Something of adoration had persisted in Quincy toward his room-mate despite constantly recurring disillusions, rational promptings, and rebuffs. In the fixations of childish fantasy and love there is the doggedness of plant-life which persists where it has grown, though all nature conspire to prove the folly of its position. Such plants will die, or they must be uprooted. They are such stubborn things precisely because of the logic of their existence—to rise from their roots. A similar instinct was in Quincy concerning Jonas. All the persuasions of deed or mind could prevail little against his intuitive attachment, because they were in different planes. He would hold to his sentiment for Jonas until the roots of energy which had thus grown were pointedly grasped and torn away. For a seed of his life instinct was there. And where it had fallen, it had remained. In Jonas, Quincy saw a future of his own growth—a boy, happy, cherished, of importance. What aided this admiration perhaps most of all was the sense of imperviousness to life’s problems which permeated Jonas. This, in particular, was a desideratum. But, after all, these were but rationalizations. The heart of the young boy’s attachment, no young boy could understand.
Quincy was in his room. It was but half an hour before dinner. The boy sat at his desk solving a knotty problem in arithmetic with a facility beyond the power of his six-years-older brother. Quincy was very apt at mathematics. But also, he was good at literature. This double accomplishment militated against his being singled out for any talent. It is a way of people, to mark a virtue only when it is one-sided.
So Quincy sat at his little desk and worked. It was a slanting, box-shaped affair. Its top lifted upon a hinge, disclosing within a maze of paper, school-books, pencils, twine. In one corner, half hidden under a pad, were two unframed pictures—cheap photographs which he had clandestinely collected of the Farnese Hercules and the Venus de Milo. Quincy’s instinct told him that it would be well not to make show of these treasures. His mother would have found them naughty, Jonas would have seared them with the laughter of Philistia. So he hid them and, like forbidden fruit, enjoyed them. Of all the pictures he had ever seen, these meant the most to him. The huge, power-ridged torso of the Hercules filled him with fellowship to so much might and in some way seemed to make him share the giant’s merciless efficiency. He could repeat the Labors. The genius of this overweening man who had penetrated to all the corners of the earth and forever forced for himself acceptance and a welcome was dazzling to Quincy. He enjoyed gazing at a plastic wish fulfillment. But for the sentiment of the divine, he turned toward the Venus. Hercules was to him a successful man; Venus was a goddess. He loved to look at her. The subdued rhythm of her body, the gentle poise of her head and breasts justified Quincy in his own nature, whereas the brawny giant served to mitigate that nature’s realness and to exalt its opposite. So also, since the Venus reached him not by antithesis, but by a direct appeal to a deep, primal part of him, his love for her was more rapt, more pointless, sweeter. He spent more time with her than with the giant. But she made him think less. And he knew less about the instinct which drew him toward her.
Above Quincy’s head, as he worked, was an electric bracket. To his left were the two beds. In the direction that he faced were the windows, curtained in dainty, dun-colored mesh. To his right was a mahogany bureau. This was no ideal setting for his work. But Quincy had learned—it was one of the gifts of the poor days—to concentrate.
The door opened and Jonas slammed in. There was no formality between them. So Quincy went on working. But in the pause that followed, the child felt something which disturbed him. Still holding his pencil, he turned about. There, near the door, stood Jonas, looking at him. On his face was a gleam of triumph.
“What’s happened, Jonas?”
Jonas chuckled. “Time to get ready for supper, Quint.”
The child jumped up, to obey. “What has happened?”
“Oh, if you only knew!”
“Tell me.”