The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

“Whose slipper is that?”

“Mine. You don’t care ...?” She spoke with a strange respect.

Quincy got up and walked. “It’s all right.” And then, facing Adelaide, he stopped. Once more, he was embarrassed. He wished he had been elsewhere.

“Thank you, sister,” he said with effort.

The girl looked at him lingeringly. It was a curious, beautiful look. It came through tears—at least, so it seemed to Quincy—like the sky through thin clouds. And this made him grope vaguely back within his soul for something he had forgotten.

And then, again, came an unaccountable impulse. Adelaide had put out her arms. His impulse was to rush within them. It was as if he would cover many wounds, if he did that. He thought of this. And in the instant of thinking, doubt slipped within—doubt and the looming presence of the house, the memory of those within it, of what they were to him and of that which they had done. He must guard himself against a fresher wound—one of a sort different from this which Adelaide had bandaged. He must beware. He must consider the tribe of Adelaide, with her seeming love and her eyes that feigned a plea. He must remember the impossibility of this which appeared to be before him—the impossibility of love, of understanding; the reality of disillusion. He must cut through this day-dream....

There was a cloud of resolution. With it, the boy’s face hardened. He turned about and limped upstairs—like a wounded wild thing, afraid with returned vigor, of the good Samaritan that had succored it.

And Adelaide sank back to her chair. She forgot to remove the signs of Quincy’s accident. She forgot to knit. She remembered her father and Rhoda. And then, her breast rose stertorously, and she began to sob. For what she had felt, she understood.

The family returned early in September to New York. For Josiah and Rhoda had strong within them a country family’s lust for the City. And with the first burning of the leaves in autumn, they missed the streets and the traffic and the theatres and the hotel-lobbies. Nor was Marsden loth. He was able to move about New York, in their motor; he was able even to visit Broadway since the Burt finances made feasible the purchase of a theatre-box. But Marsden did not care really for these. He preferred New York to the country, with the first burning of the leaves in autumn, merely because he had just been in the country. By Christmas, he would welcome a visit to Atlantic City or Bermuda; by April, he would again be longing for the mountains. The Burt family never summered at the sea-shore. It was too like Long Island. And so, the big house near Central Park, where the leaves die greyly instead of burning out, was made ready. And Quincy was hurried back—so it seemed to him—to live the year’s most passionate season in the City.

All of the summer, the mark had remained of the strange encounter with Adelaide and with the woods. He had avoided the woods, he had been shy with Adelaide. Several times, they walked forth together. But the girl’s efforts to make a breach in his world had been avail-less. They had marched on, silent for the most part; helpless utterly. And Nature was very far away.