Part 25

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....