The unwelcome man

by Waldo David Frank

But in the silence, this mystery of one to whom she lived so close came uncomfortably nigh. She preferred the cynic-cripple, though his tongue did sear her. He, at least, might be answered or escaped. She went upstairs wondering why the ties of family were so strangely false, why they solved so little and why, since they gave so little, they should demand so much. It did not occur to her that the ties of family were ties of least effort, glutton ties, carnal ties. It did not occur to her that the tuft of white soul within her must revolt, by its very nature, against a law that hallowed such! Adelaide was not strong enough to let things like that occur to her. She merely wondered and went upstairs.

Quincy examined the books on the table, though they had not changed in four months; nor in six. He scrutinized the pictures on the walls; he examined a cheap photograph, in an elaborate ivory frame, of Sylvia who had died the winter he was born. He resented, unconsciously, his sister’s perpetuation of this traditional child. His mother could be forgiven for dwelling on Sylvia and Josiah junior. But Adelaide had no excuse. Somewhere within the boy, a recollection must have smouldered of how his father had reckoned up his own unwelcome birth with the death of his two favorites. But this childish embryon of memory had grown, from the boy’s own rationalization, into a distrust of so sheerly sentimental an attachment as must be Adelaide’s for a sister who had died when she was three.

While Quincy moved about to hide his deep discomfiture at this set occasion, and to submerge in casualness his qualms as to meeting expectations, Adelaide sat calmly in an armless chair and waited for her brother to subside. She ventured no word. She did not appear to dislike this silence which was so patently wracking him. The truth was that she was forcing herself to bear it. It hurt. But it was the one way, she thought, of testing Quincy’s willingness to be a friend and to be loved. That she might hazard a first step toward a desired consequence with equal right, simply did not occur to Adelaide. She was the sort of girl to whom social initiative was as repugnant as nakedness—and for the self-same reason. The obscure channelings of sex in girls spread it at times so widely from its normal moorings that the remotest mental regions become colored, with the result that some amenities of social life are as impossible for them as a crude, physical aggression. Most girls of this girl’s age and background would have been just so silent and so passive before a man from whom they awaited a proposal. Adelaide hoped for a mere sisterly relation—the privilege of friendship with a brother. Yet, with this seemingly humble dream, her way was that of a girl aroused and wooed. And the reason, although she might never know it, was that within, her condition also was the same.

Of course, Quincy did not understand. He saw merely that Adelaide was at her ancient trick of silence and of resenting his—as if the right of silence lay all with her, the need of speaking entirely with him. This, with the set formality of their retiring to her room, and the portrait of Sylvia and an indescribable something that was Adelaide herself, conjoined to complete his mood. It was a mood pathetically different from what Adelaide had hoped for. And this also dawned on Quincy:—that it would have been easier for him had she succeeded.

In this mood, silence grew too oppressive and he began to speak. Wonder was small that the girl’s first confession at his words was pain. But from the discord of these two unrhythmed ones—a discord ashamed of itself—came a great pity; and from this at length, a sort of rhythm between them. So talk grew possible, and there was born, slow and unheeded, the boy’s intuition:—that Adelaide was in the ruck and base of life, and that, with her at life’s pinnacle, there had been room there, too, for him.

She showed her wish to know about his friends. Quincy spoke of Garsted.

“Next time you come to town, why not bring him with you?”

“If I knew—” he stopped.

“If you knew what?” she asked. She could easily have completed his remark. It had to do with his insecurity at home. He would not care to bring a friend—granted it was allowed—and have himself humiliated before a guest. Garsted had never seemed to understand his rank at home. Garsted told him, in a year college would respect him. And his family had had seventeen years.

Now, Quincy was silent. Adelaide blushed for him, in his emotion.