One morning he opened his eyes, and looked from his study-window, to
find that another heavy snow had fallen; and when he had dressed and
gone over to the house, he found Corydon in bed. She complained of a
headache, and had had chills during the night, and was now quite
evidently feverish. He was alarmed, and after he had made her as
comfortable as he could, he dressed the baby and took him upon his
shoulder, and made his way with difficulty to the farm-house. He
left the baby there, and with a horse and sleigh set out for town.
The horse had to walk all the way, and several times the sleigh was
upset in the drifts, so that it was two hours before he reached his
destination. As the doctor was out upon his rounds, he had to wait a
couple of hours more--and then only to learn that the man could not
possibly attempt the trip. He had several patients who were
dangerously ill, and he had to be on hand.

He sent Thyrsis to another doctor, but this one said exactly the
same; and so the boy spent the day wandering about the town. The
thought of Corydon's lying there alone, helpless and suffering, made
him wild; but everywhere he met with the same response--the cold
weather had apparently brought an epidemic of disease, and there was
no doctor in the place who could spare three or four hours to make
the long journey in the snow.

So there was nothing for him to do but go back. The farmer's wife
offered to take care of the baby over night, and he went down to the
cottage alone where he found Corydon much worse. He sat and held her
hand, a terror clutching at his heart; and all night long he sat and
tended her--he filled hot water bottles when she was chilled, and
got ice when she was hot, and made cool lemonade, and prepared
tidbits and tempted her to eat. He would whisper to her and soothe
her; and later, when she fell into a doze, he sat nodding in his
chair and shivering with cold, but afraid to touch the fire for fear
of disturbing her.

Then, towards dawn, she wakened; and Thyrsis was almost beside
himself with anguish and fear--for she was delirious, and did not
know where she was, or what she was doing. She kept talking as if to
the baby--in their baby-talk. Thyrsis would listen, until he would
choke up with tears.

He left her, and went up to the farm, and got the horse and sleigh
again, and drove to another town. It made no difference what doctor
he got--to Thyrsis all doctors were alike, the keepers of the keys
of health. After several hours' pursuit he found that this man also
was busy. All he could say was that he would try to get out that
night.

So Thyrsis went back again, to find his wife with flushed face, and
beads of perspiration upon her forehead; now sitting up and babbling
aimlessly, now sinking back exhausted. He sat once more through a
night of torment, holding her hot hands in his, and praying in vain
for the coming of the doctor.

It was afternoon of the next day before the man finally came, and
brought some relief to Thyrsis' soul, and perhaps also to Corydon's
body. He took her temperature and listened to her breathing, and
pronounced it a severe attack of grippe, with a touch of
bronchitis; and he laid out an assortment of capsules and liquids,
and promised to come again if Thyrsis sent for him.

And so the boy set out in the double role of trained nurse and
mother's assistant. He gave Corydon her medicines, and brought fresh
water for her, and smoothed her pillows and talked to her, and
prepared some delicacies for her when she wished to eat; also he
dressed and bathed the baby, and cooked his complex meals and fed
them to him; he put on his rubbers and his leggings and his mittens,
and the overcoat and peaked hood (which Corydon had devised for him
out of eighty cents' worth of woolly red cloth), and turned him out
to "bongie cowtoos" in the snow. Likewise he got his own meals and
washed the dishes, and tended the fires and emptied the ashes and
filled the lamps and swept the floors; and in the interim between
these various duties he fought new battles within himself, and got
new side-lights upon Chickamauga and "Bloody Angle".

Section 18. It was two weeks before this siege was lifted, and
Corydon was able to take up her burdens once more. It was then
March, and the snow had given place to cold sleety rains, and the
fields and the ground about their home were miniature swamps full of
mud. Thyrsis would tramp through this to the hill-tops where the
storm-winds howled, and there vow defiance to his foes, and come
home to pour new hope and courage and resolution into a bottomless
pit.

He was finishing his vision of the field of Gettysburg--the
three-days' grapple between two titan armies, that meant to him
three weeks of soul-terrifying toil. Men had said that Gettysburg
meant the turning Of the tide, that victory was certain; and yet
there had followed Sherman's long campaign, and all the horror of
the Wilderness fighting, and Mine Run and Cold Harbor and the
ghastly siege of Petersburg. And now Thyrsis had to fight his way
through this. He saw the figure that he had dreamed, and that
possessed him; a soldier who was the rage of the War incarnate, the
awakened frenzy of the nation. He was a man lifted above pain and
cold and hunger; he was gaunt and wild of aspect, restless and
impatient, driving, driving to the end. He went about the duties of
the camp like one in a dream; he marched like an automaton--for
hours, or for days, as need might be--his thoughts flying on to
those moments that alone were real to him, to the charge and the
fury of the conflict, the blows that were the only things that
counted. He lived amid sights and sounds of horror, with groans and
weeping in his ears, with a mist of blood and cannon-smoke before
his eyes; he drove on, grim and implacable, the very ground about
him rocking and quivering in a delirium of torment. He was the War!

Meantime Corydon was growing paler, and more wretched than ever. For
her, too, this winter was symbolized as a battle-ground. To him it
was a field in which armies clashed, and the issue was uncertain;
but to her it was a field of inevitable defeat, strewn with the
corpses of her hopes. For hours she would lie upon her couch in the
night-watches, silent, alone, staring out of the window at the wide
waste of snow in the pitiless moonlight.

Thyrsis would have preferred to sleep in his own study, as he worked
so late at night; but Corydon begged him not to do this, she would
rather be wakened, she said.

So, on one occasion, he came over at about two o'clock in the
morning, and found her sleeping, as he thought, and crawled into his
own cot. He was just dozing off to sleep, when he heard what he
thought was a stifled sob.

He listened; he thought that she was crying in her sleep. But then,
as the sound grew clearer, he sat up. The moonlight was shining in
upon her, and Thyrsis caught a bright glint of steel. Swift as a
flash the meaning of that swept over him. He had provided her with a
revolver, that she might feel safe when she was left alone; and now
he bounded out of bed and sprang across the room, and found her with
the weapon pointed at her head.

He struck it away; and Corydon, with a terrified cry, clutched at
him and collapsed in his arms.

"Oh Thyrsis!" she wailed. "Save me! Save me!"

"What is it?" he gasped.

"I couldn't do it!" she cried, choking. "I couldn't! I tried--I
tried so hard!"

"Sweetheart", he whispered, in terror.

"Don't let me do it!" she sobbed. "Oh, Thyrsis, you must save me!"

He pressed her to his bosom, shuddering with dread, and trying to
soothe her hysterical outburst. So, little by little, he dragged the
story from her. For three days she had been making up her mind to
shoot herself, and she had chosen that night for the time.

"I've been sitting here for an hour," she whispered--"with the
revolver in my hand. And I couldn't get up the courage to pull the
trigger."

He clasped her, white with horror.

"I heard you coming," she went on. "I lay and pretended to sleep.
Then I tried again--but I can't, I can't! I'm a coward!"

"Corydon!" he cried.

"There was only one thing that stopped me. You would have got on
without me--"

"Don't say that, dearest!"

"You would--I know it! I'm only in your way. But oh, my baby! I
loved him so, and I couldn't bear to leave him!"

She clung to him convulsively. "Oh, Thyrsis," she panted, "think
what it meant to me to leave him. He'd have been without a mother
all his life! And something might have happened to you, and he'd
have had no one to love him at all!"

"Why did you want to do it?" he cried.

"Oh Thyrsis, I've suffered so! I'm weary--I'm worn out--I'm sick of
the fight. I can't stand it any more--and what can I do?"

"My poor, poor girl," he whispered, and pressed her to his heart in
a paroxysm of grief. "Oh, my Corydon! My Corydon!"

The horror of the thing overwhelmed him; he began to weep
himself--his frame was shaken with tearless, agonizing sobs. What
could he do for her, how could he help her?

But already he had helped her; it was not often that she saw him
weeping, it was not often she found that she could do something for
_him_. "Thyrsis, do you really _want_ me?" she whispered. "Do you
truly love me that much?"

"I love you, I love you!" he sobbed.

And she replied, "Then I'll stay. I'll bear anything, if you need
me--if I can be of any use at all."

Section 19. So their tears were mingled; so once more, being
sufficiently plowed up with agony, they might behold the deeps of
each other's souls. Being at their last gasp, and driven to
desperation, they would make the convulsive effort, and break the
crust of dullness and commonplace, and reveal again the mighty
forces hidden in their depths. At such hours he beheld Corydon as
she was, the flaming spirit, the archangel prisoned in the flesh. If
only he could have found the key to those deep chambers, so that he
could have had access to them always!

But alas, they knew only one path that led to them, and that through
the valley of despair. From despair it led to anguished struggle,
and from struggle to defiance, to rage and denunciation--and thence
to visions and invocations, raptures and enthralments. So this
night, for instance, behold Corydon, first holding her husband's
hands, and shuddering with awe, and pledging her faith all over
again; and then, later on, when the dawn was breaking, sitting in the
cold moonlight with a blanket flung about her, her wild hair tossing,
and in her hand the revolver with which she had meant to destroy
herself. Behold her, making sport of her own life-drama--turning
into wildest phantasy her domestic ignominies, her inhibitions and
her helpmate's blunderings; evoking the hosts of the future as to
a festival, rehearsing the tragedy of her soul with all posterity
as her audience. When once these mad steeds of her fancy were turned
loose, one could never tell where their course would be; and strange
indeed were the adventures that came to him who rode with her!

There seemed to be no limit to the powers of this subliminal woman
within Corydon. Her cheeks would kindle, her eyes would blaze, and
eloquence would pour from her--the language of great poetry, fervid
and passionate, with swift flashes of insight and illumination,
tumultuous invocations and bursts of prophecy. Thyrsis would listen
and marvel. What a mind she had--sharp, like a rapier, swift as the
lightning-flash! The powers of penetration and understanding, and
above all the sheer splendors of language--the blazes of metaphor,
the explosions of coruscating wit! What a tragic actress she might
have made--how she would have shaken men's souls, and set them to
shuddering with terror! What an opera-singer she could have been,
with that rich vibrant voice, and the mien of a disinherited
goddess!

It was out of such hours that the faith of their lives was made; and
it was out of them also that Thyrsis formed his idea of woman. To
him woman was an equal; and this he not only said with his lips, he
lived it in his feelings. The time came when he went out into the
world, and learned to understand the world's idea, that woman meant
vanity and pettiness and frivolity; but Thyrsis let all this pass,
knowing the woman-soul. Somewhere underneath, not yet understood and
mastered, was pent this mighty force that in the end would
revolutionize all human ideas and institutions. Here was faith, here
was vision, here was the power of all powers; and how was it to be
delivered and made conscious, and brought into the service of life?

Most women liked Thyrsis, because they divined in some vague way
this attitude; and some men hated him for the same reason. These
men, Thyrsis observed, were the slave-drivers; they held that woman
was the weaker vessel, and for this they had their own motives.
There were women, too, who liked to be ruled; but Thyrsis never
argued with them--it was enough, he judged, to treat any slave as a
free man, or any servant as a gentleman, and sooner or later they
would divine what he meant, and the spirit of revolt would begin to
flicker.






BOOK XIII

THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE





_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 matinГ©e, 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 AntinoГјs, 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 Mädchen_", who would
be trusting and affectionate, and would talk in German with the
baby.

So now he spent several days hunting in strange places; and at last,
in a dingy East-side employment-office, he came upon his _Schatz_.
She was buxom and hearty, and fairly oozed good-nature at every
pore; she had only been a week in the country, and was evidently
naГЇve enough for any purpose whatever. She had no golden hair like
Dorothea, but was swarthy--her German was complicated with a
Hungarian accent, and with strange words that one had not come upon
in Goethe and Freitag, and could not find in any dictionary.

Thyrsis helped to gather up her various bags and bundles, and
transported her out to the country. On the train he set to work to
gain her confidence, and was forthwith entertained with the tale of
all her heart-troubles. Back in the Hungarian village she had
fallen in love with the son of a rich farmer, quite in Hermann and
Dorothea fashion; but alas, in this case there had been no "_gute
verstandige Mutter_" and no "_wГјrdiger Pfarrer_"--instead there had
been a hateful step-mother, and so the "_treffliches Mädchen_" had
had to come away.

They reached the little cottage at last; and then what a
house-cleaning there was, what scrubbing of floors; and brushing
out the cobwebs, and scouring of lamp-chimneys and scraping of
kettles and sauce-pans! And what a relief it was for Corydon and
Thyrsis to be able to go off for a walk together, without first
having to carry the baby up to the farm-house! And how very poetical
it was to come back and discover Dorothea with the baby in her lap,
feeding it a supper of _butter-brod_ with a slice of raw bacon!

As time went on, alas, it came more and more to seem that the
Dorothea idyl had not been meant to be taken as a work of realism.
The "_treffliches_ _Maedchen_" was perhaps _too_ kind-hearted; her
emotions were too voluminous for so small a house, her personality
seemed to spread all over it. She would sing Hungarian love-ditties
at her work; and somehow calling these "folksongs" did not help
matters. Also, alas, she distributed about the house strange
odors--of raw onions, boiled cabbage and perspiration. So, after
three weeks, poor Dorothea had to be sent away--weeping copiously,
and bewildered over this cruel misfortune. Corydon and Thyrsis went
back again to washing their own dishes; being glad to pay the price
for quietness and privacy, and vowing that they would never again
try, to "keep a servant".

Section 8. The spring-time had come; not so much the spring-time of
poets and song-birds, as the spring-time of cold rains and wind. But
still, little by little, the sun was getting the better of his
enemies; and so with infinite caution they reduced the quantity of
the baby's apparel, and got him and his "bongie cowtoos" out upon
the piazza.

Meantime Thyrsis was over at his own place, wrestling with the book
again. He had told himself that it would be easy, now that he was
free from the money-terror. But alas, it was not easy, and nothing
could make it easy. If he had more energy, it only meant that his
vision reached farther, and set him a harder task. Never in his life
did he write a book, the last quarter of which was not to him a
nightmare labor. He would be staggering, half blind with
exhaustion--like a runner at the end of a long race, with a rival
close at his heels.

Also, as usual, his stomach was beginning to weaken under the
strain. He would come over sometimes, late in the afternoon, and lay
his head in Corydon's lap, almost sobbing from weariness; and yet,
after he had eaten a little and helped her with the hardest of her
tasks, he would go away again, and work half through the night.
There was nothing else he could do--there was no escaping from the
thing; if he lay down to rest, or went for a walk, it would be only
to think about it the whole time. He would feel that he was not
getting enough exercise, and he would drive himself to some bodily
tasks; but there was never anything that he could do, that he did
not have the book eating away at his mind in the meantime. It was
one of the calamities of his life that there was no way for him to
play; all he could do was to take a stroll with Corydon, or to tramp
over the country by himself.

He finished the book in May; and he knew that it was good. He sent
it off to Mr. Ardsley, and Mr. Ardsley, too, declared himself
satisfied, and sent the balance of the money. So Thyrsis sank back
to get his breath, and to put back some flesh upon his skeleton. He
was wont to say when he was writing, one could measure his progress
upon a scales; every five thousand words he finished cost him a
Shylock's price.

This summer was, upon the whole, the happiest time they had yet
known. The book was scheduled to appear early in September; and they
had money enough to last them meantime, with careful economy. Their
little home was beautiful; they planted some sweet peas and roses,
and Thyrsis even began to dig at a vegetable-garden. Also, it was
strawberry-time, and cherry-time was near; nor did they overlook the
fact that they lived in close proximity to a peach-orchard. These,
perhaps, were prosaic considerations, and not of the sort which
Thyrsis had been accustomed to associate with spring-time. But this
he hardly realized--so rapidly was the discipline of domesticity
bringing his haughty spirit to terms!

He built a rustic seat in the woods, where they might sit and read;
he built a table beside the house, where the dishes might be washed
under the blue sky; and he perfected an elaborate set of ditches and
dykes, so that the rain-storms would not sweep away their milk and
butter in the stream. He talked of building a pen for chickens--and
might have done so, only he discovered that the perverse creatures
would not lay except at the time when eggs were cheap and one did
not care so much about them. He even figured on the cost of a cow,
and the possibility of learning to milk it; and was so much
enthralled by these bucolic occupations that he wrote a
magazine-article to acquaint his struggling brother and sister poets
with the fact that they, too, might escape to the country and live
in a home-made house!

With the article there went a picture of the house, and also one of
the baby, who had been waxing enormous, and now constituted a fine
advertisement. The winter had seemed to agree with him, and the
summer agreed with him even better. Thyrsis would smile now and
then, thinking of his ideas of martyrdom; it was made evident that
one member of the family was not minded for anything of the sort.
The parents might become so much absorbed in their soul-problems
that they forgot the dinner-hour; but one could have set his watch
by the appetite of the baby. Nature had provided him, among other
protections, with a truly phenomenal pair of lungs; and whenever
life took a course that was not satisfactory to him, he would roar
his face to a terrifying purple.

He was one overwhelming and incessant outcry for adventure. He would
toddle all day about the place, getting his "mungies" into all sorts
of messes. He was hard to fit into so small a place, and there were
times when his parents were tempted to wish that some phenomenon a
trifle less portentous had fallen to their lot. But for the most
part he was a great hope--a sort of visible atonement for their
sufferings. He at least was an achievement; he was something they
had done. And he could not be undone, nor doubted--he put all
skepticism to flight. In his vicinity there was no room for
pessimistic philosophies, for _Weltschmerz_ or _Karma_.