"Nothing without fighting." That had been his motto. And he had fought and he had lost. And so in this new harbor of big companies my father was now closing out. Too late for any business here, too late for life up there in his home. He had kept my mother waiting too long, he was ready at last but she was dead. Too late. He had been born too late, had dreamed his dream of sails too late, and now he was too late in dying. There was nothing left to live for. How much better for him to be dead.
I have tried to tell his story as my father felt it, at the times when it took him out of himself and made him forget himself and me. But there were other times when he remembered himself and me, and those were the times that hurt the most. For in that new humility in his eyes and in his voice I could feel him then preparing us both--me to see why it was that he could not do for me what _she_ had wished; himself to hold on grimly, to find a new job for his old age, to keep from becoming a burden--on me.
At last we were coming to the end--to that last figure in dollars and cents. I caught his suspense and we talked little now. I knew the price at which he was selling, and toward that figure I watched the debts creep slowly up. I saw them creep over, and knew that we had not a dollar left to live on. And still the debts kept mounting. How small they were, these last ones, a coil of rope, two kegs of paint--the irony of it compared to the bigness of his life. Still these little figures climbed. At last he handed me his balance. He was in debt four thousand, one hundred and forty-six dollars and seventeen cents.
I sat there dully for some time. Then I remember there came a harsh scream from a freight engine close outside. And I looked out of the window.
The harbor of big companies, uglier than I had ever seen it, no longer dotted with white sails, but clouded with the smoke and soot of an age of steam, and iron, lay sprawled out there like a thing alive. Always changing, always growing, it had crushed the life out of my father and mother, and now it was ready for Sue and me.
Good-by to the Beautiful City of Grays. A clock in an outer room struck five. In Paris it was ten o'clock, and those friends of mine from all countries were crowding into "The Dirty Spoon." I could see them sauntering one by one on that summer's night down the gay old Boulevard Saint Michel and dropping into their seats at the table in the corner.