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Ebook has 1787 lines and 102787 words, and 36 pages

Release date: January 22, 2024

Original publication: Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1917

THE UNWELCOME MAN

THE UNWELCOME MAN

BY WALDO FRANK

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1917

Published, January, 1917

Printers B. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.

TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER

PART ONE THE UNWELCOME MAN

THE UNWELCOME MAN

It threatened a Christmas of wet winds and heavy moods. The air was sluggish. Winter had died to a tepid dampness. Snowdrifts were mire; and where had been clear skies was now a dull and lowering shroud. It was as if, at its last effort, the year had lost heart and purpose. There was a note of spiritual sagging in this turn from the exuberance of cold to a siege of muddy rivulets and stagnant vapors and grey trees. The brilliant storm that had swept the country white was now a scourge of swamp upon the land-side. And through the minor harmony of dripping leafage and fulsome roads and drench-stained houses came a fret of chill, too slight to retrieve the season from its languor, yet real enough to stultify the warmth.

This was the setting of Quincy's birth.

In from Main Street and away from the salt air that fluttered toward it like a curtain's fringe, a paltry, sordid stretch of lights; a road much rutted by last summer's traffic; a straggling array of shops, saloons, dim and bedraggled with the rain--the heart of Harriet, Long Island. And then, a narrow street, loomed over by great oaks and screening cedars alien in this regardless majesty of Nature to the pot-like, worried houses that lay back in it, making their presence known with faint streaks of lights that fretted the calm gloom like human breath in a black dungeon. Beyond, scarce glimpsed, a rising motley of blue snow and rock,--a meadow. And just before this termination, where a sharp street-lamp ceased to blink against the vapors and the trees stopped,--the House. Irregular flagstones as a path to it through oozing sod that would be unkempt grass in June. A leak of orange lamp-light through the porch; another, faint from the upper story; a stocky shadow of fa?ade, thrust in the more minor darkness.

This was the spot upon which Quincy was born.

A horse plodded down the street, the elastic beat of hoofs against the slough of mud. A lamp in revolt against the drizzling night, which it seemed somehow to fend off from its scant radiance, threw a glimpse upon the horse's steaming form. He dragged a buggy sealed in rubber coverings; the reins passed over the drenched flap whence came the gleam in the swift lamp-light of two heavy hands. Without guidance, the horse turned up the carriage path at the side of the House, eagerly, while his load, rattling over the slight break from the street, mounted after. The stable door was open and they drew in--the snort of horse, the crush of wheels, the damp pungence of it all, a note of comfort against the weather. Josiah Burt unknit the rubber flap and emerged laboriously. He was a huge, heavy man with eyes that shone bright even by the dim glamor of two smoking lamps. Tenderly, he unharnessed his horse, rubbed him down, prodded his soft nose with a gesture of affection and let him trot clanking and neighing to his stall, with a slap on his haunch. And then, while the brute settled with crunch and snort and hoof-tramp to his meal, Josiah Burt swung a blurred lantern from its hook. Where had been a sharp interplay of orange fields and shooting shadows, blackness now rushed in as the man went out. He slid the door shut, bolted it and made his way, humming a tune.

The dining room was a low, long apartment muffled with porti?res faded brown from red, and with coarse grey curtains that had been white. At the table, sat five children. There were two empty places, one for the father, one for Mrs. Cripper, who always took charge of the Burt household while Sarah was upstairs adding another to it or recuperating from the drain of the effort. Before this place steamed a broad dish of corn beef, and over it was the plentiful figure of a woman whose prim, dark blue dress seemed in curious contrast to her beefy arms, her round florid face and the little ringlets of hair that stood awry like relics of coquetry after a long dousing. Josiah thrust through the porti?res and silently sat down.

Then, "How's everything, Christine?" he asked.

"Why don't you go upstairs first to Sarah and find out?"

"After'll do," the man grunted.

The children agreed. They were waiting for their dinner.

Mrs. Cripper dished out a plate-full and called Sylvia, the eldest, with a smile: "Here."

The girl was fourteen, angular, blond, nervously put up. She left the room. Beside her place was a lad but a year younger--Josiah junior--with a dark face that wore a scowl of pathetic disillusion. And on the table's farther flank sat three others: Marsden who was nine, Jonas who was six, Rhoda whose five years required her chair to be buttressed up by cushions. One mood joined them all--intentness upon dinner, indifference to all else. Mrs. Cripper doled out and sank into her chair. The prim dress was too tight, but it held. Sylvia returned, seated herself demurely and began to eat. Potatoes, doughnuts, tea were on the table. Mrs. Cripper helped the two youngest of those present; the others reached out for themselves. All ate what pleased them. No one spoke. And no one seemed adverse or uncomfortable, in the silence.

Mrs. Cripper, at length, had news to impart:

"Sarah'll be gettin' up, tomorrow."

Josiah took the news, as if stoically. Then, his eyes twinkled and he looked up.

"So you'll be goin'?" he observed.

"Yes, thank you." Mrs. Cripper was offended.

"Oh, it probably'll not be for long," he appeased her.

"I think this is all, Josiah."

"Thank God for that!" Bitter humor had precedence, in his tone, before the real hope.

"Don't take on that way."

The man examined the woman. A boiled potato stood on his fork. The brightness of his heavy-jowled face came out, as his lips curled.

"I can understand why you're against race-suicide. It's your livin'."

Mrs. Cripper dropped her knife in protest. The rattling unleashed a repressed impulse in the man. A great fist fell on the flimsy table. "As for me--I'm sick and tired of the whole thing! I'm--" he changed his mood and added, "I'm a joke, I am!" And, as if with relentless logic, his face wreathed in a smile that was actually merry.

Mrs. Cripper did not understand. She observed that Josiah was smiling. She did not like that. So she spoke to Sylvia:

"Did you look in and see if Adelaide and Thomas was all right?"

"They're asleep--" said the young girl.

"And Mama too?"

"Guess so."

Once more came the more comfortable silence.

This was the household into which Quincy was born.

The upper light, visible from the street through a pall of fog and a green shade and a drapery of curtain, came from a bedroom. Sarah lay propped up with pillows, her hair black and bronze against them. A lamp, shielded by a hand-embroidered guard--green on cream yellow--was on a table in the center of the room. The light fell on a faded carpet, the dun upholstered chairs, the wall papered in white with crimson flowers. In the shadows were the cabinet, the mantel littered with china ornament, and an old crib with its new burden of a much older story.

The door creaked open and Sylvia, carrying food, came in. She looked at her mother and saw a rather worn-out, emaciated woman with big eyes that seemed somehow hot. The spectacle displeased her. It went ill with her desire to eat her dinner. The room was musty, close, clinging. The woman in bed seemed similar in color, in mood, in nature. And even to Sylvia, the new old thing in the Family cradle was an irritating repetition. She looked on her mother as in some pitiful way responsible, yet helpless; a sort of fated carrier for some objectionable germ.

"Thank you, Sylvia," said Mrs. Burt as the child placed the dish before her. And then, she waited--as if for a greeting more desired than food.

Sylvia stepped to the door. She hesitated.

"Anything else, Mama?" she asked, miserable in this dull chamber of life.

"Nothing, thank you."

The child closed the door gingerly behind her. And Sarah Burt, inured to a great want beyond the luxury of denying herself a lesser one, began her meal.

There was a long silent wait. The woman heard the burr of the fine rain on her window, the plash of a horse, the pierce of a passing voice. She heard her jaws, the faint crack in her ears as she swallowed. Ceasing, she heard her own breath. Holding it, she heard the breath of her child. Once, a fragment of crude rumble came from below--a shattering remark of her husband. She placed the empty plate on the floor beside her bed. Now, she heard the glow of the lamp; she heard the interminable rotting of the curtains, the ancient cabinet--the slow, measured swing of inanimate life. And then, rocked in the stifled rhythm of her room, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, her husband was standing beside her bed.

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