, and I've always steered way clear of it as though I were afraid to look. I've taken your father's point of view and left the slums for him and his friends to tackle when they get the time. I was only too glad to be left out. But that hour with J. K. and his stokers gave me a jolt. I can feel it still. I can't seem to shake it off. And I'm beginning to wonder now why I shouldn't get up the nerve to see for myself, to have a good big look at it all—and write about it for a while.”

“Don't!” said Eleanore. “Leave it alone!” Her voice was so sharp it startled me.

“Why?” I rejoined. “You've tackled poverty often enough. I guess I can stand it if you can.”

“You're different,” she answered. “You leave poverty alone and force yourself to go on with your work. You've made a very wonderful start. You'll be ready to take up fiction soon. When you have, and when you have gone so far that you can feel sure of your name and yourself, then you can look at whatever you like.”

“I wonder what Joe would say to that.”

“I know what he'll say—he'll agree with me. Why don't you ask him and see for yourself? I'm beginning to like Joe Kramer,” she added with a quiet smile, “because now that I understand him I know that his life and yours are so far apart you've hardly a point in common.”

And in the talks I had with Joe this soon proved to be the case. Eleanore brought us together now and listened with deep satisfaction as we clashed and jarred each other apart.

His old indifferent manner was gone, he was softened, grateful for what we had done—but he held to that view of his like a rock, and the view entirely shut me out. Joe saw society wholly as “War Sure” between two classes, and I was hopelessly on the wrong side. My work, my home and my whole life were bound in with the upper class. And there could be no middle ground. My boasted tolerance, breadth of mind, my readiness to see both sides, my passion for showing up all men as human—this to Joe was utter piffle. He had no use for such writing, or in fact for art of any kind. “Propaganda” was all that he wanted, and that could be as cheap as Nick Carter, as sentimental as
Uncle Tom's Cabin
, if only it had the kind of “punch” that would reach to the mass of ignorant workers and stir their minds and their passions into swift and bitter revolt. Revolution! That was the thing. The world had come to a time, he said, when talking and writing weren't going to count. We were entering into an age of force—of “direct action”—strikes and the like—by prodigious masses of men. All I could do was worthless.

These talks made me so indignant and sore, so sure that Joe and all his work were utterly wild and that only in Dillon and his kind lay any hope of solving the dreary problems of the slums—that within a few days more I was delving into my opera man with a most determined approval. He at least was a builder, he didn't want to tear everything down! In his every scheme for a huge success I took now an aggravated delight. All my recent tolerance gone, I threw into my work an intensity that I had not felt in months.

And Eleanore smiled contentedly, as though she knew what she was about. When at last the time came for Joe to leave, she was twice as friendly to him as I.

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, “are about as fit to build up a new 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 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 get into their side of this fight with that queer fountainaxe 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 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.