Part 47 (1/2)

”Leave me alone, can't you, go away!” we heard between her sobs. ”It's all right--I'm ready--I'll come to you, Joe--but not now--not just now!

Go away, both of you--leave me alone!”

Joe left the house. Soon after that Eleanore arrived and I told her what had happened. She went in to Sue, I left them together and went up to my father's room. He lay on the bed breathing quickly.

”You did splendidly, son,” he said. ”You slashed into her hard. It hurt me to listen--but it's all right. Let her suffer--she had to. It hit her, I tell you--she'll break down! If we can only keep her here! Get Eleanore!”

He stopped with a jerk, his hand went to his heart, and he panted and scowled with pain.

”I sent for her,” I told him. ”She's come and she's in Sue's room now.

Let's leave them alone. It's going to be all right, Dad.”

I sent for a doctor who was an old friend of my father's. He came and spent a long time in the room, and I could hear them talking. At last he came out.

”It won't do,” he said. ”We can't have any more of this. We must keep your sister out of his sight. She can't stay alone with him in this house, and she can't go now to your anarchist friend. If she does it may be the end of your father. Suppose you persuade her to come to you.”

But here Eleanore joined us.

”I have a better plan,” she said. ”I've been talking to Sue and she has agreed. She's to stay--and we'll move over here and try to keep Sue and her father apart.”

”What about Joe?” I asked her.

”Sue has promised me not to see Joe until the strike is over. It will only be a matter of weeks--perhaps even days--it may break out to-morrow. It's not much of a time for Joe to get married--besides, it's the least she can do for her father--to wait that long. And she has agreed. So that much is settled.”

She went home to pack up a few things for the night. When she came back it was evening. She spent some time with Sue in her room, while I stayed in with father. I gave him a powder the doctor had left and he was soon sleeping heavily.

At last in my old bedroom Eleanore and I were alone. It was a long time before we could sleep.

”Funny,” said Eleanore presently, ”how thoroughly selfish people can be.

Here's Sue and your father going through a perfectly ghastly crisis. But I haven't been thinking of them--not at all. I've been thinking of us--of you, I mean--of what this strike will do to you. You're getting so terribly tense these days.”

I reached over and took her hand:

”You don't want me to run away from it now?”

”No,” she said quickly. ”I don't want that. I've told you that I'm not afraid----”

”Then we'll have to wait and see, won't we, dear? We can't help ourselves now. I've got to keep on writing, you know--we depend on that for our living. And I can't write what I did before--I don't seem to have it in me. So I'm going into this strike as hard as I can--I'm going to watch it as hard as I can and think it out as clearly. I know I'll never be like Joe--but I do feel now I'm going to change. I've got to--after what I've been shown. The harbor is so different now. Don't you understand?”

I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine.

”Yes, dear,” she said, ”I understand----”

CHAPTER XII

The events of that day dropped out of my mind in the turbulent weeks that followed. For day by day I felt myself sink deeper and deeper into the crowd, into surging mult.i.tudes of men--till something that I found down there lifted me up and swept me on--into a strange new harbor.

Of the strike I can give only one man's view, what I could see with my one pair of eyes in that swiftly spreading confusion that soon embraced the whole port of New York and other ports both here and abroad. War correspondents, I suppose, must feel the same chaos around them, but in my case it rose from within me as well. I was like a war correspondent who is trying to make up his mind about war. What was good in this labor rebellion? What was bad? Where was it taking me?