A prospector in Wyoming and a Directors’ Board on the fifteenth floor of
a great office-building in Chicago, brought by the benign twinkle of a
star into an angle of conjunction, marked out an event in Harriet, Long
Island. It was with the haphazard veer, the cold fatality of a compass.
First, came the discovery of rich veins of metal on Josiah’s land and
then, scarce with a breathing space, the plan of a railroad that gives
currency to wealth in the great West, to nose its way through canyon and
frozen lake into that very valley. No more than these two rods of fate
were needed to mark fate’s point in Harriet, Long Island.
The first twenty-thousand dollars went to the prospector. Had he placed
a claim or made contest to one-tenth of that amount, he would have found
an antagonist in Josiah Burt. As it was, he remained silent and found a
benefactor. The new magnate prepared to move his family to New York.
For Quincy, who was eleven, this trick of life had its own color and
dimension.
It was a balmy day in early spring. He and Jonas had been across country
on a jaunt, looking for rabbits. The elder boy had led his brother a
breathless pace, with which Quincy only by sheer, desperate will managed
to keep up. They had gone inland where a thick wood of birch and firs
seemed to rise abrupt from the broad waste of sand-ground and dwarfed
shrubs. Quincy’s going at all had been a matter of tolerance on the
part of Jonas. In order to drive home this detail, significant as it was
to a man of sixteen, Jonas struck a gait that was severe even for him
and ignored his brother as best he could. He was resolved, if they
should meet any of the “fellows” or, worse still, any of the “girls,”
that they should read the truth of his sublime forbearance in the
rapidity of his walk and the fixed, impersonal air on his face. But
Jonas loved the sport of a cross-country run. And as they sallied on,
leaping over brambled rock and pattering stream, enough of the open’s
generosity of spirit entered his soul to make him half admire the little
fellow that labored doggedly on, beside him.
They did not see any rabbits. But they found a carpet of myrtle and some
half-ripe strawberries which they consumed with gusto. Their chief
discovery, however, was a beaver’s dam. The stream widened sluggishly
beneath an almost veiling margin of thick bushes--aspen and willow and
oak. The leafage, turned silver and deep blue in the sun, lay over the
strolling water. Perhaps, Quincy’s chief delight in this unearthing was
the chance it gave him to get back his breath. But he feigned well a
more direct enthusiasm--no hard thing. And then, facing about, they
trudged home at a more comfortable gait. For Jonas was appeased, soaked
through, perhaps, with the gentle afflatus of the woods before the tread
of evening.
As they entered the little stone path that led in from the street,
Quincy observed his father standing on the porch and looking down toward
them. It was early for him to be at home. They were still twenty steps
away, when the man spoke. He was addressing Jonas.
“Well, sonnie. It’s through. Went through, to-day. It’s panned out
great!”
Jonas leaped forward. With a bound, he was on the porch, beside his
father.
“O Dad,” he cried, “I _am_ glad!”
Quincy, left behind, looked at the tall, portly man and the boy beside
him. Jonas was slightly shorter and a good deal less stout. But the
resemblance between the two was striking. And in the thrust-forward of
their heads, the almost perpetual shrug of their shoulders, the
movements of their hands, were the unmistakable gestures of accord. The
consequence of these details, Quincy was well aware of, although he
ignored the physical features. With instinctive logic he felt that
friendship or love for one so like his father must be a meretricious and
illusory thing. The first conscious articles of his revolt from Jonas
were stirring in him.
Meantime, the pair had passed in together. Quincy mounted to the porch
with a pang in his heart. They had gone in, rejoicing, oblivious of him.
So whatever this new thing was, which had succeeded, which had made them
happy, to Quincy it could bring no pleasure, for he had no share in it
and it had served merely to give an accent to the old want and the old
yearning.
In this spirit, he opened the door and stepped inside. The entire family
was assembled in the parlor. And the glow of excitement that they gave
out seemed to pervade the dingy room. The portières and other hangings
took on a higher key of color. A vibrancy had shot through everything.
Everything was rhythmed to this new joyous theme which he did not
understand--everything save himself. He looked more sharply. There were
other exceptions. He went over to his mother. Sarah took his hand and
held it tightly. For at that moment, Marsden was talking, and it was
forever necessary to attend him.
“One thing let’s do:” he was saying, “--get out of Harriet.”
“But summer’s coming, dear,” replied Josiah, “It would be sort of
foolish to go to New York just when every New Yorker that can afford it,
is coming to Long Island.”
“Well, let’s get out of this house just the same,” spoke Rhoda, and rose
to her feet as if to emphasize her hurry. By now, she was a tall,
slender beauty. She knew it. She was clad in a pale pink frock, loosely
hung from over her candid breasts. The skirt fell awkwardly. The color
was too dull not to detract from the dusky splendor of her hair and eyes
and soft-grey skin. It was an unbecoming frock, indeed. And this also,
Rhoda knew.
“I want to go to New York and help Rhoda buy some dresses.” It was
Adelaide who spoke. In her round, bright, golden face there shone
another passion than that of altruism. A not uncommon trait in girls
before they reach sixteen,--Adelaide was merely transferring her love of
mature decoration to her sister against the time when she could glut it
on herself.
Josiah was pacing the room, his hands clasped behind him. He had made a
flying journey to New York and he was arrayed in his best finery--a
capacious Prince Albert coat that flared below the waist like a rubber
cylinder about to burst. His trousers were too tight. The knees were
crinkled, puffy and turned-in, an anatomical detail which stout men
share with women. He wore an upstanding collar and in the wide frontal
gap his heavy chin thrust down in amiable meditation.
“Well,” he said, as he paced, “I’ll tell you: choose for yourselves
where you want to go, and I’ll foot the bill. Your mother can take you.
I got to stay near Town, this summer.”
The panorama of promise overwhelmed them. They were silent. All of them,
save Rhoda, were without a thought. After a pause, she uttered one word:
“Europe!”
And with the comfortable way of crowds, all who were present fell upon
her suggestion as if it had been the exact articulation of their desire.
“Good!” said Josiah. “Just make your plans,” and with a true sense of
the dramatic, left the room. Jonas ran after him, noisily humming, half
skipping. Rhoda and Adelaide clasped waists and danced away. There was
the tramp of their feet, the sharp cadence of their voices. And then,
came silence.
Marsden and Sarah and Quincy were left. And, as if by magic, the
parlor’s mood had changed. Heavier than ever were the portières and
other hangings; narrower and lower than before, the greyish cut of
ceiling, the impress of walls. The cripple lay back in his cushions. His
eyes were upturned. And he was musing. He did not philosophize his
meditation. It was hurting too much for that.
But his looking up and within himself made it as if Sarah and her
last-born had been alone.
She was seated on her favorite cane chair. At her knees stood Quincy,
half leaning against them, his hands in hers, his head on a level with
her eyes. And so, facing each other, they remained. There was a
pathetic similarity between this aging woman and this growing boy. Their
faces were long and drawn; their heads were generously moulded. The eyes
of both were a deep blue-grey that reminded one in her of faded violets,
in him of violets that were fresh but in a shadow. Even their mouths
were alike--large, tender-pointed, mobile. And at this moment, there
played upon them a tremor like the echo of a single pain.
Sarah shifted her gaze. To her, this searching intercourse between them
had become almost unbearable. It was as if, in this deep sympathy that
had annealed them, lay infidelity toward the others to whom she was
attached. For Quincy could not be the only one. In the rapt intensity
which drove his spirit toward her, and in her impulse to respond just so
intensely, just so wholeheartedly, it was as if, easily, it might be
brought about that there should be no others. But such a blessed gift
was not ordained for Quincy. Sarah repulsed her passionate inner gesture
of bestowal; she beat down this mother in her which threatened to clasp
Quincy to the exclusion of all else. She summoned her sense of duty, her
social sense, her common sense. She looked toward Marsden for aid in her
resolve. And deliberately, coldly, though she knew not the full nature
of her act, she broke this blinding, seething current that threatened to
submerge the pair, one with the other. She felt the presence in her
eyes, in the expression of her face, of just this feeling of exclusion,
of hopelessness, of irony that she found in his. She wiped all this
away, forcing her mind and smiling. Within herself, she knew that this
wealth was mockery for her--the gilding of a death’s-head. It would not
return her husband to her, after eleven years of tolerant estrangement.
But, somehow, it was wrong that her child should feel such things within
his mother. It was wrong that he should understand. So she turned
hypocrite and smiled.
“Well, dearie,” she said, clapping his hands together within hers,
“you’re goin’ to have fine clothes now, and--”
She stopped.
Quincy was withdrawing his hands. With a tremor of his eyelids, he
turned silently and marched out of the room.
Sarah remained as she had been--half forward in her chair. Her smile was
frozen on her face. And all of her was similarly frozen.
There had been something Quincy was not to understand. Here, then, was
something beyond the understanding of Quincy’s mother.