The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

Three times, that spring, he went forth that way, joyless, hopeless, brutal all at once after a roseate revery about his friend. And each time, he returned, smiling bitterly at his folly, cured of his possession, yet filled with an acrid will for something which that visit, somehow, had not come near supplying. But after the first occasion, he spoke no more of such things, to Julia. A shame had caught him, which he had not felt at first. There seemed less innocence, now, in talking to her, than there had been. He was beginning—a part of him—to understand.

Then, also, there were other storms,—sudden lusts of another stamp that swung him elsewhere away for satisfaction. At such times, he seemed a fool himself, and his task a mockery.

“Take her for what she is,” he cried then. “You’ve spun her all over with your ideals. These blind you to her and keep you off from her. What has she to do with the greatness of her husband’s brain? That is one thing. If he, the man, is so sated that he doesn’t need her, the woman—well—” and he would sit there, late at night, in his chair, and strip her lusciously of these ideals he had spun about her; strip her with trembling hands as if it had been her clothes that fell away. And he would strip also himself of his ideals and his aspirations. Until, there they two would stand—naked and shivering, needful of each other’s bodies to be warm.

But Quincy had not abandoned his brisk daily runs. He learned that when he missed his exercise, these lusts were best able to overwhelm him. So he sought his woods and the throb of his ridging muscles as a storm-threatened ship seeks harbor.

One day, they walked together. It seemed to Quincy as if he had never been less near to the meaning of the swaying woodland. All of him was shut to it. And most of him was shut as well to her. He did not know, of course, that here his customary tension against her had given him an outward signal. For this same effort to shut out her, although it might pass unnoticed in his room, had brought as its effect to shut out nature. In her wan smile, he felt however, that she knew something of which he was not aware.

It was a sterile hour that stung. But after she had left him and he was home, the memory of it seemed to blossom forth into a thing of a rare beauty and a lingering perfume, so that he soon forgot that it had been a sterile hour. If his own walks in the woods had been wild-flowers, this walk had been a rose. But the rose was as yet a small, tight bud. The thorns had grown more quickly.

And now, without clash of decision, or glamor of sequel, the summer holidays were near.

He sat in his room, one night. It had been a sultry day. All of the cloying afternoon, he had lain on his windowseat and given himself to reveries so nebulous that the humid air about seemed thicker to him. Below his window a forever changing crowd of boys laughed and gamboled and played at simple games. The music of their mingled feet and voices came up from underneath and seemed to shove him farther from them. He had neglected his lessons. So now he sat at his desk with an electric lamp beside him. The windows were wide open. The night breathed heavily, as if it were unwell. Then it began to rain and thunder.

At first, the water fell in clouds, drenching his window cushions. He spread a mackintosh to cover them. He did not wish to shut out the storm. He felt that he must choke without the fresh, panting vigor of the rain. Here was something elemental, simple, clear. Although he did not understand, he yearned for this, he with his mist-clogged soul, as a parched throat yearns for water. And then the downfall subsided partly and the lightning drew near. Flash after flash submerged the glow of his electric lamp. The thunder shot about him like a whirling battery in the air.

It came to Quincy that with the bolts so thick and near, it was dangerous to sit beside his lamp. He was impelled to shut his window, put out the threatened light and luxuriate in the storm from the safe haven of his bed. And then, a stronger impulse stopped him.