oil-can, and the usual supply of beans and bacon and rice and corn-meal and prunes. Also he had built himself a rustic table, and unpacked a trunkful of blankets and dishes and writing-pads and books. So once more his life was his own, and a thing of delight to him.
He had promised himself to live off the country, as he had before; but the principal game here was the wild turkey, and the wild turkey proved itself a shy and elusive bird. It was not occupied with meditations concerning literary masterpieces; and so it had a great advantage over Thyrsis, who would forget that he had a gun with him after the first half-hour of a “hunt”.
Section 2. It had now become clear to Thyrsis that he had nothing more to expect from his novel; it had sold less than two thousand copies, which meant that it had not earned the money which had already been advanced to him. But all that was now ancient history–the entrenchments and graveyards of the Wilderness battlefield were not more forgotten and overgrown with new life than was the war-book in Thyrsis’ mind. He had had enough of being a national chronicler which the nation did not want; he had come down to the realities of the hour, to the blazing protest of the new Revolution.
For ten years now Thyrsis had been playing at the game of professional authorship; he had studied the literary world both high and low, and had seen enough to convince him that it was an impossible thing to produce art in such a society. The modern world did not know what art was, it was incapable of forming such a concept. That which it called “art” was fraud and parasitism–its very heart was diseased.
For the essence of art was unselfishness; it was an emotion which overflowed, and which sought to communicate itself to others from an impulse of pure joy. It was of necessity a social thing; the supreme art-products of the race had been, like the Greek tragedy and the Gothic cathedral, a result of the labor of a whole community. And what could the modern man, a solitary and predatory wolf in the wilderness of _laissez_ _faire_–what could he conceive of such a state of soul? What would happen to a man who gave himself up to such a state of soul, in a community where the wolf-law and the wolf-customs prevailed?
A grim purpose had been forming itself in Thyrsis’ mind. He would suppress the artist in himself for the present–he would do it, cost whatever agony it might. He would turn propagandist for a while; instead of scattering his precious seed in barren soil, he would set to work to make the soil ready. There was seething in his mind a work of revolutionary criticism, which would sweep into the rubbish-heap the idols of the leisure-class world.
It was his idea to go back to first principles; to study the bases of modern society, and show how its customs and institutions came to be, and interpret its art as a product of these. He would show what the modern artist was, and how he got his living, and how this moulded his work. He would take the previous art-periods of history and study them, showing by what stages the artist had evolved, and so gaining a stand-point from which to prophesy what he would come to be in the future. Only once had an attempt ever been made to apply to questions of art the methods of science–in Nordau’s “Degeneration”. But then Nordau’s had been pseudo-science–three-quarters impertinence and conceit. The world still waited to understand its art-products in the light of scientific Socialism.
Such was the task which Thyrsis was planning. It would mean years of study, and how he was to get the means to do it, he could not guess. But he had his mind made up to do it, though it might be the last of his labors, though everything else in his life might end in shipwreck. He went about all day, possessed with the idea; it would be a colossal work, an epoch-making work–it would be the culmination of his efforts and the vindication of his claims. It would save the men who came after him; and to save the men who came after him had now become the formula of his life.
Section 3. Thyrsis would come back from a sojourn such as this with all his impulses of affection and sympathy renewed; he would have had time to miss Corydon, and to realize how closely he was bound to her. He would be eager to tell her all his adventures, and the wonderful plans which he had formed.
But this time it was Corydon who had adventures to narrate. He realized as soon as he saw her that she had something upon her mind; and at the first occasion she led him off to his own study, and shut the door. He got a fire going, and she sat opposite him and gazed at him.
“Thyrsis,” she said, “I hardly know how to begin.”
It was all very formal and mysterious. “What is it, dear?” he asked.
“It’s something terrible,” she whispered. “I’m afraid you’re going to be angry.”
“What is it?” he repeated, more anxiously.
“I was angry myself, at first,” she said; “but I’ve got over it now. And I want you please to be reasonable.”
“Go on, dear.”
“Thyrsis,” she whispered, after a pause, “it’s Harry.”
“Harry?”
“Harry Stuart, you know.”
“Oh,” said he. He had all but forgotten the young drawing-teacher, whom he had left doing Socialist cartoons.
“Well?” he inquired.
“You see, Thyrsis, I always liked him very much. And he’s been coming up here–quite a good deal. I didn’t see why he shouldn’t come–Delia liked him too, and she was with us most of the time. Was it wrong of me to let him come?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “Tell me.”
“Perhaps it’s silly of me,” Corydon continued, hesitatingly–“but I’m always imagining things about people. And he seemed to me to have such possibilities. He has–how shall I say it–“
“I recall your saying he had soulful eyes,” put in Thyrsis.
“You’ll make fun of it all, of course,” said Corydon. “But it’s really very tragic. You see, he’s never met a woman like me before.”
“I can believe that, my dear.”
“I mean–a woman that has any real ideas. He would ask me questions by the hour; and we talked about everything. So, of course, we talked about love; and he–he asked if I was happy.”
“I see,” said Thyrsis, grimly. “Of course you said that you were miserable.”
“I didn’t say much. I told him that your work was hard, and that my courage wasn’t always equal to my task. Anyone can see that I have suffered.”
“Yes, dear,” said Thyrsis, “of course. Go on.”
“Well, one day–it was last Friday–he came up with a carriage to take us driving. And Delia had a headache, and wanted to rest, and so Harry and I went alone. I–I guess I shouldn’t have gone, but I didn’t realize it. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we both had a good time–in fact, I don’t know when I have been so contentedly happy. We stopped to gather wild flowers, and once we sat by a little stream; and of course, we talked and talked, and before I realized it, twilight was falling, and we were a long way from home.”
“Go on,” said Thyrsis, as she hesitated.
“We started out. I recollected later, though I didn’t seem to notice it at the time–that Harry’s voice seemed to grow husky, and he spoke indistinctly. He had let the horse have the reins, and his arm was on the back of my seat. I hadn’t noticed it; but then–then–fancy my horror–“
“Well?”
“It happened–all of a sudden.” Corydon stammered, her cheeks turning scarlet. “I felt his arm clasp me; and I turned and stared, and his face was close to mine, and his eyes were fairly shining.”
There was a pause. “What did you do?” asked the other.
“I just looked at him calmly, and said, ‘Oh, how _could_ you?’ And at that he took his arm away quickly, and sat up stiff and straight, with a terribly hurt expression. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I was mad.’ And we neither of us spoke a word all the way home. And when we came to the house, I jumped out of the carriage without saying good-night.”
Corydon sat staring at her husband, with her wide-open, anxious eyes. “And was that all?” he asked.
“To-day I had a letter from him. He said he was going away, over the Christmas holidays. He said that he was very much ashamed of himself, and he hoped that I would be able to forgive him. And that’s all.”
They sat for a while in silence. “You won’t be too angry?” asked Corydon, anxiously.
“I’m not angry at all,” he said. “But naturally it’s disturbing. I don’t like to have such things happen to you.”
“It’s strange, you know,” said Corydon, “but I haven’t seemed to stay very indignant. He was so hurt, you know–and I can realize how unhappy he’s been. Curiously enough, I’ve even found myself thinking that I’d like to see him again. And that puzzled me. I felt that I ought to be quite outraged. That he should imagine he could hug me–like any shop-girl!”
They spent many hours discussing this adventure; in fact it was a week or two before they had disposed of it entirely. Thyrsis was hoping that the experience might be utilized to persuade Corydon to modify her utopian attitude towards young men with soulful eyes and waving brown hair. He was at some pains to set forth to her the psychology of the male creature–insisting that he knew more about this than she did, and that his remarks applied to drawing-teachers as well as to all other arts and professions.
The main question, of course, was as to their attitude towards Harry Stuart when he returned. Corydon, it became clear, had forgiven him; the phraseology of his letter was touching, and he was now invested in the glamor of penitence. She insisted that the episode might be overlooked, and that their friendship could go on as before. But Thyrsis argued vigorously that their relationship could never be the same again, and declared that they ought not to meet.
“But then,” Corydon protested, “he’ll be at the Jennings! And I can’t snub him!”
“What does Delia think about it?” he asked.
“Dear me!” Corydon exclaimed. “I haven’t told Delia a word of it!”
“Haven’t told her! But why not?”
“Because she’d be horrified. She’d never speak to Harry Stuart again!”
“But then you want _me_ to speak to him! And even to be cordial to him! You want to go ahead and carry on a sentimental flirtation with him–“
“Oh, Thyrsis!” she protested.
“But that’s what it would come to. And how much peace of mind do you suppose I’d have, while I knew that was going on?”
At which Corydon sighed pathetically. “I’m a fine sort of emancipated woman!” she said. “Don’t you see you’re playing the role of the conventional jealous husband?”
But as she thought over the matter in the privacy of her own mind she was filled with perplexity, and wondered at herself. She found herself actually longing to see Harry Stuart. She asked herself, “Can it really be I, Corydon, who am capable of being interested in any other man besides my husband?” She could not bring herself to face the fact that it was true.
Section 4. Thyrsis went away, and took to wandering about the country, wrestling with his new book. After the fashion of every work that came to possess him, it seemed to possess him as no other work had ever done before. His mind was in a turmoil with it, his thoughts racing from one part to another; he would stop in the midst of pumping a bucket of water or bringing in a supply of wood, to jot down some notes that came to him. Each day he realized more fully the nature of the task. Seated alone at night in his tiny cabin, his spirit would cry out in terror at the burden that had been heaped upon it.
He had decided upon the title of the book–“Art and Money: an Essay in the Economic Interpretation of Literature”. And then, late one night, as he was pondering it, there had flashed over him the form into which he should cast the work; he would make it, not only an exposition of his philosophy, but the story of his life, the cry of his soul. There had come to him an introductory statement; it was a smashing thing–a thing that would arrest and stun! Disraeli had said that a critic was a man who had failed as a creative writer; and Thyrsis would take that taunt and make it into his battle-cry. “I who write this,” he would say–“I am a failure; I am a murdered artist! I sit by the corpse of my dead dreams, I dip my pen into the heart’s blood of my strangled vision!” So he would indict the forces that had murdered him, and through the rest of the book he would pursue them–he would track them to their lair and corner them, and slay them with a sharp sword.
Meantime Delia Gordon had gone back to her studies, and Corydon had settled down to her lonely task. She washed and dressed and fed the baby, and satisfied what she could of his insatiable demands for play. Thyrsis would come and help to get the meals and wash the dishes; but even then he was poor company–he was either tired out, or lost in thought, and his nerves were in such a state that he could not bear to be criticized. It was getting to be harder for him to endure the strain of hearing complaints; and so Corydon shrunk more and more into herself, and took to pouring out her soul in long letters and journals.
“Is it possible,” she wrote to Delia, “that to some people life is a continuous expiation–an expiation of submerged hereditary sins, as well as of conscious ones? A great deal of the time life seems to me a hopeless puzzle; I am so utterly unfitted for the roles I labor to play. Is it that I am too low for my environment? Or can it be that I am too high? Surely there must some day be other things that women can do in the world besides training children. I try to love my task, but I have no talent for it, and it is a frightful strain upon me. After one hour of blocks and choo-choo cars, I am perfectly prostrated. I have been cheated out of the joys of motherhood, that is the truth–the spring was poisoned for me at the very beginning.
“You must not mind my lamentations, dear Delia,” she wrote in another letter. “You can’t imagine how lonely my life is–no, for it is different when you are here. Oh, I am so weary! so weary! It didn’t use to be like this. Every moment of leisure I had I would run and try to study; I would read something–I was always eager and hungry. But now I am dull–I do not follow my inspirations. If only Thyrsis and I might sometimes read together! I love to be read to, but he cannot bear it–he reads three times as fast to himself, he says. He will do it if I am sick; but even then it makes him nervous, and I cannot help but know that, however he tries to hide it. It is one of our troubles, but we know each other’s states of mind intuitively.
“Oh, Delia, was there ever a tragedy in the world like that of our love? (Almost everything in our lives is pain, and so we are coming to stand for pain to each other!) I ask myself sometimes if any two people who love could stand what we have to stand. Sometimes I think they could, if their love was different; but then that thought breaks my heart! Why cannot our love be different, I ask!
“I had one of my frightful fits of unhappiness to-day. It was nothing–it was my fault, I guess. I am very sensitive. But I think it is a tendency of Thyrsis’ temperament to try instinctively to overcome mine. Apparently the only thing that will conquer him is seeing me suffer; then he will give way–he will promise anything I want, blame himself for his rigidity, scourge himself for his blindness, do anything at all I ask. So I tell myself, everything will be different now; the last problem is solved! I see how good and kind he is, how noble his impulses are; he has never failed me in the big things of life.
“I suppose Mr. Harding writes you about us. He was up here this afternoon. He was very gentle and kind to me; he talked about his religion. Did you tell him much about me? It is a singular thing, how he seems to understand without being told. I realized to-day that whenever we talk about my life, we take everything for granted. Also, it seems strange that he does not blame me; generally people who are conventional think that I am selfish, that I ought to be loving my baby, instead of struggling with my pitiful soul.
“I wrote a little stanza the other night, dear Delia. Doesn’t it seem strange, that when I am at the last gasp with agony, I should find myself thinking of lines of poetry? I called it ‘Life’; you will say that it is too sombre–
“‘A lonely journey in a night of storm, Lighted by flashes of inconstant faith, Goaded by multitudes of vague desires, And mocked by phantoms of remote delight!'”
Section 5. Just at this time Corydon found herself the victim of backaches and fits of exhaustion, for which there was no cause to be discovered. Each attack meant that Thyrsis would have to drop his work, and come and be housekeeper and nurse; he would have to repress every slightest sign of the impatience, which, was burning him up–knowing that if he gave vent to it, he would drive Corydon half-wild with suffering. After two or three such crises, he made up his mind that it was impossible for him to go on, until there was some one to help her in these emergencies.
As a result of their farm-hunting expeditions, they had in mind a place which was a compromise between their different requirements. It had a good barn and plenty of fruit, and at the same time a view, and a house with comfortable rooms, and wall-paper that was not altogether unendurable. It was offered for four thousand dollars, of which nearly three-quarters might remain upon mortgage; so they had agreed that their future happiness would depend upon the war-book’s bringing them in a thousand dollars. Since this hope had failed, he had applied to Darrell, and to Paret, but neither of them had the money to spare. It now fell out, that just as he was at the point of desperation, he received a letter from the clergyman who had married them, Dr. Hamilton. This worthy man had been reading Thyrsis’ manuscripts and following his career; and he now wrote to tell how greatly he had been impressed by the new novel. Whereupon the author was seized by a sudden resolve, and packed up a hand-satchel and set out for the city, with all the forces of his being nerved for an assault upon this ill-fated clergyman.
Dr. Hamilton sat in his little office, looking pale and worn, his face deeply seamed with lines of care. As the poet thought of it in later years, he realized that this man’s function in life was to be a clearing-house for human misery–the wrecks of the competitive system in all classes and grades of society came to him to pour out their troubles and beg for help. It was not so very long afterwards that he went to pieces from overwork and nervous strain; and Thyrsis wondered with a guilty feeling how much his own assault had contributed to this result. Assuredly it could not happen often that a clergyman had to listen to a more harrowing tale than this “murdered artist” had to tell.
The doctor heard it out, and then began to argue: like the philanthropist in Boston, he was greatly troubled by the fear of “weakening the springs of character”. Being an “advanced” clergyman, he was familiar with the pat phrases of evolutionary science–his mind was a queer jumble of the philosophy of Herbert Spencer and that of Thomas à Kempis. But Thyrsis just now was in a mood which might have moved even Spencer himself; he was almost frantic because of Corydon, whom he had left half-ill at home. He was not pleading for himself, he said–he could always get along; but oh, the horror of having to kill his wife for the sake of his books! To have to sit by day by day and watch her dying! He told about that night when Corydon had tried to kill herself; and now another winter was upon them, and he knew that unless something were done, the spring-time would not find her alive.
The suicide story turned the balance with the clergyman; Herbert Spencer was put back upon the shelf, and Thomas à Kempis ruled the day. Dr. Hamilton said that he would see one of his rich parishioners, and persuade him to take a second mortgage on the farm. And so Thyrsis went back, a messenger of wondrous tidings.
A few days later came the check. The deed had been got ready; and Thyrsis drove to the farm, and carried off the farmer and his wife to the nearest notary-public. The old man pleaded to stay in his home until the new year, but Thyrsis was obdurate, allowing him only a week in which to get himself and his belongings to another place. And meantime he and Corydon were packing up. They drove to another “vandew”, and purchased more odds and ends of household stuff; and Thyrsis had his little study loaded upon a wagon, and taken to the new place.
A wonderful adventure was this moving! To enter a real house, with two stories, and two pairs of stairs, and eight rooms, and a cellar, and regular plastered walls, and no end of closets and shelves and such-like domestic luxuries! To be able to set apart a whole room in which the baby might spread himself with his toys and marbles and dolls and picture-books–and without any one’s having to stumble over them, and break their owner’s heart! To have a real parlor, with a stove to sit by, and a table for a lamp, and shelves for books; and yet another room to eat in, and another to cook in! To be able to have a woman come to wash the dishes without making a bosom friend of her, and having her hear all the conversation! To be able to walk through fields and orchards and woodland, and know that they belonged to one’s self, and would some day shed their coat of snow and blossom into new life! Thyrsis wished that he could have the book out of his mind for a month, so that he might be properly thrilled by this experience.
It was at the Christmas season, and therefore an appropriate times for celebrating. He went down into the “wood-lot”–their own “wood-lot”–and cut a spruce tree, and set it up in the dining-room; they hung thereon all the contrivances which the associated grandparents had sent down to commemorate an occasion which was not only Christmas and house-warming, but the baby’s third birthday as well. Because of the triple conjunction, they invested in a fat goose, to be roasted in the new kitchen-range; and besides this there were some spare-ribs and home-made sausages with which a neighbor had tempted them. It was a regular storybook Christmas, with a snow-storm raging outside, and the wind howling down the chimney, and an odor of molasses-taffy pervading the house.
Section 6. After which festivities Thyrsis bid farewell to his family once more, and went away to wrestle with his angel. Weeks of failure and struggle it cost him before he could get back what he had lost–before he could recall those phrases that had once blazed white-hot in his brain, and could see again the whole gigantic form and figure of his undertaking. Many an hour he spent pacing his little eight-foot piazza–four steps and a half each way, back and forth; many a night he would sit before his little fourteen-inch stove, so lost in his meditations that the stove would lose its red-hot glow, and the icy gale which raged outside and rattled the door would steal in through the cracks and set him to shivering.
Other times he would trudge through the snow and mud to the town, spending the day in the library, and then bringing out an armful of books to last him through the night. Thyrsis had read pretty thoroughly the literature of the six languages he knew; but now– this was the appalling nature of his task–he had to go back and read it over again. He did not realize, until he got actually at the work, what an utter overturning there would be in all his ideas. How strange it was to return and read the “classics” of one’s youth! What oceans of futility one discovered, what mountains of pretense–and with what forests of scholarship grown over them! It seemed to Thyrsis that everywhere he turned the search-light of his new truth, the structure of his opinions would topple like a house of cards. Truly, here was a _”Götzendämmerung”_, an _”Umwertung aller Werthe”!_
The worst of it was that he had to read, not only literature, but also history–often his own kind of history, that had not yet been written. If he wished to know the Shakespearean dramas as a product of the aristocratic and imperialist ideal in the glory and intoxication of its youth, he had to study, not only Shakespeare’s poetry, but the cultural and social life of the Elizabethan people. And he could not take any man’s word for the truth; he had to know for himself. The thing that would avail him in this battle was not eloquence and fervor, not the flashes of his irony and the white-hot shafts of his scorn. What he must have were facts, and more facts–and then again facts!
The facts were there, to be had for the gathering. Thyrsis again could only compare himself to Aladdin in his palace. Could it be believed that so many ideas had been left for one man to discover? It seemed to him, that the kingdoms of literature lay at his mercy; he was like a magician who has discovered a new spell, which places his rivals in his power. He knew that this book, if he could ever finish it, would alter the aspect of literary criticism, as a blow changes the pattern in a kaleidoscope.
Thyrsis had failed many times before, but this time he felt that success was in his hands; he knew the bookworld now, he was master of the game. This would set them to thinking, this would stir them up! He had got under the armor of his enemy at last, and he could feel him wince and writhe at each thrust that he drove home. So he wrought at his task, in a state of tense excitement, living always in imagination in the midst of the battle, following stroke with stroke and driving a rout before him.–So he would be for weeks; and then would come the reaction, when he fell back exhausted, and realized that his victory was mere phantasy, that nothing of it really counted until he had completed his labor. And that would take two years! Two years!
Section 7. From visions such as this Thyrsis came back to wrestle with all the problems of a household; with pumps that froze and drains that clogged, with stoves that went out and ashes that spilled, with milk-boys that were late and kitchen-maids that were snow-bound. He would leave his work at one or two o’clock in the morning, and make his way through the snow and the storm to the house, and crawl into bed, and then take his chances of being awakened by the baby, or by some spell of agony with Corydon.
He might not sleep alone; that supreme symbol of domesticity Corydon could not give up, and he soon ceased to ask for it. It seemed such a little thing to yield; and yet it meant so much to him! The room where he slept came to seem to him a chamber of terror, a place to which he went “like the galley-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon”. It was a place where a crime was enacted; where the vital forces of his being were squandered, and the body and soul of him were wrung and squeezed dry like a sponge. This was marriage–it was the essence of marriage; it was the slavery into which he had delivered himself, the duty to which he was bound. And in how many millions of homes was this same thing going on–this licensed preying of one personality upon another? And the nightmare thing was upheld and buttressed by all the forces of society–priests were saying blessings over it and moralists were singing the praises of it–“the holy bonds of matrimony”, it was called!
It was all the worse to Thyrsis because there was that in him which welcomed this animal intimacy. So he saw that day by day their lives were slipping to a lower plane; day by day they were discovering new weaknesses and developing new vices in themselves. Corydon was now a good part of the time in pain of some sort; and the doctors had accustomed her to stave off these crises with various kinds of drugs, so that she had a set of shelves crowded with pills and powders and bottles. She had learned to rely upon them in emergencies, to plead for them when she was helpless; and so Thyrsis saw her declining into an inferno. He would argue with her and plead with her and fight with her; he would spend days trying to open her eyes to the peril, to show her that it was better to suffer pain than to resort to these treacherous aids.
Section 8. They still had their hours of enthusiasm, of course, their illuminations and their resolutions. During the summer, while browsing among the English magazines in the library, Thyrsis had stumbled upon an astonishing article dealing with the subject of health. He read it in a state of great excitement, and then took it home and read it to Corydon. It told of the achievements of a gentleman by the name of Horace Fletcher, who had once possessed robust health, and lost it through careless living, and had then restored it by a new system of eating. To Thyrsis this came as one of the great discoveries of his life. For years every instinct of his nature had been whispering to him that his ways of eating were vicious; but he had been ignorant and helpless–and with all the world that he knew in opposition to him. As he read the article, he recalled a talk he had had with his “family doctor”, way back before his marriage, when he had first begun to notice symptoms of stomach-trouble. He had suggested timidly that there might be something wrong with his diet, and that if the doctor would tell him exactly what he ought to eat, and how much and how often, he would be glad to adopt the regimen. But the doctor had only laughed and answered, “Nonsense, boy–don’t you get to thinking about your food!” And so Thyrsis had gone away, to follow the old plan of eating what he liked. Health, it would seem, must be a spontaneous and accidental thing, it could not be a deliberate and reasoned thing.
But now he and Corydon became smitten with a passion of shame for all their stupidity and their gluttony; they invested in Fletcher’s books, and set out upon this new adventure. They would help themselves to a very small saucerful of food; and they would take of this a very small spoonful–and chew–and chew–and chew. Mr. Fletcher said that half an hour a day was enough for the eating of the food one needed; but they, apparently, could have chewed for hours, and still been hungry. They labored religiously to stop as soon as they could pretend to be satisfied; the result of which was that Thyrsis lost fourteen pounds in as many days–and it was many a long year before he got those fourteen pounds back! He became still more “spiritual” in his aspect; until finally he and Corydon set out for a walk one day, and coming up a hill to their home they gave out altogether, and first Thyrsis had to crawl up the hill and get something to eat, and then take something down to Corydon!
However, in spite of all their blunders, this new idea was of genuine benefit to them; at least it put them upon the right track–it taught them the relationship between diet and disease. They saw the two as cause and consequence–they watched the food they ate affecting their bodies as one might watch a match affecting a thermometer. They were no longer victims of the idea that health must be a spontaneous and accidental thing–they were set definitely to thinking about it, as something that could be achieved by will and intelligence.
But the right knowledge lay far in the future; and meantime they were groping in ignorance, and disease was still a mysterious visitation that came upon them out of the night. “Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there hath been none like it, nor shall be like it any more.”
Their own firstborn had low been on the _regime_ of the “child specialist” for a year and a half. He was big and fat and rosy, and according to all the standards they knew, a picture of health. He was the pride of his parents’ hearts–the one success they had achieved, and to which they could turn their eyes. He was a frightful burden to them–the most noisy and irrepressible of children. But they struggled and worried along with him, and were proud of him–and even, in a stormy sort of way, were happy with him. But now a calamity fell upon him, bringing them the most terrible distress they had yet had to face in their lives.
Section 9. It was all the worse because they laid the blame upon themselves. They were accustomed to attribute sickness to this or that trivial cause–if Corydon caught a cold, it was because she had sat in a draught, and if Thyrsis was laid up with tonsilitis, it was because he had gone out for kindling-wood without his hat. It had been their wont to bundle the child up and turn him out to play; and one very cold day he had stood a long time under the woodshed, and had got chilled. So that night his head was hot, and he was fretful; and in the morning he would not eat, and apparently had a fever. They sent off in haste for the doctor; and the doctor came and examined him, and shook his head and looked very grave. It was pneumonia, he said, and a serious case.
So Corydon and Thyrsis had to put all things else aside, and gird themselves for a siege. There were medicines to be administered every hour, and minute precautions to be taken to keep the patient from the slightest chill; he must be in a warm room, and yet with some ventilation. All these things they attended to, and then they would sit and gaze at the sufferer, dumb with grief and fear. Through the night Thyrsis sat by the bedside, while Cedric babbled and raved in delirium; and no suffering that he had ever experienced was equal to this.
How he loved this baby, how passionately, how cruelly! How he clung to him, blindly and desperately–the thought of losing him simply tore his heart to pieces! He would hold the hot hands, he would touch the little body; how he loved that body, that was so beautiful and soft and white! How many times he had bathed it and dressed it and hugged it to him! He would sit and listen to the fevered prattle, full of childish phrases which brought before him the childish soul–the wonderful, lovable thing, so merry and eager, so full of mischief and curiosity; with strange impulses of tenderness, and flashes of intelligence that thrilled one, and opened long vistas to the imagination. He was all they had, this baby–he was all they had saved out of the ruin of their lives, out of the shipwreck of their love. What sacrifices they had made for him–what agonies he represented! And now, the idea that they might never see him, nor touch him, nor hear his voice again!
Also would come agonies of remorse. Thyrsis would face the blunder they had made–it might have been avoided so easily, and now it was irrevocable! His whole body would shake with silent sobbing. Ah, this curse of their lives, this hideous shame–that they had not even been able to take proper care of their child! This wrong, too, the world meant to inflict upon them–this supreme vengeance, this cruel punishment!
Section 10. The doctor came next morning, and found the patient worse. This was the crisis, he said; if the little one lived through the night–And there he paused, seeing the agony in the eyes of the mother and father. They would do all they could, he said; they must hope for the best.
So the siege went on. Thyrsis sat through the night again–and Corydon, who could not rest either, would come into the room every little while, and listen and watch. They would hold each other’s hand for hours, dumb with suffering; ghostly presences seemed to haunt the sick-chamber and set them to trembling. Thyrsis found himself thinking of that most terrible of all ballads, “The Erl-King”. How he had shuddered once, hearing it sung!–
“Dem Vater grauset’s, er reitet geschwind!”
All through the night he seemed to hear the hammer-strokes of the horse’s hoofs echoing through his soul.
The child lived through the night, but the crisis was not yet over. The fever held on; the issue of life and death seemed to hang upon the flutter of an eyelid. There was one more night to be sat through and Thyrsis, whose restless intellect must needs be dealing with all issues, had by then fought his way through this terror also. They must get control of themselves at all hazards, he said; they must face the facts. If so the child should die–
He tried to say something of the sort to Corydon, seeking to steady her. But Corydon became almost frantic at his words. “You must not say such a thing, you must not think such a thing!” she cried.
Corydon had been reading about “new thought”, and she insisted that would be “holding the idea” of death over the child. “The thing for us to do,” she said, “is to make up our minds–he must live, we must _know_ that he will live!”–It was no time to argue about metaphysics, but Thyrsis found this proposition a source of great perplexity. How could a man make himself know what he did not know?
The crisis passed, and the child lived. But the illness continued for a couple of weeks–and how pitiful it was to see their baby, that had been so big and rosy, and was now pale and thin and weak! And when at last he got up and went outdoors again, he caught a cold, and there was a relapse, and another siege of the dread disease; the doctor had not warned them sufficiently, it seemed. So there was a week or two more of watching and worrying; and then they had to face the fact that little Cedric would be delicate for a long while–would need to be guarded with care all through the spring.
Thyrsis blamed himself for all that had happened; the weight of it rested upon him forever afterwards, as if it were some crime he had committed. Sometimes when he was overwrought and overdriven, he would lie awake in the small hours of the morning, and this spectre would come and sit by him. He had made a martyr of the child he loved, he had sacrificed it to what he called his art; and how had he dared to do it?
It was hard to think of a more cruel question to put to a man. Himself, no doubt, he might scourge and drive and wreck; but this child–what were the child’s rights? Thyrsis would try to weigh them against the claims of posterity. What his own work might be, he knew; and to what extent should he sacrifice it to the unknown possibilities of his son? Some sacrifice there had to be–such was the stern decree of the “economic screw.”
So Thyrsis once more was a field of warring motives; once more he faced the curse of his life–that he could not be as other men, he could not have other men’s virtues. It was the latest aspect, and the most tragic, of that impulse in him which had made him fight so hard against marriage; which had made him quote to Corydon the lines of the outlaw’s song–
“The fiend whose lantern lights the mead Were better mate than I!”
BOOK XVI
THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM
_The scarlet flush of morning was in the sky; and they stood upon the hill again, and watched the color spreading.
“We must go,” she was saying. “But it was worthwhile to come.”
“It was all worth-while,” he said–“all!”
And she smiled, and quoted some lines from the poem–
“Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound; Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour! Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest, If men esteem’d thee feeble, gave thee power, If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest!”_
Section 1. This illness of the baby’s had been a fearful drain upon their strength; and Thyrsis perceived that they had now got to a point where they could no longer stand alone. There must be a servant in the house, to help Corydon, and do for the baby what had to be done. It was a hard decision for him to face, for his money was almost gone, and the book loomed larger than ever. But there was no escaping the necessity.
They would get a married couple, they decided–the man could pay for himself by working the farm. So they put an advertisement in a city paper, and perused the scores of mis-spelled replies. After due correspondence, and much consultation, they decided upon Patrick and Mary Flanagan; and Thyrsis hired a two-seated carriage and drove in to meet them at the depot.
It was all very funny; years afterwards, when the clouds of tragedy were dispersed, they were able to laugh over the situation. Thyrsis had been used to servants in boyhood, but that was before he had acquired any ideas as to universal brotherhood and the rights of man. Now he hated all the symbols and symptoms of mastership; he shrunk from any sort of clash with unlovely personalities–he would be courteous and deprecating to the very tramp who came to his door to beg. And here were Patrick and Mary, very Irish, enormously stout, and devotedly Roman Catholic, having spent all their lives as caretakers of “gentlemen’s country-places”. They had most precise ideas as to what gentlemen’s country-places should be, and how they should be equipped, and how the gentlemen of the country-places should treat their servants. And needless to say, they found nothing in this new situation which met with their approval. There were signs of humiliating poverty everywhere, and the farm-outfit was inadequate. As to the master and mistress, they must have been puzzling phenomena for Patrick and Mary to make up their minds about–possessing so many of the attributes of the lady and gentleman, and yet being lacking in so many others!
Patrick was a precise and particular person; he wanted his work laid out just so, and then he would do it without interference. As for Mary–he stood in awe of Mary himself, and so he accepted the idea that Corydon and Thyrsis should stand in awe of her too. Mary it was who announced that their dietary was inadequate; she took no stock at all in Fletcher and Chittenden–she knew that working-people must have meat at least four times a week. Also Mary maintained that their room was not large enough for so stout a couple. Also she arranged it that Corydon and Thyrsis should get the dinner on Sundays–the Roman Catholic church being five miles away, and the hour of mass being late, and the horse very old and slow.
For two months Corydon and Thyrsis struggled along under the dark and terrible shadow of the disapproval of the Flanagan family. Then one day there came a violent crisis between Corydon and Mary–occasioned by a discussion of the effect of an excess of grease upon the digestibility of potato-starch. Corydon fled in tears to her husband, who started for the kitchen forthwith, meaning to dispose of the Flanagans; when, to his vast astonishment, Corydon experienced one of her surges of energy, and thrust him to one side, and striding out upon the field of combat, proceeded to deliver herself of her pent-up sentiments. It was a discourse in the grandest style of tragedy, and Mary Flanagan was quite dumbfounded–apparently this was a “lady” after all! So the Flanagan family packed its belongings and departed in a chastened frame of mind; and Corydon turned to her spouse, her eyes still flashing, and remarked, “If only I had talked to her that way from the beginning!”
Section 2. Then once more there was answering of advertisements, and another couple was spewed forth from the maw of the metropolis–“Henery and Bessie Dobbs”, as they subscribed themselves. “Henery” proved to be the adult stage of the East Side “gamin”; lean and cynical, full of slang and humor and the odor of cigarettes. He was fresh from a “ticket-chopper’s” job in the subway, and he knew no more about farming than Thyrsis did; but he put up a clever “bluff”, and was so prompt with his wits that it was hard to find fault with him successfully. As for his wife, she had come out of a paper-box factory, and was as skilled at housekeeping as her husband was at agriculture; she was frail and consumptive, and told Corydon the story of her pitiful life, with the result that she was able to impose upon her even more than her predecessor had done.
“Henery” was slow at pitching hay and loading stone, but when the season came, he developed a genius for peddling fruit; he was always hungry for any sort of chance to bargain, and was forever coming upon things which Thyrsis ought to buy. Very quickly the neighborhood discovered this propensity of his, and there was a constant stream of farmers who came to offer second-hand buggies, and wind-broken horses, and dried-up cows, and patent hay-rakes and churns and corn-shellers at reduced values; all of which rather tended to reveal to Thyrsis the unlovely aspects of his neighbors, and to weaken his faith in the perfectibility of the race.
Among Henery’s discoveries was a pair of aged and emaciated mules. He became eloquent as to how he could fatten up these mules and what crops he could raise in the spring. So Thyrsis bought the mules, and also a supply of feed; but the fattening process failed to take effect-for the reason, as Thyrsis finally discovered, that the mules were in need of new teeth. When the plowing season began, Henery at first expended a vast amount of energy in beating the creatures with a stick, but finally he put his inventive genius to work, and devised a way to drive them without beating. It was some time before Thyrsis noted the change; when he made inquiries, he learned to his consternation that the ingenious Henery had fixed up the stick with a pin in the end!
At any time of the day one might stand upon the piazza of the house and gaze out across the corn-field, and see a long procession marching through the furrow. First there came the mules, and then came the plow, and then came Henery; and after Henery followed the dog, and after the dog followed the baby, and after the baby followed a train of chickens, foraging for worms. Little Cedric was apparently content to trot back and forth in the field for hours; which to his much-occupied parents seemed a delightful solution of a problem. But it happened one day when they had a visit from Mr. Harding, that Thyrsis and the clergyman came round the side of the house, and discovered the child engaged in trying to drag a heavy arm-chair through a door that was too small for it. He was wrestling like a young titan, purple in the face with rage; and shouting, in a perfect reproduction of Henery’s voice and accent, “Come round here, God damn you, come round here!”
There were many such drawbacks to be balanced against the joys of “life on a farm”. Thyrsis reflected with a bitter smile that his experiences and Corydon’s had been calculated to destroy their illusions as to several kinds of romance. They had tried “Grub Street”, and the poet’s garret, and the cultivating of literature upon a little oatmeal; they had not found that a joyful adventure. They had tried the gypsy style of existence; they had gone back “to the bosom of nature”–and had found it a cold and stony bosom. They had tried out “love in a cottage”, and the story-writer’s dream of domestic raptures. And now they were chasing another will o’ the wisp–that of “amateur farming”! When Thyrsis had purchased half the old junk in the township, and had seen the mules go lame, and the cows break into the pear-orchard and “founder” themselves; when he had expended two hundred dollars’ worth of money and two thousand dollars’ worth of energy to raise one hundred dollars’ worth of vegetables and fruit, he framed for himself the conclusion that a farm is an excellent place for a literary man, provided that he can be kept from farming it.
Section 3. As the result of such extravagances, when they had got as far as the month of February, Thyrsis’ bank-account had sunk to almost nothing. However, he had been getting ready for this emergency; he had prepared a _scenario_ of his new book, setting forth the ideas it would contain and the form which it would take. This he sent to his publisher, with a letter saying that he wanted the same contract and the same advance as before.
And again he waited in breathless suspense. He knew that he had here a work of vital import, one that would be certain to make a sensation, even if it did not sell like a novel. It was, to be sure, a radical book–perhaps the most radical ever published in America; but on the other hand, it dealt with questions of literature and philosophy, where occasionally even respectable and conservative reviews permitted themselves to dally with ideas. Thyrsis was hoping that the publisher might see prestige and publicity in the adventure, and decide to take a chance; when this proved to be the case, he sank back with a vast sigh of relief. He had now money enough to last until midsummer, and by that time the book would be more than half done–and also the farm would be paying.
But alas, it seemed with them that strokes of calamity always followed upon strokes of good fortune. At this time Corydon’s ailments became acute, and her nervous crises were no longer to be borne. There were anxious consultations on the subject, and finally it was decided that she should consult another “specialist”. This was an uncle of Mr. Harding’s, a man of most unusual character, the clergyman declared; the latter was going to the city, and would be glad to introduce Corydon.
So, a couple of days later came to Thyrsis a letter, conveying the tidings that she was discovered to be suffering from an abdominal tumor, and should undergo an immediate operation. It would cost a hundred dollars, and the hospital expenses would be at least as much; which meant that, with the bill-paying that had already taken place, their money would all be gone at the outset!
But Thyrsis did not waste any time in lamenting the inevitable. He was rather glad of the tidings, on the whole–at least there was a definite cause for Corydon’s suffering, and a prospect of an end to it. Both of them had still their touching faith in doctors and surgeons, as speaking with final and godlike authority upon matters beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mind. The operation would not be dangerous, Corydon wrote, and it would make a new woman of her.
“If I could only have Delia Gordon with me,” she added, “then my happiness would be complete. Only think of it, she left for Africa last week! I know she would have waited, if she’d known about this.
“However, I shall make out. Mr. Harding is going to be in town for more than a week–he is attending a conference of some sort, and he has promised to come and see me in the hospital. I think he likes to do such things–he has the queerest professional air about it, so that you feel you are being sympathized with for the glory of God. But really he is very beautiful and good, and I think you have never appreciated him. I am happy to-day, almost exhilarated; I feel as if I were about to escape from a dungeon.”
Section 4. Such was the mood in which she went to her strange experience. She liked the hospital-room, tiny, but immaculately clean; she liked the nurses, who seemed to her to be altogether superior and exemplary beings–moving with such silence and assurance about their various tasks. She slept soundly, and in the morning they combed and plaited her hair and prepared her for the ceremony. There came a bunch of roses to her room, with a card from Mr. Harding; and these were exquisite, and made her happy, so that, when the doctor arrived, she went almost gaily to the operating-room.
Everything there aroused her curiosity; the pure white walls and ceiling, shining with matchless cleanness, the glittering instruments arranged carefully on glass tables, the attentive and pleasant-faced nurses, standing also in pure white, and the doctor in his vestments, smiling reassuringly. In the centre of the room was a large glass table, long enough for a reclining body, and through the sky-light the sun poured a pleasing radiance over all. “How beautiful!” exclaimed Corydon; and the nurses exchanged glances, and the old doctor failed to hide an expression of surprise.
“I wish all my patients felt like that,” said he. “Now climb up on the table.”
Corydon promptly did so, and another doctor who was to administer the anaesthetic came to her side. “Take a very deep breath, please,” he said, as he placed over her mouth a white, cone-shaped thing that had a rather suffocating odor. Corydon was obedience itself, and breathed.
In a moment her body seemed to be falling from her. “Oh, I don’t like it!” she gasped.
“Breathe deeply, and count as far as you can,” came a voice from far above her.
“Stop!” whispered Corydon. “Oh, I don’t want–I want to come back!”
Then she began to count–or rather some strange voice, not hers, seemed to count for her; as the first numbness passed, farther and farther away she seemed to dissolve, to become a disembodied consciousness poised in a misty ether. And at that moment–so she told Thyrsis afterwards–the face of Mr. Harding seemed to appear just above her, and to look at her with a pained and startled expression. It was a beautiful face, she thought; and she knew that everything she felt was being immediately registered in Mr. Harding’s mind. They were two affinitized beings, suspended in the centre of a cosmos; “their soul intelligences were all that had been left of the sentient world after some cataclysm.
“I always knew that about us,” thought Corydon, and she realized that the face before her understood, even though at the moment it, too, was dissolving. “I wonder why”–she mused–“why–” And then the little spark went out.
Two hours later the doctor was bending over her, anxiously scrutinizing her passive face. “Nurse, bring me some ice-water,” he was saying. “She takes her time coming to.” And sharply he struck her cheek and forehead with his finger-tips; but she showed no sign.
Deep down in some mysterious inner chamber, beneath the calm face, there was being enacted a grim spirit-drama. Corydon’s soul was making a monstrous effort to return to its habitation; Corydon felt herself hanging, a tortured speck of being, in a dark and illimitable void. “This may be Hell,” she thought. “I have neither hands nor feet, and I cannot fight; but I can _will_ to get back!” This effort cost her inexpressible agony.
A strange incessant throbbing was going on in the black pit over which she seemed suspended. It had a kind of rhythm–metallic, and yet with a human resonance. It began way down somewhere, and proceeded with maddening accuracy to ascend through the semi-tones of a gigantic scale. Each beat was agony to her; it ascended to a certain pitch in merciless crescendo, then fell to the bottom again, and began anew its swift, maddeningly accurate ascent. Each time it ascended a little higher, and always straining her endurance to the uttermost, and bringing a more vivid realization of agony. “Will you stop here,” it seemed to pulsate. “No, no, I will go on,” willed Corydon. “You shall not keep me, I must escape, I must _get out_.” But it kept up incessantly, ruthlessly, its strange, formless, soundless din, until the spirit writhed in its grasp.
Finally it seemed to Corydon that she was getting nearer–nearer to something, she knew not what. The blackness about her seemed to condense, and she found herself in what was apparently the middle of a lake, and some dark bodies with arms were trying to drag her down. “No, no,” she willed to these forms, “you _shall_ not. I do not belong here, I belong up–up!” And by a violent effort she escaped–into sensations yet more agonizing, more acute. The vibrations were getting faster and faster, whirling her along, stretching her consciousness to pieces. “Will it never end?” she thought. “Have mercy!” But after an eternity of such repetition, she found a bright light staring at her, and a frightful sense of heaviness, like mountains piled upon her. Also, eating her up from head to foot, was a strange, unusual pain; yes, it must be pain, though she had never felt anything like it before. She moaned; and there came a spasm of nausea, that seemed to tear her asunder.
The doctor was standing by her. “She gave me quite a fright,” he was saying. “There, that’s it, nurse. She’ll be sleeping sweetly in a minute.” The nurse hurried forward, and Corydon felt a stinging sensation in her side, and then a delightful numbness crept over her. “Oh, thank you, doctor,” she whispered.
Section 5. The next week held for Corydon continuous suffering, which she bore with a rebellious defiance–feeling that she had been betrayed in some way. “If you had only told me,” she wailed, to the doctor. “I would rather have stayed as I was before!” For answer he would pat her cheek and tell her to go to sleep.
The days dragged on. Every afternoon her mother came and read to her for several hours; and in the afternoons Mr. Harding would come, and sit by her bedside in his kind way and talk to her. Sometimes he only stayed a few minutes, but often he would spend an hour or so, trying to dispel the clouds of gloom and despondency that were hanging over her. Corydon told him of her vision in the operating-room, and strange to say he declared that he had known it all; also he said that he had helped her to fight her way back to life.
He seemed to understand her every need, and from his sympathy gave her all the comfort he could. But he little realized all that it meant to her–how deeply it stirred her gratitude and her liking for him. During the day she would find herself counting the hours until the time he had named; and when the expected knock would come, and his tall figure appear at the door, her heart would give a sudden jump and send the blood rushing to her head. Her lips would tremble slightly as she held out her hand to him; and as he sat and looked at her, she would become uncomfortably conscious of the beating of her heart; in fact at times it would almost suffocate her, and her cheeks would become as fire.
She wondered if he noticed it. But he seemed concerned only for her welfare, and anxiously inquired how she felt. She was not doing well, it seemed, and the doctor was greatly troubled; her temperature had not become normal since the operation, and they could not account for it, as she was suffering no more than the usual amount of pain. To Corydon this was a matter of no importance; she was willing to lie there all day, if only the hour of Mr. Harding’s visit would come more quickly. She was beginning to be alarmed because she had such difficulty in controlling her excitement.
The magic hour would strike, and the door of hope open, and there upon the threshold he would appear, in all his superb manhood. Corydon thought she had never before met a man who gave her such an impression of vitality. He was splendid; he was like a young Viking, who brought into the room with him the pure air of the Northern mountains. When he looked at her, his eyes assumed a wonderful expression, a “golden” expression, as Corydon described it to herself. And day after day she clothed this Viking in more lustrous garments, woven from the threads of her imagination, her innermost desires and her dreams. And always at sight of him, her heart beat faster, her head became hotter; until the bed she lay upon became a bed of burning coals. She realized at last what had happened to her, that she loved–yes, that she loved! But she must not let her Viking see it; that would be unpardonable, it would damn her forever in his sight. And so she struggled with her secret. At night she slept in fitful starts, and in the morning she lay pale and sombre. But when he came she was all brilliancy and animation.
Section 6. Each night the doctor would look anxiously at his thermometer; it was a source of great worry to him and to Corydon’s parents that the fever did not abate. Also, needless to say, the news worried Thyrsis; all the more, because it meant a long stay in the hospital, and more of their money gone. At last he came up to town to see about it; and Corydon thought to herself, “This is very wrong of me. It is Thyrsis I ought to be interested in, it is his sympathy I ought to be craving.”
She brought the image of Thyrsis before her; it seemed vague and unreal. She found that she remembered mostly the unattractive aspects of him. And this brought a pang to her. “He is good and noble,” she told herself; she forced herself to think of generous things that he had done.
He came; and then she felt still more ashamed. He had been working very hard, and was pale and haggard; it was becoming to him to be that way. Recollections came back to her in floods; yes, he was truly good and noble!
He sat by her bedside, and she told him about the operation, and poured out the hunger of her soul to him. He stayed all the morning with her, and he came again and spent the afternoon with her. He read to her and kissed her and soothed her–his influence was very calming, she found. After he had gone for the night, Corydon lay thinking, “I still love him!”
How strange it was that she could love two men at once! It was surely very wrong! She would never have dreamed that she, Corydon, could do such a thing. She thought of Harry Stuart, and of the unacknowledged thrill of excitement which his presence had brought to her. “And now here it is again,” she mused–“only this time it is worse! What _can_–be the matter with me?”
Then she wondered, “Do I really love Mr. Harding? Haven’t I got over it now?” But the least thinking of him sufficed to set her heart to thumping again; and so she shrunk from that train of thought. She wanted to love her husband.
He came again the next morning, and Corydon found that she was very happy in his presence. Her fever was slightly lower, and she thought, “I will get well quickly now.”
But alas, she had reckoned in this without Thyrsis! To sit in the hospital all day was a cruel strain upon him; the more so as he had been entirely unprepared for it. Corydon had assured him that the operation would be nothing, and that she would not need him; and so he had just finished a harrowing piece of labor on the book. Now to stay all day and witness her struggle, to satisfy her craving for sympathy and to meet and wrestle with her despair–it was like having the last drops of his soul-energy squeezed out of him. He did not know what was troubling Corydon, but the _rapport_ between them was so close, that he knew she was in some distress of mind.
He stood the ordeal as long as he could, and then he had to beg for respite. Cedric was down on the farm, with no one but the servants to care for him; so he would go back, and see that everything was all right, and after he had rested up for two or three days, he would come again. Corydon smiled faintly and assented–for that morning she had received a note from Mr. Harding, saying that he would be in town the next day, and would call.
So Thyrsis went away, and Corydon lay and thought the problem over again. “Yes, I love my husband; but it’s such an effort for him to love me! And why should that be? I don’t believe it would be such an effort for Mr. Harding to love me!”
So again she was seized by the thought of the young clergyman. And she was astonished at the difference in her feelings–the flood of emotion that swept over her. Her heart began to beat fast and her cheeks once more to burn. He was coming up to the city on purpose, this time; it must be that he wanted to see her very much!
That night was an especially hard one for her; she felt as though the frail shell that held her were breaking, as though her endurance were failing altogether. The fever had risen, and her bed had seemed like the burning arms of Moloch. Once she imagined that the room was stifling her, and in a sudden frenzy of impatience she struggled upon one elbow and flung her pillow across the room. In that instant she had noticed a new and sharp pain in her side; it did not leave her, though at the time she thought little about it.
She was all absorbed in the coming of Mr. Harding; by the time morning had come she had made up her mind that her one hope of deliverance was in confession. She must tell him, she must make known to him her love; and he would forgive her, and then her heart would not beat so violently at sight of him, her fever would abate and she might rest.
But when he sat there, talking to her, and looking so beautiful and so strange, she trembled, and made half a dozen vain efforts to begin. Finally she asked, “Have you ever read that poem of Heine’s– ‘Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen, Die hat einen Andern erwählt?'”
“Oh, yes,” he answered; then they were silent again. Finally Corydon nerved herself to yet another effort. “Mr. Harding,” she said, “will you come a little nearer, please. I have something very important to say to you.” And then, waveringly and brokenly, now in agonized abashment, now rushing ahead as she felt his encouragement and sympathy, she gave him the whole story of her suffering and its cause. When she came to the words “because I love you”, she closed her eyes and her spirit sank back with a great gasp of relief.
When she opened them again, his head was bowed in his hands and he did not move. “Mr. Harding,” she whispered, “Mr. Harding, you forgive me, do you not? You do not hate me?”
He roused himself with an effort. “Dear child,” said he, and as he looked at her she thought she had never seen a face so sad, so exquisite–“it is I who ask forgiveness.”
He rose and came to her bedside, and took her hand in both of his. “It would not be right for me to say to you what you have said to me. We must not speak of this any more. You will promise me this, and then you will rest, and to-morrow you will be better. Soon you will be well; and how glad your husband will be–and all of us.”
With that he pressed her hand firmly, and left the room; and Corydon turned her face to the wall, and whispered happily to herself, “Yes, he loves me, he loves me! And now I shall rest!”
Section 7. For a while she slept the sleep of exhaustion, nor did there fall across her dreams the shadow of the angel of fate who was even then placing his mark upon her forehead. Toward morning she was awakened suddenly with the sharp pain in her side; but it abated presently, and Corydon thought blissfully of the afternoon before. He would come again to her, she would see him that very day; and so what did pain matter? She was really happy at last. But as the day advanced, she became uneasy; her fever had not diminished, and the pain was becoming more persistent.
The nurse was anxious, too. Her mother came and regarded her in alarm. But she was thinking of Mr. Harding. He was coming; he might arrive at any moment.
There was a knock upon the door. Corydon’s pulse fluttered, and she whispered, “Here he is!” She could scarcely speak the words, “Come in”. But when the door opened, she saw that it was the doctor. Her heart sank, and she closed her eyes with a moan of pain. Could it be that he was not coming? Could it be that she had been mistaken–that he did not love her after all? She must see him–she must! She could not endure this suspense; she could not endure these interruptions by other people.
The doctor came and sat by her. “I must see what is the matter here,” he said. “Why do you not get well, Corydon?”
He questioned her carefully and looked grave. “I must have a consultation at once,” he said.
Corydon’s hand caught at his sleeve. “No, no!” she whispered.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the doctor. “It won’t hurt.”
“It isn’t that,” said Corydon. She all but added, “I must see Mr. Harding!”
She was wheeled into the operating-room, but this time there was no interest in her eyes as she regarded the smooth table and the shining instruments. As they lifted her upon it, she shuddered. “Oh I cannot, I cannot!” she wailed.
“There, there,” said the doctor. “Be brave. We wish simply to see what the matter is. It won’t take long.”
And they put the cone to her mouth. Corydon struggled and gasped, but it was no use, she was in the clutches of the fiend again; only this time there was no ecstasy, and no vision of Mr. Harding. Instead there was instant and sickening suffocation. Again she descended into the uttermost depths of the inferno; and it seemed as though this time the brave will was not equal to the battle before it.
The surgeons made their examination, and they discovered more diseased tissue, and a slowly spreading infection. So there was nothing for it but to operate again–they held a quick consultation, and then went ahead. And afterwards they labored and sweated, and by dint of persistent effort, and every device at their command, they fanned into life once more the faint spark in the ashen-grey form that lay before them. But it was a feeble flame they got; as Corydon’s eyelids fluttered, the only sign of recognition that came from her lips was a moan, and from her eyes a look of dazed stupidity. But there was hope for her life, the doctors said; and they sent a telegram which Thyrsis got three days later, when he had fought his way to the town through five miles of heavy snow-drifts.
Meantime the grim fight for life was going on. In the morning Corydon opened her eyes to a burning torture, the racked and twisted nerves quivering in rebellion. It did not come in twinges of pain, it was a slow, deadening, persistent agony, that pervaded every inch of her body. She wondered how she could bear it, how she could live. And yet, strangely, inexplicably, she wanted to live. She did not know why–she had been outraged, she had been deserted by all, she was but a feeble atom of determination in the centre of a hostile universe. And yet she would pit her will against them all, God, man, and devil; they should not conquer her, she would win out.
So she would clench her teeth together and fight. For hours she would stare at the wall, the blank, unresponsive, formless wall before her; and then, when the shadows of the evening fell, and they saw she was fainting from exhaustion, they would come with the needle of oblivion, and the dauntless soul would die for the night, and return in the morning to its pitiless task.
Section 8. Thyrsis received a couple of letters at the same time as the telegram, and he took the next train for the city. It is said that a drowning man sees before him in a few moments the panorama of his whole life; but to Thyrsis were given three hours in which to recall the events of his love for Corydon. He had every reason to believe that he would find her dying; and such pangs of suffering as came to him he had never known before. He was in a crowded car, and he would not shed a tear; but he sat, crouched in a heap and staring before him, fairly quivering with pent-up and concentrated grief. God, how he loved her! What a spirit of pure flame she was–what a creature from another sky! What martyrdom she had dared for him, and how cruelly she had been punished for her daring! And now, this was the end; she was dying–perhaps dead! How was he to live without her–in the bare and barren future that he saw stretching out before him?
Flashes of memory would come to him, waves of torment roll over him. He would recall her gestures, the curves of her face, the tones of her voice, the songs that she had sung; and then would come a choking in his throat, and he would clench his hands, as a runner in the last moments of a desperate race. He thought of her as he had seen her last. He had gone away, careless and unthinking–how blind he had been! The things that he had not said to her, and that he might have said so easily! The love he had not uttered, the pardons he had not procured! The yearnings and consecrations that had remained unspoken all through their lives–ah God, what a tragedy of impotence and failure their lives had been!
Then before his soul came troops of memories, each one a fiend with a whip of fire; the words of anger that he had spoken, the acts of cruelty that he had done! The times when he had made her weep, and had not comforted her! Oh, what a fool he had been–what a blind and wanton fool! And now–if he were to find her dead, and never be able to tell her of his shame and sorrow–he knew that he would carry the memories with him all his days, they would be like blazing scars upon his soul.
She was still alive, however; and so he took a deep breath, and went at his task. There was no question now of what he could bear to do, but of what he must do; she must be saved, and who could do it but himself? Who else could take her hands and whisper to her, and fill her with new courage and hope; who else could bid her to live–to live; could rouse the fainting spirit, and bid it rise up and set forth upon the agonizing journey?
So out of the very abyss they came together. But when at last the fight was won, when the doctors an-nounced that she was out of danger, Thyrsis was fairly reeling with exhaustion. When he left her in the afternoon, he would go to his hotel-room and lie down, utterly prostrated; he would lie awake the whole night through, wrestling with the demons of horror that he had brought with him from her bedside.
So he realized that he was on the verge of collapse, and that cost what it would, he must get away. Corydon’s mother was with her, and when she was strong enough to be moved, she would be taken back to the farm. He mentioned this to Corydon, and she replied that she would be satisfied. There would be Mr. Harding also, she said; Mr. Harding wrote that he would come up to the city, and do what he could to help her in her dire distress.
Section 9. There came from the higher regions a pass upon a steamer to Florida; and so Thyrsis sailed away. With a determined effort he took all his cares, and locked them back in a far chamber of his mind. He would not think about Corydon, nor about what he would do for money when he came home; more important yet, he would clear the book out of his thoughts–he would not permit it to gnaw at him all day and all night.
And by these resolves he stood grimly. He walked the deck for hours every day; he watched the foaming green waters, and the gulls wheeling in the sky, and the sun setting over the sea, and the new moon showering its fire upon the waves. Gradually the air grew warm, and ice and snow became as an evil dream. A land of magic it seemed to which Thyrsis came–the beauty of it enfolded him like a clasp of love. He saw pine-forests, and swamps with alligators in them, and live oaks draped with trailing grey moss. The clumps of palmettos fascinated him–he had seen pictures of such trees in the tropics, and would hardly have been astonished to see a herd of elephants in their shadows.
He found a beach, snow-white and hard, upon which he walked for uncounted miles. He gathered strange shells and crabs, and watched the turkey-buzzards on the shore, and the slow procession of the pelicans, sailing past above the tops of the breakers. He saw the black fins of the grampuses cutting the water, and thought that they were sharks. He stood for hours at a time up to his waist in the surf, casting for sea-bass; he got few fish, but joy and excitement he got in abundance.
Then, back upon the hammocks–to walk upon the hard shell roads, and see orange and lemon-groves, and gardens filled with roses and magnolias, and orchards of mulberry and fig-trees. Truly this must have been the land which the poet had described–
“Where every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”
Thyrsis stayed in a humble boarding-house, but nearby was one of the famous winter-resorts of the Florida East Coast, and he was free to go there, and wander about the lobbies and piazzas of the palatial hotels, and watch the idle rich at their diversions. A strange society they were–it seemed as if the scum of the civilization of forty-five states had been blown into this bit of back-water. Here were society women, jaded with dissipation; stock-brokers and financiers, fleeing from the strain of the “Street”; here were parasites of every species, who, having nothing to do at home–or perhaps not even having any home–had come to this land of warmth to prolong their orgies. They raced over the roads and beaches in autos, and over the water in swift motor-boats; they dressed themselves half a dozen times a day, they fed themselves upon rich and costly foods, they gambled and gossiped and drank and wantoned their time away. As he watched them it was all that Thyrsis could do to keep himself from beginning another manifesto for the “Appeal to Reason”. Oh, if only the toilers of the nation could be brought here, and shown what became of the wealth they produced!
As if to complete his study of winter-resort manners and morals, Thyrsis encountered a college acquaintance whose father had become enormously rich through a mining speculation, and was here with a party of friends in a private-train. So he was whirled off in one of half a dozen automobiles, and rode for a hundred miles or so to an inland lake, and sat down to an _al fresco_ luncheon of such delicacies as _paté de fois gras_ and jellied grouse and champagne. Afterwards the young people wandered about and amused themselves, and the elders played “bridge”, in the face of all the raptures of this wonderland of nature.
A strange and sombre figure Thyrsis must have seemed to these people, with his brooding air and his worn clothing; he rode home in an auto with half a dozen youths and maidens, and while they flashed by lakes and rivers that gleamed in the golden moon-light, and by orchards and gardens from which the mingled scents of millions of blossoms were wafted to them, these voung people jested together and laughed and sang.
And Thyrsis lay back and watched them and studied them. Their music was what is called “rag-time”–they had apparently found nothing better to do with their lives than to learn hundreds of verses and melodies, of which the subject-matter was the whims and moods of the half-tamed African race–their vanities and their barbarous impulses, and above all their hot and lustful passions. Song after song they poured forth, the substance of which was summed up in one line that Thyrsis happened to carry away with him–
“Ah lubs you, mah honey, yes, Ah do!”
It seemed to him such a curious and striking commentary upon the stage which leisure-class culture had reached, in the course of its reversion to savagery.
Section 10. Thyesis came home after three weeks, browned and refreshed, and ready to take up the struggle again. He came with the cup of his love and sympathy overflowing; eager to see Corydon, and to tell her his adventures, and to share with her his store of new hope.
He found her reclining on the piazza of the farm-house. The April buds were bursting upon the trees, and the odor of spring was in the air; also, the flush of health was stealing back into Corydon’s cheeks. How beautiful she looked, and how soft and gentle was her caress, and what wistfulness and tenderness were in the smile with which she greeted him!
There was the baby also, tumultuous and excited. Thyrsis took him upon his knee, and while he fondled him and played with him, he told Corydon about his trip. But in a short while it became evident to him that she had something on her mind; and finally she sent the baby away to play, and began, “There is something I have to tell you.”
“Yes, dear?” he said.
“It is something very, very important.”
“Yes?” he repeated.
“I–I don’t know just how to begin,” said Corydon. “I hope you are not going to be angry.”
“I can’t imagine myself being angry just now,” he replied; and then, struck by a sense of familiarity in this introduction, he asked, with a smile, “You haven’t been seeing Harry Stuart, have you?”
Corydon frowned at the words. “Don’t speak of that!” she said, quickly. “I am not joking.”
He saw that she was agitated, and so he fell silent.
“I hesitated a long time about telling you,” she went on. “But you must know. I am sure it’s right to tell you.”
“By all means, dearest,” he answered.
“It’s a long story,” she said. “I must go back to my first operation.” And then she began, and told him how she had found herself thinking of Mr. Harding, and of the strange vision she had had; she told of all her fevered excitements, and of her confession to him. When she finished she was trembling all over, and her face and throat were flushed.
Thyrsis sat for a while in silence, looking very grave. “I see,” he said.
“You–you are not angry with me?” she asked.
“No, I’m not angry,” he replied. “But tell me, what has been going on since?”
“Well,” said Corydon, “Mr. Harding has been coming here to see me. He saw I needed help, and he couldn’t refuse it. It was–it was his duty to come.”
“Yes,” said the other. “Go on.”
“Well, I think he had an idea that the whole thing was a product of my sickness; and when I was well again, it would all be over.”
“And is it, Corydon?”
She sat staring in front of her; her voice sank to a whisper. “No,” she said. “It–it isn’t.”
“And does he know that?” asked Thyrsis.
“He knows everything,” she replied. “I don’t need to tell him things.”
“But have you talked about it with him?”
“A little,” she said. “That is, you see, I had to explain to him–to apologize for what I had done in the hospital. I wanted him to know that I wouldn’t have said anything to him, if I hadn’t been so very ill.”
“I see,” said Thyrsis.
“And I want you to understand,” added Corydon, quickly-“you must not blame him. For he’s the soul of honor, Thyrsis; and he can’t help how he feels about me-any more than I can help it. You must know that, dear!”
“Yes, I know that.”
“He’s been so good and so noble about it. He thinks so much of you, Thyrsis–he wouldn’t do you wrong, not by a single word. He said that to me—over and over again. He’s frightened, you know, that either of us might do wrong. He’s so sensitive-I think he takes things more seriously than anybody we’ve ever known.”
“I understand,” said Thyrsis; and then, after a pause, he inquired, “But what’s to come of it?”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“What are you going to do?”
“Why, I don’t know that there’s anything to do, Thyrsis. What would there be?”
“But are you going on being in love with him forever?”
“I–I don’t see how I can tell, Thyrsis. Would it do any harm?”
“It might grow on you,” he said, with a slight smile. “It sometimes does.”
“Mr. Harding said we ought never to speak of it again,” said she. “And I guess he’s right about that. He said that our lives would always be richer, because we had discovered each other’s souls; that it would help us to grow into a nobler life.”
“I see,” said Thyrsis. “But it’s a trifle disconcerting at first. I’ll need a little time to get used to it.”
“Mr. Harding is very anxious to know you better,” remarked Corydon. “But you see, he’s afraid of you, Thyrsis. You are so direct–you get to the point too quickly for him.”
“Um–yes,” said he. “I can imagine that.”
“And he thinks you distrust him,” she went on–“just because he’s orthodox. But he’s really not half as backward as you think. His faith means a great deal to him. I only wish I had such a faith in my own life.”
To which Thyrsis responded, “God knows, my dear, I wish you had.”
Section 11. The young clergyman came to call the next afternoon, and the three sat upon the lawn and talked. They talked about Florida, and then about Socialism–as was inevitable, after Thyrsis had described the population of the East Coast hotels. But he felt constrained and troubled–he did not know just how a man should conduct himself with his wife’s lover; and so in the end he excused himself and strolled off.
He came back as Mr. Harding was leaving; and it seemed to him that the other’s face wore a look of pain and distress. Also, at supper he noted that Corydon was ill at ease.
“Something has gone wrong with your program?” he inquired.
To which Corydon answered, “Mr. Harding thinks he ought not to come any more.”
“Not come any more?”
“He says I don’t need him now. And he thinks–he thinks it isn’t right. He’s afraid to come.”
And so a week passed, and the young clergyman was not seen again. Thyrsis noticed that his wife was silent a great deal; and that when she did talk, she talked about Mr. Harding. His heart ached to see her as she was, so pitifully weak and appealing. She was scarcely able to walk alone yet; and she complained also that her mind had been weakened by the frightful ordeal she had undergone. It exhausted her to do any thinking at all; and she seemed to have forgotten nearly all she knew–there were whole subjects upon which her mind appeared to be a blank.
So he gave up trying to think about his book, and went about all day pondering this new problem. It was one of the laws of the marriage state that he must suffer whenever she suffered. It was never permitted to him to question the reality of any of her emotions; if they were real to her, they were real in the only sense that counted; and he must take them with the entire tragic seriousness that she took them, he must regard them as inevitable and fatal. For himself, he could change or suppress emotions–that ability was the most characteristic fact about him; but Corydon could not do it, and so he was not permitted to do it. That would be to manifest the “cold” and “stern” self, which was to Corydon an object of abhorrence and fear.
So now he went about all day, brooding over this trouble. He would come to Corydon and see her gazing across the valley with a melancholy look upon her features; he would see her, with her sweet face as if suffused with unshed tears. And what was he to do about it? Was he to rebuke her–however gently–and urge her to suppress this yearning? To do that would be to plunge her into abysses of grief. Or was he to come to her, and utter his own love to her, and draw her to him again? He knew that he could do that–he was conceited enough to believe that with his eloquence and his power of soul, he could have wiped Mr. Harding clean out of her thoughts in a few days. But then, when he had done it, he would have to go back to the task of revolutionizing the world’s critical standards; and what would become of Corydon after that? What she needed, he told himself, was a love that was not a will o’ the wisp and a fraud, but a love that was real and unceasing; she needed the love of a man, and not of an artist!
Here were two young people who were in love with each other; and according to the specifications of the moral code, they had their minds made up to sublime renunciation. But then, Thyrsis had a moral code of his own, and in it renunciation was not the only law of life.
It was only when he thought of losing Corydon, that he realized to the full how much he loved her. Then all their consecrations and their pledges would come back to him; he would hold her as the greatest human soul that he had ever met. But it was a strange paradox, that precisely the depth of his love for her made him willing to think of losing her. He loved her for herself, and not for anything she gave him; he wanted her to be happy, he wanted her to grow and achieve, and in order to see her do this he would make any sacrifice in the world. In how many hours of insight had it become clear to him that he himself could never make her happy–that he was not the man to be her husband! Now it seemed as if the time had come for him to prove that he meant what he had said–that he was willing to stand by his vision and to act upon it.
So after one day of especial unhappiness, he made up his mind to a desperate resolve; and at night, when all the household was asleep, he went over to his lonely study and sat down with a pen in his hand, and summoned the spirit of Mr. Harding before him.
“I have concluded to write you a letter,” he began. “You will find it a startling and unusual one. I can only beg you to believe that I have written it after much hesitation, and that it represents most earnest and prayerful thought upon my part.
“Since my return, I have become aware of the situation which has developed between yourself and my wife. Her welfare is dearer to me than anything else in the world; and after thinking it over, I concluded that her welfare required that I should explain to you the relationship which exists between us. It seems unlikely that you could know about it otherwise, for it is a very unusual relationship.
“I suppose there is no need for me to tell you that Corydon is not happy. She never has been happy as my wife, and I fear that she never will be. She is by nature warm-hearted, craving affection and companionship. I, on the other hand, am by nature impersonal and self-absorbed–I am compelled by the exigencies of my work to be abstracted and indifferent to things about me. I perceived this before our marriage, but not clearly enough to save her; it has been her misfortune that I have loved her so dearly that I have been driven to attempt the impossible. I am continuually deceiving myself into the belief that I am succeeding–and I am continually deceiving Corydon in the same way. It has been our habit to talk things out between us frankly; but this is a truth from which we have shrunk instinctively. I have always seen it as the seed of what must grow to be a bitter tragedy.
“The possibility that Corydon might come to love some other man was one that I had not thought of–it was very stupid of me, no doubt. But now it has happened; and I have worked over the problem with all the faculties I possess. A man who was worthy of Corydon’s love would be very apt, under the circumstances, to feel that he must crush his impulses towards her. But when we were married, it was with the agreement that our marriage should be binding upon us only so long as it was for the highest spiritual welfare of both; and by that agreement it is necessary that we should stand at all times. My purpose in writing to you is to let you know that I have no claim upon Corydon which prohibits her from continuing her acquaintance with you; and that if in the course of time it should become clear that Corydon would be happier as your wife than as mine, I should regard it as my duty to step aside. Having said this, I feel that I have done my part. I leave the matter in your hands, with the fullest confidence in your sincerity and good faith.”
Thyrsis wrote this letter, and read it a couple of times. Then he decided to sleep over it; and the next morning he wakened, and read it again–with a shock of surprise. He found it a startling letter. It opened up vistas to his spirit; vistas of loneliness and grief– and then again, vistas of freedom and triumph. If he were to mail it, it would be irrevocable; and it would probably mean that he would lose Corydon. And _could_ he make up his mind to lose her? His swift thoughts flew to their parting; there were tears in his eyes– his love came back to him, as it had when he thought she was dying. But then again, there came a thrill of exultation; the captive lion within him smelt the air of the jungle, and rattled his chains and roared.
Throughout breakfast he was absent-minded and ill at ease; he bid Corydon a farewell which puzzled her by its tenderness, and then started to walk to Bellevue with the letter. Half way in, he stopped. No, he could not do it–it was a piece of madness; but then he started again–he _must_ do it. He found himself pacing up and down before the post office, where for nearly an hour he struggled to screw his courage to the sticking-point. Once he started away, having made up his mind that he would take another day to think the matter over; but after he had walked half a mile or so, he changed his mind and strode back, and dropped the letter in the box.
And then a pang smote him. It was done! All the way as he walked home he had to fight with an impulse to go back, and persuade the postmaster to return the letter to him!
Section 12. Thyrsis figured that the fatal document would reach Mr. Harding that afternoon; and the next morning in his anxiety he walked a mile or two to meet the mail-carrier on his way. Sure enough, there was a reply from the clergyman. He tore it open and read it swiftly:
“I received your letter, and I hasten to answer. I cannot tell you the distress of mind which it has caused me. There has been a most dreadful misundertanding, and I can only hope that it has not gone too far to be corrected. I beg you to believe me that there has been nothing between your wife and myself that could justify the inference you have drawn. Your wife was in terrible distress of spirit, and I visited her and tried to comfort her–such is my duty as a clergyman, as I conceive it. I did nothing but what a clergyman should properly do, and you have totally misunderstood me, and also your wife, who is the most innocent and gentle and trusting of souls. She is utterly devoted to you, and the idea that the help I have tried to give her should be the occasion of any misunderstanding between you is dreadful for me to contemplate.
“I must implore you to believe this, and dismiss these cruel suspicions from your mind. If I were to be the cause of breaking up your home, and wrecking Corydon’s life, it would be more than I could bear. I have a most profound belief in the sanctity of the institution of marriage, and not for anything in the world would I have been led to do, or even to contemplate in my own thoughts, anything which would trespass upon its obligations. I repeat to you with all the earnestness of which I am capable that your idea is without basis, and I beg you to banish it from your mind. You may rely upon it that I will not see your wife again, under any circumstances imaginable.”
Thyrsis read this, and then stared before him with knitted brows. “Why, what’s the matter with the man?” he said to himself. And then he read the letter over again, weighing its every phrase. “Did he think my letter was sarcasm?” he wondered. “Did he think I was angry?”
He went to his study and got the rough draft of his own letter, and reread and pondered it. No, he concluded, it was not possible that Mr. Harding had thought he was angry. “He’s trying to dodge!” he exclaimed. “He can’t bring himself to face the thing!”
But then again, he wondered. Could it be that the man was right; could it be that Corydon had misunderstood him and his attitude? Or had he perhaps experienced a reaction, and was now trying to deny his feelings?
For several hours Thyrsis pondered the problem; and then he went and sat by her, as she was reading on the piazza. “You haven’t heard anything more from Mr. Harding, have you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Corydon.
“What do you suppose he intends to do?”
“I–I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think he means to come back.”
“But why not, dear?”
“He’s afraid to trust himself, Thyrsis.”
“You think he really cares for you, then?”
“Yes, dear.”
“But, how can you be sure?” he asked.
At which Corydon smiled. “A woman has ways of knowing about such things,” she said.
“I wish you’d tell me about it,” said he.
But after a little thought, she shook her head. “Maybe some day, but not now. It wouldn’t be fair to him. It isn’t going any further, and that’s enough for you to know.”
“He must be unhappy, isn’t he?” said Thyrsis, artfully.
“Yes,” she answered, “he’s unhappy, I’m sure. He takes things very seriously.”
Thyrsis paused a moment. “Did he tell you that he loved you?” he asked.
“No,” said Corydon. “He–he wouldn’t have permitted himself to do that. That would have been wrong.”
“But then–what did he do?”
“He looked at me,” she said.
“When he went off the other day–did he know how you still felt?”
“Yes, Thyrsis; why do you ask?”
“I thought you might have been deceiving yourself.”‘
At which she smiled and replied, “I wouldn’t have bothered to tell you in that case.”
Section 13. So Thyrsis strolled away, and after duly considering the matter, he sat himself down to compose another letter to the young clergyman.
“My dear Mr. Harding:
“I read your note with a great deal of perplexity. It is evident to me that I have not made the situation clear to you; you probably do not find it easy to realize the frankness which Corydon and I maintain in our relationship. I must tell you at the outset that she has narrated to me what has passed between you, and so I am not dealing with ‘cruel suspicions’, but with facts. Can I not persuade you to do the same?
“It is difficult for me to be sure just what is in your mind. But for one thing, let me make certain that you are not trying to read anything between the lines of what I write you. Please understand I am not angry, or jealous, or suspicious; also, I am not unhappy–at least not so unhappy but that I can stand it. I have stood a good deal of unhappiness in my life, and Corydon has also.
“You tell me about your attitude towards my wife. Of course it may be that as you come to look back upon what has passed between you, it seems to you that your feeling for her was not deep and permanent, and that you would prefer not to continue your acquaintance with her. That would be your right–you have not pledged yourself in any way. All that I desire is, that in considering the state of your feelings, you should deal with them, and not with any duty which you may imagine you owe to _me_. I have no claim in the matter, and any that I might have, I forego.
“The crux of the whole difficulty I imagine must lie in what you say about your ‘profound belief in the sanctity of the institution of marriage’. That is, of course, a large question to attempt to discuss in a letter. I can only say that I once had such a belief, and that as a result of my studies I have it no longer. I see the institution of marriage as a product of a certain phase of the economic development of the race, which phase is rapidly passing, if it be not already past. And the institution to me seems to share in the evils of the economic phase; indeed I am accustomed, when invited to discuss the institution of marriage, to insist upon discussing what actually exists–which is the institution of marriage-plus-prostitution.
“Our economic system affords to certain small classes of men–to capitalists, to merchants, to lawyers, to clergymen–opportunities of comfort and dignity and knowledge and health and virtue. But to certain other classes, and far larger classes-to miners, to steel- workers, to garment-makers–it deals out misery and squalor and ignorance and disease and vice. And in the case of women it does exactly the same; to some it gives a sheltered home, with comfort and beauty and peace; while to others it gives a life of loneliness and sterility, and to others a life of domestic slavery, and to yet others only the horrors of the brothel. And when you come to investigate, you find that the difference is everywhere one of economic advantage. The merchant, the lawyer, the clergyman, has education and privilege, he can wait and make his terms; but the miner, the steel-worker, the sweat-shop-toiler, has to sell his labor for what will keep him alive that day. And in the same way with women–some can acquire accomplishments, virtues, charms; and when it comes to giving their love, they can secure the life-contract which we call marriage. But the daughter of the slums has no opportunity to acquire such accomplishments and virtues and charms, and often she cannot hold out for such a bargain–she sells her love for the food and shelter that she needs to keep her alive.
“This will seem radical doctrine to you, I suppose; I have noticed that you take our institutions at their face-value, and do not ask how much in them may be sham. But it seems to me there is no need to go into that matter here, for no trespass upon the marriage obligation is proposed. The conventions undoubtedly give me the right to be outraged because my wife is in love with another man; I can denounce him, and humiliate her. But if I am willing to forego this right, if I do not care to play Othello to her Desdemona, what then? Who can claim to be injured by my renunciation?
“Of course I know it is said that marriages are made in Heaven, and that what God hath joined together, no man may put asunder. But it is difficult for me to imagine that an intelligent man would take this attitude at the present day. If I were dead, you would surely recognize that Corydon might remarry; you would recognize it, I presume, if I were hopelessly insane, or degenerate. What if I were in the habit of getting drunk and maltreating her–would you claim that she was condemned to suffer this for life? Or suppose that I were found to be physically impotent? And can you not recognize the fact that there might be impotence of an intellectual and spiritual sort, which could leave a woman quite as unhappy, and make her life quite as barren and futile?
“Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I have stated correctly the facts between Corydon and myself; that there exists between us a fundamental difference in temperament, which makes it certain that, however much we might respect and admire, and even love each other, we could never either of us be happy as man and wife; and suppose that Corydon were to meet some other man, with whom she could live harmoniously; and that she loved him sincerely, and he loved her; and that I were to recognize this, and be willing that she should leave me–do you mean that you would maintain that such a course was wrong? And if it were, with whom would the blame be? With her, because she did not condemn herself to a lifetime of failure? Or with me, because I did not desire her to do this–because I did not wish to waste my life-force in trying to content a discontented woman?
“I might add that I have said nothing to Corydon about having written to you; she has no idea that I have thought of such a thing, and she would be horrified at the suggestion. I have taken the responsibility of doing it, realizing that there was no other way in which you could be made acquainted with the true situation. There is much more that I could say about all this, but it seems a waste of time to write it. Can we not meet sometime, and get at each other’s point of view? I am going to be in town the day after to-morrow, and unless I hear from you to the contrary, I will drop in to see you some time in the morning.”
Section 14. Thyrsis read this letter over two or three times; and then, resisting the impulse to elaborate his exposition of the economic bases of the marriage institution, he took it in to town and mailed it. He waited eagerly for a reply the next day; but no reply came.
The morning after that, he walked down to town as he had agreed to, and called at Mr. Harding’s home. The door was opened by his housekeeper, Delia Gordon’s aunt. “Is Mr. Harding in?” asked Thyrsis.