The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

And so was fashioned above Quincy’s world, a universe.

To the bland, simple scheme of self, there now succeeded a period of conflict in which life and pain were grown more close together. The child careered mutely, sullenly, through an intricate design of needs and denials. His soul was become a field of warring colors and discordant forms. The passion rose to a fine crescendo. It was therefore destined to subside.

Rather than this, however, it was suddenly to disappear. The lifting of the fever pall was in no way gradual. The new calm flung upon him with the placid lilt of a swift bird, sailing downward on wide wings. His first world had been simply himself. On this had followed a universe of struggle and dumb passion. Now, there was born a vision in which Nature and society took smiling order. What had preceded was whirled off, leaving no trace save in the unlabelled deposits of thought and feeling that had foregathered upon Quincy, like heaps of the world’s scattered contents in huddled disarray after the passage of a cyclone.

Quincy forgot to hate his father. He forgot to love his mother with any intense personal desire, save when she was there, or some concrete demand of help—a fall or a fright—drove him back into the cosmos he had left.

Things beyond his father had the color of fear and struggle. Things beyond his mother possessed the qualities of joy. When his mind was centered, his father still could serve as symbol for life’s obstructions; his mother, of life’s happy possibilities. But Quincy was too concerned in the glad discovery of a far-flung world, in the adventuring forth upon its surprises and delights. He had in balance little energy for intensive feeling. His passions subsided—spread forth into a maze of sentiment. Where had been hate was now a mere sense of objection; where had been love remained a sense of comfort and attachment. His soul was unfolding itself among objective fields. The clash of pent-in conflict had died away.

His brothers and sisters now stepped within his world.

There was Adelaide, for instance, just three years older than himself. (By this time Thomas, the seventh child, had gone with some mute regret and very little comment.) Adelaide was an admirable person to lead in adventure. She was courageous and passing wise. Upon one occasion, she had eaten grass to Quincy’s ecstasy. Her teeth and lips had turned a convincing green. And if she could steal a cookie with hardihood, she was not above sharing it with mercy. Her two blond braids, moreover, had a delightful way of tossing when one desired to catch hold of them and her cheeks were good to delve one’s nose in. The pair held the butterflies in equal fellowship. The great trees filled them both with the same wonder. And since, by the new dispensation, they slept side by side in two separate little cots, they exchanged secrets and dreams, giggles and deep sympathies for life’s sudden flares of sorrow, with mutual satisfaction.

Rhoda, who was quite tall and had black hair, was a formidable creature. Her little sister hated her, called her a “pig.” So Quincy joined in the compact of hostility. And since it comprehended chiefly the making of faces, the harassing of Rhoda’s dolls, the acquisition, separate from her, of pennies and cookies and the hoarding, to Rhoda’s green chagrin, of visionary secrets and a very real toad, Quincy enjoyed this passion hugely.

Farther aloof in the hierarchy stood Jonas, and dimly beyond, the ominous, still figure of Marsden. Marsden was unable to play and could not even hobble without a crutch. He was, hence, despicable,—to be clandestinely made fun of. But he was by no means to be pitied. He might perhaps have elicited this feeling, had he not been so powerful, and had not mother and father so tiringly harped upon the need of it. Deep in the weave of Quincy’s life was this order of his parents to respect Marsden, to do his bidding, to look out for him. And in addition, there were his sharp, piercing eyes, the ugly curl of his thin lips, the hautain raise of his brow and, worst of all, his utter contempt and disregard for everything of Quincy’s. Against these elements, no natural affections could have prevailed. So Marsden was disliked, envied and as far as possible avoided.

Matters were different with Jonas. Approach to him was also difficult, as with Marsden or Rhoda. The distinction lay in the fact that it was a desirable, almost a dreamed-of thing. And in the active aloofness of this young, boisterous god, through the logic of his affection, Quincy read not a fault, but an added splendor. Jonas was apart, in his six more years. But he was justly, fitly so, in Quincy’s mind. And the fond hope was born in him that perhaps, some time, if only Jonas did not increase too rapidly and he could accelerate his rate, he might catch up, and a roseate fellowship be brought about.