One week before its opening, Quincy returned to college.
It was a brisk and cloudless September day. But already, though work had
not yet begun and behind him were months of ostensible recreation, his
angular gait showed that the boy was tired. Indeed, what was directly
past had been a hostile, clumsy way for him. With an intensity that made
his other struggles pale, the conflict in him had been renewed. And
there among his family, he had lived on, bearing his secret and
constrained to keep it from them. It had not seemed particularly hard
for him. It was natural to be silent and secretive and to furrow himself
with stubborn questionings. But the heat of it had over-wearied him,
although he knew so little of it.
He was aware that none of the eager spring of a new year was in his body
as he marched up the main street of the college town. He was aware that
he was apathetic and dull of eye. But the full force of what had caused
this, he had not gauged. As he looked back upon the element of his
family, it seemed to him, even, that it had helped. It had supplied the
tang of sweet retribution in this fact, that he, so generally of no
account, nourished a life within him more marvelous than anything his
family had dreamed. As ever, Adelaide sought him and groped for him and
failed. As ever Quincy felt the need of what she had to give yet ignored
the conduit to her. For Adelaide knew there was something. She saw him
bowed down with a new suffering and dazed with some still more perilous
splendor. But her incessant efforts to share and help merely heightened
his distress. With his mother, it was different. Sarah saw nothing,
understood nothing. And now, when she lectured him upon his need of
growing up and of preparing for responsibilities which, luckily, he did
not as yet possess, it was delicious for him to smile and know and in
silence suffer her misapprehension. For now, at last, he seemed to have
a proof which he had always craved--of her injustice. What had hurt
before was the insidious fear that she was right. Now, in his great
secret, did he not know her wrong? So, the mixed element of family had
not seemed unbearable. For Quincy could not know that his perverse
delight in watching his mother, by her words, tear down her hold in him
was far more ruinous to his composure than the pain of failure to help
Adelaide build up hers. By permitting his mother to act counter to her
primal place in his emotions, he was merely tangling and maiming them.
This rational proof of her disharmony could distress him. But it could
not touch her hold. It could serve merely to make it a less bearable,
but not less real thing.
Here then, was college, once more--the callous theater in which he would
enact his scene.
There had been no word or letter between him and Julia. He was glad of
this. It made his march across the Campus toward the Professor’s office
a less fearful effort. It justified the conviction which he willed, that
she had loosed her hold on him, bade him follow his conscience. But was
he following his conscience?
He stood before the silent, yellow door of the office. He straightened
visibly as if he had meant to measure himself against it--against what
it signified. What was he following? What was it, while he pondered,
that had driven him here; and now--had driven his list in signal against
the yellow door?
Silence, again. And in this lack of substance in response, something
fell away from him. It was as if he had leaned all his soul against an
answer and found only emptiness. He was glad. He would go away. He would
never come back. He feared lest perhaps the Professor should be there.
He tried to retreat. And the door opened. There he was--big and
undiminished, smiling invulnerably at him. His outstretched hand drew
Quincy back.
“Will you wait--just five minutes? I am busy with another man.”
There was no way of escape. Quincy sat down on the step and waited. His
mind was empty. He felt the grey stone stair about him. He saw a break
in the plastered ceiling. He put his fingers against his eyes and asked
how it was that what these round things saw, he also seemed to see. He
tried to rehearse the ordeal that impended--to ascertain what it was to
be. He got no farther than: “How do you do, Mr. Deering?” He repeated
this, over and over and over. It became a drone and a sing-song and a
mockery.... And then, he was actually within--alone with him. And he had
forgotten to say the one thing he had rehearsed: “How do you do, Mr.
Deering?”
The Professor looked at him searchingly, made him sit down at the big
desk, stood, himself, between him and the window, his generous hands
clasped behind his back.
“Well, Mr. Burt--what brings you here?” A pause. “You are in trouble?”
“Yes, Mr. Deering.”
The big man’s face softened. He moved away beneath a high rack of books,
in order that the boy should not need to stare into the light.
“Would you rather have me sit down, also?”
Quincy felt his consideration. “No,” he said.
“Very well, then--” The Professor’s face was gently serious, as if he
could not brook the weakness of a delay in starting.
“Professor Deering--Professor Deering--” But Quincy could not go on. He
arose to his feet. That helped. But what he said amazed him as deeply as
the other. “Professor Deering--tell me about you and your wife.”
Mr. Deering took the remark without a tremor. His face darkened and his
brow brooded. His clasped hands fell forward to his side. He did not
mistake the nature of the boy.
“You have a right to know?” he asked, softly.
“I love her, Professor Deering.”
They stood, not far apart, facing each other, firmly. And in the pause,
neither of them breathed. It seemed to Quincy at that moment impossible
that all this should be true. He watched the scene with a fiendish
interest, as if waiting for an inevitable ruin.
The Professor swallowed hard. And then, he spoke.
“You love her. So do I. That gives you a right to ask what you have
asked. Sit down.”
He gestured the boy back into his seat.
“We are in strangely similar positions, Mr. Burt. We both love her.
Neither of us has her. There is no more to say.”
“Neither of us--?”
“Yes. She is my wife; but she is not mine. At first, of course, I
believed she was. But she withdrew.”
“She accuses you of withdrawing, Mr. Deering!” The boy cried this out,
as if in pain.
The other bit his lip, savagely. “Then you have heard both sides, Mr.
Burt? What more can you demand?”
And again, there was a pause.
“Did you come here,” the big man’s voice was low and vibrant with his
question, “did you come here to judge me?”
Quincy hid his face in his hands. “To judge you? To judge you? Good God!
I came here to ask you to judge me!”
A jet of understanding shivered through the man. Quincy was not looking.
And in that moment, his face broke. He righted himself, mastered himself
and strode toward the boy. He wrenched his hands from his face.
“Look up!” he cried.
And Quincy met his clear, deep brown eyes--met them unflinchingly, his
head strained up to do so, his body still huddled in his chair, his
wrists hotly clenched in the hands of the Professor.
The Professor dropped his hold.
“We cannot judge each other, Quincy. That would be as unfair, one way as
the other. I do not understand. But I have stopped questioning. We can
spare one another that. And without tangling one another further, we can
go on, solving our lives.”
He stopped; and stepping back, surveyed the boy. “You will not
misunderstand the spirit in which I have received you. Do not turn your
back on anything--on me, for instance, or on her. Be a man. Now go.”
He spoke with a gigantic effort. And now, he held out his hand.
Quincy looked at it. He leaned back rigidly against the easy path of
taking it.
“Professor,” he said, “I cannot take your hand.”
The hand dropped back to the Professor’s side. A flash of anger went
before a cloud of pain. Both of these Quincy saw on his face. And then,
after a silence, Mr. Deering spoke:
“Mr. Burt,” he said, “your impulse in being unwilling to take my hand,
since you were willing to come to me--I confess--I cannot understand it.
It is due either to weakness or to a worse thing. You have disappointed
me,--for the first time.... Think it over. And come back to me, when you
can take my hand.” He walked toward the door, and, flinging it open--:
“Good-bye,” he said.
So Quincy went away.
* * * * *
Such were the auspices of junior year.
Everything seemed gone which he had so bravely builded up. Eighteen
years it had taken him to gain a vantage point in life, to breathe
life’s air without pain and meet life’s onslaught with a kind of joy.
And then, after one brief excursion, everything had collapsed,
everything had died; and only he remained--he, the eternal constant, but
bruised and shrunken and stripped of even the glimmer of understanding.
What had been wrong with him? What false fire had this been, making his
warmth and his vision?
Quincy trudged through the campus, bound for his room, as a wounded
beast seeks his lair. Several of his mates passed him. He was forced to
stop and shake their hands and meet their perfunctory questions as to
his summer. And all of them felt the coldness of this fellow, Burt; and
Quincy knew that all of them felt this. So he avoided stopping when he
could. And he shut the door of his room behind him--it was as if to blot
out the serene self-satisfaction of the college buildings under whose
stony eyes he had had to pass. And he rejoiced at the emptiness of his
room. And so, he sank into a chair and began feeling for his wound.
But it was utterly hopeless.
The room had not yet been placed in order. A trunk stood on the floor; a
carpet was rolled away in the corner; chiffonière and book-box and divan
huddled together, giving an air of disarray. He could not find his
wound, in such a clutter. He knew merely that its pain submerged him,
flooded its position, made him feel that all of him was drenched with
blood. Vacantly, like this, he sat for an hour. And then, an idea drew
him from the room.
He boarded a car. And now, he was in the open; hatless, panting, seeking
nature as a solace. The gentle woods flared away in their autumnal
dress. The wind tarried in the branches, shaking the red leaves downward
with the fresh force of its news. Quincy marched on, over the full-blown
grass. A copse of locust trilling before him, a harsh space where
malignant-colored sumachs mingled with the thickspread blackberry briars
that caught and stung him--and then, he reached a grove of fir. Here, he
sat down. The ground was moist and green. And a great spruce spread out
its balmful verdure. Beyond lay the parched woods. But he was free and
cut off from them. Here, he should be able to fix his wound.
From the clouds of feeling that swirled up in him, the clear-cut figure
of Julia Deering came forth. He resented her. There was no love in his
beholding her. This hurt. For it was an emptiness that ached. And then,
a strange sensation filtered through. Why did he resent her? Despise her
almost? He had hurt her; that was why. He had been unfair to her; that
was why. He had betrayed her and she lay silent in his mind throughout,
unstirring, unprotesting. This was the unforgivable thing. This was why.
How could he love a creature himself had maimed?
For a brief moment, Quincy veered upon the truth. Had he but dared to
alight there, to go no farther, to drive his standard and hold firm!
Quincy began to see how weak and straddling it had been to go to him, to
remain silent toward her; began to see what a fund of cowardly
uncertainty his virtue hid, that prompted him to feel a guilt toward
him, instead of a right for her; began to see that in his action lay a
hedging, a shallowness of feeling, a failure to build up his own morale
and his own measure, as a force which was life-saving should! He had
maimed everything. He had not stood by him, not stood by her. From each,
he had been willing to receive; and his response in each case had been a
blow in the back, once that back was turned. Oh! there was health in
this hatred, this detestation of himself which gripped him now like a
storm! It was torture. But from such torture he could arise and still
create. All that he needed was not to escape the storm; to invite,
rather, the heart of it; to remain drowned in it, till it had swept him
clean.
But though he had veered so nigh, he was too unstable not to fly on and
past. The vision of the truth died out behind him in the spray-dashed
horizon. Quincy began to defend himself, to rationalize, to seek a way
of self-forgiveness. And of course, that which he sought, he found. He
did not know what Julia had meant. He had been mad with Julia; and his
madness was over, as madness should be. Perhaps, she also had been mad
and her madness, also, had disappeared. His scruple, driving him to
Professor Deering, was a clean and brave one. He had a conscience. What
could a conscience be, but good and strong? Who ever had dared suggest
that conscience was a coward and a traitor? Professor Deering simply had
not understood. He would not lose him, he would make him understand. And
the great man, regretting his injustice, would cry him welcome and crave
his pardon. As to Julia--he felt with strong effort, he might still be
able to look upon her as a friend. His infatuation was gone. But so
might go, also, his new repulsion.
Many times, Quincy had alighted in this false haven. He should have
known its meretriciousness. He should have known that it would as surely
fail him as it had failed before. So now, a moment after, the smooth way
receded, the storm swept back and he was no better off than he had been.
But far beyond the passed horizon, the shore of truth had died away.
Ahead might be illimitable seas, lashed with his fury. But the truth was
gone.
And so, unsuccored even by this last resort, Quincy abandoned his fir
grove and went back, unheeding, through the magnificence of autumn.
* * * * *
College resumed its mechanical paces; Quincy went through them poorly.
His marks fell to dangerously near the point of failing. But he
sustained them, barely, as he sustained the business of taking food and
sleep. Garsted was gone. He had graduated and Quincy rejoiced in his
absence. It would have been impossible to talk with him. It would have
been more difficult with him about, to remain hedged in his solitude, as
he desired.
And so, through the fall, his feelings fought each other. There was no
giving out. The conflict was within, mute, targetless, internecine. At
times, his repulsion for Julia paled before mad lapses into passion.
These turned upon him, smote him and sent him shuddering back into
repulsion. There had been no word of her, no glimpse of her. He knew
with clearness, only that this was his own doing. The Professor he saw
twice weekly, in his class. But he was so easily aloof on his high
platform, fronting a score of boys, that this habitual sight was
nothing.
There had been months of his silence.
And then, one day--without preamble--Quincy went out to see Julia
Deering. It was not his old passion; nor his still older love. It was a
need--all of his energies centered upon seeing her--no more. He rang the
bell. And while the maid left him waiting in the hall, he stood consumed
by his fears of disgrace and by a miserable effort to hold up his head.
The maid returned with word that she was out. He walked away, every
fiber of him straining against the direction of his walking, reiterant
that she was there and that, with a little force, he might have seen
her. Next day, he returned. And upon his fourth attempt, the maid with a
bland smile of sympathy showed him into the little over-decorated room.
And now, she stepped within. Deliberately, her back toward him, she shut
the door. Then, she faced about.
“I decided after all,” she said, “to let you see me. The first time you
came I was here. The other two times, I was really out. How are you?”
He did not answer, so full he was of looking at her. She seemed older.
The drawn skin below her eyes was flushed and feverish. Her eyes were
immeasurably deep and soft--as if some psychic lance had pierced them.
Her body was strained forward. It seemed to tremble as does a delicate
blade of steel when it resounds. Surely, this was an ineffably lovely
thing that he had lost! For he had lost her. Her lips showed that, in
their quivering strength; ere she had spoken. And her hands showed that,
in their calm mastery,--and the backward jerk of her shoulders and the
cold fullness of her hair. This was no lover; this was a creature
without his ken, whom he had wounded. For every vibrance of her voice
and form seemed a response, not to his need, not to his love, not even
to his weakness, but to his hurt.
He stood there, forgetful of himself. And all of the words that were
spoken came from her.
“I thought,” she said, “after your so plainly-speaking silence, that you
would understand, without inflicting this upon us both.”
Then, she smiled. There was no rancor. But she could not keep her hurt
from speaking.
“Dear, poor, Quincy,” she went on, almost as if he had been the
messenger of the dead boy, her lover, “don’t you see, that after what
you have done, after what you have failed to do, the one thing left that
will not be altogether horrible, is to have an end? There are times in
life, boy, when an end is the one salvation.” She smiled again, as if at
her idea. “Of course, the final one of these times is death. But we
have had no difficulty, have we, to put an end to this--without that?”
Quincy shuddered. He wished to ask her if she loved him, had ever loved
him. But he could say nothing. She went on:
“I idealized you, Quincy. I do not regret it. As long as I dared
hope--as long, that is, as I could keep from seeing you as you really
are, I was so happy! I needed you. You were kind--for a little while.
And then, you, also, could not bear my kindness. So it was, was it not?
That was the reason why you stayed away? Well--there are women like me,
whose kindness is unbearable. I often think--it is a little game of mine
that brings me solace--that men who yearn have a better chance. The poet
can create a universe to serve. This is wide enough to stem his aching.
But a woman--all she can have is a mate and a child, to cover up her
wound. Her intensity is equal to the poet’s. I am sure of that. But what
she has is not equal to what he has. That is unfair, is it not?”
Quincy was hushed before the spectacle of his loss. Why could he not
still throw himself at her feet? Did his unworthiness at length shame
him from even hoping? How rich and full was this living beauty before
the bloodless, craven things in his mind--ideals, conscience,
aspirations--for which he had cast her out!
Again, respecting his silence, she spoke to him:
“There is one thing, Quincy, I still hope for. One thing I am still so
humble as to ask of you. You remember what I once said to you:--that
what I needed was the feeling that I would live on, in some way, in your
own life. Quincy dear, do not let that part of me that stays in you turn
bitter! Keep it pure, dear boy. Let it make you happy, once in a while.
Cherish it! Oh, I beg this of you!” She stopped and her hands clenched
before her.
“I ask this, not selfishly. I know you so well! If you can keep this
part of me happy and clean within you, it may save you some day. I know
that--and I fear, I fear what may come, if you do not.”
Now tears were there, glistening down her cheeks.
She seemed to be waiting for his promise--waiting for him to give her
the hope she had been humble enough to ask. But Quincy stood there
silent; full of, and measuring, his loss. And as her glance sought out
his eyes, it came back from them, unrefreshed and undiminished.
Slowly, she closed her eyes as if thereby shutting in the last effort of
her soul to venture forth.
And then, with a faint tremble, she turned away.
“Good-bye,” she said softly, and so left the room.