Part 1 — THE UNWELCOME MAN (continued 3)

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.

Here was a roseate arrangement; and yet, to Quincy, one certain of accomplishment, if only he would face about. But he walked on. Why?

He saw his family, coldly, clearly, in the event of his return. He read the added sneer of their lips, the arching of brows that meant indulgence for one who was hopelessly foolish and incompetent. He saw the wrath of his father at this new turn on his dignity which he had played him; the knowing whistle of Marsden, discounting childish weakness; the sharp unconcern of Rhoda, not honoring his adventure even with contempt. And he dramatized for himself the sensations of his mother. She would be glad to have him back—oh, yes! But how little she would understand! To her, his going would seem an escapade luckily done with—a spurt of temper, subsiding fortunately. She would think thus:

“Quincy was naughty. But thank God, he thought better of it. Thank God, he was too weak to turn naughtiness into badness. Quincy was too much of a child to do real injury to me. Thank God, for Quincy’s childishness!”

In her regard, as in that of all the others, he would have lost. His return would mean the sacrifice of those few considerations which he had somehow won. It would mark a new depth for his inferiority, forge a new weapon for tyranny and contempt and misconstruction. To stay away meant a path of glory. To return meant skulking back into a cell made dingier and poorer for him in his absence. And in his act, no single one of them would see aught but a lack of will, a dearth of spirit, a sickly fall. And yet, in this direction went his feet!

No tinge of cowardice was there. Quincy knew too little of the world to be afraid of it, to hesitate in choice between his home that he did know, and it. His going-out had been the irresistible plunge of a long propped-up weight, rushing toward the goal of its momentum. In his return—if return he did—there was no falling; rather, a laborious, painful urging back against the sweep of that momentum. The one way, craned his thoughts and his ambition. The way he went, a voice he did not recognize or know of, had sent a syllable.

But now, he came to feel its nature. The words of the man had been wise words indeed. That was perhaps a reason for defeating them. They had singled out the fact of mother, and there dwelt. And though Quincy was inclined to think him right, these very words had inspired within him a protest of antithesis. His mother! Was the man wrong in his uncanny penetration? What had she helped him? How sustained him? how really served to protect him? Her love was real enough. But was it not a sickly, swaying plant—roots spread too wide for clinging, leaves thrust too close within the shadow of others, to have the sun? What did he owe her? Was her love not in its essence selfish, weakly? Did it not subsist on tears and sterile moments? Could he conceive of living on such sustenance, of mounting with such feeble help?

The man had been right. Quincy’s mind agreed. But Quincy in each step proved that both man and mind were wrong. For Quincy was going back to this discredited mother. Mentally, he nullified her and discarded her. Always, she stood there, with outstretched arms, as he rushed toward her. He thought he knew the formula of her tears, yet they ate deep in him. He thought he knew the grammar of her words; yet they commanded him. Quincy was learning.

And now, the Park was behind him. The adventure stood at its climax. And if there be gods who cease at times their celestial indifference, when the gleam of a real heroism smarts in their dull eyes from earth, they were now watching Quincy. Learn the book of life and the nature of the heroic becomes plain. It is the deliberate negation of what is sense and rote, of that which the interminable average makes life; it is the disavowal of all laws, the compliance with what is but a shadow, a shred, and a suggestion. It is the leaning on an instant and the despising of all time. It is the paradoxical resolve to prove a spot of star greater and wider and more important than the mass of earth. It is the truth. And it is even more, for it is the acting on it.

Quincy knew to what he was returning. He knew that no soul within the house would feel the power of his temptation to stay away, though it meant starving. He knew that she for whom he walked back into the shambles would translate his deed to fit in her own petty scope and wishes and perturbations. He knew the utter vainness of his act for his own self; the bitter fruit that it must bear; the insufferable slur that it would cast upon his fine rush for freedom.

For a moment, he paused, lost in a cloud almost of extinction. And then, something put force upon his finger. And his finger pressed the bell....

XII

It may have been his mother, the net of impulse which she spun, that swept Quincy home. But in his act, spontaneously sprang to knowledge a new state—the sense of challenge. Indeed, the smouldering, grim awareness deep within him that he had a right to home, a right there to remain and make demands, had lain upon his mind since the beginning. It had been co-ordinate there with the sentiments that drove him back. It had, at that outset, been a sentiment itself, rather than a conviction shot through with thought. It had been leaven to his strong emotions and had made active the unarguing voice which ordered his return. But in that period of germination and later, carrying-out, this sense of challenge was at best subliminal. He could not have quoted a program by it; he could not have numbered his rights or his capacities for claiming them. This was a later birth—the coming into consciousness of this. But as his finger pressed the bell, and the moment stood before him in all its painful nudity, a great shock went through Quincy. And with it, Quincy’s sense of challenge grew articulate. All of his powers needed at such a moment to be summoned. All of his weapons he needed in his hands. And what was more, he needed not merely to find them there, but a conscious grasping them and a sharp perfection. Else, he had foundered. And so, in this general calling forth to arms, to service, of whatever lay within him, this sense emerged. He felt a state of right; he knew an order of demands. The door opening for him, there was Challenge in place of Sacrifice, as he stepped inside.

The door was opened by his father. He was in his vest. By this sure sign, Quincy learned that he had been anxious. For Josiah always gave way to worry by taking off his coat. But Quincy did not guess the nature of his concern. It would not have flattered him. He saw his father’s face, cold, solemn, bitterly relieved, who stood there, slightly to one side, waiting for words. Quincy met his arrogant gaze an instant. He felt that he had given answer, in his own expression. Spontaneously, he stepped past and went up the stairs.

The door to the sitting room was open. He felt behind him the astounded figure of his father still near the door, too outraged to act. Within the sitting room, ere he was on a level to look in, he felt the congregated presence of the others. Their mood seemed one with the cold gleam they sat in, and which reached him from above as he marched up the stairs. He turned down the hall. It was darkened. It gave accent to the light of the room where now he saw the others. There was a piercing note to his walking through that narrow, darkened passage, braving the glare where they were, in order to pass them and mount higher. His mother stood in the threshold. She called forth his name. And then, rushing into the hall, she caught him up.

He gave way to her warm, silent arms. He allowed himself gladly to be pressed and kissed and strained against her. For a moment, challenge went down.

And then, holding him at arm’s length, she looked at him with questioning eyes. Within, the others sat, mutely, coldly, interested.

“Why did you run away, Quincy?” his mother asked.

The boy was hurled back upon himself.

He felt the curious attention of those others within the room. Their almost perceptible craning forward to catch his answer ate like acid into his heart. Below, he heard his father’s steps approaching;—approaching, it seemed to Quincy, in order to complete the audience. And he the spectacle—he the victim, while his mother served to show him through his paces! Why was she so cruelly stupid? Why must she have asked that searing question? Why could she not have understood how he yearned really to answer it for her, how her asking it now—under such conditions, before these!—made that answer vain, and his desire a mockery? Her embraces given without calculation, had been better. Then, for the moment, she had been on his side—been as he wanted her. But now, she had fallen over. She might not have meant it. But did her ignorance allay his pain—bring back to life the sweet impulse she had killed? She was serving them, siding with them; and through her hold and his expectancy of better, proving the worst of them all!

He hated her for it. He hated her for her stupidity; and for the love he bore her. He hated her for the hope she had, one moment gone, inspired in him....

He shoved her aside and rushed upstairs—all of the scene, she, they of the sitting room, his father, like a wide burn upon his brain.

As he reached his room, he heard her sob. And for her suffering, as he flung himself upon his bed, he hated her the more.