Part 30

Tom sat there reading. No: he was not reading. His head was bowed over the book, but his eyes were away. He was very graceful, there in his rocking chair, with a leg thrown over the other knee and the gentle line of his sharp shoulders drooping down to his chin. Tom. His best friend! David looked on him with a great love. What a clear clean face he had. David knew that the thinning hair so faint above his high square brow was soft like silk. That his eyes, if he saw them now, would be dim with a moisture he could not let be tears. And the old gnarled hands: the hands of one who struggled stintlessly and was master. What was there wrong in Tom? Sitting across the room they had once chosen with such joy together--“the Sun is there! Davie, think of that rare god, the Sun: he will visit us each morning and stay all day”--was it not hard for him to look on the years that intervened and that were somehow wrong? Why? Why was not life the simple thing it had appeared? They had gone singing a song together: it was not right that it should end in tears.

But now there was new strength in David; a new vantage point he seemed mystically to have gained, where he could clamber up and look about him. Often he had gone so far. Beating with regretful wings against a perverse reality that prisoned him no less. No less. Now, it was less indeed. If he came again to the conclusion at whose brink he had stood so often, now he could follow it. No bar between him and what he decided to do. If Tom was false and a false friend, he would step over the brink!

Gracefully Tom sat there. And it was sure in David that if ever he had loved, this was the loved one. There had been women whom he had embraced, close of kin who had housed him. This was a mere comrade, a mere fellow-man: his hand-clasp was strongest of all. But also there was life. How little he knew of life! What a sweet hedged delirium was music, what a close cabin his affairs downtown. Tom had taught him life. Life of a sort Tom gave him now, as had his mother. What if he must be born again, away, as once from her?

He had lived in a sweet dream. One walked along a road. At times, it was garlanded in fields: at times it rose between jagged heights, or dropped beside the spume and the roar of waters. A road, clear and straight, and one could walk it. Here he had met Tom. They had joined hands. They would walk the road together. The steady road. The fleeting dream wherein he walked.... For here was no such road at all! How could one be sure of a hand clasped at one’s side? Which were the fields and which the mountains and which the torrents? In their delirious tangle, where was the road?

Tom had poisoned him. Tom had lied to him. Tom led him into ugly places. Tom had a laughter that did not mean joy and tears that bespoke sorrow of a sort he could not give his heart to. A merry world. A horrible world! He needed to blot it out. It was so packed a frenzy of maze and quicksand, that, if he did not draw himself away, he must become a part of its frenzy--a mere whirling molecule in its tortuous falsehood.

Let Tom go his own way! Let him be!

David found what he was doing. There was his place of vantage to which he could swing, and there was he, clambering up to it. He was leaving Tom behind.

They had a talk.

Tom looked silently and long at David. He was very sweet and like the Tom David would never have left, in his silence. Then he said:

“David, I hope that whatever you do, you will not marry a good and beautiful woman.”

He seemed very tired to David. The old fire was there, but it was moveless under a cloud that would not break.

David had no thought of marrying any one. No plan was farther from his consciousness. He smiled rather confidently, therefore. He was interested.

“Why?”

“Because, if you marry that sort, it will be almost impossible for you to break away.”

“Why, Tom, if one married should one want to break away?”

“Marriage has this, dreadful about it, David. It is life for a woman to be married, death for a man.”

“How is that possible? If it is good for one---- What a discord you make of the world!”

Tom laughed. The fire parted the cloud.

“What is the world but just such unending discord? Look at the world. Is it a sweet harmonious place? The one harmony it knows is an infinite texture of just such deathless conflicts, of just such tragic sacrifice of individual lives to its cruel rhythms.”

David was silent. Tom, the barer of life, was once more before him. He felt that Tom might well be true in his words. He had not altogether left the road of his Dream.

Tom went on. He had been silent and distant. He had made, for a long time, no advances to David. He had left him alone. Now in the silence of David, he saw his old art upon him, caught the flare of that past when he had taught and given and David had received. He had no power against this haunting past which he loved. He went forward to recapture it. Blindly he went like an insect toward a fire.

“David,” he spoke with an incomprehensible passion that shriveled his face, “David, I would rather see you married to a whore--than to a woman who is beautiful and strong.”

Already he was afraid, burned perhaps. He swerved away. “...Though it broke your heart, it would be less dangerous. You would escape. Comfort and happiness alone, you will be helpless against.”

He stopped. He looked at David. He saw how different this was which had happened after his words, from what had always happened. David was calm. He was away. Tom had lost him....

* * * * *

David went on with his visits to Helen Daindrie.

He found he was telling her all the little things that filled his days and nights--the little nothings.

“I don’t know where I walked,” he said. “It was very noisy, I know. But it all seemed so quiet. There was a silence in the men and women.... It seemed as if there was a silence in them, and they were scurrying about so fast to get away from it.... But the silence clung.”

“You spend very little time at home.”

“Yes,” he said, shaking his head.

“Don’t you care to read?”

“I don’t seem to, now.”

“Why, David?”

“I do not want to be at home. When I am home, I go to bed. Even if it is only nine o’clock.”

And then there was a pause.

“You do not seem,” she said, “to be very fond of the company of your friend.”

He shook his head again, looked away. It was not needful, long. Again, he saw her.

He was very easeful and relaxed. He made no effort to talk or to conceal, when he was with her. She was a sweet impersonal presence. It was good of her to let him come so often. He had no sense within his vision of himself in the world, of her who was a woman beside him.

One time, after a great quiet, she said:

“Why, since these things are so, do you not live alone?”

Her words were part of the quiet. They did not break it. They were very calm and very quiet indeed. So they entered into David.

He had not answered her. Often he sat so, still, and when he spoke it was upon some other theme. She never spoke these words again....

It was Spring....

David got up very early from his bed, he went into their large room, it slumbered restlessly there, he looked out of the window.

A great mist was before his eyes. A great mist lay in the street. He could not see the street and the opposite houses. It was a great white mist, warm and rolling away: the mist of morning. He looked toward the east. There, dim in the white, were the trees of the little Square. Above them he saw the Sun, a gleam, swathed in the vapors.

He went back to bed and to sleep.

When he awoke, he was rested. He was very warm under his sheet; he had perspired. Under his flesh he was cool and rested as he had not been in a long time.

He returned to the large room and looked once more out of the window.

The Sun was a naked flame jeweling the sky. The trees of the little Park were shrill with green and the moisture sang on them like tinkling glass.

Tom came in. David said to him:

“Tom, I think I want to go away and live alone.”

Tom was haggard in the sunlight. His eyes were hot and rimmed in shadows.

He nodded. “Of course, Davie,” he said. “Go now, if you want to. I shall be glad to keep the place.”

The two friends looked at each other. David wanted to take Tom’s hand: he wanted to cry. Tom stood there, stiff, graceless for once, and did not help him....

Thus easy it had come like leaves on the tree in Spring; like Sun out of the mists of dawn. David thought very little about it.

He went on going to see Helen. He took his trunk and his books and his violin and moved them into an ample furnished room on the West Side. He was to have a bathroom of his own. He would be comfortably fitted out.

On the last day, he held out his hand. He said:

“My trunk will be called for to-day, Tom. I have taken a room.” He gave Tom the address which he had written on a piece of paper.

Tom took it between his thumb and finger. “Thank you, David.” He had not looked at it.

Mrs. Lario came in, behind a large tray that held their breakfast. Quickly she set the table. She laid a newspaper, longitudinally folded, beside each plate. She left. Tom and David sat down to their last breakfast.

Usually, they read their papers. It helped to stem the arid draught of their silence. Now, they placed their papers unread away. Tom looked at David. He made no effort to speak. His temple was pulsing. David was trying to eat. He looked at his food. He leaned back in his chair, and also his thoughts seemed to incline away. He said to himself: “I must be natural. What am I doing?” He found that he could not eat his breakfast. He had a swallow of water, a spoonful of oatmeal. He could taste what he had eaten. It seemed to be still in his mouth. He raised his head and looked at Tom.

For an instant they saw each other.

A terror came upon David, a great pain. He could not bear this. Was this not his friend whom he was leaving? For whatever reason, to whatever end, this was Tom, and he loved him, and he was cutting an artery that throbbed with blood. He could not linger. He felt himself being swept toward a sort of precipice. He was afraid. It was as if he held in his hands some precious life, and he and it were being entranced toward the brink. Every vein in his head beat hard against his going: cried for his moving.

He got up. He was trembling. Tom smiled no longer. There was a passion in his eyes, as if this getting up of David were some fatal execution he had awaited and steeled himself to meet. His face was bloodless.

“Good-by, Tom,” David put out his hand.

Tom took it. He held it limply. Then he pressed it hard.

“Good-by, Boy,” he said....

Helen Daindrie had a friend, “my young friend” she called her with just a touch of condescension, a girl who had studied the violin abroad with the greatest masters and who was once more in New York. She was to make her official bow in the Fall. Helen Daindrie asked a few of her friends to come and hear her.

“I have invited Cornelia,” she said to David. “Will you call for her and bring her?”

David had not seen Cornelia more than twice in the past three months. He had not seen her once of his own initiative. When she asked him to come, he obeyed. He always would. Despite himself, he had the feeling for her that a young man might have for a maiden aunt: he was deeply, even ideally fond of her, but she seemed to live in another world, there was no way of contact nor of expression for his fondness.

Since he was living alone, he had not seen her at all.

She greeted him, when he came, as usual, cordially, with no hint of the empty months without him. Her eyes no longer searched him with hot, comfortless inquiries. It was as if she had done everything she could to be acceptable to David. She was quite ready.

“Just a minute, while I throw on my cloak. It’s very warm, isn’t it? It isn’t going to rain?”

“I don’t think so. It’s a glorious night.”

“A glorious night? Do you think we have time to walk a little?”

He watched her finally settling her hair before the mirror. She was “dressed-up” in a slim white gown. She was ugly. Her head outweighed her body: it gave her a gaunt and naked look in her white dress. The yellow skin of her face broke the paltry shimmer of her gown into green and gray.

“I’m afraid,” said David, “we might be late if we walked.”

“Very well.” She came up to him and smiled. “Come.” She opened the door.

“Well, Davie, tell me how have you been?”

It was hard for him to speak. It was impossible for him to smile as he wished to. Cornelia seemed inadequate to his young hunger. He was angry at himself for this. He owed her better. He was not a very good and loyal friend, he supposed. Tom was right in what he said, however wrong in what he was. He walked beside Cornelia to the car, through the sweet May night: and in order to hold himself beside her and take her arm at the crossing, he needed to forget her....

* * * * *

On the top floor of the house of the Daindries was a wide quiet room which Helen had fitted out for her own. Its easy spaces were conserved and rounded by the uncluttered furniture. Nothing was large and ponderous to defeat them. Two lamps stood wide away on little tables. Their low light brought out the warm dark stroke of the couch and absorbed the rugs. The gray walls had a retreating texture.

The guests sat very hushed and hidden in the shadows and the music. A tall girl swayed by the piano: she was raw-boned and gaunt above the light of the lamp. Her docked hair flung away from the sheer strong forehead. She played with a restraint that burned: it was her restraint that she flung circling and lowering from her sharp shoulders down upon the hidden guests.

The guests sat, suddenly tamed, suddenly cowed. They were the world to David--a motley mass made one by the dark and the music, that would rise up again and be a tearing thing against his life. Now they were breathing hard; something had shut them up in their own narrow breasts.

The girl stepped toward them, away from the piano. The piano was silent. He who had sat at it and followed her mood, who had trailed like a wake in a muffled sea upon her passage was now withdrawn. The girl stood like one naked above the room. The music she had played and the guests lay trammeled spirits at her feet. She moved and stepped upon them. She lifted her violin to play alone. It was Bach she was playing.

She was a sharp high figure cutting the dark room. Her violin was a hard creature that sobbed and was soft. She and her violin and the huddled life of the world within the room were the music that was Bach.

As she played she moved. She moved up and down: she was very free with her sweeping arm and her long legs walking as she played. From her freedom came an uttered Law and fell upon them all.

They were struck by the clear strokes of her playing and her walking up and down: they were showered in the fire of this molten music....

David recaptured himself. He seemed to be sitting in a black pool of life. All of the lives of these about him were one: they were melted together. They had no being apart, they had no light. They were a black pool, stirless. Now he felt somewhere still a glow: under the black hush and above the strokes of the music. His senses went seeking a glow that he felt somewhere still.

He sat on a couch. Next him a woman: next her a man. The music flooded and beat and these had no life against it. They were a dim base on which the music dwelt. Still he knew that this glow he felt was real and was near. It was a presence to him. His eyes wandered to find it.

Against the music and himself and the room, his eyes went, seeking the magic more real than the music whereby he might come to life. They found!

She was sitting far back at the other end of the couch: she was lost in the black pool of the room as no one else, so that he could not see her. Yet David knew her, glowing alone, and knew what precious thing this was which he had found in the world. Once more, and as never before, it came to him, that he had never known her: that he had never seen her. She was hidden there with her true magic, in a false real world, and he could not know her now, nor see her. But he knew that he wanted to know her, and that he wanted to see her.

He sat with a new quiet holding him tenderly. The girl played on. A passionate fantasy flooded forth from the round mouth of the violin. It rocked the room. It tore at these submerged ones living there and shredded them in its measured frenzy. But David was quiet and sure. The world was a mad wild place for this moment dominioned: the music lashing it was also wild and was sunless, it was a river buried under rocks of the earth and making them tremble. The glow he had found was a warm place where he would dwell.

The girl had stopped, she was leaning over her violin, she was packing it away.

The guests moved slow and uncertain, like the maimed creatures they were. Their voices were splinters of their broken selves.

They began to leave.

Cornelia stood near the door. She was looking for David. She saw him.

She saw that he did not want to escort her home. Very dimly his conscience was stirring in his mind. If she disappeared, his conscience would go also. It would leave no trace.

She was very shrunk and pitiful in the long swell of the music. She knew he must not see her another moment. His conscience might win and he might take her home: he would never forgive her. She saw a new world in his eyes, turning his eyes from hers.

She slipped out.

And all the guests were gone.

There was no one in the room save David and this Helen he did not know. She stood there, straight and small in the center of the room. She looked at him.

He came to her. Everything he did was slow. He had a sense of an eternity in which he was about to step. The passions of his life seemed shivered fragments beside the steadfast vastness of this moment.

She was near him now. He had her warm pervasion all about him. He put his arms around her waist. Her arms were stiff at her side. As she leaned faintly back from the pressure of his hands, her face turned upward. So he drew her in, until her mouth was his....

* * * * *

Cornelia was home. Straight she went into her little bedroom and lit the gas. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was pale, but a dim flush flowered her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and deep with a dry passion. She looked at herself; aloud she said:

“This is I. This is Cornelia Rennard.” Her voice ceased, she went on speaking. “I am beautiful. For one time, I am beautiful. If he could see me now----” It was so. It was a pity he could not see her now.

She turned away, she took off her dress. Carefully she smoothed out its folds: she placed it away. She had a housegown of warm quilted silk-brocade--it was brown. She put it on. She fastened it tight about her and made the belt sure about her waist with a knot.

She went to her desk and sat down.

She took a calendar date-book and laid it before her. There was an engagement inscribed for the following Sunday. The rest of the days were blank. She began to write.

“_Sunday_: prepare sketch for the Trenton fountain. Evening, Purzes for dinner. _Tuesday_: ask Mr. Bailey about Philadelphia. _Friday_: Jack and Clara to tea.”

She filled ten days with her mental notes of engagements. When she had done so much, suddenly she grasped the book in her two hands as if to tear it. Her hands stopped in suspense. Her face turned upward.

“It has to be,” she said, once more aloud. “It is a lie.... What is a lie?” She was smiling. “Cornelia----” she tenderly spoke, almost maternally to herself, “when one does a thing, do it well.”

She laid the date-book open at the center of the desk.

With a swift thrust she opened the drawers. She closed them. No. There was nothing there to be concealed.

She was up. She smiled; once more she took a pencil and turned the pages of the book to a day two weeks away. She wrote:

“Ask David to dinner.”

Then, she straightened and crossed the room.

A batch of painted sheets were in her arms. Her water-colors, her incomprehensible confessions. She laid them forth on the table, looked long at them. They were very lovely, these delirious designs, these flauntings of form and color. Color rose in them to form, form faded and died away to the realms of color. But she looked at them and shook her head. They meant nothing to her.

“What nonsense,” she breathed.

Then: “Perhaps some of my statues may live. That first bronze----”

She swept the sketches back into her arms, she thrust them into the hearth. It was cold and black. In a moment it blazed. But the sheets burned slowly, imperfectly. The fire went out. She had to scatter them and work upon them and light them several times with many matches before they were ash.