IV

Quincy lies on his back. He is at the age when one feels most

completely, and yet when one’s world is most completely logical. Soon,

his first birthday will be celebrated and the campaign of dwarfing his

emotions, battering down the one sufficient Rationale of life that he

will ever have, will be on foot. Innumerable projections from an

indigestible world will come to trouble him. But now, everything that he

absorbs, he absorbs literally. All of it becomes the stuff of himself,

as surely as the milk he sucks. In his own world, he is omniscient and

omnipresent.

None the less, he lies sprawling on his back. He is alone in the room.

He is crying. His mother enters.

By now, he can distinguish her. The first state of his life is already

buried; the woman that first gave him milk is a mere quality that he has

transferred into this other woman. So, they are one in his sense and in

his heart. For the most active portion of Quincy’s mind is still the

portion that forgets. Each new event brings its deposit of sensation,

departs, and leaves no trace. He is still All. And no thing is sensed by

him except in its deposit. The wealth of sensation mounts. The causes

flash up, die out. But his mother is a comforting exception. Somehow,

she has a being of her own, constant, separate from what she does for

him. She is Quincy’s first lesson in objectivity. And so, he places out

his little hands to grasp her. For the idea of Self is still unshakable

within him. And in what follows, it is forever proven to be right....

His hands go up. And his hands receive. He is lifted from his cradle. He

is pressed full and hard against this Quantity--his mother. It is all

his doing, since his little hands went up. A feeling of infinite

rightness floods him, crinkling his body. He gives up all his being to

this sense, as he lies there embraced. A compact of fellowship and

intercourse is signed in the imprint of his fingers upon her breast, her

hair, her curiously protruding nose and eyes and mouth. He is wafted

back upon a past which his mind militantly denies. All life begins with

just this surging backward--synchronous with all life’s struggle, the

command to wrench desire forward. But in his mother’s arms, the struggle

dies and the primordial impulse swells to the full. Quincy is unabashed

by this joy that holds him, when his mother holds him, making him warm

and needless; making him happy to revert to a complete dark dependence.

For Quincy has no morality. He has only logic. He is in the hand of

love. And he is willing.

His world broadens vastly. His power to embrace his world soon meets its

limit. It seems, then, that his world has shrunk. The cruel process of

unfolding is incessant with its burden of surprises. All of life, then,

assumes surprise as its tonal color. All of life becomes a swelling

forth from self into new shadows. These harden to a part of substance.

And the act begins afresh. New shadows. New crystallizings. New

flooding-forth. Yet, through it all resounds still a chord of

harmony,--himself. But already, the chord is minor. Already, Quincy

grows aware of a bewildering congeries of other things. He still

persists throughout, but in a note that lessens. And this is why the

minor chord is sorrowful.

* * * * *

Gradually, then, life was resolving itself in its full force to Quincy.

He knew need and space and limitation. He was to know hostility and

hate. In his world, came from time to time a massive creature with a

face that stayed very far away. Generally, this occurred before a flood

of darkness. At first the sense aroused was one of immateriality. This

person was of no consequence. He loomed up, noised about, and then the

gentle time stole over the great world. But Quincy learned ere long, now

he was growing wise, that matters are not always what they seem. It was

a great blow to Quincy. From his father, indeed, the infant came to feel

a new quality of apartness. If his mother’s independence had been

established, it was still always within the bounds of a strong

empire--that empire, himself. Beyond this, her separateness had no

impulse to break. But with his father it was different. He was not only

apart in his movements and effects; he seemed connected by no bond

whatever to the dominion that was Quincy! Indeed, his being, thrust ever

within Quincy’s world, seemed an affair entirely fortuitous.

Here was a great, new truth to knead into his heart. His father came;

his father _was_; and yet no even tenuous chord connected them. From

this amazing seed of recognition sprang many varied, new impressions.

And it was not long ere infantile wisdom had sensed the truth.

There was a reason for his father’s being there, with his rough distant

body, and his cold eyes, and his voluminous voice. All else in the

world was a note in his own harmony, a weave of his own texture. His

father alone--like him--lived with no deeper source. And between them,

needed by them both, claimed by them both, was this delicious creature

of sweet embrace and warm bestowal! There lay the kernel of all

bitterness. For Quincy felt with the fibre of his being, that his mother

was not completely, not exclusively his own. She served another.

Quincy rolled in the heavy lull that broods before a tempest. He could

not grope unassisted across the floor of his world, but the daze of his

blue eyes, the clench of his fists betokened already a sense of failure,

a sense of loss. The vista-sneer of fatality and disillusion was already

smiting its message upon his brow. For could one mistake the things that

happened when his father came in upon them? At once, his mother’s touch

lost its magic; her face in some way grew clouded. With tense arms she

would hurt him; with tense arms lay him away.

Fully and splendidly, he came to hate his father. Every nerve of his

body melted in fire-fretted agony when he was there. And in reaction, he

strained more piteously toward his mother.

And so was fashioned above Quincy’s world, a universe.

To the bland, simple scheme of self, there now succeeded a period of

conflict in which life and pain were grown more close together. The

child careered mutely, sullenly, through an intricate design of needs

and denials. His soul was become a field of warring colors and

discordant forms. The passion rose to a fine _crescendo_. It was

therefore destined to subside.

Rather than this, however, it was suddenly to disappear. The lifting of

the fever pall was in no way gradual. The new calm flung upon him with

the placid lilt of a swift bird, sailing downward on wide wings. His

first world had been simply himself. On this had followed a universe of

struggle and dumb passion. Now, there was born a vision in which Nature

and society took smiling order. What had preceded was whirled off,

leaving no trace save in the unlabelled deposits of thought and feeling

that had foregathered upon Quincy, like heaps of the world’s scattered

contents in huddled disarray after the passage of a cyclone.

* * * * *

Quincy forgot to hate his father. He forgot to love his mother with any

intense personal desire, save when she was there, or some concrete

demand of help--a fall or a fright--drove him back into the cosmos he

had left.

Things beyond his father had the color of fear and struggle. Things

beyond his mother possessed the qualities of joy. When his mind was

centered, his father still could serve as symbol for life’s

obstructions; his mother, of life’s happy possibilities. But Quincy was

too concerned in the glad discovery of a far-flung world, in the

adventuring forth upon its surprises and delights. He had in balance

little energy for intensive feeling. His passions subsided--spread forth

into a maze of sentiment. Where had been hate was now a mere sense of

objection; where had been love remained a sense of comfort and

attachment. His soul was unfolding itself among objective fields. The

clash of pent-in conflict had died away.

His brothers and sisters now stepped within his world.

There was Adelaide, for instance, just three years older than himself.

(By this time Thomas, the seventh child, had gone with some mute regret

and very little comment.) Adelaide was an admirable person to lead in

adventure. She was courageous and passing wise. Upon one occasion, she

had eaten grass to Quincy’s ecstasy. Her teeth and lips had turned a

convincing green. And if she could steal a cookie with hardihood, she

was not above sharing it with mercy. Her two blond braids, moreover, had

a delightful way of tossing when one desired to catch hold of them and

her cheeks were good to delve one’s nose in. The pair held the

butterflies in equal fellowship. The great trees filled them both with

the same wonder. And since, by the new dispensation, they slept side by

side in two separate little cots, they exchanged secrets and dreams,

giggles and deep sympathies for life’s sudden flares of sorrow, with

mutual satisfaction.

Rhoda, who was quite tall and had black hair, was a formidable creature.

Her little sister hated her, called her a “pig.” So Quincy joined in the

compact of hostility. And since it comprehended chiefly the making of

faces, the harassing of Rhoda’s dolls, the acquisition, separate from

her, of pennies and cookies and the hoarding, to Rhoda’s green chagrin,

of visionary secrets and a very real toad, Quincy enjoyed this passion

hugely.

Farther aloof in the hierarchy stood Jonas, and dimly beyond, the

ominous, still figure of Marsden. Marsden was unable to play and could

not even hobble without a crutch. He was, hence, despicable,--to be

clandestinely made fun of. But he was by no means to be pitied. He might

perhaps have elicited this feeling, had he not been so powerful, and

had not mother and father so tiringly harped upon the need of it. Deep

in the weave of Quincy’s life was this order of his parents to respect

Marsden, to do his bidding, to look out for him. And in addition, there

were his sharp, piercing eyes, the ugly curl of his thin lips, the

hautain raise of his brow and, worst of all, his utter contempt and

disregard for everything of Quincy’s. Against these elements, no natural

affections could have prevailed. So Marsden was disliked, envied and as

far as possible avoided.

Matters were different with Jonas. Approach to him was also difficult,

as with Marsden or Rhoda. The distinction lay in the fact that it was a

desirable, almost a dreamed-of thing. And in the active aloofness of

this young, boisterous god, through the logic of his affection, Quincy

read not a fault, but an added splendor. Jonas was apart, in his six

more years. But he was justly, fitly so, in Quincy’s mind. And the fond

hope was born in him that perhaps, some time, if only Jonas did not

increase too rapidly and he could accelerate _his_ rate, he might catch

up, and a roseate fellowship be brought about.

Meantime, however, there was Adelaide, in whose seniority he felt a

gentle guidance toward the elusive source of pleasure and away from the

forever lurking shadow of misfortune. But this alliance was short-lived.

Nor was this entirely without fault in Quincy. Doubtless, a moving

factor in Adelaide’s defection was the longing she nursed to be of the

company of Rhoda. Herein, her state was like that of Quincy toward his

brother. But whereas the boy had felt a justice, fashioned almost a

glory in his brother’s pointed superiority, Adelaide had resented this

in Rhoda. Having resented it, she turned to Quincy, with, however, a

tinge of spite upon her feeling. And when, at length, Rhoda opened the

way toward comradeship, her real desire to join her ranks, to exercise

her smouldering sex-patriotism, was bound to show.

The nature of Quincy, however, made all this easier for Adelaide. These

were perhaps the blandest years, the most harmonious, of his life. But

even here there was within him a source of conflict, a rift, destined to

debar him from gracious or facile living. Adelaide found him slow to

follow up a game or play into which, with the best impulse, he had

entered. Always, there lay in him the instinct to retire, to grow cool,

to wander off lack-spirited before her own climax of enthusiasm.

Suddenly, she would find that his mood was changed, that he was

spiritually alone and aloof, while they pursued together the sequence of

some sport. And, once thus removed from their common-ground of interest,

there was no retrieving him. He would sit a-dream on the grass, cold

before the sand pile which their mutual eagerness was to have

transformed into a castle. If one addressed him then, he would not hear.

If one tried to shake him from his reverie, he would scratch and bite

and scream.

This was all Adelaide knew. But behind his failure, even as a child, to

sustain his interest, it mattered little in what end, there lurked a

serious cause. Quincy lacked soul-endurance. The part of him that should

have fired his acts seemed scant of fuel. And from this want had come a

timidness of purpose, a tendency to veer and flutter and give way. Not

only in the face of opposition was this true, but in the effort of

accomplishment, in the very fact of nearing what he had desired. The

imminence of approach to that toward which he had set out with heart

a-gleam, served to slacken his pace and to disaffect his will.

Adelaide had suffered from this, in their serious business of play.

Quincy’s own suffering, here as forever after, was to be indissolubly

set in the suffering he helped to cause in others.

And at the time of this first instance, with its result of a tragic

disaffection, he was not yet eight.

V

There was but a short interim between the alliance with Adelaide and the

beginning of the reign of Jonas.

These were dull days of autumn. And during them, Quincy was put to

school. This new event, however, appeared to involve him slightly. It

taxed a surface of his attention. Its influence was neither encompassing

nor deep. For Quincy was the kind of child who always precedes, in that

he is an individual, the class in which his years cause him arbitrarily

to be placed. With such, the average drone-exercise of school is an ugly

filler of what might elsewhere have been golden hours. But if the

business of reading and addition meant little to him, the new will of

Jonas to acknowledge him as vassal meant relatively much.

Prior to his eighth birthday came a shift in the house. Rhoda and

Adelaide were brought together into one room--it had been their request.

Quincy was ousted from his bed--he regarded it as a promotion; and his

room was given over to the crippled Marsden who was old and crabbed even

for his hoary seventeen years. Jonas was removed from his spacious

quarters to a wide, transformed attic under the eaves where the ceiling

sloped and an air of solitude pervaded. A cot was placed beside his

wooden bed for Quincy. The room left vacant on the second floor was made

ready to receive a lodger; for the Burt finances were, as ever, ragged.

It was written that no lodger should come. But there, at least, stood

the empty room, in token of the family’s scrupulous intentions.

In this sharing of a room, apart from the ruck of life, with his life’s

ideal, began an era in Quincy’s progress. The lad rejoiced in its marked

position, under the roof. He rejoiced in the extra flight of stairs to

be pattered up to reach it. He rejoiced in the singularity of the

ceiling, in the lack of a conventional wall-paper,--the room was roughly

wainscoted in pine, and plastered. But most of all, he rejoiced in the

symbolism of his little white cot alongside the majestic bed. And so,

since his happiness required precisely the meed of haughty tolerance,

the stressed superiority of Jonas,--Quincy was happy.

Jonas was fourteen. In coloring and contour, he derived from his father.

He was blond of hair and his eyes were brown. Already, an incipient

fleshliness was there. His head was small--dull and indelicate in its

square mass; his nose was short and thick and his mouth was heavy. He

was an ordinary boy. But he was playful, arrogant, world-wise and

fourteen. So, for the present, he suited the demands of the slight,

dark, wiry child who was his brother.

Quincy lay wide-eyed in his cot, waiting for his brother, with rapt

expectancy.

Since it was winter, he had retired after dark. His mother had taken him

upstairs, while Jonas and the others remained below for their later

supper.

“Well, dear,--I hope you won’t mind your new room.”

As she struck a match and lit the lamp, Quincy felt her presence as a

rather hazardous protection from the dark which he had mind enough, now,

to fear. He clung to her skirts. This was a great event--this first

night with Jonas. But like all such, it was fraught with peril, touched

with the dizziness of enterprise. Below, in the old room, were less

thrills, less promise; but also there was less fright, less mystery. The

child forgot the exalted meaning of this new phase--a room with Jonas.

He saw the scared gleam of the lamp against the shadows. He saw the loom

of the great bed, marked off in what seemed an infinitude of space, an

infinitude of ground for visions. And almost, his heart misgave him and

he regretted the smug past with Adelaide when there had been steadfast

company in the vast gloom of night.

“Come,” his mother put him off tenderly, “you aren’t afraid, are you?”

And so, a-tremble, he was put to bed. His mother moved about him in a

glow of certainty, half merged in the uncertain darkness. And then came

the last rite, before the lamp and mother went out together--the prayer.

He knelt on the cot, his head against her breast. And though the words

he spoke were cold, fearless, high-sounding words, the prayer he really

uttered was an appeal for comradeship in the vast night. From this

standpoint, God could be of use to him and real. He did not need him for

daily bread, nor for guidance from unheard-of evils and unguessed

temptations. But with all energy, his mind fixed on Deity as a presence

that would remain with him in the black, murmurous horror which would

clap in upon him, when lamp and mother went out together. And with this

spirit, there was fervor in his voice, though it gave forth unapt words;

there was religious passion in the clutch of his little hands and the

pressure of his head, although they touched not God at all, but a still

older, more eternal Mother. For her going out--with the lamp--was of the

color of life itself, inevitable. And already, his eight years had

taught Quincy to submit.

It happened. He lay straining beneath his covers. A dormer window had

been opened. And from it came a ghostly stir of trees, a frozen glow of

refracted light, a sibilance of brooding and foreboding. In the house

itself, were the night’s innumerable voices--those that dared make

themselves heard only when no soul but Quincy was about. Below, with

Adelaide, they had been quiet; but a moment before, with mother, they

were hushed. Now, they were at their occult revels. They chuckled and

laughed and hissed; the forms that owned them creaked upon floors, made

the walls to groan and bend, shuffled through the somehow resisting air.

The child stared before him. Blackness. Was he blind? He turned his head

and saw that he was not. For there, in the window was the soft blur of

light, and beside it stood one of the night’s forms. It was a strange,

half-real thing--a streak of gold and green with orange eyes and ears

that swayed, and a mouth that came in the wrong place but gaped none the

less. Quincy accepted it with difficulty. It did not somehow transmit to

him its own frozen heart of horror. The child was even able to look away

from it, into the impenetrable shadows where his feet, his cot,

everything was swallowed up. He feared these more. A sense of engulfment

crept over him. He closed his eyes. He slept.

And then, he was awake. The obsession of the early evening was still

foremost in his mind: that he must stay awake for Jonas--to greet Jonas

as he came to the big bed. He was unconscious utterly that he had

slept. The one cessation of which he was aware was of the horrors--of

the voices and the forms and the green light. He lay quite still,

half-expecting their return. They seemed so essential and fateful a part

of a life alone. But a strange peace filled the room. It contained no

fears, no visions. It seemed to be shaping calmly, rhythmically. It

became a personality. And it was resting. What was that?--yes, the room

was even breathing. Surely, softly, continuously it came--the breathing.

Quincy lay wonder-struck in bed. How was this? It had not the stuff of a

dream, nor of such forms as the gold-green monster he had discovered by

the window. This was _real_!

He sat up in his cot. The breathing came and came. If only Jonas--. A

thought flashed, and the child looked toward the bed. There it stood,

huge, looming above the shadows. And in it, a lack of precision, then a

sense of form, a concrete sense of breathing. Jonas was there. The

mystery of how, did not distress him. Quincy accepted the glad wonder

without question. For a long time, he sat up, drinking it in, basking in

his new sure dominion of the room. And then, he sank back upon his

pillow into sleep....

* * * * *

Still, there were disquieting things to be observed in Jonas. His

attitude toward the family was in one case at least radically wrong. He

and father seemed on the point of becoming chums! That autumn, already,

Jonas had been allowed to follow on a snipe-shooting expedition. He was

full, even now, of his father’s prowess--big, burly, muscular man that

he was--in laying low the little sand-skipping creatures that seemed

less bird than insect. And now, not long after Quincy’s eighth birthday,

when the weather was still a grumbling discord of cold and ice and when

still, one went to bed in the dark, Jonas was taken on a trip to New

York. He was away an interminable time--from early breakfast until

bed-time. And he returned inarticulately stuffed with wonder and

importance. What had transpired and in what respect New York was

dissimilar to Harriet, Long Island, Quincy could not ascertain.

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand,” said Jonas. “It’s all a holler and a

racket and a lot o’ stone towers where people live and you’re jigged up

and down in elevators.”

For his superiority, Quincy forgave him. But when he observed: “Dad and

me ’tended to business together,” Quincy disliked the association. Nor

could his remark, couched in a prophetic voice: “We are goin’ to be

rich, we are. Dad tol’ me,” wipe out the evil taste. The announcement

indeed meant far less than the promise of half an orange.

With the spring, Josiah’s interest in the boy that resembled him grew

ostentatiously. One Sunday afternoon, Jonas was accorded a puff of the

paternal pipe. Gloatingly, he came over to Quincy, who sat sulking on

the sofa, and blew into his face. Quincy observed that now Jonas’ breath

was like his father’s. It hurt him. A favorite place for Jonas came to

be his father’s knee. He would sit there and they would have long,

mumbled converse together. Quincy would seek out his mother if she was

present, and talk to her. Or if she was busy, he would press his face

against the back of his chair and hold rival conversation with himself,

biting the upholstery or punching it with emphatic fists--eager above

all to appear indifferent. But all that he would be really conscious of

was his father’s low chuckle and the shrill peal of Jonas’ laughter.

“Do you like Dad?” the child asked his brother one evening, as Jonas

stumbled noisily into their room.

“He’s great!” came the answer.

“I like mother,” said Quincy.

“Do you, molly-boy?”

And Quincy turned away his head in a flood of shame, tempered with

pride.

Toward their sisters also, there came to be a gulf in policy. Jonas was

actively adverse to both Adelaide and Rhoda. Quincy, who also did not

love them, feared them and was anxious above all to be left alone. But

if they addressed him with kindness, or some slight show of interest,

his enmity subsided. He became glad, eager to respond. This inclination

brought him the criticism of his brother. Jonas was for warfare and a

perpetual offensive. He criticized Quincy’s amiable bent. And his way of

criticism was a sneer that cut.

In Marsden, however, they had a common ground and a true grievance

binding them against their sisters. For Rhoda curried favor with this

sinister vicegerent of their parents’ will. And Adelaide always followed

Rhoda. Both of them were forcibly inclined toward him, by reason of his

unfortunate rut of life. And for these causes, Jonas and Quincy were

impelled against them.

* * * * *

With his nine years, Quincy was admitted to dinner with the remainder of

the family. And although this privilege might have been expected to

prove welcome, it marked a new cycle of suffering for Quincy. The two

major instances were these: that it necessitated his climbing up alone

to bed through the dark and terrible house, and that it brought out

poignantly at last to the child how his own place therein differed from

what he wished and from that occupied by all the others.

Marsden’s throne was a much pillowed chair, with broad arms and wheels.

In this, he was rolled to his place at dinner. And dinner was the one

time of congregation for the entire family. Josiah was almost invariably

away at lunch--he was of that strange variety of men who prefer saloon

fare with beer, to home cooking without it. Adelaide and Rhoda came home

late from school. And Jonas preferred a box of sandwiches and cookies to

be consumed away among his school-mates. In consequence, lunch as a rule

was a scattered and unceremonious affair.

The order of seating at dinner was inflexible. At the end of the oblong

table, nearest the red portières, sat father, leaning close over his

plate, his elbows flat against the white cloth. At the other end, in

strategic proximity to the kitchen, was the straight, stiff figure of

mother, who jumped up from time to time, disappeared, and then returned

motionless, creaseless to her fixed posture. On her left was brought the

chair of Marsden, and beside him sat Rhoda, a tall girl of fourteen,

with a red mouth that curled and great black eyes tokening a somnolent

fire and an acerb spirit. On his mother’s right hand was Quincy’s place.

Next to him came Adelaide with her ingratiating manner and her busily

agitating curls of a sun-shot brown. And on his father’s right, Jonas

had place for his noisy, passionate consumption of all the food within

his reach or not beyond his power.

From mother came a word of grace. During this tense moment, when the

soup lay steaming with irresistible flavor before them, the children

were supposed to bow their heads and cast their thoughts on high. But

Quincy’s devotion was not so rapt as to preclude observance of his

father, who sat stock-still, face up, during the prayer, and trimmed his

nails or grimaced his open deprecation. Inspired so, Jonas, while not

daring not to bow his head, frequently gave vent to a giggle or to an

inward gesture of disrespect. The two girls were in earnest. Marsden

simply continued the smirk and sullen countenance that were his wont.

And over little Quincy, reverently inclined, stole a strange sense of a

thing amiss, of a rift in the sacrificial rhythm.

“Amen,” was the signal for a reaction of noise. Father would cut a piece

of bread-crust with a knife--a tooth splitting process. The girls would

giggle; Jonas would empty his plate and then thrum the table with

impatience. And Marsden would order his mother up to re-arrange his

cushions.

And while the first sharp edge of appetite wore down, came a space of

muffled sounds, with scanty words. Mother would rise noiselessly with

that miraculous manner which forbade even the creaking of her chair.

Silently, she would gather in the soup plates and pass out into the

kitchen.

With regularity, this act was a sign for father. His heavy face would

crease in smiles; his heavy hand would fetch down upon the table, upon

his knee, upon the back of Jonas.

“Well, lad--what’s new?”

And a gay parley would take place between them.

Here was one invulnerable nucleus; another, three-fold, centered upon

Marsden, whose sisters found confession and admiration good, at his

indifferent shrine. Rhoda had noticed Marsden intent upon a book that

she knew nothing of. But his intentness augured well to a curious

impulse in herself. She desired to read a book provocative of such.

“I guess not,” says Marsden.

“Please!”

“Mother would never forgive me, if I let you,” he smiles maliciously.

“Oh--you will--” she pleads, tittering a bit at the point of his

cajolery.

“Well, I can’t stop you.”

And Rhoda, titillated strangely by her prospect, jumps half out of her

seat to embrace her brother.

“Here,” cries father, looking up in mock anger from his colloquy with

Jonas. “Back in your place there! Mother’ll be here.”

And as if with one accord, a faint, vague sneer,--a parting of lips, a

twinkle of eyes--steals over the entire company. Quincy alone is

excepted. He does not understand. But again there presses upon him the

sense of a piteous discord crying against life’s rhythm. Jonas tells an

amusing incident from school. Father laughs broadly; Marsden laughs to

the best of his ability, his flavor of acid for the nonce repressed;

Rhoda laughs, feeling the fellowship of Marsden, and Adelaide giggles,

following the lead of Rhoda. And then, the door opens and mother

re-appears with the stew. It is as if a hushing pall had fallen. Quincy

does not understand--once more. But the dinner nears completion.

With the dessert, there is a shifting of places. The meal’s decorum

breaks. Natural tendencies evolve still further. Jonas jumps to his

father’s knee. He is busy stealing whiffs of smoke as it shoots past his

nose. Rhoda and Adelaide flock to Marsden. He is their god, and in this

fact their parents find delight and no small measure of solace for their

son’s misfortune. Marsden’s hair is fine and black and long. Rhoda

discovers with a shriek of delight that it is getting thin. Yet Marsden

is not nineteen. The two girls pass their fingers over his head. Marsden

growls and utters sharp words, basking, the while, in their devotion.

Mother moves back and forth in the business of clearing the table. And

Quincy sits alone, desolate, ignored, while father talks fishing with

Jonas and his two sisters vie with each other at their new sport of

making braids in Marsden’s hair.

The minutes pass. Quincy cannot hide his interest in this shared

spectacle of love wherein he has no part. A dull regret, as for

something he has never had, yet something perpetually desired and

observed, weighs on him. And through the shroud of this deep, yet

inchoate want upon his soul, darts now and then a flare of anger, a cut

of pain. But the anger shoots off into a formless gloom. So Quincy

remains still, doing nothing, mindful of little, articulate not even in

resentment. And his mother passes to and fro, clearing the table, too

busy to see.

At last, however, she stops before him. He feels the doom of her words,

ere she can utter them.

“Quincy,” she says, “it’s bed-time. Say good-night.”

For a moment, he sits motionless. It is as if he were lost in an

incongruous atmosphere, shutting in his body. But his mind has gone out

before him, from the room. Vaguely, yet poignantly, he is rehearsing in

his little brain the dreadful drama that lies out there--the ordeal of

going up to bed. In his mind, he feels already the black loom of the

house, the fitful shiver of light in the long halls, the numerous

attendance, in a thousand shadows, in a thousand forms, of night’s dire

beings. And although he sits there in the light-flooded room, filled as

it is with those whom he knows best, he is alone already, abandoned

already to mystery and terror. And those who are about him serve not at

all to attenuate the presence of what acts in his mind, or to protect

him from it. For this is very real. And those about him are very

lifeless in their care, very vague in their reality.

“Did you hear what your mother said?”

These are the sole words his father has for him, all of the dinner hour.

They serve to throw Quincy to his feet. He stands and looks about him.

He would draw strength from these faces to meet his trial, light from

them to brave the darkness. But, though his mind grasp it not and his

mouth have no word for it, he knows that he has failed. Almost, escape

from here is good. But there is so little choice! And his untutored

heart has no law to make decision between the shadows that threaten and

this light that mocks.

It is the rule that he must bid “good-night” individually, to each of

these persons--his family--who now direct their gaze on him with a

certain prying interest, as if to gain a sensation from his antics. He

feels this. He feels that to cry out or misbehave in some wild fashion

as his panic prompts, would merely furnish a cordial to their repast. He

feels that to rush out, branding these salutes the mockery they are,

would provide a pretext for dragging out his agony. And then, it comes

back to him--the prospect beyond the door--! It is an odd impulse,

indeed, that would impel rushing upon _that_. For _that_ is one of those

recurrent ills which his life’s reason teaches him to take, slowly,

hushedly, with gritted teeth--the passage to his room.

So he moves doggedly from father to Marsden, from Marsden to Marsden’s

two adoring sisters, and thence to Jonas, who revels in his place beside

his father.

Last comes his mother. She takes him in her two hands, lifts him from

his feet, embraces him sturdily, once, twice, again, as he dangles in

the air. And then, turning him about, she sets him toward the door. The

fervor of her message sends the child almost exultant to the stairs. It

required so little to enspirit him! But at the landing, the maternal

warmth wears weak and the chill gloom of the hall breaks through.

Clenching his fists, humming a tune that has in it the fever of true

inspiration, he stumbles toward his goal. The creak of his little feet

affrights him; the dull glare of the hall lamp, swept low an instant by

some occult draught, the deep-breathing shadow of the rooms he

passes--everything conjoins in a stifled symphony of shock and fear.

He reaches his attic. The door is shut. With a dexterity that he cannot

understand, he opens. It is as if he were being driven in by the

fantasies that press on behind, about, and threaten to attain him. All

of the dimensionless way, he has felt them, creeping and clinging at his

back.

And now the door’s healthy slam has shut them out. A lamp is burning.

Almost gaily, he watches the comb of its yellow flame spurting and

receding. For the ordeal is over. And in his joy at this, he has no

thought or fear of the morrow.