My work, as my father saw it now, was to write "strong, practical
articles" presenting the respective merits of free ships, ship subsidies
and discriminating tariffs to build up our mercantile marine.
But I was growing tired these days of my father's idea, his miracle and
his endless talk of the past. On walks along the waterfront he would
treat it all like a graveyard. But while he pointed out the tombs I felt
the swift approach of Spring. It was March, and in a crude way of its
own the harbor was expressing the season--in warm, salty breezes, the
odor of fish and the smell of tar on the bottoms of boats being
overhauled for the Summer. Our Italian dockers sang at their work, and
one day the dock was a bright-hued mass of strawberries and early Spring
flowers landed by a boat from the South. Everywhere things seemed
starting--starting like myself.
I had given up my warehouse job, and free at last from that tedious desk
to which I once thought I was tied for years, with two sketches sold and
ideas for others, so many others, rising daily in my mind, I went about
watching the life of the port. Poor Dad. He was old. Could I help being
young?
Without exactly meaning to, I drew away from my father to Sue. We felt
ourselves vividly young in that house. We quarreled intensely over her
friends and were pleased with ourselves in the process. We had long
talks about ourselves. Sue let me talk to her by the hour about my work
and my ideas, while she sat and thought about her own.
"If you're planning to write up the harbor," she said sleepily late one
night, "you ought to cruise around a bit in Eleanore Dillon's motor
boat."
I looked at her in astonishment.
"Does that girl run a motor boat?"
"Her father's." Sue yawned and gave me a curious smile. "I'll see if I
can't arrange it," she said. And about a week later she told me,
"Eleanore's coming to take us out to-night."
Some of Sue's friends came to supper that evening and later we all went
down to the dock. There was no moon but the stars were out and the night
was still, the slip was dark and empty. Suddenly with a rush and a swirl
a motor boat rounded the end of the pier, turned sharply in and came
shooting toward us. A boiling of water, she seemed to rear back, then
drifted unconcernedly in to the bottom of the ladder.
In the small circle of light down there I saw Eleanore Dillon smiling
up. She sat at her wheel, a trim figure in white--a white Jersey,
something red at her throat and a soft white hat crushed a bit to one
side. Beneath it the breeze played tricks with her hair.
We scrambled down into the cock-pit. It was a deep, cozy little place,
with the wide open doors of a cabin in front, in which I caught a
glimpse of two bunks, a table, a tiny electric cooking stove and a
shaded reading light over the one small easy chair. There were impudent
curtains of blue at the port holes. There was a shelf of books and
another of blue and white cups and saucers and dishes. And what was
that? A monkey crouching under the table, paws clutching the two
enormous brass buttons on the gay blue jacket he wore, eyes watching us
angrily as he chattered.
"Buttons," commanded his mistress, "come out here this minute and stop
your noise. There's nothing for you to be peevish about, the water's
like glass. When it's rough," she explained, "he gets fearfully seasick.
Come here now, pass the cigarettes." And this her Buttons proceeded to
do--very grumpily.
Then as a small, quiet hand pulled a lever, I felt a leap of power
beneath me, the boat careened as she turned, then righted, there was a
second pull on the lever, another surging leap of speed, and as we
rushed out on the river now up rose her bow higher and higher, a huge
white wave on either side. The spray dashed in our faces. Everyone began
talking excitedly. Only the Buttons kept his monkey eyes fixed anxiously
on his captain's face while he clasped the pit of his stomach.
"Oh, Buttons, don't be such a coward," she said. "I tell you it's smooth
and you won't be sick! Go out there and stop being silly!"
Slowly and with elaborate caution the monkey crept forward over the
cabin. For a moment up at the bow he paused, a ridiculous little
dark-jacketed figure between the two white crests of our waves. Then
with a spring he was up to his place on the top of the light, and there
with gay gesticulations he greeted every vessel we passed.
I had taken a seat by Eleanore's side. She was driving her boat with
eyes straight ahead. Now and then she would close them, draw in a deep
breath of the rough salt air, and smile contentedly to herself. After a
time I heard her voice, low and intimate as before:
"Finished up that hideous harbor of yours?"
"No," I answered hungrily, "I think I've just begun." I caught a gleam
in her eyes.
"You'll be out of your rut in a moment," she said.
"What do you mean, my rut?" I demanded.
"The East River, Stupid--wait and see."
From the little East River corner I'd lived in, we sped far out on the
Upper Bay, a rushing black speck on a dim expanse, with dark, empty
fields of water around us, long, luminous paths stretching off to the
shores, where the lights twinkled low for miles and miles and there were
sudden bursts of flame from distant blast furnace fires.
"Tell me what you've been writing about this hideous place," she said.
"Who said it was hideous at night? Of course if you wrap it all up in
the dark, so that you can see none of its sea hogs----"
"What's a sea hog?"
"A sea hog is a wallowing boat with a long, black, heavy snout." And
mustering all that was left of my hatred I plunged into my picture. "The
whole place is like that," I ended. "Full of smoke and dirt and
disorder, everything rushing and jamming together. That's how it looks
to me in the daytime!"
"Are you sure it does--still?"
"I am," I answered firmly. "And I'm going to write it just as it looks."
"Then look back of you," she suggested.
Behind us, at the tip of Manhattan, the tall buildings had all melted
together into one tremendous mass, with only a pin point of light here
and there, a place of shadowy turrets and walls, like some mediaeval
fortress. Out of it, in contrast to its dimness, rose a garish tower of
lights that seemed to be keeping a vigilant watch over all the dark
waters, the ships and the docks. The harbor of big companies.
"My father works up in that tower," she said. "He can see the whole
harbor spread out below. But he keeps coming down to see it all close,
and I've steered him up close to everything in it. You've no idea how
much there is." She threw me a glance of pitying scorn. "There are over
seven hundred miles of waterfront in this small port, and I'm not going
to have you trudging around and getting lost and tired and cross and
working off your grudge in your writing. You come with me some afternoon
and I'll do what I can to open your eyes."
"Please do it," I said quickly.
* * * * *
She took me down, to the sea gate at the end of a warm, still, foggy
day. There in the deepening twilight we drifted without a sign of a
world around us--till in from the ocean there came a deep billow, then
another and another, and as our small craft darted off to one side a
gigantic gray shadow loomed through the fog with four black towers of
smoke overhead, lights gleaming from a thousand eyes.
"Another sea hog," murmured a voice.
"I said in the daytime," I replied.
We went out on another afternoon to watch the fisherman fleets at their
work or scudding before a strong wind home with a great, round, radiant
sun behind. She showed me fishers in the air, lonely fish hawks one by
one flying in the late afternoon back to their nests on the Atlantic
Highlands. And far out on the Lower Bay she knew where to stir up whole
armies of gulls, till there seemed to be thousands wheeling in air with
the bright sunshine on all the wings. The sunshine, too, with the help
of the breeze, stole glinting deep into her hair. She watched me out of
half-closed eyes.
"Is this daylight enough?" she demanded.
"This is simply absurd," I answered. "You know very well that this
harbor is ugly in places----"
"Only in places. That's better," she said.
"In a great _many_ places," I rejoined. "Please take me to Bayonne some
day--at two p. m.," I added.
It seemed a good, safe, unmysterious hour, and as we neared the place
next day my hopes mounted high, for there was a leaden sky overhead and
loathsome blotches and streaks of oil on the gray water around us--while
ahead on the Jersey shore, from two chimneys that rose halfway to the
clouds, poured two foul, sluggish columns of smoke.
"Still New York harbor, I believe?" I inquired maliciously. But Eleanore
was smiling. "What's the joke?" I demanded.
"The southwest wind," she softly replied. I could feel it coming as she
spoke. As I watched I saw it take that sky and tear jagged rifts in it
for the sun, and then as those two columns of smoke began twisting and
writhing like monster snakes they took on purple and greenish hues and
threw ghostly reflections of themselves down on the oily water around
us, filled with blue and gold shimmerings now.
"What a strange, wonderful purple," murmured a quiet voice by my side.
Stubbornly I resisted conversion. I wanted more afternoons in that boat.
"Now it's blowing that oily odor our way," I declared in sudden
annoyance. "I no sooner get to enjoying myself when along comes one of
the smells of this place. And where's the beauty in _them_? Can you show
me? Here's a place that should be a great storehouse of pure fresh air
for the city to breathe, and----"
"Oh, hush up!" said Eleanore.
But I doggedly found other blemishes here--swamps, railroad yards and
sooty tracks that filled the waterfront for miles where there should
have been parks and boulevards. At the same time I assumed the tone of
one who tries to be fair and patient. Whenever she showed me some new
beauty in water or sky I took great pains to look at it well. When an
angry little squall of wind came ruffling over the sunny waves in
sweeping bands of deep, soft blues, I gazed and gazed at its wonder as
though I could never have enough. And so gazing I spied floating there a
sodden old mattress, a fleet of tin cans. And I said that it seemed an
unhealthy thing to dump all our refuse so close to the city.
"They don't!" she retorted indignantly. "They take it out miles beyond
the Hook!"
In short, I considered myself mighty clever. Day by day I prolonged my
conversion, holding obstinately back--while Eleanore revealed to me the
miracles worked by the sunset here, and by the clouds, the winds, the
tides, the very smoke and the ships themselves, all playing weird
tricks on each other. Slowly the crude glory of it stole upon me
unawares--until to my own intense surprise the harbor now became for me
a breathing, heaving, gleaming thing filled deep with the rush and the
vigor of life. A thing no longer sinister, crushing down on a man's old
age--but strangely deeply stirring.
"Look out, my friend," I warned myself. "This is no harbor you're
falling in love with."