VIII
In early September, the workmen and the decorators left the big brown-stone house in a condition of coldness known as “modern” and a state of deadness known as “beautiful.” And then, the family of Burt moved in. At this time, Quincy was approaching his twelfth birthday.
Not as long as he lived did he forget the feeling that came over him, that first time, as he mounted the stoop and went through the ponderous carved door into the house that was now to be his home.
The coupé came to a stand-still. The horses had made a strange and muffled sing-song on the pavement. From time to time, this changed to a metallic patter in syncopation—a sound symbol, it seemed to Quincy, of affright. At these intervals, the carriage jolted, one wheel rolled high, the other was in a trough. Then again, all righted itself and the sing-song was resumed. In the coach, was gloom of blue upholstery and leather. His father and his sisters sat tight, thrilled, their eyes intent upon the passing city. It was a maelstrom of half impressions. Cars clanged, other horses sloughed off the view, a swaying coachman shouted, an insatiate tide of men and women ebbed and flowed. Marsden, mother, Jonas and the servant had gone before in another carriage. And now, the frenzy of Manhattan seemed to abate. It was like leaving the wind behind one on the water. They swung up the border of a Park. There were trees and shrubs and grass! It was a wood, by all conventions. And yet it depressed Quincy who yearned for just such balm. The trees were grey; the grass was dull. Here was not life, but a show of artifice. Hard walks girded the green stretches like belts of steel. None of the free tang and give and sunniness, none of the lilt and smiling, none of the purple murmur of the woods was here. Central Park did not fool Quincy—could not have fooled him, even if cars had not swept back and forth between him and it; even if a depressing monotone of houses had not filled the other flank.
And now, the carriage rolled up. A crowded tramp of the horses and it came to a halt.
Rhoda and Adelaide seemed to emerge from a trance.
“Here we are!” they sighed, with a hollow note that bespoke the nervous feel in their stomachs. The carriage door flung open. They bounded out and ran up the stoop. Josiah half-lifted, half-pushed Quincy to the pavement. He stood there, balanced by his bewilderments, while his father paid the coachman.
“Come on, sir,” the big man tapped his shoulder. The carriage had disappeared. Quincy looked up.
Before him was an unbroken but uneven battlement of houses. Some were brown, some were red, some were grey. At their feet ran the wide, flagstoned pavement. Some were straight-stepped, some were curved, some were curiously decorated boxes. A few had no feet at all—with doorways punched abruptly in the wall. Before Quincy’s eyes it was brown; the protuberance with stairs was straight. Red doors were flung wide open—held so for passage of the trunks—and within was darkness. Above, it was all very vague and high. Quincy felt this, though he did not look. He went up mechanically, with his father. As he stepped in, he felt a quick sensation of the sky—shrill blue, inexorably far away, yet good. It seemed like a short draught of water when one has been long athirst. It was but a momentary glimpse. And then, his body carried him beyond, within, where the sky was not. He saw the long hall, shadowed, and the wide stairs. It seemed clear to him now why it had been as if the sky was snuffed away. Everything loomed forward and smothered Quincy; filled up the crystal space within him that cared for the blue above and seemed somehow related to it. Everything loaded down upon him, occupied him, stayed there. As he trudged up, it was as if a mighty burden had come suddenly. Quincy observed no more, felt nothing more explicit. But for an instant a perspective flashed on him, though he deemed it merely a natural panic like a score of others he had undergone. In it, he saw himself, slight, small, stooped, his head strained back with his disordered tension, his legs careering stiffly with untrained, superfluous energy. In it, he saw about him a weight of gloom—the stuff and color of this house which was to be his home. And then, once more, he was a child. His mother stood at the head of the stairs. She was very busy, and rather dirty-looking.
“You had better go up to your room, dear, where you won’t be in the way.” She turned to Jonas who sat sprawling within vision, upon a great chair in green satin. “Jonas, will you take Quincy up?”