Now, David was beginning to see by a new light, to find different colors. Immersed in the struggle himself, he found that it had its appeal like any contest: its occasions for fun and romance, its release of the generous and the brave from the welter of uglier instincts. The strange thing about Tom was that he kept the attitude of the outsider. Perhaps therein lay his strength, the element of caution and command above the Battle. But if David knew from his boyhood what a terrible thing it was to watch two men beat each other in the street, he knew as well what a thrilling thing it was if he were one of the beaters—beyond pain and reason altogether, given up to the ecstasy of beating. So now, however arbitrary the rules, wasteful the blows and trivial the ends, there was a pleasure in this clinch of wits, a catching curve to this conflict. The glamor might come, as Tom insisted, from the prodigious expense of will and energy in those who struggled together. But glamor it was.... Was all glory on earth the glory merely of him who could see glory?
David moved to his new poise in the world on wings within him like the wings of a seed. He was part of that Spring, he would bud with it: he too sought sustenance for his green shoots, his frail flowers. His affair with Constance shed mellowness like a sun: his relation with Tom inspired at once a taste for mastery and the need of seeking it elsewhere since to Tom he was subject. In the particular detail of finding his life downtown an exciting game, there was his new Chief, the credit man, Mr. Christopher Barlow.
A little gray-haired man with blue eyes sparkling: a silent man who seemed unconcerned with giving him the most perfunctory explanations of the work he expected him to do.
“How the devil can I give satisfaction if Mr. Barlow declines to show me how?” said David to himself: and looked at Mr. Barlow: and found he was not near so ill-at-ease as the occasion called for.
Mr. Barlow did not ignore him. His eyes dwelt on David, reticent, timidly, as if he feared to intrude even with his eyes. But it was no professional attention. The embargo was strict on business. David had his desk. What should he do with it? He pondered—pondered long since there was nothing swift in David at all. He resolved to take matters into his own hands.
“I am here,” he decided, “I have to do something here. I’ll look about....”
He began to eye, finally to study files, to go through ponderous credit lists, to decipher, by the process of comparison, the marks he found against the names of customers. He read the classified papers on Mr. Barlow’s desk: those on the Wicker trays, before the stenographer filed them. Mr. Barlow saw him prowling. David was quite sure the sharp, kind face lighted up and the eyes twinkled. Mr. Barlow blew a sluggish ring of smoke from his cigar into the air, thrust through it with his pencil and exclaimed: “I got you!” to the ring. Cryptically enough. Yet it was such behavior that limited David’s discomfort. Mr. Barlow seemed quite manifestly pleased. He would go on prowling.
This continued for several weeks.
His uncle burst into their office with rustle of spread papers flying about him like sails. He made for Mr. Barlow’s desk without noticing David.
“Oh, Mr. Barlow: I wonder can you help me in this matter of Dehn and Penny. You know, they have sued for that fall shipment. Yes, of course: the shipper is responsible. But it’s a complex case. Whereabouts do we stand as to the next ten years, should we decide to compromise?”