And I walked through it all as though in a dream. On the dock I watched it spellbound--until with handkerchiefs waving and voices calling down good-bys, that throng of happy travelers moved slowly out into midstream.
And I knew that deep below all this, down in the bottom of the ship, the stokers were still singing.
That same day I had an appointment to lunch with the owner of rich hotels whose story I was writing. And the interview dragged. For the America he knew was like what I'd seen on the upper decks of the ship that had sailed a few hours before. And I could not get back my old zest for it all, I kept thinking of what I had seen underneath. The faces of individual stokers, some fiery red, some sodden gray, kept bobbing up in my memory. Angrily trying to keep them down, I went on with my questions. But I caught the hotel millionaire throwing curious looks at me now and then.
I went home worried and depressed and shut myself up in my workroom. This business had to be thought out. It wasn't only stokers; it was something deep, world-wide. I had come up against the slums. What had I to do with it all?
I was in my room all afternoon. I heard "the Indian" at my door, but I sat still and silent, and presently he went away.
Late in the twilight Eleanore came. How beautiful she was to-night. She was wearing a soft gown of silk, blue with something white at her throat and a brooch that I had given her. As she bent over my shoulder I felt her clean, fresh loveliness.
"Don't you want to tell me, love, just what it was he showed you?"
"I'd rather not, my dear one, it was something so terribly ugly," I said.
"I don't like being so far away from you, dear. Please tell me. Suppose you begin at the start."
It took a long time, for she would let me keep nothing back.
"I wouldn't have thought it could hit me so hard," I said at the end.
"I can't be simply angry at Joe," I went on. "He's so intensely and gauntly sincere. It isn't just talk with him, you see, as it is with Sue's parlor radical friends. Think of the life he's been leading, think of it compared to mine. Joe and I were mighty close once"--I broke off and got up restlessly. "I hate to think of him," I said.
"It's funny," said Eleanore quietly. "I knew this was coming sooner or later. Ever since we've been married I've known that Joe Kramer still means more to you than any man you've ever met."