The Harbor Part 25

And as though the fresh fierce hungriness had pa.s.sed from that small heathen's soul into my own, that day I again became a reporter of things to be seen in the port of New York.

Back into the dockshed I went, and all up and down and in and out among piles of strange and odorous stuffs. And once more I felt the wonder of this modern ocean world. I followed this raw produce of Mother Earth's four corners back into those factory buildings ash.o.r.e. I saw it made into chewing-gum, toys, sofas, glue, curled hair and wall-paper. I saw it made into ladles' hats, corks, carpets, dynamos, stuffed dates. I saw it made into dirt-proof collars and s.h.i.+rt bosoms, salad dressing, blackboards, corsets and the like. Again I fairly reveled in lists of things and the places they came from and the places to which they were going. I saw chewing-gum start for Rio and Quaker Oats for Shanghai, patent medicine for Nabat, curled hair for Yokohama, "movy" theater seats for Sydney, tomato soup for Cape Town and corsets for Rangoon.

"From Everywhere to Anywhere" was the t.i.tle of my article. It took only a week to write, and was ready when the Dillons came home.

CHAPTER XIV

They landed toward the end of July and I went to the dock to meet them.

Elated over my finished story, which I had in my pocket, and made absurdly happy by the sight of Eleanore smiling down at me over the rail, I was surprised at the greeting she gave me.

"Why, you poor boy. How terribly hard you've been working," she said.

And she looked at me as though I were sick and worn to the bone. The end of it was that I accepted delightedly an invitation to spend a week up at their cottage on the Sound.

Those were seven vivid glowing days. I could not relax, I was too intensely happy, I had too much to tell her, not only about my work but about a host of other things that without rhyme or reason popped into my mind and had to be said. The range of our talk was tremendous, and the wider we ranged the closer we drew. For she too was telling things, and her things were as unexpected as mine and infinitely more absorbing. Her manner toward me had quite changed. It was that of a nurse with an invalid, she frankly ordered me about.

"Why can't you lie back on those cus.h.i.+ons?" she asked one morning when we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day--and instead you're as wide awake as an owl."

"I am," I admitted happily. "I'm trying to see everything." The chic little hat and the blouse she wore were adorably fresh from Paris, and as I watched her run her boat I could feel flowing into my body and soul a perfectly boundless store of new life.

"I've been thinking you over," she said.

"Have you?" I asked delightedly. I had often wondered if she had. "What do you think?" I inquired.

Eleanore frowned perplexedly.

"You're such a queer combination," she said. "You have such ridiculous ups and downs. To-day you're way up, aren't you."

"I am," I said very earnestly. She looked off placidly over the Sound.

"You're so very sensitive," she went on. "You let things take hold of you so hard. And yet on the other hand you seem to be so very----" she hesitated for a word.

"Tough," I suggested cheerfully.

"No--hungry," Eleanore said. "You're always reaching out for things--you jump right into them so hard. And even when they hurt you--and you're hurt quite easily--you hang on and won't let go. Look at the way you've gone at the harbor right from the start. And you're doing it still--you've done it all summer until it has made you look like a ghost. And I guess you'll keep on all your life. There are harbors everywhere, you know--in a way the whole world is a harbor--and unless you change a lot you're going to be hurt a good deal."

"My mother agreed with you," I said. "She wanted me to be a professor in a quiet college town."

"Please stop twinkling your eyes," Eleanore commanded. "Your mother knew you very well. You might have done that--and settled down--with some nice quiet college girl--if you had done it years ago. As it is, of course you're hopeless."

"I am not hopeless," I declared indignantly. "If I can only get what I want I'll be the happiest fellow alive!"

"I know," she answered thoughtfully. "You told me that before. You want fiction, don't you."

"Yes, fiction," I said wrathfully. "I want that more than anything else. But I don't want any quiet kind, and I don't want any quiet town,"

I went on, leaning forward intensely. "I want the harbor and the city--I want it thick and heavy, and just as fast as it will come. I want all the life there is in the world--all the beauty--all the happiness! And I can't wait--I want it soon!"

From under the brim of her soft white hat her blue-gray eyes were fixed intently on the sh.o.r.e, which was miles away. But watching her I saw she knew that all the time I was saying desperately, "I want you."

I knew she did not want me to say anything like that out loud, and I felt myself that I had no right--not until I had done so much more in my writing. But I kept circling around it. Half the time on purpose and as often quite unconsciously, in all we talked about those days I kept eagerly filling in the picture of the life we two might lead. When in one of her cool hostile moods--moods which came over her suddenly--she told me almost jealously how happy she'd been with her father abroad and how together they had planned to go to India, China, j.a.pan in the years to come, I brought her back to my subject by saying: "I mean to travel a lot myself."

"That's one advantage I have as a writer," I continued earnestly. "I'll never be tied down to one place. All my life--whenever I choose--I can pick up my work and go anywhere."

She looked straight back into my eyes.

"I wish my father could," she said.

"Look here," I said indignantly. "Your father has been four months abroad while I have been in Brooklyn! Isn't it only fair and square to let _me_ travel this afternoon?" She looked at me reluctantly.

"Yes," she agreed. "I suppose it is."

"Come along," I urged, and off we went. While our boat drifted idly that long, lazy afternoon, we went careering all over the world and I kept doggedly by her side. Every now and then I would make her stop while we had a good look at each other, exploring deep into the old questions, "What are you and what do you want?"

"You can't run a motorboat all your life," I reminded her. "What are you going to tackle next?"

"Our living-room," she answered. "I'm going to have it done over next month."

That took us into house furnis.h.i.+ngs, and I gave her ideas by the score.

I had never thought about this before, but now I thought hard and eagerly--until she brought me up with a jerk, by pityingly murmuring:

"What perfectly frightful taste you have. It's funny--because you're an artist--you really write quite beautiful things."

"I don't care," I answered grimly. "I can see that living-room----"

"So can I," she said cheerfully. "But so long as you like it, that's all there is to be said. You're the one who has to live in it, you know. Now my father likes a room----"

And while I looked gloomily over the water she told me what her father liked.

He came out from the city each evening by train. He refused to use the boat these days, he said he was so infernally busy that he could not spare the time. He brought out stacks of papers and plans which had piled up while he was abroad, and with these he busied himself at night.

And though Eleanore from the veranda glanced in at him frequently, she never again caught him looking old. And when she went in to make him stop working he smilingly told her to leave him alone. He smoked many cigars with apparent enjoyment, his lean face wrinkling over the smoke as he turned over plan after plan for the harbor. His manner to me was if anything even kindlier than before. He began calling me "Billy" now.

On the last night of my stay he said:

"I think you're the man I've been looking for. I've just read your story and you've done exactly what I hoped. You've pictured one spot of efficiency in a whole dreary desert of waste. Come up to my office to-morrow at ten."

CHAPTER XV

So at last I went up to the tower.