The Harbor Part 20

"By the next evening I had the idea for this boat. When I told him he was delighted, and we both grew excited over the plans--which he drew by my bed, I made him draw dozens. At last it was built and lay at its dock, and I packed all I needed into a trunk and we came down in a taxi.

It was a lovely May afternoon and we had a beautiful ride up the Hudson.

And from then on through the Summer I hardly went ash.o.r.e at all, I knew if I did it would spoil it all.

"Every night we slept on board in those two cozy little bunks. I learned to cook here. Soon I was able to run the boat and even to help my father a little. I knew just enough about his work to go places for him and save his time. I'd forgotten I ever had any nerves, for I felt I belonged to something now that got way down to the roots of things. Do you see what I mean? This harbor isn't like a hotel, or an evening gown or Weber and Fields. I love pretty gowns, and my father and I wouldn't miss Weber and Fields for worlds. But they're all on top, this is down at the bottom, it's one of those deep places that seem to make the world go 'round. It's right where the ocean b.u.mps into the land. You can get your roots here, you can feel you are real.

"You see what my father is doing is to take this whole harbor and study it hard--not just the water, the s.h.i.+pping and docks, for when he says 'the port of New York' he means all the railroads too--and he's studying how they all come in and why it is that everything has become so frightfully snarled. A lot of big s.h.i.+pping men are behind him, and he's to draw up a plan for it all which they're going to give to the city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in the ocean world. It's one of those slow tremendous pieces of work, it will take years to carry it out and hundreds of millions of dollars. My father thinks there's hardly a chance that he'll ever live to see it all done. I know he will, I'm sure he will, he's the kind of a man who keeps himself young. But whether he really sees it or not, or gets any credit, he doesn't care.

"That's the kind of a person my father is," Eleanore added softly.

"My father wants to meet you," she told me toward the end of June, at one of those times when she let the boat drift while we had long absorbing talks. "He has read that thing you wrote about the German sea hog, and he thinks it's awfully well done."

"That's good of him," I said gruffly.

Somehow or other it always makes me uncomfortable when people talk about my work. When they criticize I am annoyed and when they praise I am uneasy. What do they know about it? They spent an hour reading what it took me weeks to write. They don't know what I _tried_ to do, nor do they care, they haven't time. I never feel so cut off from people, so utterly alone in the world, as when some benevolent person says, "I liked that little story of yours." Instantly I shut up like a clam.

"I liked it too," said Eleanore.

"Did you?" I asked delightedly. Far from retiring into my sh.e.l.l, I wanted at once to open up and make her feel how much I had missed in that crude effort. Soon she had me talking about it. And while I talked on eagerly, I tried to guess from her questions whether she'd read it more than once. Finally I guessed she had. And, glancing at her now and then, I wondered how much she could ever know about me or I about her--really know. And the intimacy I saw ahead loomed radiant and boundless. I strained every nerve to show her myself, to show her the very best of myself.

But then I heard her ask me,

"Wouldn't you like to talk to my father?"

Here was a fine end to it all.

"I don't know," I answered gloomily. I could see already those engineer eyes moving amusedly down my pages. I could see her watching his face and getting to feel as he did about me. "What good would it do?" I added.

"What good would it do?" Her sharply offended tone brought me back with a jerk to try to explain.

"Don't you see what I mean!" I asked eagerly. "Why should a man as busy as he is waste his time on a kid like me? After all that you've told me about him, I feel sometimes as though all the writers on earth don't count any more, because all the really big things are being done by men like your father."

"That's much better," said Eleanore. "Only of course it isn't true. If you poor little writers want to get big and really count," she went on serenely, "all you have to do is to write about my father."

"I'll begin the minute you say so," I told her.

"Then it's arranged," said my companion, with an exceedingly comfortable sigh. "We've taken a cottage up on the Sound for the summer," she continued. "And we're moving up to-morrow. Suppose you come up over Sunday."

"Thanks. I'd love to," I replied.

"So she's to be away for months," I added dismally to myself. "No more of these long afternoons."

CHAPTER X

On the following Sat.u.r.day, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 her course, "was the way you listed that Dutchman's cargo. 'One baby carriage--to Lah.o.r.e.' 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 Lah.o.r.e.' 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 s.h.i.+ning 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."

"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. Das.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 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 Ca.n.a.l." 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!"