“Nobody’s on my side.... Nobody’s on my side....” said Edward, standing up and clenching his fists in half-conscious imitation of Emily’s vehement manner. “I’m not pretending, Rhoda; it is that I really do feel things a hundred and fifty per cent intense. Be gentle with me....”
“Gentle is my middle name,” said Rhoda, and she stood up and pressed a hand on each of his shoulders. “What do you want me to do, you pity-beggar?”
“Can’t you see how it is with me?” said Edward. “I’m not stupid. I’m not even slow, though I’m deaf. If I’m alert and confident I’m not even very deaf. But God is against me, and you are all against me, and nothing I do or say can ever be successful because there is nobody on my side to lead the applause. If I could even once come into a room and have people look up and say ‘Hurrah, here he is at last ...’ I’d be a different man. I’ve never heard that. I hardly dare to be alive against so much opposition. My own voice is terrible to me because there is no-one who wants to hear it. I am living on a giddy high peak of unhappiness. Once before I have been a little bit in love. To my first love I never spoke—without being interrupted by Jimmy saying something far more interesting. Or if I did speak she never listened. For she was one of Jimmy’s loves—and he had a dozen others in three years. I should think thirty women cried when he was killed.... If things didn’t matter to me so—I could have anything in the world I wanted. Rhoda, if I could be sure of myself for one minute—it would be worth while to be alive....”
As he said this, Edward saw the inner side of a long cylinder wave as it broke on a clear stretch of sand. It was the color of bright jade. The nearest wave was jade-green, and the wave behind it was a dull gold, and the wave behind that was a thick violet, and behind that ran waves of endless shades of blue. And behind all the waves stood the rust-red and amethyst hills.
“Worth while to be alive?” thought Edward. “What am I saying? I who can see so clearly.... Eyes in the world must always be happy, whatever hearts may be....”
His mind considered itself for a moment almost complacently. “In a way I must be rather an interesting feller. Lots of fellers get no kick at all out of impersonal things like colors and what not. I really get a certain kick out of being so unhappy. It is like being drunk, it makes one see more faerily....”
He looked at Rhoda again. She was smoking, leaning against a rock and drawing with a stick on the sand. Rhoda’s strong short hair never blew out of order. The tip of her nose was never shiny. Nothing undignified ever dared to happen to Rhoda.
He donned again his extravagantly appealing look. “Rhoda, if you could let me have an hour of my own. I have never had an hour of my own. Think of all the hours you have possessed—and spare me one. Let me take command to-night, let everybody see me in command ... let Emily see me....”
“Me—me ...” he thought. “What kind of a Me would Emily want to see?... There isn’t any cute little notion that would delight Emily.... She would be terribly stabbing and cold to a cute little notion....”
“Yet I will ride that hour,” he told himself in the street-car. “It must be my hour....”