The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

It was now, that the sensation and the delight of emptiness were furthered.

“What is the use,” Marsden rhetorically asked, “what is the use of blinking the facts?—Here we are, having to feed ourselves and get some pleasure out of the world. If you deny the world it will deny you, and that means—wipe you out. If you please it, it will give you a little something. Of course, even then, it will cheat you and finally run you through the shoulder-blades. But if you don’t please it, it won’t give you even the little that cheating you implies. It won’t give you even the breathing-space before the dagger-thrust. It will not let you come to life, at all. And then, what have you got? Dreams;—a handful of shoddy, aged make-believes that will poison you with their mold and rust.”

All this—and more of the sort—proved Marsden’s new friendship for his brother. Quincy was very glad to have it. It occurred to him that here was a cripple happier than he had been! a cripple, therefore, to be emulated! He wanted to be happy. He had not been happy long on the old path. If dry bones and a bent back pointed an easier way than the glad promptings of his own rhythmic body, then manifestly the impellings of free muscles and of eyes that danced in the sun must be denied. It might seem natural to find gaiety through them and the old plays that he had undertaken. But it was not so. Wiser it was, then, to incline before the successful mandate of dry bones and a bent back. Moreover, in this new atmosphere of business, Marsden seemed to fit in as less of an anomaly, more of a norm. There was a somewhat all about him kindred to this cripple with his aging head and his brittle, tottering body and his cavernous hot eyes. Marsden appeared to him almost as a symbol and a prophet. If he accepted the City, it was an apt step to accept him. And if he went about in the City extolling its nature, denying its deformities, then Marsden also ceased to be a sickly monster. To this Quincy had brought himself—to this brink of assimilation. In his old world, the sun’s slant through the trees had been the morning’s journalistic headline, a tender man’s word the affair of state, his own surviving spirit the season’s crop;—there, Marsden had indeed been a poor, pitiable outcast, a grotesque denial of the world’s lilt, to be avoided and to be feared. But now it was different. Marsden’s limbs seemed no longer an exception to the world’s meaning—which had grown also lame and palsied. His malignant power, smouldering in the gloom of his infirmities, seemed of a note with the world’s might, smothered as deep in its rotting malady. Marsden’s philosophy sat on his helplessness and healthlessness, making them power and a grim enjoyment. And even so, Quincy’s new world builded its prestige from its barriers, mined its pride from the innumerable things—its wealth and laws—that cluttered it, gleaned pleasure from a poverty of vision making real freedom and real adventure undesirable.

Marsden and the City—how one they were! Marsden in his cripple’s chair that was the seat of his dominion, Marsden who had builded his state and founded his pleasure in the sick senses of his being. And the City which gained its eminence and reason also from its shackles, from its myopia, from its deformities. Eloquently, these two, shut off alike from nature’s rhythm, thriving alike in the shelter of their moribund condition, fitted together.

And now, won by the hard glamor of their perfection within their morbid limits, Quincy elected to join their company. Marsden the cripple must be his captain. For no wild flower, standing alone, was shielded in such permanence and might as he.

This extremity of choice tokened the violence of effort which Quincy put to his so-called adjustment; and this violence of effort proved the strength of what still held him back. Needless to say, in all this time, Quincy did not grow fond of Marsden; he never reached the stage of even being comfortable in his presence. But in so far as he had not grown fond of work, nor of the City either—not grown comfortable in them, the analogy of resolution to abide with them and with his brother suffered no shock. If aught gave way in this factitious structure, it must be the base. All had been builded logically. And logic in a superstructure is a good thing; logic in a foundation is a lie. And the first gust of feeling, the first tremor of the unconscious, may make it totter.

Meantime, Quincy furrowed a rut for himself in Mr. Cugeller’s office. He went about with Adelaide and with her friends. He struck up an acquaintance with a young man called Herbert Lamory, who worked beside him.

Lamory was a cousin of Mr. Cugeller—a handsome boy who spent money handsomely even though he did not have it. He took Quincy about—introduced him to his acquaintances—undertook his education. He was bright and charmful, shallow and content. Quincy grew very fond of him.

And so, the year went. Work progressed admirably. Its new intricate developments from the stupid beginnings captivated Quincy in a sense. So he applied himself. And he had a mind that could have mastered far more difficult tasks than those of business. That is, he had a real mind, whereas business requires chiefly an applied and unvarying intuition. This same mind, intent on business, must have made him prosper. But mind has a way of varying and wandering. And if this takes place, it is worse in business—infinitely worse—than no mind at all. However, that time was not yet.

Herbert Lamory became a help to Marsden. By this friendship was assuaged in Quincy the lingering discomfort of being a disciple. Herbert seemed pleasant practice to what his brother had so miserably marked in theory. Herbert also was warped, eyeless, deformed. Yet, with all this, he had contrived to found a really pleasurable Helicon. Quincy liked Herbert. And the spirit within him of his Protestant forefathers was glad at having so amiable a pasture wherein to let out his brother’s and the City’s perverted dogmas.