Quincy

“ Quincy’s eyes were no longer dry, and his mouth moist. The ecstasy of the night went before a shrinking sense of its strangeness. And now, his eyes were moist and his lips parched. He breathed heavily. He was, after all, only a boy, young for his years in those external sophistries men call experience. And so, fear filtered in with the chill. He walked fast. He was man enough to strive not to escape his situation but to escape the fright it brought him. He was animal enough not to entertain a mental quandary,—to go on, as his will drove him. ”

“ Men grew hard, savage, wet-lipped.
Quincy and she leaned over the table, drinking and looking at each other. For the most part, they were silent. Each of them was still alone. It was easier so. Each of them fended the other from the hectic floods of light and life. Each of them shut the other in.
Quincy melted with the wine. He grew warm. He poured offerings unto this woman, saying no word. He made her an altar, not knowing her name; a goddess, not knowing her will. She was beautiful with the wine fretting her grey cheeks and the fire fanning in her eyes. ”

“ Quincy knew enough—just enough—to be horrified at this; to feel the fitness of a venturing spirit, eager, elastic, for a beginning; and to grow sick at the lack. He did not know enough even to blame the crowd. Nor did he know that the glad face and joyous limbs of the pioneer are figments of fable-weaving; that the mood of the morning is ever a grim facing forward against the soul’s pull backward ”

“ 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 pulsing rhythm of so much youth centered about a point gave college a lilt that did not fail to whirl Quincy with it. For a time, the mere sense of motion suffused his consciousness. He was content.
And then, he understood. A windstorm in a desert is engrossing. But while one dashed off the onslaught of hot sand, sweeping one’s senses, there might still come stirring through the monotone of sting and color the thought of other action, the doubt of this fight’s good. So, now, with Quincy. Life as he knew it had been largely desert. ”

“ So Quincy walked fast. And as he did so, the forms blocked in upon the flow of being with less frequence, less consistency. The Park itself had become the undertone. The curving of the paths gave to his motion a tonality. The bushes lay deep in their beds of grass. Above was a lacing of trees, a shameless cover for the naked night. For so the trees seemed to Quincy. The bright sky that shone through and above them was like the hot skin of some empassioned creature—a thing consumed in sex. And the short trees and ruffled bushes that lay before it were like shreds of lace on a vast nudity. ”

“ Quincy was at an age to sound the springs of manhood, and to glean childish joy therefrom. Above his poverty of gifts, there arose now a sense of power and of promise that thrilled him the more for its bare setting. Quincy was to be a man—a tall, strong master endowed with all the honors of his sex! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Quincy leaned back in his easy-chair and blew a ring of blue smoke from one of Uncle Robert's cigars.
"Excuse me, Aunt Ella," said he, "but do you ever intend to get married again?"
"Quincy Adams Sawyer!" cried Aunt Ella, with an astonished look on her face, "are you joking?"
"Certainly not," replied Quincy. "My question was intended to be a serious and respectful inquiry. You are only forty, fine looking, well educated, well connected and wealthy. Why should you not?" ”

“ Each morning, at first, these things gripped Quincy while his heart forsook him. So that he found it hard to go, hard to bear, easy to fall away.
And in the office, the dread rhythm was continued. Here, men, boys, girls were drawn together, the secret of their lives apart forever a little dimmer in their eyes. And here, unendingly, they stayed with no hope more bright than that fortune hold them there, since that hold was living, and with no intercourse more high than that of wolves sharing a carcass, through want of strength, not will, to drive each other off. ”

“ Her body was no less slender, no taller. But her mastership had calmed it, given it a composure in unison with the firm cut of her dainty mouth and the regular line of her small nose. Quincy had not liked her hands, since they had been both short and soft. Now they seemed lighter, freer, longer. They seemed to have the power now to poise and balance. They had been the paws of a rather destructive savage; they and her eyes had altered most. Quincy was awed, not by herself but by the feeling of aloofness that stood between them, making their past of comradeship unreal. ”

“ Quincy replied with a laugh, "If I did my reward is a great return for my power of invention, but I assure you I was thinking of your health and not of the chair, when I tendered my services."
"You are an adept in sweet speeches, Mr. Sawyer. You city young men all are; but our country youth, who are just as true and honest, are at a great disadvantage, because they cannot say what they think in so pleasing a way."
"I hope you do not think I am insincere," remarked Quincy, gravely.
"Not at all," said Alice, "but I have not answered your question. ”

“ Unpleasant, ill-natured, evil-tempered things they were to Quincy—freaks without form or beauty, uninspiring and meaningless. To any lad of vision, a brook with a bass sunning in its bed, a flower upon a ledge of rock, must mean immeasurably more. But for the vague impression of this truth, Quincy was{58} upbraided. He could not buttress it with clarifying questions, such, for instance, as whether a man with three noses would be deemed worshipful or a woman ten feet high entrancing. And if not, then why these freaks styled geysers? ”

“ Both Quincy and Alice laughed heartily. "As for horses," continued Rosa, "I never drive alone. When I'm with some one I alternate between hope and fear until I reach my destination."
"I trust you were more hopeful than fearful on your way from Eastborough Centre," said Quincy.
"Oh! I saw at a glance," remarked Rosa, "that you were a skilful driver, and I trusted you implicitly."
"I have had to rely a great deal upon Mr. Sawyer," remarked Alice, "and, like yourself, I have always placed the greatest confidence in him. ”

“ Quincy was proud of the fresh firm girl that marked him off from the other men with their faded or drab or hectic women. And Clarice was proud, seeing in Quincy a man strong enough to run the race when its rhythm pleased him, without the engulfment that degraded all these other men—their slavish dress, and their inelastic hands and their stamped features. ”

“ Quincy, also, went home for his Christmas vacation. He was one of the few that felt these things about him. Most were in these things, making their sum. He was outside, so he felt and understood. The glitter and ring grew and transformed in him, as he forsook them. Things spiritual too, however fair, have shadows, when they stand within the flood of some subjective sun. ”

“ Men have stayed in prison longer than that and have come out into the world again. Why, Quincy is only fifty-three now.”
“And I'm seventy—an old woman some think me, and others call me so, but if I were sure that by living I could see Quincy again, I'd manage some way to keep alive until he came.”
“You are just lovely, Aunt Ella, and I love you more than ever for those words. I believe that Quincy wants me to come to him—and I am going!”
“My dear Alice, I'm sure the only way you will ever see Quincy is by going to him, for he can never come to you.” ”

“ Yet what a flimsy farce was this new, lonely world of Quincy! Its very nature was the proof of his enduring need still to go forth, to love, to harmonize with others. The pith of every condition is a ground common with its opposite. ”

“ An American orator and patriot, born in Massachusetts in 1744, Mr. Quincy, by his fervid and convincing eloquence, was one of the most powerful champions of the popular cause of independence.
Be not deceived, my countrymen. Believe not these venal hirelings, when they would cajole you by their subtleties into submission, or frighten you by their vaporings into compliance. When they strive to flatter you by the terms “moderation and prudence,” tell them that calmness and deliberation are to guide the judgment; courage and intrepidity command the action. ”

“ Everybody does.” Clarice talked as to one who could not possibly understand. And Quincy, acquiescent in the import of her tone, grew silent.
They wandered along a neglected road, half green with grass. A barbed wire fence straggled through the opaque bushes, laden with berries. They were walking rather more rapidly than their wont. It was as if the unconscious impulse of their limbs was to free each from the other. Quincy wore a grey, soft shirt. ”

“ Though Quincy was but two hours’ walk from Beacon Hill, it belonged in a different world. For two hundred years, every Adams, from father to son, had lived within sight of State Street, and sometimes had lived in it, yet none had ever taken kindly to the town, or been taken kindly by it. The boy inherited his double nature. He knew as yet nothing about his great-grandfather, who had died a dozen years before his own birth: he took for granted that any great-grandfather of his must have always been good, and his enemies wicked; but he divined his great-grandfather’s character from his own. ”

“ Yet, as they died away and the blue mist of the harbor thickened and the myriad gold lights came out, shooting their gleam into an overtone, and the water’s murmur turned to a sheen of silver, and the whistles of the water-craft thridded the vagueness with their sharp reports, Quincy changed his mind. The City was now a ghost looming away, a thing of uncanny life, vibrant and portentous;—a thing of beauty. Quincy went back to that first visit of discovery when he had come down, thrilled with adventure, from his college and walked Brooklyn Bridge. ”

“ Once as a very young boy he was taken to pass a few days with his grandfather Brooks under charge of his aunt, but became so violently homesick that within twenty-four hours he was brought back in disgrace. Yet he could not remember ever being seriously homesick again.
The attachment to Quincy was not altogether sentimental or wholly sympathetic. Quincy was not a bed of thornless roses. Even there the curse of Cain set its mark. There as elsewhere a cruel universe combined to crush a child. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Quincy looked sharply at his friend. This question moved him. He thought of his life, so far. He thought of the havoc which even this little glimpse of the world had played with him. He grew sombre and his eyes lost their liquid glow of relaxation.{177}
“Something’s wrong,” he said solemnly. “If I belong to the world, there’s that within me objects to it. It cries out, objecting. It felt the beauty, that day. And, as you say, that meant that it recognized a fellowship, a harmony. But it hurt, Garsted,—it hurt like being crushed!” ”

“ So stood these bright things to{184} Quincy’s spirit. Their shadows broadened upon him. And they made him gloomy; for the shadow, even of a painted picture, will be dark.
When he reached New York, with home before him, he smiled ironically to himself. The grey loom from the past brightness was wide across him. He bethought himself that he was going jerkily, obtusely, through a set of motions meaning nothing to him. He was partaking of a ceremony without its spirit. It was a deep and pregnant ritual for these others—home turned host, home in a roseate smile and at attention. ”

“ It gave no response to this relation, it left no mark to fix on, no ring to hear as a tonality.
At once, Quincy veered back to the couple he had left—and however he approached himself, there were they, also.
The evening had been auspicious. Since he had ruled—an aboriginal residue in him—that an ill evening should augur ill, surely it was right to read a happy omen from a happy time. Quincy did not hesitate. As he walked home down the silent avenue where the black trees murmurously bent upon the lights, he was convinced. His firmness and grip had not gone from him! ”