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.”