The Harbor Part 8

"What I want to do," he said, "is to bust every hold that any creed ever had on me. I don't mean only creeds in churches, I mean creeds in politics, business and everywhere else. I want to get 'em all out of my eyes so I can see what's really here--because I'm so sure there's an awful lot here and an awful lot more that's coming. If I make a noise like a knocker at times you don't want to put me down as any Schopenhauer fan. None of that pessimistic dope for little Joey Kramer.

I never open a new book without hoping I'll find the real stuff I want, and I never open a paper without hoping that some more of it will be right here in the news of the day. Kid," he ended intensely, "you can take it from me there are going to be big doings soon in this little old world, big doings and great big ideas, as big as what caused the Civil War and a d.a.m.n sight more scientific. And the thing for you and me to do is to get ourselves in some kind of shape so we can shake hands with 'em when they arrive, and say, 'h.e.l.lo, fellahs, come right in. You're just what we've been waiting for.'"

When Joe gave up college at the end of the junior year, he left a small group of us behind. "The Ishmaelites," we called ourselves. For though most of us "couldn't quite go Joe," we had all "queered" ourselves in college through the influence on us he had had.

There are thousands of Joe Kramers now in colleges scattered all over the land. Each year their numbers grow, each year more deep their vague conviction that somehow they've been cheated, more harsh and insistent every year their questioning of all "news from the graveyard," whether it comes from old fogey professors or from parents or preachers, eminent lawyers or business men, great politicians or writers of books. Arrogant and sweeping, sparing nothing sacred--young. Ignorant, confused and groping, almost wistful--new. They are becoming no insignificant part in this swiftly changing national life.

Joe Kramer was one of the pioneers.

CHAPTER VIII

It was with an unpleasant shock of surprise that I found Joe liked the harbor.

When I took him home for Christmas he spent half his time down there on the docks. He explored the whole region for miles around, in a week he spoke in familiar terms of slips and bays and rivers that to me were still nothing but names. Moreover, he liked my father. And my father, opening up by degrees, showed an unmistakable relish for Joe.

They had long talks in the study at night, where I could hear them arguing about the decline of our s.h.i.+pping, the growth of our trusts and railroads, graft and high finance and strikes, the swift piling up of our troubles at home--and about the great chance we were losing abroad, the blind weak part we were playing in this eager ocean world where every nation that was alive was rus.h.i.+ng in to get a place. As their voices rose loud and excited, even my young sister Sue, who was just out of high school now and doing some groping about of her own, would go into the study to listen at times. But I kept out. For already I was tired again of all these harbor problems, I wanted to get at life through Art! And I felt besides that if I entered into long talks with my father, sooner or later he would be sure to bring up the dreaded question of my going into his business. And this I was firmly resolved not to do. For my dislike of all his work, his deepening worries, his dogged absorption in his tiresome hobby of s.h.i.+ps, was even sharper than before.

"That dad of yours," Joe told me, "is a mighty interesting old boy. He has had a big life with a big idea."

"Has he?" said I. "Then he's lost it."

"He hasn't! That's just the trouble. He thinks he's a comer when he's a goer--he can't see his idea is out of date. It's a pity," he added sadly. "When a man can spend his days and nights hating the trusts and the railroads as he does, it's a pity he's so darned old in his views of what ought to be done about it. Your father believes that if only we'd get a strong navy and a large mercantile marine----"

"Oh, cut it, J. K.," I said pettishly. "I tell you I don't care what he believes! The next thing you'll be telling me is that I ought to take a job in his warehouse!"

"You might do worse," said Joe.

"What?" I demanded indignantly.

"That's just what I said. If you'd go on a paper and learn to write like a regular man I'd be tickled to death. But if all you want to be in life is a young Guy de Maupa.s.sant and turn out little gems for the girls, then I say you'd be a lot better off if you went into your father's warehouse and began telling Wall Street to get off the roof!"

"Thank you," I said stiffly.

From that talk Joe and I began drifting apart. I never brought him home again, I saw less of him at college. And at the end of the college year he went to New York, where he found a job on a paper.

And so all through my senior year I was left undisturbed to "queer"

myself in my own sweet way, which was to slave for hours over Guy de Maupa.s.sant and other foreign authors, write stories and sketches by the score, and with two other "Ishmaelites" plan for a year's work in Paris.

The French prof was delighted and spurred us on with glowing accounts of life in "the Quarter." One of us wanted to be a painter. No place for that like Paris! Another an architect--Paris! Myself a writer--Paris!

For what could American writers to-day, with their sentimental little yarns covering with a laugh or a tear all the big deep facts of life, show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it up to my mother--the last time she came to college.

I soon found she was on my side. If only she could bring father around.

I still remember vividly that exciting night in June when the three of us, back there at home, sat on the terrace and fought it out. I remember the beauty of the night, I mean of the night up there in the garden under the stars, my mother's garden and her stars, and of the hideous showing put up by my father's harbor below.

Of course he opposed my going abroad. His old indifference to me had vanished, I saw he regarded me now as worth while, grown up, a business a.s.set worth fighting for. And my father fought. He spoke abruptly, pa.s.sionately of the great chance on the docks down there. I remember being surprised at his talk, at the bigness and the intensity of this hunger of his for s.h.i.+ps. But of what he said I remembered nothing, I did not hear, for I was eyeing my mother.

I saw she was watching him pityingly. Why? What argument had she still to use? I waited in increasing suspense.

"So that's all there is to it," I heard him end. "You might as well get it right out of your head. You're not going over to Europe to fool away any more of your time. You're going to buckle down right here."

"Billy, leave us alone," said my mother.

What in the name of all the miracles did she do to him that night--my mother so frail (she had grown so of late), my father so strong? The next day she told me he had consented.

I saw little of him in the next two weeks. He left me alone with her every evening. But when I watched him he looked changed--beaten and broken, older. In spite of myself I pitied him now, and a confused uneasiness, almost remorse, came over me at the way I had opposed him.

"What's come over Dad?" I wondered. Once I saw him look at my mother, and his look was frightened, crushed. What was it she had told him?

Those evenings I read "Pendennis" aloud for the third time to my mother.

It had been our favorite book, and I took anxious pains to show her how I loved it still. But once chancing to look quickly up, I caught my mother watching me with a hungriness and an utter despair such as I'd never seen before. It struck me cold, I looked away--and suddenly I realized what a selfish little beast I was, beside this woman who loved me so and whom I was now leaving. My throat contracted sharply. But when I looked back the look was gone, and in its place was a quiet smile.

"Oh, my boy, you must do fine work," she said. "I want it so much more than anything else in my whole life. In my whole life," she repeated. I came over to her chair, bent over her and kissed her hard.

"I'm sorry I'm going! I'm sorry!" I whispered. "But mammy! It's only for a year!"

Why did that make her cling to me so? If only she had told me.

But what young egotists we sons are. It was only a few days later that with my two college chums, from the deck of an ocean liner, I said good-by to the harbor.

"Thank G.o.d I'm through with you at last."

CHAPTER IX

I was in Paris for two years.

In those first weeks of deep delight I called it, "The Beautiful City of Grays." For this town was certainly mellowed down. No jar of an ugly present here, no loud disturbing harbor. But on the other hand, no dullness of a fossilized past. What college had been supposed to do this city did, it took the past and made it alive, richly, thrillingly alive, and wove it in with the present. In the first Sorbonne lectures, even with my meager French, I felt this at once, I wanted to feel it. These profs were brilliant, sparkling, gay. They talked as though Rousseau and Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac and Flaubert, Maupa.s.sant and all the rest were still vital dazzling news to the world, because these men were still molding the world. And from here exploring out over the town, I was smilingly greeted everywhere by such affable gracious old places, that seemed to say:

"We've been written about for a thousand years, and now you also wish to write. How charming of you. Please sit down. Garcon, un bock."

And I sat down. Scenes from the books of my great idols rose around every corner, or if they didn't I made them rise. There was pride in the process. To go to the Place de la Republique, take a seat before some cheap, jolly cafe, squint out at the Place with an artist's eye, reconstruct the Bastille, the Great Revolution, dream back of that to Rousseau and Voltaire and the way they shook the world by their writings--and then wake up and find that I had been at it for three mortal hours! What a chap I was for dreams. I must be quite a genius.

There were hours with Hugo in Notre Dame in one of its most shadowy corners; with Zola on top of a 'bus at night as it lumbered up into the Belleville slums; with Balzac in an old garden I found; with Guy de Maupa.s.sant everywhere, in the gay hum and lights of those endless cafes, from bridges at sunset over the Seine, or far up the long rich dusk of the Champs elysees, lights twinkling out, and _his_ women laughing, chattering by.

Nothing left in this rich old world but the harbor? Nothing beautiful, fine or great for an eager, hungry, happy young man? I could laugh! I knew now that the harbor had lied! For into this radiant city not only the past but the whole present of the earth appeared to me to be pouring in. Painters, sculptors, writers and builders were here from all nations, with even some Hindus and j.a.ps thrown in, young, bringing all their dreams and ambitions, their gaiety, their vigor and zest.

"Young men are lucky. They will see great things."

Voltaire had said that about thirty years before the French Revolution.

It had been true then, true ever since, it was true to-day and here--though _our_ great things I felt very sure were not to come in violence--the world had gone beyond all that. No, these immense surprises that were lurking just before us, these astounding miracles that were to rise before our eyes, would come in the unfolding of the powers in men's minds, working free and ranging wide, with a deep resistless onward rush--in the stirring times of peace!

And we were not only to see great things but we were all to do them!

That was the very keynote of the place. Here a fellow could certainly write if only he had it in him. Impatiently I slaved at my French. Five hours sleep was plenty.