They stood upon the porch of the little cabin, listening to the silence of the night.
“How far away it all seems!” she said—
   “How many a dingle on the loved hill-side
        Hath since our day put by
    The coronals of that forgotten time!”
 
“It makes one feel old,” he said—“like the coming of the night!”
“The night!” she repeated, and went on—
           “I feel her finger light
    Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train;—
        The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
        The heart less bounding at emotion new,
    And hope once crush’d less quick to spring again!”
 
Section 1. Throughout this long winter of discontent came to them one ray of hope from the outside world. “The Genius” was given in the little town in Germany, and Thyrsis’ correspondent sent the twenty-five dollars, and wrote that it had made a great impression, and that more performances were to be expected. Then, after an interval, Thyrsis was surprised to receive from his clipping-bureau some items to the effect that his play was to be produced in one of the leading theatres in Berlin. He wrote to his correspondent for an explanation, and learned to his dismay that his play had been “pirated”; it was, of course, not copyright in Germany, and so he had no redress, and must content himself with what his friend referred to as “the renowns which will be brought to you by these performances”.
The play came out, in the early spring, and apparently made a considerable sensation. Thyrsis read long reviews from the German papers, and there were accounts of it in several American papers. So people began to ask who this unknown poet might be. The publishers of “The Hearer of Truth” were moved to venture new advertisements of the book—whereby they sold perhaps a hundred copies more; and Thyrsis was moved to pay some badly—needed money to have more copies of the play made, so that he might try to interest some other manager. He carried on a long correspondence with a newly-organized “stage society”, which thought a great deal about trying the play at a matinée, but did nothing.
Also, Thyrsis received a letter from one of the country’s popular novelists, who had heard of the play abroad, and asked to read it. When he had read it and told what an interesting piece of work it was, Thyrsis sat down and wrote the great man about his plight, and asked for help; which led to correspondence, and to the passing round of the manuscript among a group of literary people. One of these was Haddon Channing, the critic and essayist, who was interested enough to write Thyrsis several long letters, and to read the rest of his productions, and later on to call to see him. Which, visit proved a curious experience for the family.
He arrived one day towards spring, when it chanced that Corydon was in town visiting the dentist. Thyrsis had just finished his dinner when he saw two people coming through the orchard, and he leaped up in haste to put the soiled dishes away, and make the place as presentable as possible. Mr. and Mrs. Channing had come in their car (they lived in Philadelphia), and were followed by an escort of the farmer’s children—since an automobile was a rare phenomenon in that neighborhood. The entrance to the peach-orchard proved not wide enough for the machine, so they had to get out and walk; and this they found annoying, because the ground was wet and soft. All of which seemed to emphasize the incongruity of their presence.
Haddon Channing might have been described as a dilettante radical. He employed a highly-wrought and artificial style, which scintillated with brilliant epigram; one had a feeling that it rather atoned for the evils in human life, that they became the occasion of so much cleverness in Channing’s books. Perhaps that was the reason why most people did not object to the vagueness of his ideas, when it came to any constructive suggestion. In fact he rather made a point of such vagueness—when you tried to do anything about a social evil, that was politics, and politics were vulgar. One could never pin Channing down, but his idea seemed to be that in the end all men would become free and independent spirits, able to make their own epigrams; after which there would be no more evil in the world.
And here he was in the flesh. It seemed to Thyrsis as if he must have made a study of his own books, and then proceeded to fit his person and his clothing, his accent and his manner, to make a proper setting thereto. He was tall and lean, immaculate and refined; he spoke with airy and fastidious grace, pouring out one continuous stream of cleverness—any hour of his conversation was equivalent to a volume of his works at a dollar and a quarter net.
Also, there was Mrs. Channing, gracious and exquisite, looking as if she had stepped out of one of Rossetti’s poems. She was a poetess herself; writing about Acteon, and Antinoüs, and other remote subjects. Thyrsis assumed that there must be something in these poems, for they were given two or three pages in the thirty-five-cent magazines; but he himself had never discovered any reason why he should read one through.
Section 2. They seated themselves upon his six-foot piazza; and Thyrsis, who had very little sense of personality, and was altogether wrapped up in ideas, was soon in the midst of a free and easy discussion with them. It seemed ages since he had had an opportunity to exchange opinions with anyone except Corydon. With these people he roamed over the fields of literature; and as they found nothing to agree about anywhere, the conversation did not flag.
A strange experience it must have been to them, to come to a lonely shanty in the woods, and encounter a haggard boy, in a cotton-shirt and a pair of frayed trousers, who was all oblivious of their elegance, and unawed by their reputation, and who behaved like a bull in the china-shop of their orderly opinions. Mrs. Channing, it seemed, was completing her life-work, a volume which was to revolutionize current criticism, and lead the world back to artistic health; to her, modern civilization was a vast abortion, and in Greek culture was to be sought the fountain-head of health. She sang the praises of Athenian literature and art and life; there was sanity and clarity, there was balance and serenity! And to compare it with the jangled confusion and the frantic strife of modern times!
To which Thyrsis answered, “We’d best let modern times alone. For here you’ve all facts and no generalization; and in the case of the Greeks you’ve all generalization and no facts.”
And so they went at it, hot and heavy. Mrs. Channing, her Greek serenity somewhat ruffled, insisted that she had studied the facts for herself. The other proceeded to probe into her equipment, and found that she knew Homer and Sophocles, but did not know Aristophanes so well, and did not know the Greek epigrams at all. Thyrsis maintained that the dominant note in the Greek heritage was one of bewilderment and despair; in support of which alarming opinion he carried the discussion from the dreams of Greek literature to the realities of Greek life. Did Mrs. Channing know how the Greeks had persecuted all their great thinkers?
Did she know anything about the cruelties of their slave-code?
“Have you ever studied Greek politics?” he asked. “Do you realize, for instance, that it was the custom of statesmen and generals who were defeated by their political rivals, to go over to the enemy and lead an expedition against their homes?”
“Isn’t that putting it rather strongly?” asked Mrs. Channing.
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “Didn’t the conquerors of both Salamis and Platasa afterwards sell out to the Persian king? And then you talk about the noble ideal of woman which the Greeks developed! Don’t you know that it was nothing but a literary tradition?”
“I had never understood that,” said Mrs. Channing.
To which the other answered: “It was handed down from imaginary Homeric days. The Greek lady of the Periclean age was a domestic prisoner and drudge.”
Section 3. Then, late in the afternoon, came Corydon; and this part of the adventure must have seemed stranger yet to the Channings. Corydon wore a shirt-waist and a ten-cent straw hat, trimmed with some white mosquito-netting, and an old blue skirt which she had worn before her marriage, and had enlarged little by little during the period of her pregnancy, and had taken in again after the baby was born. Also she was pale and sad-looking, much startled by the sight of the automobile, and the sudden apparition of elegance. She got rid of her armfuls of groceries and bundles, and seated herself in an inconspicuous place, and sat listening while the argument went on. For a full hour she never uttered a word; only once during the controversy over the “Greek lady”, Mrs. Channing turned to her and asked, “Don’t you agree with me?” But Corydon could only answer, “I don’t know, I have not read much history.” And who was there to tell the visitor that this strange, wide-eyed girl knew more about the tragedies and terrors of the Greek temperament than she with all her culture and her college-degrees could have learned in many life-times?
The two stayed to supper, and Corydon and Thyrsis set out the meal upon the rustic outdoor table; they apologized for their domestic inadequacies, but Mrs. Channing declared that she “adored picknicking”. The evening was spent in more discussion; and finally it was decided that the visitors should stay over night at the hotel in town, and come out again in the morning.
Thyrsis concluded, as he thought the matter over, that the two must have been fascinated by this domestic situation, and curious to look deeper into it. Perhaps they saw “material” in it; or perhaps it was that Haddon Channing was really impressed by Thyrsis’ powers, and sought to understand his problems and help him. Whatever may have been the motive for it, when they came the next morning, the critic took Thyrsis for a walk in the woods and proceeded to discuss his affairs. And meanwhile his wife had set herself to the task of probing the innermost corners of Corydon’s soul.
The burden of Channing’s discourse was Thyrsis’ impatience and lack of balance, his fanaticism and his too great opinion of his own work. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you are the most friendless human being I have ever encountered upon earth. How can you expect to interest men if you don’t get out into the world and learn what they are doing?”
“That means to get a position, I suppose?” said Thyrsis.
“No, not necessarily—” began the other.
“But I haven’t money to live in the city otherwise.”
That was too definite for Channing, and he went off on another tack. He had been reading “The Higher Cannibalism”, and he could not forgive it. A boy of Thyrsis’ age had no right to be seething with such bitterness; there must be some fundamental and terrible cause. He was destroying himself, he was eating out his heart in this isolation; he was so wrapped up in his own miseries, his own wrongs—in all the concerns of his own exaggerated ego!
They were seated beside a little streamlet in the woods. “What you need is something to get you out of yourself,” the critic was saying—“something to restore your sanity and balance. It’ll come to you some day. Perhaps it’ll be a love-affair—you’ll meet some woman who’ll carry you away. I know the sort you need—they grow in the West—the great brooding type of woman-soul, that would fold you in her arms and give you a little peace.”
Thyrsis was silent for a space. “You forget,” he said, in a low voice, “that I am already married.”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “Such things have happened, even so,” he said.
Thyrsis had taken his part in the conversation before this, defending himself and setting forth his point of view. But now he fell silent. The words had cut him to the quick. It seemed to him an insult and a bitter humiliation; here, at his home, almost in the presence of his wife! What was the man’s idea, anyway?
And suddenly he turned upon Channing with the question, “You think that I’ve married a doll?”
The other was staggered for a moment. “I don’t know what you’ve married,” he replied.
“No,” said Thyrsis. “Then how can you advise me in such a matter?”
“I see that you’re not happy—” the other began.
“Yes,” said the boy. “But I don’t want any more women.”
There was a pause, while Thyrsis sat pondering, Should he try to explain to this man? But he shook his head. No, it would be useless to try. “She is not in your class,” he said.
“How do you mean?” asked the other.
“She has none of your culture, none of your social graces. She can’t write, and she can’t sing—she can’t do anything that your wife does.”
“I’m afraid,” said Channing, in a low voice, “you don’t take my remarks in the right spirit.”
“Even suppose that she were not what you call a ‘great woman-soul’,” persisted Thyrsis—“at least she has starved and suffered for me; and wouldn’t common loyalty bind me to her?”
“I have tried to do something very difficult,” said the other, after a silence. “I have tried to talk to you frankly. It is the most thankless task in the world to tell a man his own faults.”
“I know,” said Thyrsis. “And that’s all right—I’m perfectly willing. I don’t mind knowing my faults.”
“It is evident that you have resented it,” declared the other.
Thyrsis answered with a laugh, “Don’t you admit of replies to your criticisms? Suppose I’m pointing out some of your faults—your faults as a critic?”
Channing said that he did not object to that.
“Very well, then,” said Thyrsis. “I simply tell you that you have missed the point of my trouble. There’s nothing the matter with me but poverty and lack of opportunity; and there’s nothing else the matter with my wife. We’re doing our best, and it’s the simple fact that we’ve endured and dared more than anybody we’ve ever met. And that’s all there is to it.”
It was evident that Channing was deeply hurt. He turned the conversation to other matters, and pretty soon they got up and strolled on. When they came near to the house, he went off to see his chauffeur, and Thyrsis stood watching him, and pondering over the episode.
It was the same thing that had happened to him in the city; it was the thing that would be happening to him all the time. He saw that however wretched he might be with Corydon, he would always take her part against the world. Whatever her faults might be, they were not such as the world could judge. Rather would he make it the test of a person’s character, that they should understand and appreciate her, in spite of her lack of that superficial thing called culture—the ability to rattle off opinions about any subject under the sun.
So it was that loyalty to Corydon held him fast. So her temperament was his law, and her needs were his standards; and day by day he must become more like her, and less like himself!
Section 4. He returned to the house, entering by the rear door. The baby was lying in the room asleep, and out upon the piazza, he could hear Corydon and Mrs. Channing. Corydon was speaking, in her intense voice.
“The trouble with me,” she was saying, “is that I have no confidence! Other women are sure of themselves—they are self-contained, serene, satisfied.”
“But why shouldn’t you be that way?” Thus Mrs. Channing.
“I aim too high,” said Corydon. “I want too much. I defeat myself.”
“Yes,” said the other, “but why—”
“It’s been the circumstances of all my life! I’ve been defeated—thwarted—repressed! Everything drives me back into myself. There is nothing I can do—I can only endure and suffer and wait. So all the influences in my life are negative—
   ‘I was sick with the Nay of life—
    With my lonely soul’s refrain!’”
 
“What is that you are quoting?” asked Mrs. Channing.
“It’s from a poem I wrote,” said Corydon.
“Oh, you write poetry?”
“I couldn’t say that,” was the reply. “I have no technique—I never studied anything about it.”
“But you try sometimes?”
“I find it helps me,” said Corydon—“once in a great while I find lines in my mind; and I put them together, so that I can say them over, and remind myself of things.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Channing. “Tell me the poem you quoted.”
“I—I don’t believe you’d think much of it,” said Corydon, hesitating. “I never expected anybody—
“I’d be interested to hear it,” declared her visitor.
So Corydon recited in a low voice a couple of stanzas which had come to her in the lonely midnight hours. Thyrsis listened with interest—he had never heard them before:
   “What matters the tired heart,
        What matters the weary brain?
    What matters the cruel smart
        Of the burden borne again?
 
    I was sick with the Nay of life—
        With my lonely soul’s refrain;
    But the essence of love is strife,
        And the meaning of life is pain.”
 
There was a pause. “Do you—do you think that is worth while at all?” asked Corydon.
“It is evidently sincere,” replied Mrs. Channing. “I think you ought to study and practice.”
“I can’t make much effort at it—”
But the other went on: “What concerns me is the attitude to life it shows. It is terrible that a young girl should feel that way. You must not let yourself get into such a state!”
“But how can I help it?”
“You must have something that occupies your mind! That is what you need, truly it is! You’ve got to stop thinking about yourself—you’ve got to get outside yourself, somehow!”
Thyrsis caught his breath. He could tell from the tone of the speaker’s voice that she was laboring with Corydon, putting forth all her energies to impress her. He was tempted to step forward and cry out, “No, no! That’s not the way! That won’t work!”
But instead, he stood rooted to the spot, while Mrs. Channing went on—“This unhappiness comes from the fact that you are so self-centred. You must get some constructive work, my dear, if it’s only training your baby. You must realize that you are not the only person who has troubles in the world. Why, I know a poor washerwoman, who was left a widow with four children to care for—”
And then suddenly Thyrsis heard a voice cry out in anguish, “Oh, oh! stop!” He heard his wife spring up from her chair.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. Channing.
“I can’t listen to you any more!” cried Corydon. “You don’t know what you’re saying!—You don’t understand me at all!”
There was a pause. “I’m sorry you feel that,” said Mrs. Channing.
“I had no right to talk to you!” exclaimed the other. “There’s no one can understand! I have to fight alone!”
At this point Thyrsis went into the kitchen, and made some noise that they would hear. Then he called, “Are you there, dearest?”
“Yes,” said Corydon; and he went out upon the piazza. He saw her standing, white and tense.
“Are you still talking?” he said, with forced carelessness.
And as Mrs. Channing answered “Yes,” Corydon said, quickly, “Excuse me a moment,” and went into the house.
So the poet sat and talked with his guest about the state of the weather and the condition of the roads; until at last her husband arrived, saying that it was time they were starting. Corydon did not appear again, and so finally Thyrsis accompanied them out to their car, and saw them start off. They promised to come again, but he knew they would not keep that promise.
Section 5. He went back to the house, and after some search he found Corydon down in the woods, whither she had fled to have out her agony.
“Has that woman gone?” she panted, when he came near.
“Yes, dear,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“Oh!” cried Corydon. “How dared she! How dared she!”
“Get up, sweetheart,” said Thyrsis. “The ground is wet.”
“She’s gone off in her automobile!” exclaimed the girl, passionately. “She spent last night at a hotel that charged twelve dollars a day, and then she told me about her washerwoman! Now she’s gone back to her beautiful home, with servants and a governess and a piano and everything else she wants! And she talked to me about ‘occupation’! What right had she to come here and trample on my face?”
“But why did you let her, dearest?”
“How could I help myself? I had no idea—”
“But how did you get started?”
“I’ve nobody to confide in—nobody!” cried Corydon. “And she wanted to know about me—she led me on. I thought she sympathized with me—I thought she understood!”
“She’s a woman of the world, my dear.”
“She was just pulling me to pieces! She wanted to see how I worked! Don’t you see what she was looking for, Thyrsis—she thought I was material!”
“She only writes about the Greeks,” said Thyrsis, with a smile.
“I’m a horrible example! I’m neurasthenic and self-centred—I’m the modern woman! She read me a long lecture like that! I ought to get busy!”
“Dearest!” he pleaded, trying to soothe her.
“Busy”! repeated Corydon, laughing hysterically. “Busy! I wash and dress and amuse a baby! I get six meals a day for him, I get three meals for us, and clean up everything. And the rest of the day I’m so exhausted I can hardly stand up, and a good part of the time I’m sick besides. And then, if I think about my troubles, it’s because I’ve nothing to do!”
“My dear,” Thyrsis replied, “you should not have put yourself at her mercy.”
“How I hate her!” cried Corydon. “How I hate her!”
“You must learn to protect yourself from such people, Corydon.”
“I won’t meet them at all! I’m not able to face them—I’ve none of their weapons, none of their training. I don’t want to know about them, or their kind of life! They have no souls!”
“It isn’t easy for them to understand,” said Thyrsis. “They have never been poor—”
“That woman talks about the Greek love of beauty! What sacrifice has she ever made for beauty—what agony has she ever dared for it? And yet she can prattle about it—the phrases roll from her! She’s been educated—polished—finished! She’s been taught just what to say! And I haven’t been taught, and so she despises me!”
“It’s deeper than that, my dear,” he said. “You have something in you that she would hate instinctively.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve told you before, dearest. It’s genius, I think.
“Genius! But what use is it to me, if it is? It only unfits me for life. It eats me up, it destroys me!”
“Some day,” he said, “you will find a way to express it. It will come, never fear.—But now, dear, be sensible. The ground is wet, and if you sit there, you will surely be laid up with rheumatism.”
He lifted her up; but she was not to be diverted. Suddenly she turned, and caught him by the arms. “Thyrsis!” she cried. “Tell me! Do you blame me as she does? Do you think I’m weak and incompetent?”
Whatever answer he might have been inclined to make, he saw in her wild eyes that only one answer was to be thought of. “Certainly not, my dear!” he said, quickly. “How could you ask me such a question?”
“Oh, tell me! tell me!” she exclaimed. And so he had to go on, and sing the song of their love to her, and pour out balm upon her wounded spirit.
But afterwards he went alone; and then it was not so simple. Little demons of doubt came and tormented him. Might it not be that there was something in the point of view of the Channings? He took Corydon at her own estimate—at the face value of her emotions; but might it not be that he was deluding himself, that he was a victim of his own infatuation?
He would ponder this; he tried to have it out with himself for once. What did he really think about it? What would he have told Corydon if he had told her the bald truth? But such doubts could not stay with him for long. They brought shame to him. He was like a man travelling across the plains, who comes upon the woman he loves, being tortured by a band of Apaches; and who is caught and bound fast, to watch the proceedings. Would such a man spend his time asking whether the woman was weak and incompetent? No—his energies would be given to getting his arms loose, and finding out where the guns were. He would set her free, and give her a chance; and then it would be time enough to measure her powers and pass judgment upon her.
Section 6. It was a long time before the family got over that visitation. Corydon burned all Channing’s books and she wrote a long and indignant letter to Mrs. Channing, and then burned the letter. Thyrsis never told her about his conversation with the husband, for he knew she would never get over that insult. For himself, he concluded that the Channings were lucky in having got into a quarrel with them, as otherwise he would surely have compelled them to lend him some money.
In truth, the advent of some fairy-godmother or Lady Bountiful was badly needed just then. They had struggled desperately to keep within the thirty-dollar limit, but it could no longer be done. Illnesses were expensive luxuries; and there was the typwriting of the book—some twenty dollars so far; also, there were many things that happened when one was running a household—a tooth-ache, or a telegram, or a hot-water bottle that got a hole in it, or a horse that ran away and broke a shaft. Little by little the bills they had been obliged to run up at the grocer’s and the butcher’s and the doctor’s had been getting beyond the limits of their monthly check; and to cap the climax, there came a letter from Henry Darrell, saying that the next two checks would be the last he could possibly send.
So Thyrsis set to work once more at the shell of that tough old oyster, the world. He made out a “scenario” of the rest of his new book, and sent it with the part he had already done to his friend Mr. Ardsley. Then for three weeks he waited in dread suspense; until at last came a letter asking him to call and talk over his proposition.
Mr. Ardsley had been reading all Thyrsis’ manuscripts, nor had he failed to note the triumph of “The Genius” abroad. It became at once apparent to Thyrsis that the new book had scored with him; it was a book that could hardly fail, he said—if only it were finished as it had been begun. Thyrsis made it clear that he intended to finish it; no man could gaze into his wild eyes, and hear him talk of it in breathless excitement, without realizing that he would die, if need be, rather than fail.
So then the author went in to have a talk with the head of the firm. He spread out the treasures of his soul before this merchant, and the merchant sat and appraised them with a cold and critical eye. But Thyrsis, too, had learned something about trade by this time, and was watching the merchant; he made a desperate effort and summoned up the courage to state his demands—he wanted five hundred dollars advance, in installments, and he wanted fifteen per cent. royalty upon the book. To his wonder and amazement the merchant never turned a hair at this; and before they parted company, the incredible bargain had been made, and waited only the signing of the contracts!
Thyrsis went out from the building like a blind man who had suddenly received his sight. It seemed to him at that moment as if the last problem of his life had been solved. He sent off a telegram to Corydon to tell her of the victory, and a letter to Darrell, saying that he need send no more money—that the path was clear before his feet at last!
Section 7. This marked a new stage in the family’s financial progress; and as usual it was signalized by a grand debauch in bill-paying. Also there was a real table-cover for Corydon, and a vase in which she might put spring-flowers; there were new dresses for the baby, and more important yet, a new addition to the house. This was to be a sort of lean-to at the rear, sixteen feet wide and eight feet deep, and divided into two apartments, one of which was to be the kitchen, and the other an extra bed-room. For they were going to keep a servant!
This was a new decision, to which they had come after much hesitation and discussion. It would be a frightful expense—including the cost of the extra food it would add over thirty dollars a month to their expenses; but it was the only way they could see the least hope of freedom, of any respite from household drudgery. It had been just a year now since they had set out upon their adventure in domesticity; and in that time Corydon figured that she had prepared two thousand meals for the baby. She had fed each one of them, spoonful by spoonful, into his mouth; and also she had washed two thousand spoons and dishes, and brushed off two thousand tables, and swept two thousand floors. And with every day of such drudgery the heights of music and literature seemed further away and more unattainable.
Thyrsis had seen something of servants in earlier days—he had memories of strange figures that during intervals of prosperity had flitted through his mother’s home. There had been the frail, anaemic Swedish woman, who lived on tea and sugar, and afterwards had gone away and borne nine children, more frail and anaemic than herself; there had been the stout personage with the Irish brogue who had dropped the Christmas turkey out of the window and had not taken the trouble to go down after it; there had been the little old negress who had gone insane, and hurled the salt-box at his mother’s head. But Thyrsis was hoping that they might avoid such troubles themselves; he had an idea that by watching at Castle Garden they might lay hold upon some young peasant-girl from Germany, who would be untouched by any of the corruptions of civilization. “A sort of Dorothea”, he suggested to Corydon; and they agreed that they would search diligently and find such a “treffliches M?dchen”, who would be trusting and affectionate, and would talk in German with the baby.
So now he spe............