him at all, much less, observed if he was making progress. He thought
the best way to hide his rather uncomfortable pleasure was by burying it
in a litter of accounts where personal data concerning tobacco
dealers--their wives and their habits--mingled fantastically with cold
figures. But of one thing David was already sure. He was groping
confidently in a labyrinth of business detail to whose end he had been
offered no key and no direction: he was assistant to a man that ordered
him and asked him nothing whatsoever. Yet he liked that man immensely.
And he observed to his surprise that he was working harder than he had
ever worked. He was soon to know that also he was learning faster. There
was in the queer antics of Mr. Barlow a design. In a tacit way, he had
been set to a test. In a hidden way he was being watched! Business was a
brighter thing. He came each morning to his work with his nerves
tingling. He was eager to plunge in and pull out more prizes of
knowledge. Since the standard of Mr. Barlow was so dim, David put it
high and worked the harder to attain it: put it at the height of
himself.
Then, the business of his office dawned on him as a mystery no longer.
He seemed to know where he was and whither he was going. The mists were
lifting, there was a pleasant terrain under his feet. Mr. Barlow said no
word. But David felt like swinging his arms.
Evidently even this secret impulse was no secret to Mr. Barlow.
“Mr. Markand.”
David startled. As he got up from his little desk, he felt as if he were
at the beginning of a race he had long prepared for.
Mr. Barlow handed him a batch of papers; “Make a report on this,”--and
resumed his silence.
David went back to his corner, his hands a-tremble as if he held at once
a testimonial of merit and a maze of magic words he must by some
fantastic grace decipher. Would he prove equal to the test? He looked at
what was in his hands. With difficulty, he focussed his eyes and read.
He seemed to know! Very slowly, step by step, he followed. All the
papers he had surveyed, all the correspondence left--by accident, he
wondered?--on Mr. Barlow’s desk swung now into line like an army of
reserves to help him. He met his battle, he was half dazed by his
ability to advance against these intricate problems. He gained
confidence as he moved. After an hour’s work:
“Mr. Barlow,” he said, as if he had said the same thing a score of times
before, “I shall have to make a couple of visits for this report. I must
go to the stores--and----”
He dangled.
“Well, then--why don’t you start?”
In the relief he had of the answer, David knew the depth of hesitance
that there had been in his announcement.
He went and succeeded. He was a little amused to find in himself that he
liked every one he met in his visits, and that despite this fact his
report was unfavorable. Mr. Barlow made no comment at all.
“It must have been an easy one,” said David to himself.
But he realized that he had had a bully time: he was winning his spurs.
Occasionally now, Mr. Barlow broke his silence: in the unobtrusive way
with which he kept it. David was bewildered at his chief’s understanding
of him. He had an uncanny way of choosing subjects for chance
observation that came close home.
“Could you find anything more human,” he once asked, “than this job of
ours? Yet it deals with the cold matter of financial credits. The point
is, Mr. Markand, there is no such animal as the ‘cold matter of
financial credits.’ There’s human warmth, human smartness, human
weakness everywhere. You can just bet there’s never another thing. You
know it in a play of Shakespeare, don’t you? Get to know it in this play
and you’ll have fun.”
Mr. Barlow indeed seemed to have fun.
“Well,” he greeted David, “ready this morning to sail the Spanish Main?
Let’s see,--hm,” he was slicing his mail from one hand to another as one
does with a pack of cards, “let’s see what’s on deck to-day.”
It was hard to guess how old was Mr. Barlow. His short-cropped hair was
uniformly graying: it had been black, it was now neither black nor gray.
He was clean-shaven. David noticed two wide, deep folds pleating the
cheeks of his generous long face. But the air of Mr. Barlow was young.
David did observe a certain resoluteness in his good humor--a
consistency perhaps too nurtured. At times, when his eyes wandered from
his work and he sat there rigid, slowly beating his hand from the
supported wrist upon the table as if to some inner rhythm, David saw a
gathering sadness in his eyes. Before it could spread to the rest of his
face Mr. Barlow routed it. He got up, he walked up and down, his little
body had the lithe quickness of morning. He shrugged his sharp shoulders
quite as he did when he smiled. The sadness was gone....
* * * * *
It could not be long before this new bloom of contentment reached where
Tom and David stood looking at each other.
It was come and working over him as does all bloom: subtly, hidden away
in the slow hours, swift alone in the achievement and perhaps in the
passing--a thrust here of green, a burst there of bud, the alternate
warm cradling of sun and shadow....
He was alone in his room. By breaking early from his work he overtook
the long rays of the sun of afternoon pointing across his window into
the East where the night rose. He squatted on the floor with crossed
legs, arms folded. He stayed unmoved, and let his thoughts swirl about
his gladness like birds circling a light-house.
Swift shadows were his thoughts against the tower of his vision. David
saw he was alive, and felt it good. Surely life was a miracle none could
explain. Surely to approach the miracle was to confess it--bask in the
glow of knowing life unknowable. He had a vision of the world of men and
children and mothers--endless millions massing down the ages. All of
them had eyes upturned, had eyes and lips full of prayer. All of them
were on their knees. All the men and mothers and children of all ages
were praying before the miracle of life! He thought of Science--he
thought of Darwin, of the makers of systems and machines, of the weavers
of dogmas and rules. He knew that all these were parts of the miracle
and somehow good. But what did they know and what did their saying
amount to? Could one of them explain what and why _Life was?_ the
ecstasy of this teeming, whirling earth flung like a fleck of dust upon
the whirlwind of countless worlds that, in their turn, lifted a shred of
flimsy scarf on the tempest of unending Space? They could not explain.
Their absorption in some speck of knowledge ended alone in this: that
they forgot they could not explain ... so lost the one approach they
might have had to the ecstasy of life. Their little speck of knowledge
blotted their vision!
David sat thrilling with the thought of this adventure--this greatest of
surprises:--he was alive! He seemed large in his vision, strong. He
realized that Tom did not have this vision. He felt himself larger and
stronger than Tom. He felt tender toward him for this. He forgave him
everything, since everything was trivial to this: that he was stronger
than Tom and loved him, and must therefore care for him. Out of the dim
vision of all life, there crystalized for David a vision clear and
single of his relationship with Tom. But in its superb folly, never
could it have been engendered save for the truth of David’s wanderings
among the stars....
So he was really stronger than his friend? And he had been unjust with
misunderstanding? There were discrepancies of words and action, dubious
things in Tom? Then let him out of his overflowing strength observe
them.
Tom said to him: “You are my one real friend. You must believe that.”
And: “Whatever I may say or do with others to deflect me, to you I am
the truth.”
Tom said these things often, because often puzzlement was in David and
doubt near. Tom said to him: “Your standard of me, David, is a great
injustice. Its height is unfair. I am not strong, David, I am weak. I
admit all the hateful things you see in me when we go out together. A
sort of drunkenness quivers through me. I have to say clever things, I
have to please, I have to _control_. Damn it, man! you don’t despise it
half so well as I. But, Davie, I am not like that, am I, when we are
alone? Why won’t you judge me by my real self? Tell me, do you judge
anything else when it is hidden and sick?”
Tom said to him: “You didn’t like the way I was to-day with Durthal? Oh,
my dear fellow, it was plain enough. It was written all over you. My
only wonder was what poor old Lars was thinking. What a dear, black
grouch you can be, Davie.... Well, why should I not be cordial to Lars?
Why should I not pay as much attention to him as I wish? And more than I
do to my best friend--yes, my best friend whom I ignored? I know that,
Davie. In company I do not need to pay attention to you. You are not
part of company. If I ignored you--logical, eh? I have _you_ alone. And
if, in yourself, you do not know the difference in the way I feel toward
yourself and toward silly, empty-headed Durthal, do not expect me to
make it clear with a room full of fellows. Because I won’t!”
“Do you think Durthal empty-headed?”
“You know he has just enough stupidity to make an intelligent professor
of Swedish drill.”
“And Darby Lunn?”
“Lunn has talent, David. Whether he will ever amount to a thing as a
painter is another thing. I doubt it. He is a bit mad, you know.
Nurtures all the nonsense of his will with a great pride instead of
trampling it under, as a true artist should. What I am trying to help
him toward is knowledge of the folly of extravagance and wildness in so
sober a calling as Art.”
“But you are wild with him, Tom. You talk nonsense and you act nonsense
as I have never seen you do with any one else!”
“If I didn’t meet him on his own ground, what chance would I have of
drawing him off it?... Really, Davie, you are a joke.”
“Are you very fond of him also?”
“Not also--and not either. I am interested in Darby’s hopeless talent:
and in Durthal’s efficient helplessness.”
“They both believe, I am sure, that you’re devoted to them.”
“Well: they are devoted to me. Why should I not let them think what
gives them pleasure? Do I harm them--does what I let them think harm
you?" ... David often wondered if each believed himself Tom’s “only
friend.”
But now he knew these doubts unworthy. He had a strength with which to
exorcize them. He knew that _he_ was the real friend. He knew that Tom
was not altogether conscious of his motives with such “friends” as Lunn
and Durthal. The truth was, he loved power: loved the nearness of those
over whose minds he was ascendant. Unconsciously, he fed to each a
subjecting mental and emotional food. This was but one of the details of
Tom’s curious character; David now understood.
The truth was, indeed, that Tom could be insincere: deeply so, never.
His insincerity was superficial. It could come into play the world over:
it went like a mist before the sun of their friendship. David must learn
a difficult thing: to believe his friend when he spoke truth, to be
unshaken when he scattered counterfeits. Was not the reason plain
enough? Tom was sensitive beyond measure. As no one else he felt the
scorn of life, the scorn of human imperfection. Among the false works of
man he had to move about, to hunt and earn his living. Tom’s passionate
disgust for the Law! How his too fine sensibilities were agonized by the
Law’s lying ugliness: so that his native pleasure in its practice went
and he had no eyes for the Law’s better side. Or, if he did have
pleasure in the game--and he must while he played it--how quick it died
away before the soreness of his nerves! Tom could not admit of the need
of life’s imperfections: not face the imperfections in himself. Yes:
that was it. When these imperfections called for their hour of air, they
simply cast the real Tom out where he would not interfere. That was why
the love of power and applause, when it did come to Tom, came like
intoxication, overwhelmed him so that David looked in vain for his
scornful and uncompromising friend. Now David would look in vain no
longer. In the very perfection of Tom’s worldliness, he saw the measure
of his contempt. As if Tom said: Here, my fools, you want me to dazzle
you and play you? You shall have your fill. You have no interest in my
real thoughts, my real self? You shall have no peep at them. The more,
now, Tow hid himself, the more David found him.
All this David discovered for himself. All this, in many conversations,
hinted or thrust sharply in, Tom had been preparing him to think.
Tom--and an April sun upon the seed of himself....
David glowed.... What marvel what difference there could be in the same
things! His cable-car flung grating shrieking on the corner: an
adventurous jest which once was an ugly jolt against the tempo of his
way.
The City!--the miraculous City! No trees, no fresh sod greening: an
ailanthus bursting here and there through cracks--gray cold--in the
pavements. But men and women in the streets! Now he saw what teeming
creatures these were, the streets and their women.
Streets and women big with laughter and children. Teeming streets,
teeming women.
It was hard to recall how dead he had been that winter. It was hard to
recall the streets. Gray mournful fissures they were, cracks by the cold
upon the flint of a barren star: ruts in the crust of a dead world. Upon
them the chill refuse of chaos was cast down. Soiled snow, soiled
creatures. They crawled from their crannies and over-ran them. They bore
in their eyes the Sign of exile in chaos.
Now different streets--budding teeming streets: different himself,
glowing through packed streets.
Women sat in shawls on the housesteps: doors opened into reeking, into
pregnant darkness: children in rags among filth of gutters: horses
rattling their carts through laughter of children. Mothers had gray long
breasts--they held them to sweet red lips. Mothers had shrill
words--they spoke love. High noon came on the precocious sun of Spring
and clarified the crevices of filth between the Belgian blocks. Odors
rose to the sun not sweet like the smells of earlier Springs. And yet
no Spring was fertile like this Spring. No stir of field with young
grass, with young flowers, with margin of maples ruddy in hard buds,
keen in the glint of birds.... David lived. David for a moment saw with
his eyes how his eye-lids were shut down against them. David saw....
* * * * *
Blackness ... ultimate texture of all colors ... light. A world of
infinite color, infinite flesh: himself within the world, himself
carried within it through it. Himself of the breakless tissue of the
world. Flesh of sweet smells, sweet odors, sweet fluids. Flesh
altogether and altogether about him. He altogether touching all
Flesh--and All. David knew through his shut eyes, walking the world, how
he was carried within a world of ceaseless substance: how he was
substance within it: how his moving and knowing through Flesh was
Spirit.... He walked--he worked--he ate. He had a woman’s body, he
earned the bread of a man, he held the love of a friend. Flesh, all. And
his moving through Flesh, his moving through infinite immersion through
the Night, through the World of Flesh--Spirit and Dawn.... His eyes were
shut. But his mouth was open! David saw with his mouth. And though he
knew not he had seen, there was within him, there would be now
forevermore within him, life of a vision.
The world was a Dark Mother. The Night of the miracle of worlds was
fleshed and was a Mother. She moved in infinite directions an infinite
path. She was moveless. And he within her, moving with the world toward
the movelessness of birth.
David was unborn. But his mouth sucked vision. Sucking the Night sucked
vision. He slept again. Slept long.... Slept years.... But he lived.
* * * * *
David and Tom came back from dinner: they sat together for a last smoke
in their room: the world they willed came to be. David lit his pipe: it
was the one smoke that gave him comfort. Tom sat gloomy, nervous,
flicking his cigarette until he had destroyed it, lighting another. He
tore open his collar as if he needed air. He whistled the last half of a
tune, stopped, met David’s eyes and broke from the strain of their
mutual discovery by jumping up and gazing into the night. David did not
budge. The room was filled with a strange restraint. Somewhere a
struggle was, in which his mind grappled against a sinuous opponent. Why
did he have to struggle even with his friend for the friend he wanted?
He was sick of struggle. Was not all struggle a lie? Life was work
enough. There was no repose even in strength. There was no repose even
in pleasure. David thought of Constance. Yes: even _there_ was work. Was
respite in weakness? David doubted, seeing Tom, thinking of the pelt of
his wit, the curves of his mind striving for attention. In death?...
Tom was back of his chair, standing above him. He put his hands about
David’s neck, drew them close.
“What are you thinking?”
David was silent. Tom’s hands drew closer.
“I could choke you,” he said. “----if it weren’t that the cigarette
smoke gets in my eyes.”
They laughed together.
David was sure he understood. Tom would change. Tom must change! When
Tom changed it would have been by David’s help. Meantime, he must abide
by him, not tire, and watch. For David could not easily endure the ways
of his friend. He might well know what they meant: he need not therefore
deny his unhappiness before them....
Yet unhappiness must be too heavy a word. Discomfort rather. The base of
a friendship such as this between them must be happiness. For the base
was solid!
David knew little how he built on this. Without faith in Tom’s absolute
fidelity to him Tom’s infidelities to himself and to the world must have
been insufferable. But with this faith, all the rest of Tom--his
excuses, his associates, his excesses--were urgent reasons why David
could not turn from him, must come closer. Tom said: “You are my best
friend. With you I am the truth.” This was the Law whereby David took
him. All else Tom said, Tom did, was in its very contrast emphasis of
the truth. All else could by it be redeemed and solved. Let the Law
however not be shaken!
What if the Law was an invested fort he had at times to defend against
misgivings? against Tom’s own behavior? Was he not full of an unuttered
life that invested contradictions?
David’s contentment was unshakeable. It took to itself all hesitant
things, made them over. He wanted to feel that with him as with Tom, the
truth lay clearest in their lives together. How was he so different? In
business? with Constance? He also had his sophistries and abdications.
He took pride now in this kinship. It gave an added spell to the haven
of their friendship where they withdrew from a falsetto world to the
lone reach of the truth.
Soon David forgot the hushings altogether that were needed to create
this haven. Subsided were his doubts with Tom, his blanchings when they
drew close, the lack of visible background to their friendship. It was
strange: their friendship was deep yet what vistas had it leading back
to a common source, what forward avenues of life? It was full of fire,
this friendship, yet where was its warmth? It was needful to him, yet
what rest had he of it?
David who had sucked vision could forget....
XI
Constance Bardale had left early that Spring for Europe. David could not
say that he really missed her. He had great pleasure in looking back
upon the reality of them together: a certain satisfaction in the
prospect of her return in the Fall. He was not prompted to wish to
hasten that return. He did not know if this was missing her.
He was like the warming weather. He had his days of retrogression, even
of chill, when his mood was overcast and moist. But there was ever the
underlying progress into Summer. All of him seemed opening. All of him
was turned toward some generous source of energy within that made him
fresh and green. He was resilient with growth. The squandaries of the
world had no effect on this deep calm of his state. He moved in rhythm
and with no jarring upward. Even so does a flower, despite the crust and
the stone it must push through. The observer might have deemed him
motionless: a poor observer who could have said the same thing of the
flower.
He had said good-by to Constance naturally enough. That was the most
delightful thing about her. She compelled candor.
She moved among hat-boxes and deranged chairs draped with flowing
garments.
“David, I hope you won’t be bored without me. Come. Good-by. You had
better run along. You’ll only be in the way when aunt arrives.” She
traveled with her aunt. “If you feel like it, write me.”
She kissed him swiftly on his lips--and even then, though in her one
hand was a pair of shoes, in the other a pile of lingerie, and though
her eyes were upon the door expecting her aunt to open, still there was
passion in that moment. She was a wonderful woman: a true American in
specialization. She had managed to pack her trunk and pack away her
lover without placing passion in the bag or meticulousness on her lips.
David went satisfied, without a hint of her ingenuity in bringing this
about.
And now his emotions were relieved of a fixed objective goal. They could
waft outward, vaguely. David found delight in their vagueness.
It was the same, though less pointedly, with other dwellers in his life.
Cornelia was always and largely removed. Unconsciously, David kept her
and wanted her so. He saw her not more than once in a fortnight. He did
not really see her then. He talked to her; looked at her; listened to
the sounds of her voice which easily resolved into the accepted
syllables of words. But he was deeply unaware of her. And sadly. Since
she bled for this and was yet unwilling to shock her boy into a
knowledge of his selfishness.
She knew she might have. Had she said: “David, you are far away. What is
between us? David, look really into my words, look really into me. Don’t
you see how I suffer when you remain outside?” David would have come to
her indeed, like the half-tamed, clumsy cub he was, into her arms and
begged for forgiveness. But that could not be. So Cornelia, also, was
pleasantly removed for David. And this was good, since then he could
read into the picture those details he liked: delete the others.
It was the same with Business. It was always so with Business when one
so wanted it. David discovered that Business was more like a woman than
he had discovered women: in its reticence, in its immediate response to
his desire, either to be all taken up and quick with it, or to be left
spiritually alone. He found as his moods veered and alternated, so
followed what he could give to his affairs downtown. If he was full of
energy to spill and full of fancies to weave, Business was a romantic
game that grappled him and spent him. Mr. Barlow had taught him that.
But if he was misty and gray and low, Business became a habit exercise
that barely held his mind, unobtrusive and gray like his own forces. And
without disaster. He could plunge into it, work upon it with every
muscle of his body. Or he could hold aloof and run it with two
disdainful fingers. He could thrust eyes upon it close, and have joy of
its jungle of tropic passions, or poise it philosophically from afar, as
a flat patch in his life where he grew his bread-and-butter. Now he was
holding it endearingly aloof. It was an accommodating thing that used up
just enough of his time and energy to leave him peaceful and ruminant at
night.
Even Tom was away. He was gone West on business. David did not write. He
made no effort to touch the actual departed friend. He dwelt with his
own vision of Tom, unhampered now in his deep will to find it altogether
perfect. For the nonce, this wearing struggle to hold it perfect was
over. This Tom in his mind had no unfitting angles. Nor the Tom
abstractly speaking to him from afar.
That morning, he had received a letter. It read:
_Greetings, dear friend_: