The Harbor Part 28

"Of course it is," she promptly agreed.

And then after a rigid instant when each of us looked at the other as though asking, "Quick! What are we going to do?"--she burst out laughing excitedly. So did I, and that carried her into my arms and--I remember nothing--until after a while she asked me to go, because she wanted to be by herself. And I noticed how bright and wet were her eyes.

I saw them still in the darkness down along the river front, where I walked for half the rest of the night, stopping to draw a deep breath of the sea and laugh excitedly and go on.

Life changed rapidly after that night. I grew so absorbed in Eleanore and in all that was waiting just ahead, that it was hard not to shut out everything else, most of all impersonal things. It was hard to write, and for days I wrote nothing. I remember only intimate talks. Everyone I talked to seemed to be deeply personal.

I told my father about it the next evening before supper. I found him in his old chair in the study buried deep in his paper.

"Say, Dad--would you mind coming up to your room?" He smote his paper to one side.

"What the devil," he asked, "do I want to come up to my room for?"

"I've--the fact is I've something you ought to know." I could hear Sue in the other room.

"All right, my boy," he said nervously. As he followed me he kept clearing his throat. Sue must have guessed and prepared him. In his room he fussed about, grunted hard over getting off his shoes and, finding his slippers, then lay back on his sofa with his hands behind his head and uttered an explosive sigh.

"All right, son, now fire ahead," he said jocosely. I loved him at that moment.

"You know Eleanore Dillon," I began.

"She turned you down!"

"No! She took me!"

"The devil you say!" He sat bolt upright, staring. "Well, my boy, I'm very glad," he said thickly. His eyes were moist. "I'm glad--glad! She's a fine girl--strong character--strong! I wish your poor mother were alive--she'd be happy--this girl will make a good wife--you must bring her right here to live with us!"

And so he talked on, his voice trembling. Then out of his confusion rose the money question, and at once his mind grew clear. And to my surprise he urged me to lose no time in looking around for "some good, steady position" in a magazine office. My writing I could do at night.

"It's so uncertain at best," he said. "It's nothing you can count on.

And you've got to think of a wife and children. _Her_ father has no money saved."

I found he'd been looking Dillon up, and this jarred on me horribly. But still worse was his lack of faith in my writing. I was making four hundred dollars a month, and it was a most unpleasant jolt to have it taken so lightly.

I went down to Sue. As I came into the living room she met me suddenly at the door. In a moment her arms were about my neck and she was saying softly:

"I know what it is, dear, and I'm glad--I'm awfully glad. If I've been horrid about it ever, please forgive me. I'm sure now it's just the life you want!"

And that evening, while Dad slept in his chair, Sue and I had a long affectionate talk. We drew closer than we had been for months. She was eager to hear everything, she wanted to know all our plans. When I tried at last to turn our talk to herself and our affairs at home, at first she would not hear to it.

"My dear boy," she said affectionately, "you've had these worries long enough. You're to run along now and be happy and leave this house to Dad and me."

I slipped my arm around her:

"Look here, Sis, let's see this right. You can't run here on what Dad earns, and if you try to work yourself you'll only hurt him terribly. My idea is to help as before, without letting him know that I'm doing it.

Make him think you've cut expenses."

It took a long time to get her consent.

The next night I went to Eleanore's father. He received me quietly, and with a deep intensity under that steady smile of his, which reminded me so much of hers, he spoke of all she had meant to him and of her brave search for a big, happy life. He told how he had watched her with me slowly making up her mind.

"It took a long time, but it's made up now," he said. "And now that it is, she's the kind that will go through anything for you that can ever come up in your life." He looked at me squarely, still smiling a little, frankly letting his new affection come into his eyes. "I wish I knew all that's going to happen," he added, almost sadly. "I hope you'll get used to telling me things--talking things over--anything--no matter what--where I can be of the slightest help."

Then he, too, spoke of money. He meant to keep up her allowance, he said, and he had insured his life for her. Again, as with my father, I felt that disturbing lack of faith in my work. I spoke of it to Eleanore and she looked at me indignantly.

"You must never think of it like that," she said. "I won't have you writing for money. Dad has never worked that way and you're not to do it on any account--least of all on account of me. Whatever you make we'll live on, and that's all there is to be said--except that we'll live splendidly," she added very gaily, "and we won't spend the finest part of our lives saving up for rainy days. We'll take care of the rain when it rains, and we'll have some wonderful times while we can."

We decided at once on a trip abroad as soon as I had finished my work.

And I remember writing hard, and reading it aloud to her and rewriting over and over again, for Eleanore could be severe. But I remember, too, more trips in her boat to gather the last odds and ends. I remember how the big harbor took on a new glory to our eyes, mingled with all the deep personal joys and small troubles and crises we went through, the puzzles and the questionings and the glad discoveries that made up the swift growth of our love.

And though I never once thought of Joe Kramer, he had prophesied aright. I belonged wholly now to Dillon's world, a world of clean vigorous order that seemed to welcome me the more as I wrote in praise of its power. And happy over my success, and in love and starting life anew with all the signs so bright--how could I have any doubts of my harbor?

We were married very quietly late one April afternoon. It rained, I remember, all that day, but the next was bright and clear for our sailing. In our small stateroom on the s.h.i.+p we found a note from the company, a large, engraved impressive affair, presenting their best wishes and asking us to accept for the voyage one of their most luxurious cabins.

"This is what comes," said Eleanore gaily, "of being the wife of a writer."

"Or the daughter," I said softly, "of a very wonderful engineer."

"You darling boy!"

We moved up to a large sunny cabin. I remember her swiftly reading the telegrams and letters there as though to get them all out of the way. I remember her unpacking and taking possession of our first home.

"We're married, aren't we," said a voice.

There was only one more good-by to be said. On the deck, as we went out of the harbor, Eleanore stood by the rail. I felt her hand close tight on mine and I saw her eyes glisten a little with tears.

"What a splendid place it has been," she said.

CHAPTER XVIII

We found every place splendid in those weeks as we let the wanderl.u.s.t carry us on. And as though emerging from some vivid dream, various places and faces of people stand out in my memory now, as then they loomed in upon our absorption.

I remember the little old harbor of Cherbourg, gleaming in the moonlight, where when we landed Eleanore said, "Let's stay here awhile."

So of course we did, and then went on to Paris. We took an apartment, very French and absurdly small, from a former Beaux Arts friend of mine.

I remember the kindly face of the maid who took such beaming care of us, the cafe in front of which late at night we sat and watched the huge shadowy carts go by on their way to the market halls, the sunrise flower market, where we filled our cab with moss roses and plants, Polin's songs in the "Amba.s.sadeurs," delicious pet.i.tes allees in the Bois, our favorite rides on the tops of the 'buses, that old religious place of mine down under the bridge by Notre Dame.

All these and more we saw in fragments, now and then, looking out with vivid interest on all the life around us, only to return to each other, _into_ each other I should say, for the exploring was quite different now, there had been such hours between us that nothing intimate could be held back. Nothing? Well, nothing that I thought of then. For somehow or other, in those glad, eager afternoons and evenings, in those nights, nothing disturbingly ugly in me so much as thought of showing its head.

Three years before in this stirring town I had felt guilty at being a monk. But now I felt no guilt at all. For down the Champs elysees our cab rolled serenely now, and even our driver's white hat wore an air as though it had a place in life.

From Paris we started for Munich, but we did not stop there, we happened to feel like going on. So we went through to Constantinople, whence we took a boat to Batoum and went up into the Caucasus, which Eleanore had heard about once from an engineer friend of her father's. I remember Koutais, a little town by a mountain torrent with gray vine-covered walls around it. Shops opened into the walls like stalls. There we would buy things for our supper and then in a crazy vehicle we would drive miles out on the broad mountainside to an orchard pink with blossoms, where we would build a fire and cook, and an old man in a long yellow robe and with a turban on his head would come out of his cabin and bring us wine. And the stars would appear and the frogs tune up in the marshes far down in the valley below, and the filmy mists would rise and the mountains would tower overhead. And the effect of this place upon us was to make us feel it was only one of innumerable such vacation places that lay ahead, festival spots in long, radiant lives. We felt this vaguely, silently. So often we talked silently.

Then there would come the most serious times, when with the deepest thoughtfulness we would survey the years ahead and very solemnly place ourselves, our views and beliefs. Miraculous how agreed we were! We believed, we found, in good workmans.h.i.+p, in honest building, in getting things done. We believed in Eleanore's father and all those around and above him that could help his kind of work. We were impatient of soft-headedness in rich people who had nothing to do, and of heavy muddle-headedness in the millions who had too much to do, and of muckraking of every kind which only got in the way of the builders. For the building of a new, clean vigorous world was our religion. And it did not seem cold to us, because our lives were in it and because we were in love.