The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

The crowd closed on Quincy’s heart. And Quincy felt the crowd. He grasped his burden tightly, and pushed ahead. But meantime, and for the first time, he was a-feel with this new substance. What it gave him went to all the senses. It was a sharp, quick taste that drew and a pungent odor that clouded eyes. It was subtle and it was slight. Yet, once impinged upon his being, it remained. And now, he recognized it:—

A desire not to go on—a yearning to cease altogether. A weariness, which in its scope was cosmic, yet in its application seemed almost not to be!

Still, the boy’s energies pricked him on. There was no tremor of hesitation in his walk or in his face. But it was as if the spirit that had forged these energies by which he was now acting, had flickered out. As the light of a star, after the star has died, pierces through space uncaring, so it seemed that Quincy pursued his goal, with his source gone. All this about him seemed to have sapped his soul. It was all so huge and crass and crushing. It cared so little for him. He was a particle within it, too light to sink, too heavy to ascend.

The crowd. And the boy on his way to college.

He had not reckoned on this thing. He had lived within it all of his life. Yet, until this moment, it had been as remote as non-existence. Now, ere he knew how, it was at work upon him. And already, he was weary!

Quincy knew enough—just enough—to be horrified at this; to feel the fitness of a venturing spirit, eager, elastic, for a beginning; and to grow sick at the lack. He did not know enough even to blame the crowd. Nor did he know that the glad face and joyous limbs of the pioneer are figments of fable-weaving; that the mood of the morning is ever a grim facing forward against the soul’s pull backward; and that he shared this weariness that so distressed him with most men who, aching of sinew and sick of heart, go out and win.

An impulse murmured to go back. He crushed it. Back, there was all he yearned to overcome. The impulse which made it preferable to the unknown filled him with shame. He had not been this shirker, two years past. He trudged on. Before him, was much unknown, but one thing certain—Struggle. As he envisaged this, a part of Quincy blanched. It was not because he feared; because he lacked daring for pain or for discomfort. Both of these lay behind him. He thought, and rightly, to have sounded them. What was unbearable in the future was the struggle, the exertion. Whatever the fruit of it, with struggle the price seemed vain. Whatever the bitter emptiness he left behind, since he could lie still and without deeds, seemed welcome. While the world shrieked about him, horrible in its clangor of steel and its dull delirium of feet, Quincy was filled with the desire to share nothing with it, to cut loose, aloof, to cast out whatever element he might conceal in common.

He was weary because this crowd seemed tireless; he craved peace because it breathed out conflict; he longed for abnegation, though it was failure, since the crowd was as it was, with its attainment. Subreptively, unformed, the desire stirred within him, if this hideous pervasion was life, for non-existence.

And then, he thrust that from him, also. For though the source seemed cold, the light was flashing forth. Clearly, he knew that he did not court the future; that he would fain have gone from his past into a region without measure. But none the less, he had reached the station. While his soul yearned for a state without time, his eyes had seen the clock and his brain grasped that it was later than he had surmised. While his soul longed for an endless truce to goal and striving, he had doubled his pace so as not to miss his train. And with his heart set against any sequel whatsoever, he had bought a ticket for the immediate future!

The crowds swirled in eddies and great streams to the narrow gates that sucked them in. The vibrance of movement and adventure hummed in the air. The incense of man’s activity reached his nostrils. He, also, was caught up. His feet carried him down the throbbing passage. The long, silent train lay out like a mystery, beyond his sight. There was a Song in this commotion; a Promise in these steps....