Here he was, then, launched upon a rushing tide of complete reaction—an adverse avalanche. He did not know that he was again rushing from himself, that falsehood is an easing drug, and that it was the truth which had hurt him. Long, long since, the flash of it which he had entertained that autumn day in the woods after his talk with the Professor, had fallen beyond the rim of his world. He did not know how cowardice had betrayed him in the guise of loyalty and virtue, and how the very subtle plea of the herd had filled his ears, edging him on to serve it and deny himself, give up to it his treasures, in hope of some vague interest which the herd proclaimed as duty and morality and good. He did not suspect a weakness rotting far deeper than his attempt to bridge from Julia’s love to the Professor’s friendship, menacing far more than was implied in his failure to hold either. In the tingling rebuke of his dismissal upon both sides, he did not see a measure of his deserts, nor in Julia’s fears for him did he understand the possibility of reason. The real truth must have swelled that love, meeting the other friendship; the real good must have nurtured both. But Quincy missed wider than these. He had defiled the separate gifts of a man and a woman, with his crude effort to bind and compass them in a view imposed and a standard borrowed. But Quincy had erred deeper than this. For he did not guess that, behind it all, lay the fear of venturing alone, the fear of being a measure to himself and of wielding his life as his life’s measure. He did not dare to dream that there was in him, glorying itself, the ancient, leprous fear of the herd’s children to graze outside of the herd’s shadow. All of these truths had trembled in him; he had rejected them as unendurable; they had died away. And now, worst of all, he was content! His failure was breeding a self-satisfaction—failure’s way. For in that breeding lies failure’s secret—its birth and its recurrence. The eternal slave lauds his cell and his shackles, calling them home and law. The rare master ignores his freedom, looking beyond it.
This year was the one when he was least at odds with his family. He sensed a truce in his father, as if the old man had held off, stepped back and were scrutinizing him. One day, toward Christmas, his father spoke to him, before they went in to the paneled dining room:
“I saw your boss, Mr. Cugeller, to-day.”
Sarah was at once intent, laying aside her knitting—for Rhoda’s expected baby.
“He seems satisfied with you, my boy.”
There was a stroke of tender respect in the appellation. His mother smiled with surprise and sighed with relief.
“Come, dear—dinner.”
Here was a new atmosphere indeed. Quincy sat down with a sense of mastership that goes with a sense of having been accepted. He judged that his parents were good, homely folk. He judged their respect a worthy thing. He felt arms go out and draw him within the circle. And it seemed to him that this was what he had longed for, fought for, always. He judged his past revolts as misapplied. He judged himself, if anything, more harshly than had they.
That evening, Adelaide found him in his room. He had brought home some sales-slips which by rights belonged to office hours.
“Do you really care for business, Quint?” she asked, seating herself on his bed.