kindest thing to do. But David was not egoist enough to know it. He came
less often, and left her alone. He tried to talk to her. He realized how
little talk there had been in the happy visits: how fully those evenings
of delight had been evenings of kisses. The talk wearied him: the “moral
tone” was pervasive and obtrusive.
“Give! Give yourself!” her blood cried against her temples.
Had she given, she might have won at least a part of him. David was in
no state to resist self-bestowal. Unknown to himself, he was wandering
through life, seeking the life that would exchange with his. Nowhere had
he found it; without vision of that he would be ever tantalizingly
remote from capture.
He was swollen in her senses, now that he held himself stiffly away in
his chair and listened to her words. Her power to take-in flooded her
body and mellowed it, left dim her eyes whereby to see him. She saw his
sweet heaviness beneath the drab of his suit. She had a sense of her
fingers running through his hair, of being drunk with him. And it was
possible! The room was quiet and suppliant. The lamp was dim for such
secrecies. She fought against herself, and passion ran through her,
melting her, drenching her, like tears.
But she was a lady. She had not reached thirty years to be seduced by a
boy who would not marry....
His visits filtered away: ceased. Again he invited her to an occasional
lunch. In his heart, from it all, there remained chiefly self-rebuke. He
had not been a gentleman. He had kissed her with casual flippancy: she
had not understood. Why, he wondered, was he so superficial in his way
with women? Why was their hold on him so slight? This was not love. Tom
must be right, and love did not exist. Friendship was the deeper,
lovelier passion.... At times, he recalled the little girl in the car or
his mother....
* * * * *
An added year upon the emptiness of David.
He had a dream. He was in a pit--or was it a well? He groped round and
round its circular bottom. He looked up. Far beyond his eyes was a
dimness he knew was Light. It hurt him to look up. It made him dizzy. It
made him tremble. He groped round and round.... Then, he stopped. Quite
still. The bottom of the pit swung up and struck against his eyes. Tom
lashed him from behind with a whip. “Go ahead!” Tom muttered. David
faced about. The well began to swing maddingly around with shattering
strokes like a vast piston. The bottom where he groped swerved up, went
up, high, high. He had the sense of a terrific altitude. The well was
upside down. He was tumbling, rushing down the well. Beneath him,
infinitely far, he saw the dimness he knew was Light....
David awoke: horror crept over all his flesh. He clutched his bed. He
lay there stabbed by every mutter of the night.
It was long before his mind that was cowering far in a corner of the
room came back to him, sat with him, took away his fears: before the
stirrings of the dark silence ceased to be a shatter and shriek in his
nerves.
It was long before he forgot the dream. He made no effort to remember
it. A dream was a bit of nonsense. Nonsense also that its mere coming to
his mind brought back the streaking of darkness into veins of horror....
It was not long before he put to himself for the first time a question:
What was killing the friendship between Tom and himself? For an
uncharted time, he had been in fever, in trance; he had not looked at
all. Now, seeing with sudden eyes, he saw their friendship and how it
had changed, and how a blight was on it.
Always there had been flurries of irritation; swift misgivings; shadows.
How much else there had been! Warm communion: the sweet living in Tom’s
strength and in the knowledge of his caring: the sheer delight of
watching his clear mind cut through the mists of life, like a bird soar
and sing over his head. Where now these delights?... It came to David
how, for a long time already, they had not been....
Tom came home without taking his dinner. He was not hungry: also he knew
that David would be out. He sat motionless in his favorite straight-back
chair and took the storm of his senses with heroic grimness.
In such an hour, David’s absence moved him obliquely. He was glad of his
solitude in their room: fearful of the tread in the hall that must break
it. And yet, he was listening, yearning,--suddenly possessed of the
sense of something missing, and that thing vital, and that thing David.
He caught himself back, in an eternal question: “If he were here, what
would you say to each other?”
This raging schism there was in all his thoughts: he yearned to hold
David, and he yearned to be rid of him. Two monsters, these desires,
feeding upon each other, feeding upon him. He helpless against them. If
he wounded the one, its hurt was strength to the other. How could he
kill the one, without being overwhelmed at once by its opponent? In
their balance he was torn away by conflict, yet in their balance he was
saved from some black annihilation he could not envisage. How could he
lose David altogether? In what realm lived his wish altogether to have
him?
David came in.
Night had crept up sweetly from the street. The City brooded in memory
of an August which had come like a woman’s madness. It was still warm. A
breeze came dancing through the open window. The room where Tom sat
rigid seemed faintly a-swing in a sea: the glow and scent and murmur of
the City was a wave, heaving the room. The wind whipped it gently.
David came in and saw Tom sitting so strangely stiff; he stopped. Tom,
this time, had not budged. He looked at David. He saw his open gentle
face and its sweetness, he knew how unbearable it was that he should
lose him.
“David, won’t you come and sit down?”
David came. Crossing the room, he stumbled on the rug.
“David ... what is there wrong between us?”
His head was turned toward his friend. David looked; there was Tom’s
full face pleading toward him. His eyes were bright in the shadow: they
glanced with a sharp pain and a great welling wish, like tears.
David’s hand instinctively went out: he rested it upon his own knee.
“I don’t know, Tom.... I don’t know.”
Very faintly he spoke. There was a warm moistness in his mouth.
“David, I am sorry! I am sorry for so many things. But I love you,
David. I am your real friend.... You believe that, don’t you?”
“Tom, I don’t know how.”
“What have I done to make you doubt my friendship?”
David’s chance! Simple and naked stood the issue between them. Let him
but meet it. Had he not grievances enough? No: he would not say
“grievances.” Had he not reasons--inexorable reasons?
He sat there, looking away toward the window. Swiftly, now, it was
getting dark. The frame of the window seemed very far away--dimly etched
out against the surrounding darkness. The window was light. With a
vague stir that was heliotropic, David gazed on it.
His mind had the sudden need of grasping reasons. Reasons were
scurrying, scattering, melting away.
His reasons--his reasons for doubting that Tom was his friend! Where
were they? Why did he want reasons, after all? Was not Tom sitting there
with tears in his eyes no dimmer than this light, pleading for faith?
Had he not previously understood with a rare insight he was proud of,
the problem of Tom? Here he was, collecting reasons, picking up reasons!
Missiles to strike with? Why? Why not? Was he not unhappy with Tom? Was
not his whole life poisoned by this poison that hid in their friendship?
He was not seeking stones to attack with, he was seeking defense. Many
reasons there were, if only he could fasten his mind--how strange it was
swerving about!--to take them up.
Tom said:
“I know--I know--I know----” He was mentioning faults. He was proving
they were no reasons. “But we are friends, Davie. Oh, do you not _feel_
there is no one I love like you? Not my sister, Davie! No one.
Everything I would throw away to help you. My work, my ambitions--what
makes them bearable, David, except your friendship? Can’t you
understand....”
There was something wrong. Under the precision of Tom’s words, something
wrong. Above the clouded stretch of Tom’s emotions, something wrong.
Something wrong. The reasons! For God’s sake, the reasons!
David began to stammer: “You tell Lunn and Durthal you are their friend.
To me you run them down. How should I know ...?”
He stopped. Tom was silent. No: this was no reason. David _could_ know.
David needed no proof. He had to forgive these stupid relationships of
Tom.
“How should you know?” asked Tom. “Ask yourself, David.”
Groping again. There sat his friend. He felt him like a flame in the
dark. Why was he, David, crouched there, gathering strength to strike
him? Why could he not _accept_ him?... Past pains, past miseries. He had
not wanted better than to accept him. What had cast him off? Surely not
his desire? Tom it was, who made him not accept him. He was not
fighting. He was holding himself safe. By God! holding himself clean.
Reasons! Reasons against Tom!
“What help do you give me in my troubles?” he said, low in his seat:
half to himself: placing his words before him very near, as if to look
at them, rather than give them to Tom--lest he wish to recall them. “I
have my worries. I have to keep them to myself. Is that what I should
feel with my friend? I have had problems with--women. If I mention them
to you, you sneer or laugh or turn hard. And difficulties with my
relatives--worries downtown....”
“I do not coddle you, David.”
How much he laid upon these words, and how these words were like a
shaft--running slow from Tom to him!... Did David wish ease and flattery
from friendship? Did David wish help that might hurt, or soothing that
would hinder? David was childish and selfish. No! Tom could not take so
seriously his petty affairs with women. Oh, yes, he knew about
them--every one: or his untidy problems with his uncle’s family or with
his Chief downtown. No! he was not David’s wet-nurse. If he wanted a
friend--one who took him ever upon the most real level, who by dint of
treating him as mature and strong might help him to achieve maturity and
strength....
David again gazed at the light casemented from the night-packed room.
There was something: yes, there were reasons. These were not the true
ones. Let him then say aloud: “These are not the true reasons, Tom.”
What would happen? Tom’s quiet voice--he was quiet now: why was his
voice not always so quiet--would ask: “And the true reasons, David?” His
answer! Let him now bring forth his answer. Why was that silly nightmare
protruding in his mind? Tom was a flame in the room. It burned him. Let
him come to hate it, to avow his hatred!
“It seems, Tom, that we are so very far apart.” Oh, but were they not
near? To whom was David, these past years, growing and nearing? “I do
not know how to express my dreams, my ideals, Tom. I am not ashamed of
that. I have time to learn to express them. But they are real. I fed as
if to you, they are not real. You have no love for them ... no
faith....” He was silent. He went on: “When a woman is going to have a
child, she has not seen it, she does not know how it looks or what it
will be named. But it is real to her, and she loves it.”
“Can’t you see, David, that this child in you,--this dream-life at your
heart--is what I love more than all in the world?”
“You are perpetually hurting me: sneering at me: stabbing my efforts to
understand with your logical proofs that understanding and ideals and
truth are nonsense!”
“Is this, then, why you doubt my friendship?”
“That vague thing in my heart is very near to me.”
“And to me, David!”
“Then why do you say the things you do?--and why--Tom--why ...?”
“Yes, David?”
“Why do you do the things, and lead the life you do?”
“Oh, David, if you would help me to understand?”
“Are you sincere?”
“No, David, I am not sincere. Help me to be sincere.”
“It seems to me that sincerity must be there first of all.”
“We are not all so fortunate as you are, David.”
“I do not understand.”
“Nor I. I want to be sincere. I want to be strong enough to be always,
always sincere, as I am now sincere only with you.”
“Tom, what does all this mean?”
“Can’t you believe me when I tell you, I do not understand? I try,
Davie! It hurts. You ask me for help. I have helped you often, Davie.
Perhaps most when I seemed cruel and harsh and distant. Isn’t that true?
But you seem to think I must be always strong. My mind--my poor mind you
expect so much of, Davie--I hate it at times, because, if it has helped
you, it has done me disservice. It has estranged us. I am weak, also.
Oh, dear, dear Boy, I am weaker than you! You spoke of a woman who is to
be a Mother. What is so strong as such a woman? Her fidelity to her
child, her confidence, her vast unuttered love of which all her being is
symbol. The breath she takes, the food she eats--is for a purpose. That
is strength, David. Even if she cannot name her child, or, call it. And
you are indeed like that. You have a strength a little like that woman.
I love you for that, David! I have no such purpose. When one has
purpose, growing within one,--one’s flesh and blood,--it is easy to be
sincere. When one has no such purpose, it is hard....”
“Tom, you do not know how you hurt me.”
“Will you stand those hurts, for my sake?”
Why should he? Why should he? What load of service was Tom placing upon
him? And the reasons for this? Tom was speaking again:
“----all I can say is that all my life seems suddenly to run on edge.
Off-track. It is hard to explain ... two lines faintly divergent at
first, yet how they widen!... Some little dissonance deep in my heart,
and it creeps into all the words I say, at times, into all the acts I
do: the discord widens and multiplies. Until it--_shrieks_! Do you
understand at all?”
No, David could not understand. Tom could not understand. With bleeding
nerves, he had made this symbol of his self-division. It was beautifully
true. But to make the symbol was not to understand it.
Yet, although neither saw, they were impressed. Tom’s words were
nonsense, perhaps: but they were like song. They held their hearers. The
more raptly since neither knew that this was music. So birds, perhaps,
listen to song and dimly descrying its beauty, which is its meaning,
obey its call. David was silent. He was near Tom. A new plenitude in Tom
that hurt him no less than the emptiness he had feared.
A very faint pull from himself, a very faint losing of balance. As it
went on, from deep within him, invisibly deep, it widened toward the
world.
Tom sat still, seeing his hurt, seeing he could not heal it. He had to
watch a bleeding he could not stem. He watched it, now: with David
watching him. He saw the dissonant thing that spread and shattered his
world: he saw the deepest of his thrusts to right himself die far from
the mark....
And David there before him with clear eyes! David ready to judge him!
David in search of words wherewith to judge him!... Tom came to himself
in anger. All his effort to be, for once, harmoniously himself rose up
from its defeat and surged toward David. Anger for David! If he lacked
fingers long and skilled enough to remove this cancer in his friendship,
setting him balanceless toward life, then let him blot it out. Let David
be blotted out!...
He turned against him.
“The worst thing about you is that you make me take you seriously. Your
troubles are nothing but selfishness. Selfishness is insatiate. So is a
dull humorlessness like yours. My Lord, man, what a state you put me in
just because we’re friends--just because I want to think well of you,
well of your interests and your doubts. What is it all about? Eh, tell
me that. What the Devil have you to complain of?”
He stood over David and menaced him with words. “You’re a spoilt child:
what you need is a Mamma. If you had a spark of wit you’d roar at
yourself, roar at me when I am fooled by your childishness into being
tender. I am to give, and give, and _give_. If I weary or get out of
breath, I am judged. Supposing I turned about, just for a change, and
began judging you?”
David sat numb. The need of striking back, the need of defense--where
was it? Tom lighted the gas-jets. Every gas-jet. The room showed yellow
and hard. The light was like the lying of sand, the room was a barbarous
arena. Tom’s eyes were one with the blazing gas-jets.
Their bell.
“Sometimes I am sick, I am sick of it all,” said Tom. “Sometimes I
wonder what it must be like, just for a moment to be taken as I am:--to
be embraced in understanding; to _receive_.”
The door opened, Durthal and Lunn came in.
“You have come just in time!” he clasped their hands. “You have rescued
me from the presence of my Maker!”
Lunn blinked. Durthal was sniggling already. He had caught Tom’s mood,
the directions of favor and attack. That was enough.
“Oh--oh,” Tom laughed. “Don’t look scared. Markand is my Maker. Didn’t
you know that? Being with Markand is a perpetual Day of Judgment. Even
in the strictest Faith that should come only once. Living with Markand
it never stops. Down--down one must go on one’s knees. And stay there.”
David felt Tom’s sneers cut him and bind him motionless.
“I am sorry, Tom. I did not mean----”
“Oh, it is easy for him.” Tom broke his words. He was facing Durthal and
Lunn who had found quick seats on the couch, as one hastens to settle at
a performance that has begun already. Tom’s back was to David. Lunn was
peering toward him with his heavy head low on his shoulders: blinking
and smiling. Durthal beamed into Tom’s face.
“It is easy for him. You see, he has nothing to confess. His soul is
empty of sin. Did you know that, you fellows? He can promenade about in
his soul quite freely, as one takes a stroll by the sea-shore.
Altogether empty, I assure you--_of sin_. I must go dragging along.”
He paced up and down. He was very bitter.
David was still viced in the hurt of the interruption.
“Well, Darby, how is the picture? It promises, my dear chap, to be the
best you have done. Real improvement there.... No, no--my friend, you
must not let that happen! Stick it out. I don’t care if it is beginning
to bore you. Ability to stand boredom is the mark of power. Yes....
Inspiration is cheap as birds twittering. Sustainment of inspiration is
rare as genius. It is genius, I tell you.”
Lunn was happy. Tom praised his picture: called him his friend. He
sensed that the reason for all this was devilish. It made no difference.
One had to take Tom as he came. Durthal glared snakishly at David:
dissatisfied that Tom’s onslaught was in abeyance.
David wished to right himself. Perhaps he was sulking. Perhaps Tom was
watching to see what he would do. Let him try to join in.
“I wish you would let me see some of your pictures, sometime,” he said
to Lunn.
Lunn frowned ungraciously.
“Sure,” with a stirring of his feet. “Any time.”
“They’re immoral, David.” Tom turned. “They’ll shock you. They tell the
truth. They accept the world as it is.”
His voice had a sing-song emphasis, as if he were warning a child away
from the fire.
“And what a world it is!” Durthal had merely been waiting. He had not
dared hope that David would so aptly accommodate himself to his hostile
wishes. He fell in at once with Tom’s accent. “Better not see them,
Markand. The women Lunn paints aren’t pure: the men aren’t moral.”
“Think of that, Davie! Wasting his good time painting impure women!”
Lunn bobbed his long head with delight.
“I would paint a pure person, if I could find one.”
Tom came up to David, and placed his hand under his chin.
“What about this?” he said.
David was stiff, waiting for the hand to go away.
“How can we be sure he’s pure?” exclaimed Durthal.
“That is true,” Tom stepped away a little. “We must be sure. How _can_
we be sure?... David, give us your credentials. Your proofs. For Lunn’s
sake, David. Think of the unhappy fix he is in--painting nothing but
wicked creatures! Think what an unselfish service you can perform.”
“----if he is pure,” Durthal insisted.
“Yes. If you are pure,” said Tom.
All three of them smiled. All three of them fell spontaneously to this
delicious game of baiting David. The ugliness of life, the folly of
hope--these were their themes. They seemed to be baiting not so much
David as a Dream in David: a bloom of loveliness in David thinking the
world was lovely. This was the unbearable presence in the room, the
maddening thing. This they joined hands and minds to blemish and
befoul....
David was stark with the treachery of Tom. He could manage Tom. It was
bitter hard, but he could manage Tom. These others--these living
missiles of mud Tom used to fling at him, now he was weak and
angry:----
Tom goaded on. Never had he been so lonely, never had he needed David
more. Yearning to fling himself on David’s side, to his feet, his words
grew sharper, falser.
“He is silent,” mocked the emboldened Durthal. “Perhaps he isn’t pure,
at all. This _is_ important, you know. How shall we ever find out?”
“But even if he is, do you think, Darby, that would make him worth
painting?” Tom leaned back on his heels and poised David. “Yes,” he said
slowly, “he _is_ worth painting.”
“Tell us, Markand--_are_ you what you profess to be,” Durthal
mock-pleaded.
David was up. He was white. He was suddenly strong and gentle.
He walked to the door and opened it.
“Get out,” he said.
They sat there, rigid. They looked to Tom. The gap of the open door was
a drawing burn upon them. Tom said no word. He gave a little laugh and
was silent also.
Lunn fumbled for his hat.
“Guess I’ll be going,” he rose jerkily to his feet. Durthal rose glibly.
They came close to David. His hand held the door wide open. They passed
his eyes; they strained to hold to their slow pace. As they moved down
the dark hall, they had the sense in their backs of an impending
blow....
David stood with his back against the shut door. He had done a violent
thing; he was afraid be had done wrong. These were Tom’s friends. No--by
the truth--these were not! But by what human right--he could not look at
Tom’s eyes. He had a sense of guilt. All his sense of hurt was gone
before his sense of guilt. Tom stood waiting for his eyes, in order to
tell him with his own how much he thanked him.
David struggled with his body: turned it about: left the room. He knew
he would go wandering aimless through the streets. Tom was alone. His
eyes had failed to give their message.
He had not moved from his seat. He sat upright, rigid. Had sentence been
passed against him: and why was it good? And why were his hands so
empty? A strange despair crept over Tom, stiffened his muscles, dimmed
his mind. So he sat, knowing not how long....
A knock at the door. Another knock. He lifted his head laboriously to
see the door. He saw the room. It was cruel clear. The ugly paint of the
woodwork, the neat pale paper cutting and empty against him, the rocker
where David loved to sit and where he felt his absence like a poignant
mirthless presence. How terrible clear was the room’s emptiness and the
path of something sweet that had been there and was gone! Two grimaces
remained, sitting on the couch, sitting for him.... It knocked again....
He felt that he was very faint. “I had no supper,” he said. “It is
knocking.” He knew that his head was light.
“Come in.”
The door burst open. A little boy stamping in: a messenger boy. His face
round and swarthy. His eyes roamed about the room like listless beasts,
taking in nothing.
“Rennard?” he shouted. Strangely his eyes wandered, took in nothing!
Such tired eyes: such disillusioned eyes. So weary a boy. He was not
there.
In Tom’s hands a letter.
His unconscious glance made him know already without knowledge it was
from Cornelia. He sat, holding the letter out as his hands had received
it: unopened....
“What does she want?” beat sluggish in his head like an alarum chiming
through thick fog.
He opened it: he put on his hat: he was gone.
This sense he had very sharp: that he was gone. He should, he felt,
have stayed, stayed in their room until David returned. But Cornelia
wanted him. Coming to her, he had this detached sense: that he was
gone....
She gave him both her hands. He felt her face, its sweetness, its dear
sweet homeliness. He saw that she was glad he had come, and that she had
missed him: how she would always forgive him, and how cruelly for near
two years he had been treating her.
She placed a letter in his hand. He faced it. He went to the couch
suddenly and sat down....
The pall lifted that was over his great hurt, he knew how he was
suffering. The world had been clear--their room--and he in cloud: it had
been like a shrill close lake under a hidden sky. Now all else was dim
save the burning sun of his hurt. The letter was from their sister,
Ruth: it told of the death of their father.