Although at such lucid moments I would sometimes go a-soaring up into
the most dazzling dreams, more often I would plunge in gloom. For
Eleanore's dreams and all her thoughts seemed centered on her father.
From each corner of that watery world, no matter how far we wandered,
the high tower from which he looked down on it all would suddenly loom
above the horizon. Over the dreariest marshes it peeped and into all our
talk he came. A marsh was a place that he was to transform, oily odors
were things he would sweep away. For every abuse that I could discover
her father was working out some cure. With a whole corps of engineers
drafting his dreams into practicable plans, there was no end to the
things he could do.
"Here is a girl," I told myself, "so selfishly wrapped up in her father
she hasn't a thought for anyone else. She's using me to boom his work,
as she has doubtless used writers before me and will use dozens more
when I'm gone. No doubt she would like to have _dozens of me_ sitting
right here beside her now! It's not at all a romantic thought, but think
how she could use me then!" And I would glower at her.
But it is a lonely desolate job to sit and glower at a girl who appears
so placidly unaware of the fact that you are glowering. And slowly
emerging from my gloom I would wonder about this love that was in her.
At times when she talked she made me feel small. My own love for my
mother, how utterly selfish it had been. Here was a passion so deep and
real it made her almost forget I was there, asking questions, hungrily
watching her, trying to learn about her life.
"While I was in school," she said, in that low deliberate voice of hers,
"my father and I went abroad every summer. We tramped in the Alps for
weeks at a time, keeping way off the beaten paths to watch the work of
the Swiss engineers. One of them was a woman. We saw the bridge she'd
built over a gorge, and I became deeply excited. Until then I had never
had any idea that I could go into my father's work. But now I wondered
if I could. That winter in school I really worked. I was dreadfully dull
at mathematics, but I wouldn't see it. I made up my mind to go to
Cornell for the course on engineering. I worked like a slave for two
years to get ready and just succeeded in getting in.
"Then toward the middle of Freshman year I realized that I was becoming
a quite absurdly solemn young grind. There were over a hundred girls in
college but I had made barely any friends. And so I firmly resolved to
be gay. I made a regular business of it and worked my way into clubs and
dances, hunting for the girls I liked and scheming to make them like me
too. By May I was way behind in my work. I tried to make up, I began
cramming every night until one or two in the morning. And I passed my
examinations--but that summer I broke down. My father had to drop his
work and take me abroad for an operation, and by the time we got back he
had lost nearly six months of his time. I decided that as an engineer I
was a dismal failure. I'd much better give my father a chance.
"So when he took up this work in New York I spent all my time on our new
apartment. I loved fussing with it, I shopped like a bee, and this kept
me busy all Autumn. Besides I was going about with Sue. She had managed
me long ago at school and I was glad to let her now, for I was hunting
for new ideas. But Sue put me on so many committees that by Spring my
nerves were in shreds, and again for weeks I was flat on my back.
"One evening then--when my father came home and sat down by my
bedside--it came over me all of a sudden--the wonderful quiet strength
in his hand, in the look of his eyes.
"'Where have you been?' I asked him.
"'Down on the harbor,' he told me. Since eight in the morning he'd been
in a launch exploring it all. I shut my eyes--my wretched eyelids
quivering--and I made him describe the whole day's trip while I tried to
see it all in my mind. Soon I was feeling deliciously quiet. 'I'm going
down there too,' I thought.
"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 ashore 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 bumps 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 shipping 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 shipping 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 shell, 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."