The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

Quincy straightened perceptibly. And then, an angry look came into his eyes.

“Look here,” he said, “you leave me alone!”

He marched down the walk. And the policeman mounted back to the height of the hill. For once, Law had been chastened and the individual not crushed, in their perpetual encounter.

What the man in the Rambles had not done, this last completed.

The boy walked now, sturdily, though slowly, toward the Park gate by which he had flung in. An acute observer might have remarked, as he walked on, a curious asymmetry between the force that he seemed to be requiring as he went and the little speed that he attained. A portion of the boy’s energies appeared to load his heels and to impede him. The full swing of his legs was evidently not impressed upon the business of walking. The jerky, heavy gait that he maintained, despite his efforts, proved a divorce of purpose. Quincy’s upper body, his head, his arms were in the rhythm of a steady stride. His legs, somehow, were recalcitrant. And in consequence of this, the boy moved slowly, veered perceptibly in a way that to a tyro might have seemed the signal of intoxication.

Doubtless, the strange sermon of the man in the Rambles had let loose the flow of argument that surged in Quincy. And the rational conclusion to which his thinking brought him was all of a harmony with that strange sermon. Yet, Quincy was going home!

Indeed, in this seeming contradiction, lay the crux of his experience. Quincy was sounding, vividly, the paltriness of logic, the bland imperviousness to it, of truth. His mind swirled in and out of the channels of his resentment, his miseries, his hopes. His mind measured, of course, in flood or ebb, exactly with these channels which it could not escape. And yet, though their course lay outward, he was going home! Before, while he thought his mind submerged and gone, he had yet acted by it. His going forth had been a mental sally though his mind slept. His going-home was an irrepressible emotion, though his mind clamored against it. What a strange paradox for fifteen years to glimpse, though the way of sight was only a pervasive sense of helpless pain, an almost cosmic irritation. Quincy walked on. And his thoughts surged against his walking. And gradually, as he walked, he grappled with his thoughts, grimly determined to deflect them, to turn them back, in stride with his own steps. All of his power went into this battle. His mind must be convinced, won over! He, long since, and ere he had so much as guessed it, had been won over. But even now, Quincy did not know. While he strove to force his intellect into compliance, he believed himself merely in process of thinking out his problem. The struggle to bend his mind to the way of his soul came to him merely as the mechanics of deliberation. Long ago, Quincy was decided. There remained, now, only to propitiate his mind. And this paltry afterlude assumed within him the dimensions of the whole. He would perhaps have called it “making up his mind.” He did not dream that this was an act of kindly reconciliation—the winning over of an un-needed minority in whose dissent lay, at the worst, a source of irritation.

But mind holds the channels of our consciousness—controls the self’s publicity. And from this not inconsiderable power, it has built up a prestige for itself. It delays the announcement of any state until it has been approached; and then, it so gives out the news that its consent seems necessary, not for the mere announcement through its channels, but for the state itself. And so, the mind’s acknowledgment—often a hard-wrung effort to make it face a long accomplished fact—seems a protagonist where it is naught but a chorus, commissioned to explain and to chime in.

The real decision, then, impelling Quincy homeward, was not an affair of words or of deliberation. It had been born in that deep land of him that is never heard save through its far remote ambassadors. It had been born of that will which does not argue, which makes its indomitable revelation and then subsides, while its deed runs subtly through innumerable channels to the outer lands. Here then, takes place the clash of denial and of argument. Within, there is the serenity of fate. But if Quincy’s recognition was to come only within the shadow of his goal, it was none the less acute for the delay. However wrong was his belief that, in this struggle of deliberation which held him now, lay the finality of what he was to do, by means of it he at least came to understand.

As he walked, he thought of life as it would be, if he did not return. At once, he had the picture of it, uncensored by the least knowledge of reality. He saw himself living in a miraculous family, a group of persons who would respect him, leave him alone, and welcome with attentive eagerness his least advance. Of course, out of his graciousness, he did advance, at times. This family knew his worth and felt his tragedy. Under their roof he grew and his powers spread. And his life became one of great service. But of pleasure, there was little. He kept to himself, nursing his delicious sorrow, a beneficent knight-errant, with the bleeding soul of a recluse. But gradually, the edifice of his good deeds rose into view. And at last, it came within the ken of those that had driven him away. Partly through age, his parents’ hair would by now be white; mostly, however, through remorse. All of his old family, in heroic resolution, had shouldered the guilt for his departure. And now, he returned to them, magnanimous, loving, and forgave them. He kissed his father’s wrinkled face down which tears of contrition fell. Rhoda also was there—husbandless, somehow, chastened, eyes soft with the wish to be accepted. And he went up to her, and took first her hands and then, her head, and gave forgiveness. With her came the others—respectful, humbled, yearning toward him. (His mother was not in the picture. But he was unaware of this.) He exacted no punishment; he said no word of sorrowful reminder. He threw open his arms for all and took them in. And there was happiness.