The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

Once more, the two years, outweighing all within them.

Why, just two years? He remembered. Of course, it was an approximation. But with that last summer spent with the family in their unfitting home, the great disgust had been born. It had been the great disgust, not because it was intrinsically greater than all the others marking his life, but because it was the first that he had met—the first that he had grasped—the first that he had dared! He had remained until the fall, marshalling his resolution, throwing away his garret-full of insincerities. And then, clean, light, glistening with spiritual sinew, he had come away to the little room in Murray Hill. Here, his fight had begun. What made him think it was ended? Only two years.

He could find nothing to hate or to deny in those two years. That was a signal reason for recalling them and no other term of his ill-fitting life. He could find nothing to alter or undo. And this also, was brilliantly unique. Yet no more. What pregnancy in these two years? What achievement? What hope gained? Quincy asked himself.... He had bought a pistol.

Then two years, virgin of misdeed, free of dross, forged in a true fire, gave no more than the muddy, lazing, treacherous years before them! Gave no more? Gave less! For those years in which he had stultified himself and which, in turn, he had repudiated, offered memories. He could pasture among them. Filthy and false as he had branded them, they had borne something. Their sin had had a fruit that was sweet. Their wrongness had been pregnant with something that endured. These last two years had been chaste—and sterile. Here was an encouraging observation. It was wrong! He would fight for the true, two years of his life! He would deny the rest—deny Garsted and Deering, deny the woods, deny Rhoda and his mother, deny his dreams. He would deny Julia most of all! All of these things had been wrong, yet they lived! All of these last two years were dead, yet they were right! Here was a new thing to ponder.

The City came into the lists. He had been awaiting this. It threw the balance into a solution. He began to understand.

Two years again—wearying to have lived, wearying to think of. The two years in which he had been alone with the City.

A little squirming thread came out of the welter and ran to an open place. This place was cold and barren and utterly disagreeable. The welter had been fretted with sweet things, streaked with warmth, bathed with perfume. But it had no dimension, no perspective. And the cold place that was open had both of these! The thread was crimson like the fire-car that he had seen in the cold City lights. That rushed to a place which presumably was hot. This thread of his shivered its way to a place that was cold. It was unfortunate. The City had given him a comparison that made him yearn. There was a seed in this!

What was unhappiness? He had been thinking about the City. Now, he pondered this? Well—let his mind reel like a drunken man. It is as good a gait, when one has no place to go, as straight ahead. And that is why drunkards reel. The liquor gives sway to their unconscious self. They do not care to go where they are going. So they go reelingly. So his mind, perhaps. Here it was vainly philosophizing? Let it go.

With relaxation, magically, came an answer.

He had said to himself: “I am unhappy.”