She had been reading in the little cabin, and a hush had fallen upon them. “Yes, thou art gone! And round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.”
“Gone!” she said, and smiled sadly. “Where is he gone?”
And she turned the page and read again—
   “But Thyrsis nevermore we swains shall see;
      See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,
      And blow a strain the world at last shall heed—
    For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer’d thee!”
 
Then, after a pause, she added, “How often I have remembered those words! And how pitiful they are, when I remember them!”
Section 1. It was a tiny cupboard of a room in a tenement. They sat upon their bed to eat, and they hid their soiled dishes beneath it. Dirty children screamed upon the avenue in front, and frowsy-headed women and wolfish men caroused in the saloon below. Yet here there came to them the angel with the flame-tipped wings, and here they dreamed their dream of wonder.
In the glory of their new-found passion all life became transfigured to them; they discovered new meaning in the most trivial actions. There was no corner so obscure that they might not come upon the young god hidden; they might touch his warm, tender flesh, and hear his silvery laughter, and thrill with the wonder of his presence. They spoke a new language, full of fire and color; they read new meanings in each other’s eyes. The slightest touch of hand upon hand, or of lips to lips, was enough to dissolve them in tenderness and delight.
They rejoiced in the marvel of each other’s being—in the glory of their bodies, newly revealed. To Thyrsis especially this was life’s last miracle, a discovery so fraught with bliss as to be a continual torment. The incitements that were hidden in the softness and the odor of unbound and tumbled hair; the exquisiteness of maiden breasts, moulded of marble, rosy-tipped; the soft contour of snowy limbs, the rhythmic play of moving muscles—to dwell amid these things, to possess them, was suddenly to discover in reality what before had only existed in the realm of painting and sculpture.
Corydon also, in the glow of his delight, of his rapture and his ravening desire, discovered anew the wonder of herself, and came to a new consciousness of her beauty. She would stand and gaze before her, with her hands upon her breasts, and her head flung back and her eyes closed in ecstasy, so that he might come to her and kiss her—might kiss her again and again, might touch her with his lover’s hands and clasp her with his lover’s arms.
In most of these things she was his teacher. For Corydon was one person, in body, mind and soul; in her there were no disharmonies, no warring elements. His friend the doctor had set forth his idea of “a good woman”; but Corydon’s goodness proved to be after no such pattern. Now that she was his, she was his; she belonged to him, she was a part of him, and there could be no thought of a secret shame, of any reserves or hesitations. Her body was herself, and it was joy to her; it was joy the more, because she could give it for love; and she sought for new ways to utter the completeness of her giving.
She was like a little child about it—so free, so spontaneous, so genuine; Thyrsis marvelled at her utter naturalness. For himself, in the midst of these things, there was always a sense of the strange and the terrible, a sense of penetrating to forbidden mysteries; but Corydon laughed in the sunlight of utter bliss—and she laughed most at him, when she found that her simple language had startled him.
For the maiden out of ancient Greece was now become a lover! And so she was revealed to Thyrsis—she who might have marched in the Panathenaic processions, with one of the sacred vessels in her hands, or run in the Attic games, bare-limbed and fearless. So he learned to think of her, singing in the myrtle groves Of Mount Hymettus, or walking naked in the moonlight in Arcadian meadows.
So he thought of her all through her life, whenever a moment of joy came to her—whenever, for instance, she found her way to the water. They had dressed her in long skirts and put her in a drawing-room—but Corydon had got to the water in spite of them; and all that any Nereid had ever known, that she had known from the time the waves first kissed her feet.
And so it was also with love; she was born to be a priestess of love’s religion. She had waited for this hour—that she might take his hand, and lead him into the temple, and teach him the ritual. It was a ministry that she entered upon with the joy of all her being. “Ah, let me teach you how to love!” she would cry. “Ah, let me teach you how to love!”
Love was to her an utter blending of two selves, the losing of one’s personality in another’s; it meant the forgetting of one’s self, and all the ends of self. And Thyrsis marvelled at the glory that came upon her, at each new rapture she discovered. All the language of lovers was known to her, all the songs of lovers were upon her lips:
   “Du bist mir ewig,
    Bist mir immer—
    Erb und Eigen
    Ein und All!”
 
Such was her woman’s gift: precious beyond all treasures of earth, and given without price or question. And Thyrsis trembled as he realized it; he lived upon his knees before her, and floods of tenderness welled up in his heart. How utterly she trusted him, how completely she belonged to him! And what could he do to show himself worthy of it—this most wonderful dream of his life come true—
   “If someone should give me a heart to keep,
    With love for the golden key!”
 
Yet, amid all these raptures, Thyrsis was haunted by ghosts of doubt. Would he be able to do what his heart yearned to do? Love meant so much to her—and could it mean that much to him? Why could it not be to him the complete thing it was to her—why must he argue and wonder and fear?
For Thyrsis’ ancestors had not dallied in Arcadian meadows. They had come from the wilds of Palestine and the deserts of Northern Africa; they had argued and wondered and feared in Gothic cloisters, in New England meeting-houses; and the shadow of their souls hung over him still. He could not love love as Corydon loved it, he could not trust it as she trusted it. It could never seem to him the utterly natural thing—there was always a fear of pollution, a hint of satiety, a thrill of shame. Directly the first fires of passion had spent themselves, these anxieties came to him; he remembered how in his virgin youth he had thought of passion—as of something strange and uncomfortable, even grotesque, suggesting too closely a kinship with the animals. So he noticed that his feelings always waned before Corydon’s. She wished him to linger—love meant so much to her!
Then too, the code of passion was all unknown to him. What was right and what was wrong? When should one yield to desire, and when should one restrain it? To Corydon such questions never came—to her there was no such possibility as excess; she was complete and perfect, and nature told her. If there were temptations and restraints and regrets, they were for Thyrsis; and he had to keep them for his own secret, he could ask no help from her. For he discovered immediately that with his proud imperiousness, he could not endure to have Corydon refuse herself to him. So this laid a new burden upon him, an appalling one. For were they not always together—her lips always calling him, the impulse towards her always with him?
There was another circumstance—the means they had to take to prevent the consequences of their love. From the very first, Thyrsis had shrunk from the thought of this; but it was only later that he realized how much it repelled him. It offended all his sense of economy and purpose; it was something done, and at the same time undone—and so it had in it the essence of all futility and wrongness. It took from passion its meaning and its excuse; and yet he could not say this to Corydon; and he knew also that he could no longer do without her. He was bound—bound fast! And every hour his chains would become tighter; what was now spontaneous joy would become a habit—a thing like eating and sleeping, a new and humiliating necessity of the flesh!
Section 2. Such were their problems. They might have solved them all, perhaps—had they only had time. But others came crowding upon them, others still more insistent and perplexing. The world was pressing them, jealous of their dream of delight.
Their little fund of money was gone, and so Thyrsis went back to his hack-work. All day he sat by the window and slaved at it, while Corydon lay upon the bed and read, or wandered about the park by herself. Thyrsis’ burden was twice as heavy now, for he had to earn for two; and when in the ecstasies of love she cried out to him that she was his forever, the cruel mockery of circumstance translated this to mean that he would forever have to earn for two!
He wrote more book-reviews, and peddled them about; sometimes he was forced to exchange them for books he reviewed, and then to sell the books for twenty or thirty cents apiece. He wrote up some ideas for political cartoons, and got three dollars for one of them. He wrote a parody upon a popular poem, and got six dollars for that. He met a college friend, just returned from a trip in the Andes, and he patiently collected the material for a narrative, and sold it to a minor magazine for fifteen dollars.
And meanwhile he toiled furiously at another pot-boiler, a tale of Hessians and Tories and a red-cheeked and irresistible revolutionary heroine, to fill the insatiable maw of the readers of the “Treasure Chest.” On one occasion, when everything went wrong, Corydon took the half-dozen solid silver coffee-spoons and the heavy gold-plated berry-spoon which had constituted her outfit of wedding-presents, and sold them to a nearby jeweler for two dollars and a quarter.
But through all this bitter struggle they looked forward to a glorious ending. In April the book would be out—and then they would be free! They would go away to the country—perhaps to the little cabin of last summer! Ah, how they dreamed of that cabin, how they hungered for it! They pictured it, covered in snow, with the ice-bound brook in front of it—both the cabin and the brook asleep, and dreaming of the spring-time.
Thyrsis was dreaming of it also, with tears in his eyes and a mighty passion in his heart; for his new book was calling to him—he had to fight hard to keep it from taking possession of his thoughts and driving the pot-boilers out of the temple.
There came the joyful excitement of reading the proofs of his book; also of inspecting the cover-design, and the sample of the paper, and the “dummy”. And then—it was two weeks from now! Then it was only ten days—then only one week. And finally the raptures of the first sample copy!
It was time the publishers had begun to advertise it, and Thyrsis went to see Mr. Taylor about the matter. Mr. Taylor was vague in his replies. Then came publication-day, and still no advertisements; and Thyrsis called again, and insisted and expostulated, and learned to his consternation that they were not going to advertise it; the season was a bad one, the firm had met with unexpected expenses, and so on. When Thyrsis reminded them of their promises, and threatened and stormed, Mr. Taylor informed him quietly that there was nothing in the contract about advertising.
So Thyrsis went home, and tried to forget his rage in the work of disposing of his hundred copies. He had prepared himself for the possibility of everything else failing, but here he had a plan whereby he felt that his deliverance was assured. He had made up a list of a hundred of the best-known men of letters in the country—college presidents and professors, editors and clergymen, novelists and poets and critics; and he had done more hack-work, and earned the twenty dollars it would take to send to each of them a copy of the book, together with his manifesto, and a little type-written note. This, he felt, would make certain of the book’s being read; and once let the book be read by the real leaders of the country’s thought, and his siege would be at an end!
So the packages went to the post-office, freighted with the burden of his hopes and longings. And two or three times a week Thyrsis went to see his publishers, and find out how the book was going. He was never able to ascertain just what they were doing with it, or how they expected to sell it; Mr. Taylor would tell him vaguely that it was doing fairly well—the season was “slow”, and he must give the book time to “catch on”.
And then came the reviews. A clipping-bureau had written, offering to furnish them at five cents apiece; and this was moderate, considering that there were only a dozen altogether. Most of these were from unimportant out-of-town papers, whose book-reviews are written by the high-school nieces and the elderly maiden-aunts of the publishers. Of the metropolitan newspapers and literary organs, only three noticed the book at all; and two of these gave perfunctory mention, evidently made up from the publisher’s statement on the cover.
The third writer had connected the book with the interview in the “Morning Howl”, and he wrote a burlesque review of it, in which he hailed it as the “Great American Novel”. His method was to retell the story, quoting the most highly-wrought passages, with just enough comment to keep it in the vein of farce. To Thyrsis this mockery came like a blast of fire in the face; he did not know that it was the regular method of the newspaper—a method by means of which it had made itself known as the cleverest and most readable paper in the country.
Section 3. All this was the harder for him, because it came at a black and spectral hour of his life. It was not enough that the book was falling flat, and that all their hopes were collapsing; a new and most terrible calamity befell them. For three months now they had been dissolved in the bliss of their young dream of love; and now suddenly had come a thunderbolt, splitting the darkness about them, and revealing the grim hand of Fate closing down!
For several years of her life Corydon had carried a trying burden—once each month she would have to lie down for three or four days and be a semi-invalid. And last month this had not happened; the time had come and gone, and she was as well as ever. She had told Thyrsis about it, and how it disturbed her; it might mean nothing, it had happened several times before to her; but then again—it might mean that she had conceived.
The idea had been too frightful to contemplate, however, and they had put it aside. It was not possible—the doctor had told them how to prevent it; he had told them that “everybody” did it, and that they could feel safe.
But now came the second month; and Corydon, filled with a vague terror, waited for the day. And horrible beyond all telling—the day came and went once more! And two days came—three days! And so finally Corydon went to see the doctor.
When she came home again, and entered the room, Thyrsis saw it all in her face, without her uttering a word. He went sick, all at once; and Corydon sank down upon the bed.
“Well?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.
“It’s true,” she said.
“And what did he say?”
“He said—he said I was in splendid shape, and that I would have a fine baby!”
And Thyrsis stared at her, and then suddenly burst into wild laughter, and hid his head in his arms. Such was their mood that she could not feel sure whether he was laughing or crying.
Now, indeed, they were facing the reality of life. All the problems with which they had ever wrestled were as child’s play to this problem; they could sit and read the deadly terror in each other’s eyes. Corydon’s lip was trembling, and her face was white and drawn and old. So swiftly had fled her young dream of joy!
“Thyrsis,” she said, in a low voice, “it means ruin!”
“Yes,” he answered.
And she clenched her hands tightly. “I will kill myself first!” she whispered. “I will not drag you down!”
He made no reply.
“Listen, Thyrsis,” she went on. “There is only one thing to be thought of. I must get rid of it.”
“Get rid of it?” he echoed. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But women often do it.”
“I’ve heard of it,” he replied. “But isn’t it dangerous?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “and I don’t care.”
There was a pause.
“Why don’t you ask the doctor?” he inquired.
“The doctor? There was no use us asking him, Thyrsis.”
“Why not?”
“Because—he doesn’t understand. He likes babies. That’s his business.”
They argued this. But in the end Thyrsis resolved that he must see the doctor himself. He must see him if it was only to pour out his anguish. It was the doctor’s fault that this fearful accident had befallen them!
But the boy soon saw that it was as Corydon had said, there was nothing to be gained in that quarter. Babies were indeed the doctor’s business; they were the business of the whole world, from his point of view. People got married to have babies; they were in the world to have babies, and anything else was just nonsense. Nowadays babies were the only excuse that people had for living—their morality began and ended with them. Moreover, babies were fine in themselves; they were beautiful and fat and jolly. The pagan old gentleman sang a very paean in praise of babies—the more of them there were, the more laughter upon earth.
Also, having them was the business of women—that, and not reading German poetry and playing the piano. They all made a little fuss at the outset, but then they submitted, and they soon found that Nature knew more than they. Babies completed women’s lives, they settled their nerves; they gave them something to think about, and saved them from hysteria and extravagance and sentimentalism, and all the rest of the ills of the hour.
Then the doctor fixed his keen eyes upon him. “Are you and Corydon thinking about an abortion?” he demanded.
“I—I don’t know,” stammered Thyrsis. The word sounded ugly.
“I got that impression from her,” said the other. “And now let me tell you—if you do that, it’ll be something you’ll never forgive yourself for as long as you live. In the first place, you may lose your wife. It’s a very dangerous thing, and a woman is seldom the same after it. You might make it impossible for her ever to have a child again, and so blast her whole life. You’ll have to trust her in the hands of some vile scoundrel—you understand, of course, that it’s a crime?”
“I suppose so,” said Thyrsis.
“It’s a crime not only against the law—it’s a crime against God. And it’s the curse of our age!”
There was a pause.
“What’s the matter with Corydon, anyway?” demanded the doctor.
“She’s so young!” cried Thyrsis.
“Nonsense! She’s nineteen now, isn’t she? And she couldn’t be in better condition.”
“But she’s so undeveloped—mentally, I mean.”
“There’s nothing in the world will develop her like maternity. And can’t you see that she wants the baby?”
“Wants it!” shouted Thyrsis.
“Why, of course! She’s dead in love with you, boy. And she wants the baby! Why shouldn’t she have it?”
“If I could only make you understand—” protested Thyrsis, feebly.
“Yes!” exclaimed the doctor. “That’s what they all say! Not a day passes that some woman doesn’t sit in this office and say it! Each case is different from any other case that ever was or could be. They tell me how much they suffer, and what a state their nerves are in, and how busy they are, and how poor they are—their social duties, and their artistic duties, and their religious duties, and their philanthropic duties! And they weep and wring their hands, and tell me agonizing stories, and they offer me any sum I could ask—many a time I might earn a thousand dollars by something that wouldn’t take me ten minutes, if only I didn’t have a conscience!—Go away, boy, and get those ideas out of your head!”
Section 4. So Thyrsis went away, with a new realization of the seriousness of his position, with a new sense of the grip in which he was fast. It was a conspiracy of Nature, a conspiracy of all the world! It was a Snare!
All through this love-adventure, even when most under the sway of his emotions, Thyrsis’ busy mind had been groping and reaching for an understanding of it. Little by little this had come to him—and now the picture was complete. He had beheld the last scene of the panorama; he had got to the moral of the tale!
He had been the sport of cosmic forces, of the blind and irresistible reproductive impulse of Nature. Step by step he had been driven, he had played his part according to the plan. He had hesitated and debated and resolved and decided—thinking that he had something to do with it all! But now he looked back, and saw himself as a leaf swept along by a torrent. And all the while the torrent had known its destination! He had had many plans and many purposes, but always Nature had had but one plan and one purpose—which was the Child!
Twelve months ago Thyrsis had been a boy, carefree and happy, rapt in his dream of art; and now here he was, a married man, with the cares of parenthood on his shoulders! If anyone had told him that a trick could be played upon him, he would have laughed at them. How confident he had been—how certain of his mastery of life! And now he was in the Snare!
Dismayed as he was, Thyrsis could not but smile as he realized it. The artist in him appreciated the technique of the performance. How cunningly it had all been managed—how cleverly the device had been hidden how shrewdly the bait had been selected!
He went back over the adventure. What a fuss he and Corydon had made about it! What a vast amount of posturing and preluding, of backing and filling! And how solemnly they had taken it—how earnestly they had believed in the game! What convictions had weighed upon them, what exaltations had thrilled them—two pitiful little puppets, set here and there by unseen hands! Rehearsing from prologue to curtain the age-long drama, the drama of Sex that had been played from the beginning of the world!
He marvelled at the prodigality that Nature had displayed—at the treasures she had squandered to accomplish her purpose! She would create a million eggs to make one salmon; and she had created a million emotions to make one baby! What poems she had written for them—what songs she had composed for them! She had emptied the cornucopiae of her gifts into their lap! She had strewn the pathway with roses before them, she had filled their mouths with honey, and their ears with the sound of sweet music; she had blinded them, she had stunned them, she had sent them drunken and reeling to their fate!
And the elaborate set of pretenses and illusions that she had invented for them! The devices to lull their suspicions—the virtues and renunciations, the humilities and the consecrations! Corydon had been frightened and evasive; Nature had made him suffer, so as to break her down! And he had been proud and defiant; and so Corydon, the meek and gentle, had been turned into a heroine of revolt! Nay, worse than that; those very powers and supremacies that he had thought were his protection—were they not, also, a part of the Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and his exaltations—what had they been but a lure for the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff about the grouse’s neck, the gold and purple of the butterfly’s wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, ineffable genius—that had been the plume of the partridge, the crowning glory before which his mate had capitulated!
These images came to Thyrsis, until he burst into wild, sardonic laughter. He saw himself in new and grotesque lights; he was the peacock, spreading his gorgeousness before a dazzled and wondering world; he was the young rooster, strutting before his mate, and thrilling with the knowledge of his own importance! He was each of the barnyard creatures by turn, and Corydon was each of the fascinated females. And somewhere, perhaps, stood the farmer, smiling complacently—for should there not be somewhere a farmer in this universal barnyard?
But then, the laughter died; for he thought of Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee”, and shuddered at the fate of the male-creature. He was a mere accident in the scheme of Nature—she wasted all his splendors to accomplish the purpose of an hour. And now it had been accomplished. He had had his moment of ecstasy, his dizzy flight into the empyrean; and now behold him falling, disembowelled and torn, an empty shell!
But no—it was not quite that way, Thyrsis told himself, after further reflection. In the human hive the male creature was not only the bearer of the seed he was also the worker. And so there was one more function he had to perform. All those fine frenzies of his, his ideals and his enthusiasms—they had served their purpose, and would fade; but before him there was still a future—a drab and dreary future of perpetual pot-boiling!
He recalled their bridal-night. All that had puzzled him in it and startled him—how clear it was now! Corydon had shrunk from him, just enough to lure him; and then, suddenly, her whole being had seemed to change—she had caught him, and held him fast. For he had accomplished her purpose; he had gotten her with child! And so he must stand by her—he must bring her food, that she might give the child life! And for that purpose she would hold him; for that she would use every art of which she was mistress—the whole force of her being would go into it!
She would not know this, of course; she would do it blindly and instinctively, as she had done everything so far. She would do it by those same generous and beautiful qualities that had made him hers! Therein lay the humor of his whole adventure—there lay the deadly nature of this Snare. The cords of it were woven out of love and tenderness, out of ecstasy and aspiration; and they were wound about his very heart-strings, so that it would kill him to pull them loose. And he would never pull them loose—he saw that in a sudden vision of ruin! She would be noble to the uttermost limit of nobleness. She would threaten to destroy herself—and so he would save her! She would bid him cast her away—and so he would stand by her to the end! And the end would be simply the withering and shrivelling of those radiant qualities which he called his genius—qualities which were so precious to him, but about which Nature knew nothing!
So grim an aspect had life come to wear to this boy of twenty-one! He stripped all the flesh of illusion from its fair face, and saw the grinning skull beneath. And he mocked at himself, because of all those virtues by which he had been caught—and which yet he knew were stronger than his will. Through faith and love he had been made a captive; and through faith and love would he waste away and perish!
Section 5. Meantime, Corydon was prosecuting an inquiry into these matters upon her own account, and getting at quite other points of view. There were some, it seemed, who took this game less seriously than she and Thyrsis; and these managed to go free—they broke the cords of the Snare, they slipped between the fingers of the hand of Fate. Corydon had heard a certain scientist refer to man as “Nature’s insurgent son”; and now came the discovery that Nature had insurgent daughters also.
Being in an “interesting condition,” Corydon was entitled to the confidences of the married women acquaintances of the family. They were eager to know all about her, and what she was going to do; and they told her their own experiences. She brought these to Thyrsis, who was thus admitted to a view of the inner workings of the “race-suicide” mill.
It was as the doctor had said; each one of these middle-class ladies considered herself a special case, but their stories all seemed to fit together. Nature’s boundless and irrational fecundity was an exceedingly trying feature of the life of middle-class ladies. In the first place, the having of babies was a tedious and painful matter. One became grotesquely disfigured, and had to hide away and sever all social relationships. One lost one’s grace and attractiveness, and hence the power to hold one’s husband. And then, there were all the cares and the inconveniences of children. What was one to do with them, in a city where the best hotels and apartment-houses barred them out?
Then, too, even supposing the best of intentions—there was the cost of living. At present prices it was impossible for a man who had only a salary to support more than one or two children; and with prices increasing as they were, one could not be sure of educating even these. And meanwhile, the Nature of Things had apparently planned it that a woman should bear a child once a year for half her life-time!
So all these middle-class ladies used devices to prevent conception. But these were not always successful—husbands were frequently inconsiderate. And so came the abortion-business, which the doctor had described as the curse of the age.
Now and then one could accomplish the thing by some of the innumerable drugs that were advertised for the purpose. But these always made one ill, and seldom did anything else. Corydon met one young person, the wife of a rising stockbroker, who had presented her husband with twins in the first year of their marriage, and who declared that she was apparently designed to populate all the tenements in the city. This airy and vivacious young lady lay back in her automobile and prattled to Corydon, declaring that she was “always in trouble.” She had tried to coax her family physician in vain, and had finally gone elsewhere. She had got quite used to the experience. All that troubled her nowadays was how to make excuses to her friends, one could not have “appendicitis” forever!
But there was another side to the matter. There was one woman who had had a hemorrhage; and another whose sister had contracted blood-poisoning, and had died in agony. There were even some who pleaded and exhorted like the doctor, and talked about the thing’s being murder. All of which arguments and fears Corydon brought to her husband, to be pondered and discussed.
They spent whole days wandering about in the park in agony of soul. They had one brief month in which to decide the question—the question of life or death to the possible child. Truly here, once more, was an issue to which Thyrsis might apply the words af Carlyle—
   “Choose well, your choice is
    Brief and yet endless!”
 
Section 6. This was also the month in which the fate of the book was decided. Each day, as he went for the mail, Thyrsis’ heart would beat high with expectation; and each day he would be chilled with bitter disappointment. He was still hoping for a real review, or for some signs of the book’s “catching on”. Nor did he finally give up until he chanced to have a talk about it with his friend, Mr. Ardsley; who explained to him that here, too, he had fallen into a trap.
His “publishers” were not really publishers at all. They did not make their profit by selling books—they made it out of authors. There were many vain and foolish people who wrote books which they were anxious to see in print, so that they might be known as literary lights among their friends. Many of them had money, and would buy a number of copies; and the “publishers” had the expenses guaranteed in advance and so would make a profit upon the sale of even one or two hundred copies. All this being well known, the reviews never paid any attention to the announcements of this concern, nor did “the trade” handle their books. As for Thyrsis’ volume, they had printed it very cheaply—it was to be doubted if it had cost them what he had paid them. And they had even published it as a “net price” book—thereby taking three cents more off the royalty to which he was entitled!
Mr. Ardsley had declared that he would be lucky if his book sold three hundred copies; and so he felt that it was quite a tribute to the merits of his work when, after six months more of waiting, he received a royalty statement from the concern showing a sale of seven hundred and forty-three copies, and enclosing a check for eight-nine dollars and sixteen cents. This check Thyrsis paid over to his rich relative, and a week or two later, when he sold a short story, he sent the balance of the hundred dollars that he owed. And so he figured that the privilege of writing his first book and offering it to the hundred great men of letters of the country, had cost him the sum of one hundred and thirty-five dollars and eighty-four cents!
Meantime, of course, Thyrsis was hearing from these great men of letters. When he counted up at the end he found that he had received replies from sixteen of them; whether the other eighty-four received his book, or what they did with it, he never knew. Of these sixteen, six wrote formal acknowledgements, and two others said that they found nothing to appeal to them in his book; so there were left eight who gave him comfort, Several of these were among the really vital men of the time, as Thyrsis found out later, when he came to read their books, and to know them as something other than newspaper names. Several of them wrote him long and really helpful criticisms of his work, recognizing the merits he knew it had, and pointing out defects which he was quick to acknowledge. Four of them even told him that he had undoubted genius, and predicted great things for him. But that was as far as any of them went. They wrote their opinions, and there they stopped, as if at a blank wall. No one among them seemed to feel that he could take any action upon his opinion, however favorable; not one comprehended that what the boy was groping for was neither praise nor blame, but a chance for life. Not one had any advice of a practical sort to offer; not one had any personal or human thing to say; not one even asked to see him! And lest this should be due to oversight, or to false delicacy, Thyrsis wrote, in his desperation, and reminded them that the “genius” they recognized was being killed by starvation. To this, one did not reply, and another advised him to take up newspaper work, as “a means of getting in touch with the public”!
It was a ghastly thing to the boy as he came to realize it—this utter deadness and coldness of “the world”. Thyrsis himself was all afire with love—with love, not only for his vision and his art, but for all humanity, and for humanity’s noblest dreams. His friends were poets and sages of past time, men of generous faith and quick sympathies; and in all the world of the living, was there not one such man to be found? Was there nothing left upon earth but critical discernment and epistolary politeness?
The question pursued him still more, after the one interview which resulted from all this correspondence. There was a distinguished Harvard professor who had told him that he had rare powers and must go on; and hearing that the professor was in New York, Thyrsis asked the privilege of calling.
It was in one of the city’s most expensive hotels—for the professor had married a rich wife, and was what people called “socially prominent”. The other did not know this; but it seemed an awful thing to him that anyone should be sitting in a brocaded silk-covered chair in a palace of luxury like this, while possessed of the knowledge that his genius was starving.
“You tell me to go on, professor,” he said. “But how can I go on?”
The professor was fingering his gold eyeglasses and studying his visitor.
“You must get some kind of routine work,” he declared—“enough to support you. You can’t expect to live by your writing.”
“But if I do that, I can’t write!” cried Thyrsis.
“You’ll have to do the best you can,” said the other.
“But I can’t do anything! The emotions of it eat me all up. I daren’t even let myself think about my work when I have to do other things.”
“I should think,” commented the professor, “that you would find you are still more hindered by the uncertainties of hack-work.”
“I do find that,” the boy replied. “That is just what is the matter with me.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be forced to a compromise in the end.”
“But I won’t! I won’t!” cried Thyrsis, wildly. “I will starve first!”
The other said nothing.
“Or I will beg!” added Thyrsis.
The other’s look clouded slightly—as the boy, with his quick sensitiveness, noted instantly. “Of course,” said the professor, “if you are not ashamed to do that—”
“But why should I be ashamed? Greater men than I have begged for their art.”
“Yes. I know that. And naturally—I honor that feeling in you. If you have that much fervor—why, of course, you will do it. But I’m afraid you’ll find it a humiliating experience.”
“I wouldn’t expect to find it a picnic,” answered Thyrsis, and took his departure—having perceived that the professor’s leading thought was a fear lest he should begin his begging that day.
So there it was! There was the eminent critic, the writer of exquisite appreciations of literature! The darling of the salons of Boston—which called itself the Athens of America and the hub of the universe! A man with a brain full of all the culture of the ages—and with the heart of a mummy and the soul of a snob! He had approved of Thyrsis’ consecration with his lips—because he did not dare to disapprove it, because the ghosts of a thousand paupers of genius had stood over him and awed him into silence. But in his secret heart he had despised this wan and haggard boy who threatened to beg; and the boy went out of the palace of luxury, feeling like an outcast rat.
Section 7. From this interview Thyrsis went to meet Corydon in the park; and after he had told her what had happened, they began one more discussion of their great problem. This had to be the final one; for the month of respite had passed, and the time for action was come!
Through their long arguments, Thyrsis had gradually come to realize that the decision rested with him. Corydon was in his hands; she had become a burden upon him, and she would rather she were dead; and so he had to take the responsibility and issue the command. So through many an hour while Corydon slept he had marshalled the facts and tested them, hungering with all his soul for knowledge of the right.
To bring a child into the world would shatter every plan they had formed. And yet, again and again, he forced himself to face the idea. They had always meant to have children ultimately; and now the gift was offered—and suppose they rejected it, and it should never be offered again! However unpropitious the hour might be, still the hour was here—the task was already one-third done. And if there were cares and responsibilities, expenses and pains of child-birth—at least they would be for a child; whereas, in the other case, there were also cares and responsibilities, expenses and pains—and for naught!
Throughout all this long pilgrimage of love, Thyrsis had been struck by the part which blind chance had played. It was blind chance that had brought Corydon to the country where he had gone. It was blind chance that he had read his book to her. And then—the chance that he had gone to see a doctor about diet! And that dark accident in the night, that had opened the gates of life to a new human soul! And now, strangest of all—the chance by which this last issue was to be decided! By a walk in the park, and a casual meeting with a nurse-maid!
“God knows I want to do what is right!” Thyrsis had said. “But I just don’t know what to say!”—And then they sat down upon a bench, and the nurse-maid came and sat beside them.
It was five or ten minutes before Thyrsis noted what was going on. He was lost in his sombre brooding, his eyes fixed upon vacancy; when suddenly he heard Corydon exclaim: “Isn’t he a little love!” He turned to look.
The nurse-maid was in charge of a carriage, and in the carriage was a baby; and the baby was smiling at Corydon, and Corydon was smiling back. She was poking her finger at it, and it was catching at the finger with its chubby paws. “Isn’t he a little love!” Corydon repeated.
Thyrsis stared at her. But then, quickly, he hid his thought. He even pretended to be interested.
“Isn’t he pretty?” she asked him.
Now as a matter of fact he seemed to Thyrsis to be quite conspicuously ugly. He had red hair, and a flat nose, and was altogether lacking in aristocratic attributes. But Thyrsis answered promptly, “Yes, dear,” and continued to watch.
And Corydon continued to play. Apparently she knew something about babies—how to amuse them and how to handle them, and had even heard rumors about how to feed them. She was asking questions of the nurse-maid, and displaying interest—Thyrsis would have been no more amazed had he found her in converse with a Chaldean astrologer. For a full quarter of an hour she had managed to forget her agonies of spirit, and to play with a baby!
They got up to go. “You like babies, don’t you, dearest?” asked Thyrsis, as they walked.
“Why, yes,” she said.
And then there was a silence, while he pondered. Here, he perceived in a flash, was the great hand of Nature again!
Since the first day of their marriage Thyrsis had been haunted by the sense of a dark shadow hanging over them, of a seed of tragedy in their love. He had his great task to do, and Corydon could not do it with him. The long road of his art-pilgrimage stretched out before him; and some day he must take his staff and go.
And now here, of a sudden, was the solution of the problem! The answer to the riddle of all their disharmonies! Let Corydon have her baby—and then he might have his books! As he pondered, there came to him the words of the old doctor—“She wants that baby!”
So before he reached home, his mind was made up. Cost what it might, she should have the baby. But he would not tell her his reason—that must be a secret between himself and Mother Nature. And then it seemed to him that he could hear Mother Nature laughing behind her curtain—and laughing not only at Corydon, but at him. He recalled with a twinge all his earlier cynicism, his biological bitterness; he had taken up the burden of his virtues again!
Section 8. In many ways this decision, once arrived at, was a relief to them. It lifted the weight of a great fear from their lives; it gave them six months more of respite—and in six months, what might not Thyrsis be able to do? He had been toiling incessantly at his hack-work, and had saved nearly ninety dollars, which would be enough to keep them going until his new book was written.
This book was now fairly seething in him. A wonderful thing it was to be, far beyond his first; in the beauty of it and the glow of it he was forgetting all his disappointments, all the mockeries of fate and the hardness of the world. If only he could get this book done, then surely he would be saved, then surely men would be forced to give him a chance!
So he waited not a moment after the decision was made; he even blamed himself for having waited so long. From the “higher regions” there had come a windfall in the shape of two railroad-passes; and a couple of days later they stepped out upon the depot-platform of a little town upon the shore of Lake Ontario.
Oh, the joy of being in the country again! The smell of the newly-plowed earth, the sight of the spring-time verdure; and then the first glimpse of the lake, with its marvellous clear-green water, and the fresh cold breeze that blew from off it! There was challenge and adventure in that air—Thyrsis thought of argonauts and old sea-rovers, and his soul was stirred to high resolves. He took deep breaths of delight, and clenched his hands, and imagined that he was at his book already.
They found a second-hand tent which could be bought for eight dollars; four dollars more would pay for the lumber, and so they would live rent-free for the next five months! They went far down the shore of the lake, looking for a place to camp, and picked out a rocky headland, a mile from the nearest farmhouse, and completely out of sight of all the world. The rich woman who owned it was in Europe, but the agent gave permission; and then Thyrsis looked at his watch and made a wild suggestion—“Let’s get settled this afternoon!”
“Why, it’s nearly three o’clock!” cried Corydon. “It’ll be dark!”
“There’ll be a moon,” he replied, “and we can work all night if want to.”
“But suppose it should rain!”
“I don’t see any signs of it. And what’s the use of spending a night in the town, and wasting all that money?”
And so it was decided. They went to the store and purchased their housekeeping equipment. What a sense of power and prosperity it gave them as they made their selection—two canvas-cots and two pairs of blankets, a lamp and an oil-can and a tiny oil-stove, two water-buckets and an axe and a wash-basin, a camp-stool and a hammock and a box full of groceries! They got a team to carry all this, in addition to their lumber and their trunks. They stopped at a farm-house, and arranged to get their milk and eggs and bread and vegetables, and also to borrow a hammer and saw; and then till after sundown Thyrsis toiled at the building of the platform and the cutting of stakes and poles for the tent.
Corydon fried some bacon and heated a can of corn, and they had a marvellous and incredible supper. Afterwards they raised the tent, and she held the poles erect while Thyrsis tied the guy-ropes. They had been advised to choose a sheltered place, back in the woods; but they were all for adventure and a view of the water, and so they were out on the open point. There were pine-trees, however, and Thyrsis had strong ropes with which to anchor the tent fast. When he finished, about ten o’clock at night, he stood off and admired the job by the light of the moon, and declared that a storm might tear the tent to pieces, but could never blow it over.
They hauled in their trunks and the rest of their belongings, and set up the cots and spread the blankets. Then by the light of the oil-lamp they gazed about.
“Oh, Thyrsis,” she cried, “isn’t it glorious!”
“It’s our home,” he said. “A home we made all for ourselves!”
“And a home without a landlady!” she added.
“And with no saloon underneath!” said he. “And no street-cars and no screaming children in front of it!”
Instead there was the night with its thousand eyes, and the lake, with the moon-fire flung wide across it, and the pine-trees singing in the wind.
“Brr! it’s cold!” exclaimed Corydon.
“We’ll have to sleep with our clothes on for a while,” said he. And yet they laughed aloud in glee. “It’s all we want!”
“It’s all we ever could want!” declared Corydon. “Oh, let’s work hard and earn money enough, so that we can stay here beneath the open sky, and not have to go back into slavery!”
Then, in the morning, the joy of a plunge in the icy lake, and of a run in the woods, and of breakfast eaten in the warm sunlight! There was much work still to be done; Thyrsis had to build a stand of shelves and a table for the tent, and a table and a bench outside; and then all their belongings had to be unpacked and set in order. Such fun as they had laying out the imaginary partitions in their house; two bedrooms and a library, a kitchen and a pantry—and all outdoors for a living-room!
They would count this the beginning of their love; at last they were free to love, and to be happy as they chose. There was no longer anyone to criticize them scarcely anyone to know about them; their only contact with the world was when they went for the mail and for provisions. They learned that the washer-woman who came for their clothes was ashamed for the poverty in which they lived, and that some of the neighbors suspected them of being oil-smugglers; on two occasions came sheriffs from distant counties to compare Thyrsis with the photographs and descriptions of long-sought bank-burglars and murderers. But although Thyrsis had often declared that he would rob a bank to secure his freedom to work, he had not yet done it, and so these experiences only added piquancy to their adventure.
It was a life such as might have been lived in the Garden of Eden. They cooked and ate and studied out doors, in a sunny glade when it was cool, and in the shade of a great oak-tree when it was warm. They wandered about in the forest, they bathed naked in the crystal lake—diving from the rocky headland, and afterwards standing upon it and drying themselves in the sun. Corydon was now free to fling away the conventionalities which had hampered her in the city; by way of signalizing her enfranchisement she cut short her hair—that untamed, rebellious hair which had taken so long to dry and to braid and to keep in order!
So they lived, in daily touch with the great heart of Nature. They saw the sun rise on one side of the rocky headland, and set upon the other; they watched the great storms sweep across the lake, and the lightnings stab into the water. Sometimes, at night, the gale would shake their tent until they could not be sure if it was wind or thunder; but the stays held fast, and they slept untroubled. And then the storm would pass, and in the morning there would be the lake, sparkling in the sunlight; and the sky, clear as crystal, with the white gulls wheeling about, and grey-blue herons standing near the shore.
There were bass to be caught from the rocky point. “So we must have at least one meal of fish every day,” declared Thyrsis.
“I’m willing,” said Corydon—“if you’ll catch them.”
“And then, there are lots of squirrels about.”
“Squirrels!” cried she.
“Yes. I can knock one over with a stone now and then—you’ll see.”
“But, Thyrsis! To eat them!”
“Did you ever taste one?” he laughed.
“But it’s cruel!” she exclaimed; and he thought to himself, How like the little Corydon of old!
“Wait till I’ve skinned him and fried him in bacon grease,” he answered.
And even so it proved. Corydon was troubled by the crisp little toes turned up in the air, but when these had been cut off, she yielded to the allurements of odor and taste. “I’m nothing but a digesting machine nowadays!” she lamented.
To which Thyrsis replied in the words of the village-girl in “Faust,” “‘She feeds two when she eats!’”
They had been obliged to give up their attempt to live on prunes and turnips. For the doctor had warned them that Corydon must have plenty of “good nourishing food”; and this warning was backed up by all her women acquaintances—and also by Corydon’s own inner voices. The appetite that she developed was appalling to them—not only as to quantity but as to quality. She would find herself unable to eat anything they had in their pantry, and with a craving for the wildest and most impossible things; or she would not know what she wanted—and would travel to the store and gaze about at the provisions, until a sudden illumination came. Sometimes she would be so hungry for it that she could not wait to get home, but would sit down by the road-side and devour the contents of the market-basket. To these cravings she yielded religiously, because she had been told that they represented vital needs of her system. Some one had told her an appalling tale about a pregnant woman who had been possessed by a desire for bananas; and because she had not gratified it, the baby when born had cried for five weeks—until they had fed it a banana!
These strange experiences lent new interest to their intimacy. They went through all the journey of maternity together. Pretty soon the changes in her body began to be noticeable; and day by day they would watch these. How wonderful it all was, how incredible! Thyrsis would sink upon his knees before her, and clasp his arms about her and laugh “She’s going to have a little baby!” And Corydon would blush and protest; she did not like to be teased about it—she was still only half reconciled to it. “I’m only a child myself!” she would cry. “I’ve no education—nothing! And I’m not fit for it!” Then he would have to comfort her, telling her that life was long, and that the child would be something to study.
They discussed the weighty question of the name which they should give the child. In this, as in other matters, they were without precedents and limitations, and they found that excess of freedom is sometimes an embarrassment. They were impelled towards literary reminiscence; and Thyrsis soon realized that this was a matter in which the sensuous temperament would have to have its way. “After all,” argued Corydon, “to you a name is a name. If you can call the baby and have it answer, isn’t that all you care about?”
“Yes,” he assented, “I suppose so; if the name’s too unhandy for calling, I can have a nickname.”
To Corydon, on the other hand, a name was a vital thing; a child that was lovely under one name might be unendurable under another. She had been reading Ossian, and the poems of the neo-Celtic enthusiasts; so after much pondering and consultation she announced that Cedric and Eileen were the two names from which they would choose.
Section 9. Many moods of tenderness came to them. He loved to fondle her, to exchange endearments with her. They gave each other foolish names, after the fashion of lovers the world over; and they would go on to modify these names, and add prefixes and suffixes, until the most ingenious philologist could not have figured out where the names had started. They made new words, also; they invented a whole language for use in these times of illumination, and which Thyrsis denoted by the name of “dam-fool talk”.
One was always discovering new qualities in Corydon. She had as many moods as the lake by which they lived, and it seemed to him that with each mood her whole personality changed—she would even look like another being. There was the every-day Corydon, demure, and rather silent; and then there was the Corydon who lived in the arms of Nature—who swam in the water, a sister of the mermaids, and made herself drunken with the sunlight; and then would come a mood of mischief, and laughter would break from her, and her wit would be such that Thyrsis would sigh for a stenographer. She would make herself a Grecian costume out of a sheet, and dance to music of her own making; or she would put trinkets upon her forehead, and be a gypsy-queen—she could be anything that was wild and exotic and unpremeditated. She had dances for that mood also—she would laugh and caper as merrily as any young witch. But then, again, there would come the Corydon of melancholy and despair; her features would shrink up, her face would become peaked and pitiful, she would seem like a child of ten. Sometimes Thyrsis could laugh her out of such a mood by telling her of her “beady black eyes”; and she did not like to desecrate her eyes.
And now there was a new Corydon—the Corydon who had been chosen of the Lord, the worker of a miracle. This gave new awe to her presence, it set a crown upon her forehead. One morning, in mid-summer, they had come out from their bath, and she stood upon the rock in the sunshine; and suddenly he saw her give a start, and stand transfixed, staring in front of her.
“What is it?” he asked.
Her voice thrilled as she whispered, “Thyrsis! It moved!”
“Moved?” he echoed.
“I felt the child move!” she cried.
And so he came and put his hands upon her body, and together they stood waiting, breathless, as if listening for a far-off sound.
“There! There!” she cried. “Did you feel it?”
Yes, he had felt it. And in all his life had he ever felt anything stranger? The first sign of the new life that was to be—the first hail out of the darkness of nonentity! And truly, to hear that hail was to be rapt into regions of wonder unspeakable!
It was to be a new human soul; a creature like themselves, with a mind of its own, and a sense of responsibility—It would be a man or a woman, independent, self-creating, and knowing naught about this strange inception. And yet, it would be their life also; they had caused it—but for them it would never have been! Blindly, unwittingly, following the guidance of some power greater than themselves, they had called it into being. And in some mysterious and incredible way it would share their qualities; it would be a blending of their natures, a symbol of their union, of the strange fire that had blazed up in them and fused them together. Truly, had they not come here to the essence of love, that great blind force which had ruled and guided all things from Time’s beginning?
They had come to the very making of life, it seemed. And yet, they wondered—were they really there? This new soul that was to be—had they in truth created it? Or had it existed before this? And whence did it come? If it was really the dignified and divine thing that it would someday imagine itself to be, was it not uncanny that it should have come thus—a nameless, half-human, half-animal thing, kicking inside the body of a woman?
It was Being, in all its ineffable mystery, its monstrous and unendurable strangeness. They lived face to face with it, they saw a thousand aspects of it. Sometimes Corydon would be obsessed with the sense of the sheer weight she carried; a burden fastened upon her and not to be got rid of—an imposition and torment to her. Then again, she would see herself in grotesque and even comical lights—as akin to all the animals, a cousin of the patient cow. And then would come a moment of sudden wonder, when she would be transfigured, a being divine, conferring the boon of life upon another.
It was in this last way that Thyrsis thought of her. There was about her a sense of brooding mystery, as of one who walks in the midst of supernatural presences. She would sit for hours gazing before her, like Joan of Arc listening to her voices; and he would be touched with awe, and would kiss her tenderly and with reverence.
This brought new meanings into their love, new meanings into his life; he would clench his hands and vow afresh his battle with the world. How hideous a thing it was that at this time she should be tormented by fears of want and failure! That she should have to go without comforts, that she should even fear to ask for necessities—because she knew how fast his little store of money was going! Other women had children, and they did not have to be haunted by the doubt if it was right to have them, if there would be any place for them in the world. And some of these were selfish and idle women, too—and yet they had everything they needed! And here was Corydon, beautiful and noble, the very soul of devotion—Corydon must be harrowed and tortured! He did not really mind the world’s treatment of himself, but for this treatment of her—ah, someday the world should pay for that! Someday it should do penance for its mockery and its blindness, that had been a blasphemy against the holy spirit itself!
At such times as this he would put his arms about her, and try to whisper something of the pity and grief that filled his heart. He would try to tell her how much he really loved her, how utterly he was devoted to her. Some day she should have her rights, some day he would repay her for all that she had dared for him. And then the tears would come into Corydon’s eyes, and she would answer that she feared nothing and cared about nothing, so long as she had his love.
Section 10. After these things, Thyrsis would go at his book again. He would go at it doggedly, desperately. He had scarcely taken time to get settled in the tent and to get their housekeeping régime under way, before he had heard the call of the book and wandered away to wrestle with it. The writing of it was a matter of life and death with him now—of life and death, not only for himself, and for Corydon, but for the unborn soul as well. His money would last him only six or eight weeks, and then he would have to take to pot-boiling again. So every hour was precious; this time there could be no blundering permitted.
Thyrsis was not writing now about minstrels and princesses; he was not painting enraptured pictures of joy and love. The pain of life had become too real to him. His six months of contact with the world had filled him with bitterness; and he was forging a sharp spear, that he could drive into the heart of folly and stupidity.
It was the story of Hathawi, the dreamer, which he had come upon in a Hindoo legend. “The Hearer of Truth,” was to be the title of the book; and for it Thyrsis was working out a new style. In the original it had been a fanciful tale; but he meant to take it over to the world of everyday reality, to give it the atmosphere of utter verihood. He meant to use a style of biblical simplicity, bare of all ornament, dealing with the most elemental things. And this might seem easy, but in reality it was the hardest thing in the world—it was like blank verse. One might toil all day for a single phrase into which to pack one’s meaning.
He wished to show Hathawi from the beginning; the solitary child, the seer of life’s mystery, who went away into a lonely place to brood. He dwelt in the high mountains, where the lightning played and the storm-winds shook him; he disciplined his will by fasting and prayer, so that the self in him died, and he could perceive eternal things, and aspects of being that are hidden. He went into the forests and dwelt with the wild things, and learned to understand their language—not only their beauty and their power, which are plain; not only their fears and their hatreds, which are painful to discover; but also their love, which is deepest of all. He learned to know the life which is in lifeless things—in water and air and fire; the joys and sorrows of the flowers, and the venerable wisdom of great trees, and the worship which is in the floods of sunlight. And having learned these things, Hathawi came back into the world.
He found that he was able to read the souls of men, but at first he could not believe what he read—it was so terrible, and so far from nature. He preferred to stay among the poor, because they were closer to the heart of things, and their falsehoods were simple. But he discovered that the evil and misery of men’s life came from above, and so he went into the “great world” to dwell.
And everywhere he went, men’s innermost thoughts were revealed to him, and to themselves through him. He acted upon men and women like wine—an impulse seized them to speak the truth, the truth that they had hidden even from their own hearts. Afterwards, when they realized what they had done, they hated Hathawi and feared him; but they said nothing, because each thought that the secret was his own.
But then, as his power grew, Hathawi began to reveal men in more public ways, and a scandal arose. There was whispered a story of a great statesman who had declared at a banquet what was his real work in the world; and one day a bishop arose in his cathedral and said that he taught the dogmas of his church, because they were necessary to keep the people in subjection. Then came the famous episode of a policeman who bade the prisoner go free and arrested the judge instead. Other policemen were called upon to hinder their comrade, but they declared that he was right; and then newspaper reporters, when ordered to write about it, avowed that they would write only what they believed. After which came a convention of one of the great political parties; and the presidential candidate made a speech, outlining his actual beliefs, and so destroyed his party. This, of course, was a national calamity, for all statesmen declared that the people could not be deceived by one party; and then, too, it was reported that Hathawi meant to attend the convention of the other party!
Because of this they shut him up in jail, charging him with being a vagrant, which he undoubtedly was. But he won over all the jailers and the prisoners to his doctrine, and so the jail was emptied. Moreover, it was found that some of those who loved him most truly had come to share his power of hearing truth. The madness was spreading everywhere; agitators were busy among the people, and public safety was threatened. So a certain very rich man, who in Hathawi’s presence had vowed himself a wolf, engaged an assassin to strike him down in broad daylight upon the street.
Then in order to suppress the disturbance, they spirited the body away and burned it, and scattered the ashes. But this was a bad thing for them to do, for the ashes became seeds of the new contagion, and all through the great city, in the strangest and most unaccountable way, men would suddenly begin to speak the truth. And, of course this made business impossible—the merchants and traders had to move away; and how was it possible to preserve authority, when sooner or later all the lawyers and the judges and the politicians would speak truth? So the people arose and declared that they were weary of lies, and they erected a statue of Hathawi at one of the places where his ashes had fallen, and declared that every candidate for office must make his speeches there. After that it was a long time before there were any officials elected—because no man could be found to whom prominence and power were not more precious than public welfare. But meanwhile the people thrived exceedingly.
Finally, however—the climax of the story—the news of all this had spread to other nations, and the rulers of these nations perceived that it was anarchy, and could by no means be permitted—their own people were threatening to rise. It must be clearly shown that a state without a government would be plundered by enemies; and so they prepared to plunder it. And so arose a great agitation in Hathawi’s home-state, and men called for a dictator, and for preparations of defence. But the followers of Hathawi cried out, saying, “Let us submit! Let us open our city to these men, and let them do their will—for the power of the truth is greater than even they.” And so it was decided.
When the hostile rulers heard of this a great fear took possession of them. They remembered the fate of certain famous diplomatists they had already sent over; and they dared not trust themselves near the statue of the Hearer of Truth. So their plans of invasion came to naught; and among their own people there was laughter and bitter mockery; and behold, one morning, a statue of Hathawi which some one had set up in a public-square! Here the lovers of truth gathered by thousands, and the soldiers who were sent to shoot them laid down their arms and joined them; and so, all over the world, was the end of the dominion of the lie.
Section 11. Such was the outline of Thyrsis’ story. He judged that it might be a very great story, or a comparatively commonplace one—it all depended upon the power with which it was visioned. He must get into himself and wrestle the thing out. This was to be his act of creation—his baby!
It was the first time since his marriage that Thyrsis had tried really to do what he called work. All things else had been mere echoes of the work he had done the previous summer; but now he had to do something new, something that was an echo of nothing else. Every day that he faced the task, his agony and despair of soul grew greater; for he found that he could not do the work. He could not even begin to do it—he could not even try to do it! He was helpless, bound hand and foot!
It was not his fault, it was not Corydon’s fault; it was a tragedy inherent in the very nature of things—in the two natures that were in himself. There was the man, who loved a woman, and hungered to see her happy; and there was the artist, to whom solitude was the very breath of life. To write this book—to write it really—he would have to spend weeks of brooding over it, thinking about nothing else day and night; he would have to shape his whole existence to that end to be free from every distracting circumstance, from everything that called him out of himself. And how could he hope for such a thing, while he was living in a tent with another person?
Thyrsis had his artist’s standard of perfection. Of course, he could never actually be satisfied with what he did; but at least he could feel that it was the best he was equal to—he could get a real and honest sense of exhaustion for himself. But now, the moment that he faced the problem fairly, he saw he could never get that real and honest sense of exhaustion again. He was dragged up to the issue and forced to face it instantly. The pressure of circumstances upon him was overwhelming; and he had to make up his mind to do something he had never done before—instead of really writing his books, to do the best he could with them!
Yet, inevitable as this was, and clearly as he saw it, he could not make up his mind to it. In reality, he never did make up his mind to it. He did it, and in his inmost heart he knew that he was doing it; but all the time he was trying to deny it, was wrestling with agony and despair in his soul in the effort to do something else.
He would go away in the morning and try to think about the book; and just when he would get started, it would be time for dinner, and there would be the image of Corydon waiting for him. And so he would go home, and go back in the afternoon—and when he had got started again, it would be dark. The next day, having explained his trouble, he would take his lunch away with him; but in the forenoon there would come a drenching thunder-storm, and he would have to go back again. Or he would try to work in the tent at night; and the wind would howl and blow the lamp so that he could not put his mind on anything. Nor did it avail him to rail at himself, to tell himself that he was a fool for being at the mercy of such mishaps. It was none the less a fact that he was at the mercy of them, and that he could no longer give himself up to the sway of his imagination.
And always there was Corydon, yearning for his companionship. It had always been their idea that they should do the work together; so completely would they be fused in the fire of love, that she would share his soul states and write parts of his books. But now that idea had to be abandoned; and this was her tragedy.
“I have to sit and think of my health!” she would exclaim.
“It isn’t your health, dear,” he would plead; “it’s the health of the child!”
“I know that. But then, am I always to sit at home and be placid, while you go away to wrestle with the angels?”
“Not always, Corydon,” he said. “This will pass—”
“If I do,” she cried, “I only stay to wrestle with the demons. And is that so very good for a pregnant woman?”
“My dear!” he protested.
“It’s just as I said!” she went on. “I ought not to have had the child! I’m only a school-girl, with a school-girl’s tasks. And I try and try, but I can’t help it—everything within me rebels at the cares of mother-hood.”
“That’s one mood, dear,” he said. “But you know that’s not true always.”
“It’s all the clearer to me,” she insisted, “since we’ve had to give up our music. I can’t work at the piano any more—I may never be able to.”
“But even if you could, Corydon, I couldn’t afford to get you one now.”
“No, of course not. And you have to give up your violin!”
“Much time I have to practice it in our present plight!”
“I know—I know! But don’t you see, we lose our last hope of growing together? I’ve a vision that haunts me all the time—you going away to do your work, and staying for longer and longer periods—and I sitting at home to mind the baby!”
Day after day he would come back, and she would ask him how the book was going; and he would have to answer that it was not going at all. Then, in his desperation, he would make up his mind to write what he could—to be content with this glimpse of one scene, and with that feeble echo of what he knew the next scene ought to be; and he would bring the result to Corydon, and would discover with a secret pang that she did not know the difference. But then he would ask himself—how could she know the difference? The difference did not exist! His vision of the thing had existed in himself, and in himself alone; if he never uttered it, the world would never know what it might have been—and would never care. Ah, what a future was that to look forward to—to filling the ears of the world with lamentations concerning the books that he might have written! And all the time knowing that the ears of the world were deaf to every sound he made!
Section 12. He thought that he realized the bitterness of this tragedy all at once; but the real bitterness was that he had to realize more and more of it every day. It was a tragedy he had to live in the house with. He had to watch it working itself out in all the little affairs of life; he had to see it manifesting itself in his own soul, and in the soul of Corydon, and even in the soul of the child. Worst of all to him, the artist, he had to see it working itself out in what he wrote—in book after book that went out to represent him to the world, and that did not represent him at all, but only represented the Snare in which he had been caught! It was one of the facts about this Snare, that there was no merciful Keeper to come and put the victim out of his misery with a blow upon the head; that he was left alone, to writhe and twist and tear himself to pieces, and to perish of slow exhaustion. It was not a murder—it was a crucifixion!
He could not have told for whom his heart bled most, for himself, or for Corydon. Here she was, with her grim problems and her bitter necessities; needing advice and comfort, needing companionship—needing a husband! And she had married an artist—a reed that would grow “nevermore again as a reed with the reeds by the river!” That could not grow, even if it had wanted to! For it was quite in vain that the world cried out to him to settle down and become as other men; he could not. The thing that was tearing at his vitals would continue to tear; the only choice he had was between self-expression and madness.
So, wrung as his heart was, he had to go away and as he could. If he yielded to his desire and stayed by her, then the book would not be written in time; and so all their hopes would be gone—they would never win their freedom then! And he would explain this to her; with their relentless devotion to the truth, they would talk it all out between them. They would trace every cord and knot of the Snare. And Corydon would grant that he was right, and that she must submit. He must stay away all day—and all night, if need be—till the book was done.
Not that they were always able to settle their problems in the cold light of reason. Sometimes Thyrsis, with his artist’s ups and downs, would be nervous and irritable; he would manifest impatience over trifles, and this would give rise to tragedies. There was a vast amount of fetching and emptying of water to be done for their little establishment; and sometimes a man who was carrying the destinies of the human race in his consciousness was not as prompt as he might have been in attending to these humble tasks. And moreover, the water all had to be dipped up from the lake; and sometimes, when it was stormy, it was a difficult matter to get it as free from specks as was needed for the ablutions of a fastidious young lady like Corydon.
“If you’d only take a little trouble!” she would say.
“Trouble!” he would exclaim. “Do you think I enjoy hearing you complain about it?”
“But Thyrsis, this is dirtier than ever!”
“I know it. The wind is blowing harder.”
“But if you’d only reach out a little ways—-”
“I reached out till I nearly fell into the water!”
“But Thyrsis, how can I ever wash my face?”
And so it would go. Thyrsis would be absorbed in some especially important mental operation, and it would be a torment to him to have such things forced upon his attention. Corydon, it seemed to him, was always at the mercy of externals; and she was forever dragging him out of himself, and making him aware of them. The frying-pan was not clean enough, or his hair was unkempt; his trousers were ragged or his coat was too small for him. Was life always to consist of such impertinences as this?
And so Thyrsis, in a sudden burst of rage, gave the water-bucket a kick which sent it rolling down the bank, and then strode away to his work. But unfortunately his work was not of a sort which he could do with angry emotions in his soul. And so very soon remorse overcame him. He returned, to find that Corydon had rushed out to the end of the point, and flung herself down upon the rocks in hysterics. And this, of course, was not a good thing for a pregnant woman, and so he had to set to work to soothe her.
But alas, to soothe her was never an easy task, because of her sensitiveness, and her exalted ideals of him. However humbly he might apologize and beg forgiveness, there would remain her grief that it had been possible for a quarrel to occur between them. She would drive him nearly wild by debating the event, and rehearsing it again and again, trying to justify herself to him, and him to himself. Thyrsis was robust, he wanted to let the past take care of itself; he would tell her of all the worries that were harassing him, and would plead with her to grant him the privilege of any ordinary human creature, to manifest annoyance now and then. And Corydon would promise it—she would promise him anything he asked for; but this was a boon it did not lie within the possibility of her temperament to grant. He could be angry at fate and at the world, and could rage and storm at them all he pleased; but he could never be harsh with Corydon without inflicting upon her pain that wrecked her, and wrecked him into the bargain.
Perhaps, he thought, it was her condition that accounted for this morbidness. She was liable to fits of depression, and to mysterious illness—nausea and faintness and what not. Also, she had been told weird tales about prenatal influences; and he, not having been educated in such matters, could not be sure what were the facts. So, whenever she had been unhappy, there was the possibility that she had done some irreparable harm to the child! And that made more problems for an over-worked and sensitive artist.
He soon saw that he had to suppress forever the side of him that was stern and exacting. Such things had a place in his own life, but no longer in Corydon’s. Instead, he would see how she suffered, and his heart would be wrung, and he would come back again and again to comfort her, and to tell her how he loved her, how he longed to do what was right. He would set before her the logic of the situation, so that if things went wrong she might realize that it was neither his fault nor hers—that it was the world, which kept them in this misery, and shut them up to suffer together. So it was, all through their lives, that their remorseless reason saved them; they would find in the analysis and exposition of the causes of their own unhappiness the one common satisfaction they had in life.
Section 13. These were the circumstances of the writing of “The Hearer of Truth”. It was completed in six weeks, and it did not satisfy its author, the finishing of it brought him no joy. But that, though he did not realize it, was the one circumstance in its favor—the less it satisfied him, the more chance there was that the world would know what it was about.
He had the manuscript copied, and then he sent it off to a magazine in Boston, whose editor had been one of his hundred great men, and had promised to read the new manuscript at once. Meantime Thyrsis sent for some books to review, and got to work at another plot to be submitted to the editor of the “Treasure Chest”. For their own treasure-chest was now all but empty, and one could not live forever upon blueberries and fish.
Day by day they waited; and at last, one fateful afternoon, the farmer came with some provisions and their mail. There was a letter from Boston, and Thyrsis opened it and read as follows:
“I have read your manuscript, ‘The Hearer of Truth’, and I wish to tell you of the very great pleasure it has given me. It is noble and fine, and amazingly clever as well. I must say frankly that I was astonished at the qualities of maturity and restraint it shows. I think it quite certain that we shall wish to use it as a serial; but before I can say anything definite, the manuscript will have to be read by my associates. In the meantime I wished to tell you personally how highly I think of your work.”
Thyrsis read this, and then, without a word, he passed it on to Corydon. As soon as the farmer’s back was turned, the two fell into each other’s arms, and all but wept. It was victory, beyond all question. The magazine might pay as much as five hundred dollars for the serial rights—and with that start, they would surely be safe. Besides that, it would mean recognition for Thyrsis—the world would have to discuss his work!
Doing pot-boilers was easy after such a triumph as that. They even treated themselves to holidays—they purchased a quart of ice-cream on one day, and hired a boat and went picnicking on another. Thyrsis got out his fiddle once again, and even became so reckless as to inquire about the price of a “practice-clavier” for Corydon. Also he began inquiring as to the cost of houses; when they got the money they would build themselves a little cabin here—a cabin just the size of the tent, but with a room upstairs where Thyrsis could do his work. After that they would be free from all the world—they would never go back to be haunted by the sight of
       “Sorrow barricadoed evermore
    Within the walls of cities.”
 
Section 14. So a month passed by; and Thyrsis wrote again to the editor, and was told that they were still discussing the story. And then, after two more weeks, there came another letter; and this was the way it read:
“I am sorry to have to tell you that the decision has been adverse to using your story. My own opinion of it has not changed in the least; but I have been unable to induce my associates to view it in the same light. They seem to be unanimous in the opinion that your work is too radical for us to put to the front. We have a very conservative, fastidious, and sophisticated constituency; and this is one of the limitations by which we are bound. I am more than sorry that things have turned out so, and I trust I need hardly say that I shall be glad to read anything else that you may have to submit to us.”
And there it was! “A conservative, fastidious, and sophisticated constituency!” Thyrsis believed that he would never forget that phrase while he lived. Could one get up a thing like that anywhere in the world save in Boston?
It was a bitter and cruel disappointment—the more so because it had taken six weeks of his precious time. But there was nothing to be done about it save to send off the manuscript to another magazine. And when it had come back from there he sent it to another, and to yet another—paying each time a total of eighty cents to the express-company, a sum which was very hard for him to spare. To make an ending at once to the painful episode, he continued to send it from one place to another, until “The Hearer of Truth” had had the honor of being declined by a total of fifteen magazines and twenty-two publishing-houses. The pilgrimage occupied a period of nineteen months—after which, to Thyrsis’ great surprise, the thirty-eighth concern offered to publish it. And so the book was brought out, with something of a flourish, and met with its thirty-eighth rejection—at the hands of the public!