Harbor (9781101565681) (49 page)

We talked of books being written in England and France, in Germany and Russia, all dealing with deep changes in the views and beliefs and desires of men.

“Any man,” he said, “who thinks that modern Europe will go smoothly, quietly on, needs a dose of your harbor to open his eyes.”

He turned to me with a sudden thought.

“Why don't you write a book,” he asked, “about this harbor you have known?”

Eleanore made a quick move in her chair.

“That's just what you ought to do!” she exclaimed.

“I wonder if I could,” I said. “It would be hard to see it now, as it looked at all the different times.”

“You'll hardly be able to do that,” the Englishman answered quietly. “Because to each one of us, I suppose, not only his present but his past is constantly changing to his view. But I wouldn't let that bother you. What would interest me as a reader would be your view of your life as you look back upon it to-day—in this present stage of your growth.

“I was raised in the Alps myself,” he went on. “So
my
picture of life is the mountain path. As I climb and turn now and then to look back, the twisting little path below appears quite different each time. But still I keep on writing—my changing view of the slope behind and of the rising peaks ahead. And now and then by working my hardest I've felt the great joy of writing the truth. As you know, it isn't easy. But year by year I've felt my readers grow in number. I believe they are going to grow and grow, not mine nor yours but the readers of all the chaps like ourselves, the readers who pick up each new book with the hope that one more fellow has done his best—not to please them but to please himself—by telling of life as he has seen it—his changing life through his changing eyes.”

 

After he left us there was a long silence. Both of us were thinking hard. And as Eleanore looked up to the stars I saw their brightness in her eyes.

“Yes,” she said at last, “I'm sure. I'm sure you'd better take his advice—and write as truthfully as you can the whole story as you see it now—of this strange harbor you have known.”

We talked long and eagerly that night.

I began my story of the harbor. Every hour that I could spare from the stories and sketches of tenement life by which I made a scant living those days, I spent in gathering memories of my long struggle with this place, arranging and selecting and setting them in order for this record of the great life I had seen.

 

But this wide world has many such lives, many heaving forces. And ever since I had been born, while I had been building for myself one after the other these gods of civilization and peace—all unheeded by my eyes a black shadow had been silently creeping over the whole ocean world. Now from across the water there came the first low grumble of war. Within one short portentous week that grumble had become a roar, and before all the startled peoples had time to realize what was here, vast armies were being rushed over the lands, all Europe was in chaos—and the world was on the eve of the most prodigious change of all.

And like the mirror of the world that it had always been to me, the harbor at once reflected this change. Only a little time before, I had seen it almost empty, except for that crude boat of the crowd, the
Internationale
, with its songs of brotherhood and of a world where wars should cease. Now I saw it jammed with ships from whose masts flew every flag on the seas, and from the men who came ashore I heard of how they had been chased, some fired upon, by battleships—I heard of war upon the seas. I felt my father's world reborn, an ocean world where there was nothing without fighting, and where every nation fought. Ours had already entered the lists, with a loud clamor for ships of our own in which to seize this sudden chance for our share of the trade of the world. The great canal was open at last, and Europe in her turmoil had had not even a moment to look. The East and South lay open to us—rush in and get our share at last! Make our nation strong at sea!

And while in blind confusion. I groped for some new footing here, strove to see what it was going to mean to that fair world of brotherhood which I had seen struggling to be born—suddenly as though in reply there came a sharp voice out of the crowd.

Joe Kramer came to trial for his life. Before his case went to the jury, Joe rose up and addressed them. And he spoke of war and violence. He spoke of how in times of peace this present system murders men—on ships and docks and railroads, in the mills and down in the mines. And as though these lives were not enough, the powers above in this scramble for theirs for all the profits in the world, all the sweated labor they could wring out of humankind, had now flown at each others' throats. And the blood of the common people was pouring out upon the earth.

“My comrades over the water,” he said, “saw this coming years ago. They worked day and night to gather the workers of Europe together against this war that will blacken the world. For that they were called anti-patriots, fiends, men without a country. And some were imprisoned and others were shot. And over here—where in times of peace the number of killed and wounded is over five hundred thousand a year—for rebelling against this murder they have called me murderer—and have placed me here on trial for my life.

“And what I want to ask you now is that you take no halfway course. Either send me out of this dock a free man or up the river to the chair. For this is no year for compromise. Am I a murderer? Yes or no. Decide with your eyes wide open. If you set me free I shall still rebel. I shall join my comrades over the sea who already are going about in the camps and saying to the rank and file—‘You can stop this slaughter! You can save this world gone mad! You can end this murder—both in time of war and peace!' ”

 

And the jury set Joe free.

Early in the following week I went down to his room by the docks for a last evening with him there. Joe was sailing that same night. Under a name not his own he had taken passage in the steerage of the big fast liner which was to sail at one o'clock. Into his room all evening poured his revolutionist friends, and the chance of revolution abroad was talked of in cool practical terms. Nothing could be done, they said, in the first few months to stop this war. Years ago the man in France, who had led the anti-war movement, had predicted that if war broke out every government rushing in would force on its people the belief that this was no war of aggression but one of defense of the fatherland from a fierce onrushing foe. And so in truth it had come about, and against that appeal to fight for their homes no voice of reason could stem the tide.

The socialists had been swept on with the rest. By tens and hundreds of thousands they had already gone to the front. But it was upon this very fact that Joe and his friends now rested their hopes. For just so soon as in the camps the first burst of enthusiasm had begun to die away, as the millions in the armies began to grow sick of the sight of blood, the groans and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the stench of the dead—and themselves weary of fighting, worn by privation and disease, began to think of their distant homes, their wives and children starving there—then these socialists in their midst, one at every bivouac fire, would begin to ask them:

“Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes—or were we sent out by our rulers to die only in order that they in their scramble might take more of the earth for themselves? And if this is true why not rise like men and end this fearful carnage?”

Already these thousands were in the camps. Into Joe's room that evening came men to give him the names and regiments of those comrades he could trust. Joe with a few hundred others was to make his dangerous way into the camps and the barracks, wherever that was possible, of French and Russians and Germans alike, to carry news from one to the other, to make ready and to plan.

Now and then, in the talk that night, I felt the thrilling presence of that rising god, that giant spirit of the crowd, not dead but only sleeping now to gain new strength for what it must do. And again in gleams and flashes I saw the vision of the end—the world for all the workers. For in this crowded tenement room, forgotten now by governments, this rough earnest group of men seemed so sure of this world of theirs, so sure that it was now soon to be born.

One by one they went away, and Joe and I were left alone. Slowly he refilled his pipe. I thought of the talks we had had in ten years.

“Well Bill,” he inquired at last, “what are you going to do with yourself?”

“Write what I see in the crowd,” I said, “from my new point of view—this year's point of view,” I added. I went on to tell him what the English writer had said. And I told of my book on the harbor.

“Well,” said Joe when I was through, “I guess it's about the best you can do. You've got a wife to think of.”

“You don't know her,” I rejoined, and I told him how she had changed our home in order not to stop my work.

“But don't you see what she's up to?” said Joe.

“What the devil do you mean?” I asked indignantly. Joe blew a pitying puff of smoke.

“You poor blind dub of a husband,” he said with his old affectionate smile, “she's making you love her all the more. You're anchored worse than ever.
You
can't go over to Europe and take a chance at being shot. Don't you see the hole you're in? You've got to care what happens to you.”

“I'm not so sure of that, Joe,” I said. “Things in this world are changing so fast that it's hard for any man in it to tell where he'll be in a year from now—or even a few short months from now. It's the year that no man can see beyond.”

“You mean you're coming over?” he asked.

“I'm not sure. Just now I'm going to finish this book. I'm going to see Eleanore through till the baby is born. But after that—if over in Europe the people rise against this war—I don't just see how I can keep out.”

Joe looked at me queerly. And with a curious gruffness,

“I hope you will keep out,” he said. “There aren't many women like your wife.”

He pulled an old grip from under his bed and began throwing in a few books and clothes. From a drawer he swept a few colored shirts, some underclothes and a small revolver.

“J. K.,” I said, “I've been thinking about us. And I think our youth is gone.”

“What's youth?” asked Joe indifferently.

“Youth,” I replied, “is the time when you can think anything, feel anything and go anywhere.”

“I'm still going anywhere,” he remarked.

“But you can't think anything,” I rejoined. “You say I'm tied to a wife and home. All right, I'm glad I am. But you're tied, too. You're tied to a creed, Mister Syndicalist—a creed so stiff that you can't think of anything else.”

“All right, I'm glad I am,” he echoed. “I'm sorry youth lasted as long as it did.”

He closed his grip and strapped it. Then he took up his hat and coat and threw a last look about the room where he had lived for a year or more.

“Breaking up home ties,” he said with a grin. “Don't come to the boat,” he added downstairs. “She don't sail for an hour or two and I'll be asleep in my bunk long before.”

“All right. Good-by, J. K.—remember we may meet over there——”

Again that gruffness came into his voice:

“If you do, you'll be taking a mighty big chance,” he said. “Good-by, Bill—it's just possible we may never meet again. Glad to have made your acquaintance, Kid. Here's wishing you luck.”

He turned and went off down the Farm with that long swinging walk of his, his big heavy shoulders bent rather more than before. And as I stood looking after him I thought of the lonely winding road that he was to travel day and night, into slums of cities and in and out among the camps.

 

I walked slowly back through the tenements toward the new home among them that Eleanore had made.

In the summer's night the city streets were still alive with people. I passed brightly lighted thoroughfares where I saw them in crowds, and I knew that this tide of people flowed endlessly through the hundreds of miles of streets that made up the port of New York. Hurrying, idling, talking and laughing, quarreling, fighting, here stopping to look at displays in shop windows, there pouring into “Movies”—and walking, walking, walking on. Going up into their tenement homes to eat and drink, love, breed and sleep, to wake up and come down to another day.

So the crowd moved on and on, while the great harbor surrounding their lives and shaping their lives, went on with its changes unheeded.

I tried to think of this harbor as being run by this common crowd—of the railroads, mines and factories, of the colleges, hospitals and all institutions of research, and the theaters and concert halls, the picture galleries, all the books—all in the power of the crowd.

“It will be a long time,” I thought. “Before it comes the crowd must change. But they will change—and fast or slow, I belong with them while they're changing.”

Something Joe had once said came into my mind:

“They're the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in time of peace.”

And I thought of the crowds across the sea—of men being rushed over Europe on trains, or marching along starlit roads, or tramping across meadows. And I thought of long lines of fire at dawn spurting from the mouths of guns—from mountainsides, from out of woods, from trenches in fast blackening fields—and of men in endless multitudes pitching on their faces as the fire mowed them down.