The Coolidge examiner., 1932-06-24

through the lonely inner moors of
his desolation.
The Buhlows were blond, every
one of them, blue-eyed, straw-haired.
Dark, aloof, alone, he stood in their
dear, kind world-the alien whose
isolation no one dared mention. The
alien, who, by every virtue of the
anomaly of his position, was treated
with consideration that hurt more
than helped. All of his childhood,
Sterling had yearned for the hear
tier reprimands handed out so un-
selfconsciously to the Buhlow chill
dren. No childish dispute had ever
been settled against him, The alien
deferred to!
The same way now with his re-
tarded decision. With not one other
of his children would Proscow have
been so indulgent. Terry was con-
crete example. Even Shirley, the
only girl in the group. had never
met the quality of indulgence that
had been meted out to sterling.
1t made the bitterness and the
hurting and the secret gnawing pain
of being special, and a little outside
the dear, inner group Of people who
were dearer than dear to him, al
most too vast to be borne.
1t was not alone the sense of be-
ing the outsider, it was the knowl-
edge that their unspoken sense of
it kept them all so cruelty consider
ate, so deferential to his special po-
SitiOn.
Not even his foster father was
to sense this out as the secret of
the curious problem confronting him
in this foster son Of his.
Too bad. Most gifted member of
the family. Brains. Talent. VIII
get his bearings in time, of course.
But a curious licked kind of psy-
chology to the lad. Doesn't care
great deal about anything. Fine in
telligence. High strung, but not un-
duly nervous. Sensitive, of course.
But somewhere in the machinery of
the boys fine mind, a monkey
wrench.
For a while Shirley had seemed
to have easiest access to the conf
dence Of Sterling. They were so
close; so filed with admiration, each
for the other. Their entire child
hood had been like that. Merciless
in their repartee, gibe and banter,
they were nevertheless closer than
any other two of the children.
But then at this stage, when more
than ever Sterling had become the
noncommittal dilettante, even Shir-
ley had fallen back defeated. Some
thing was eating Sterling.
However, in the end it was Shir-
ley who was to find her way into
the tormented labyrinth of Ster-
ling's dilemma.
The recital of his years of secret
anguish and hurt and jealOusies
came from him one night in a tor
rent, on the heels of a discussion
they had been having together on
the subject Of his refusal to com
pete for an art prize.
Sentence by sentence, revealing
commitment by commitment, the
strange secret tortures of the
years lay revealed.
"Tm too jealous, Shirley. Too
eaten with devilish pain of being
an outsider to the people 1 love best
in the world, to care about any
thing. I'm licked before start. You
can't want anything badly enough
to go out and get it when you're
eaten with a devil like that. 1t
will always be that way with me.
| Homesickness, heart sickness, to be
one of a group that will always too
consciously and conscientiously try
to make me think I am what / am
not"
"You fool" said Shirley, after
hours Of letting this too long
dammed-up confession flow from
! him. "You darling, blessed adorable
idiot. The only thing, Sterling, that
has made all these late years of
mine the grand luminous years that
they have been is the fact that you
are not one Of US in the sense you
mean. Fool. Darling idiot. Please,
please don't sit there pretending you
don't know what l mean. Sterling
how terrible it would be if really
you were one of u.s."
Suddenly, seeing her there in a
radiance that was as beautiful as
| II was unmistakable TO him, Ster-
ling did see and seeing,
came to bless the fact that he was
| not one of them
] Brook Farm Experiment