“David,” he stopped before him and spoke with a hot restraint, “I am ashamed of you. Why the Devil should you want to go to War?”
David was sprawling in a wide Morris chair. He curled up a little under this onslaught like a furry caterpillar.
“Who is to go, if unmarried fellows like myself are not?”
“Who is to go?” Tom blazed at him. “Who is to go? I’ll tell you. Loafers who have nothing better to do. Men who are so miserable in their jobs they’d die for a chance to get away. Men who are so miserable in their homes they’ll die if they can’t get away. Unmarried, healthy men? The very last, I tell you. Let the sick of heart and the sick of life go first. They’ll find the Cuban fever far more like a pleasant change.”
“This is no time to be flippant.”
“I am not flippant.”
“Then you’re—you’re wrong. This is an unselfish war if ever there was one——” Tom’s smile choked him. “Well, darn it: we’re in it. We’ve got to see it through, however you may look at it.”
David was sensitive enough to feel the deep concern which Tom’s cynicisms covered. This was why he stopped his words of protestation. Strange unease came to him with the feeling. Tom wanted him to stay, to live. Why should he stir against his friend because of that? Tom stormed, making his friendship clearer, showing his affection warmer; David grew colder, less convinced, almost spitefully set against him.
He stood up. “Well,” as if to make an end of an unbearable thing, “I think I am going to enlist.”
A cloud went over Tom Rennard’s face. It was gray, feverish. His hands fell out as if a current had crumpled them and gone.