The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

Julia reappeared in his dreams. Quincy instinctively feared an omen. Almost at once, Julia was no more in his dreams. He began to dream of Rhoda and of bloody scenes wherein his father suffered—nightmares in which an anonymous woman lurked vaguely, clothed in the mystery of prize and instigator. Then came a time when he could not catch his dreams at all. As he awoke, there in his mind would lift a smoke of struggle. But as he grasped at it, it went and underneath was nothing.

Meantime, the year wore away. Christmas vacation happened. Quincy experienced a radiant New Year. For naught took place. His projection of dream had the æther to itself. There were no obstructions great enough to make him conscious that he was gliding—that the avalanche had subtly started. His mother had been ill and was South during the holidays. This may have saved him. But howsoever, the New Year came radiant upon its tracks of ice.

With January, there was an afternoon that revealed many things already long alive.

It was the first “tea” with Julia Deering since the last May. In Quincy’s still confident state this fact required no comment beyond the probability that she had had no inclination or no time for him, alone. Her previous favors in this light called neither for sequel nor for conclusion. He went that afternoon then, splendidly at ease, eager by anticipation to show his friend how full and serious a man he was. He knew he must impress her. And in that impress, she would see the handwork of her husband. This must delight a devoted spouse.

Quincy did not recall, even, as he rang the bell, how he had come that first time, a year since. His grip on memory was of rare efficiency. This grip it was, forsooth, that made the delusion possible of his grip on life. There was no happy mean in Quincy’s nature. He had suffered through too wide a surface of fine feeling. His memory had been too keen to suggest ways in which the present and the future might attack him. Too great had been his liking to an exposed nerve. And now, there was no surface at all for life to sting, no memory at all for life to grope by, no meeting on life’s plane. He was beyond the rule of the realities. He was a boy, nursing his spirit. And no more unreal being can be found in the vast Mirage called Truth.

As he came, then, that day, to chat and perhaps clumsily gulp down his tea, a subtle streak fenced off the real Quincy from the conscious one. These two mingled their accents. To the thoughts of the one, the other expressed speech; to the feelings of the other, the first gave utterance. And at times, the lips and the hearts of each made instantaneous counterpoint. The harmony of all this was minor. A mere thread of vibrance often drew the line between them. And in such faint distinctions, voiced at once, lies discord. Music, builded upon this searching wisdom, Quincy had not failed to love, that night at the Deering party. The subtle barriers of its sound, thrown together into a stirring discord, had gone forth and understood him. Julia had not loved the music. But here, played on this gentler instrument, the same, weird, lingering detonations gripped and swayed her. At last, in his gestures and his words and the flash of his eyes, the Modern Music was articulate enough for her to hear.

From the point of her reception, of her vibration in response, life turned to red for Quincy. For it is dangerous in a boy to be as music for a woman.

But meantime, he chatted blandly and balanced his uncomfortable tea-cup and was assured of the depths of his composure.

They sat in her room. The door into the study was shut. But the Professor was out.

She wore a dress of faint blue crêpe, with still gentler streakings of orange. The bodice was caught high under her arms by a double seam. Here, an elastic drew the dress close to her body. Her black hair was knotted low so that the two coils of it above her ears which he had previously noticed, were not in evidence. Now her ears were covered. The hair lay flat, cutting apart from the center of her forehead. In this way, its cold, froward whiteness and her eyes’ warm depths came to accentuation.