The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

“Why am I interested in the household life of a philosopher? Why do I resent his wife yet dream of her? Why, when I dwell on his perfections, does she seem to mar them? Why, when I let her vision come does his seem to dim? What business are all these things to me? I am a protégé of Professor Deering. Each year, out of the incoming mass, he selects a few like me. I have interested a woman happening to be his wife, who, being an interesting woman, is naturally capable of interest in another. There is nothing more. Yet my mind goes—like fingers picking rags—hoping for a fabulous jewel; tremulously. What is wrong with me?”

These questions Quincy put to himself, as the sun mellowed and the spring burst forth from the brown earth and the haggard trees. Quincy took them with him on his country runs. The ground was damp with moisture. Maple buttons stood on the long twigs. And as he ran or sauntered or reclined on a dry rock, garlanded in the shoots of little elms and oaks, the question rounded like a fist, hardened and struck him silent.

All of that spring this phenomenon was repeated. There would sprawl the questions, pricking or stroking him—no more. Suddenly, a vital force would encompass, then compress them. They would become a fist and strike him. He would startle, resist, give way. And then, as suddenly, the fist would once more disintegrate. Again, there would be relaxation until the following blow. All of that spring, moreover, there was no conclusion.

Certain things were plain enough.

Professor Deering was the greatest man in the world. His friendship was priceless. But Julia Deering was the first woman in the world willing to consort with him. Was that less a treasure? And why should it be? Why did some sickly sense within him tell him of a conflict between these two possessions? He had a mind; he had a soul. Did these two possessions menace one another? Perhaps that explained the mist about the two new human elements. But with all this, the boy’s head hurt. And his mind helped him out, through some centrifugal tangent.

There was nothing really personal in the relation of Quincy and Julia Deering. There was nothing really personal in the relation of Quincy and Lawrence Deering. The personal, in either instance, was the boy’s contribution. The man believed to have discovered in him a mind; he had not gone far enough yet with him to view this, save as a specimen, as a relief, perhaps, in his work. The woman thought to have found in him a spirit. She also had not gone far enough to adventure there, preferring to bring it up within the scope of her own play. Quincy, quite with an equal egoism, had subjected these to his own lights. But his lights were feebler than their medium. So it was he who was refracted, rather than they who were transfigured. Quincy was the suffering one; for Quincy was the changing one.

All this was a whirling in the dark for him. He understood so little. His year at college seemed so sounding a failure. What had it got him?

He sat on a rock, panting for breath, from his run up-hill. Columbine and azalias flourished about him. The fresh hum of insects deepened the glow of last autumn’s leaves, heightened the clear tenderness of the anemones. A great oak twisted above him on its tortuous way to the sun-flushed sky. Numerous little oak trees with fresh red leaves, most of them doomed to perish, ran riot with the other foliage in the cleft where he sat. Solomon’s seal and chestnut sprouts, liquid patches of wild violets, geranium and slender sprays of the wild grape with its leaves ruddy red and velvet green, shared his nook with him. Below swept the valley, splashed with dogwood, an infinity of greens and rose-bathed white. Through all the woodland, the wind raced daintily. A copse of aspen swayed in a complex unison, while the sun danced counterpoint on the leaves. Blossoming fragrance and a humid acrid strain of fecund life waved over him. The sky came down, its blue burning upon him. And beyond, the sun slanted westward, bursting well up in a haze that consumed its less gentle fires.

So garrisoned, Quincy met himself, and sought an accounting of his year in college. The boy frowned. And the day’s grandeur went over him like a rich garment over a soiled body. He shivered for it. He was ashamed. He understood nothing save his own impotence. He felt nothing save his suffering. He was nothing, before a universe of splendor. Family and friendship, fellowship and duty—in all relations, he seemed slipping, tottering. There was no name for what he was, since there was no name to describe anything within his life. He was unsure of qualities at home. In the house of college as in the house of Deering, he was uncertain. He was a nameless thing. And all the nameless things that touched him, for want of appellation, faded to naught or turned against him; all things save this one thing that grew greater without a title: his unhappiness.

The sun sent a spear of flame through the haze. It gleamed on his face, as he sat there, gazing with steady eyes. His eyes were in shadow. Deep purple they were, a pathetic counterpart of black. The lashes lay long about them. On his mouth were myriad little nervous frets, such as make up a pathetic counterpart of smiling. Quincy turned his eyes toward the falling sun. They glowed now, a limpid blue. And the black lashes were bronze. And the moist mouth opened and grew strong.