But this time it was Corydon who had adventures to narrate. He
realized as soon as he saw her that she had something upon her mind;
and at the first occasion she led him off to his own study, and shut
the door. He got a fire going, and she sat opposite him and gazed at
him.

"Thyrsis," she said, "I hardly know how to begin."

It was all very formal and mysterious. "What is it, dear?" he asked.

"It's something terrible," she whispered. "I'm afraid you're going
to be angry."

"What is it?" he repeated, more anxiously.

"I was angry myself, at first," she said; "but I've got over it now.
And I want you please to be reasonable."

"Go on, dear."

"Thyrsis," she whispered, after a pause, "it's Harry."

"Harry?"

"Harry Stuart, you know."

"Oh," said he. He had all but forgotten the young drawing-teacher,
whom he had left doing Socialist cartoons.

"Well?" he inquired.

"You see, Thyrsis, I always liked him very much. And he's been
coming up here--quite a good deal. I didn't see why he shouldn't
come--Delia liked him too, and she was with us most of the time. Was
it wrong of me to let him come?"

"I don't know," said he. "Tell me."

"Perhaps it's silly of me," Corydon continued, hesitatingly--"but
I'm always imagining things about people. And he seemed to me to
have such possibilities. He has--how shall I say it--"

"I recall your saying he had soulful eyes," put in Thyrsis.

"You'll make fun of it all, of course," said Corydon. "But it's
really very tragic. You see, he's never met a woman like me before."

"I can believe that, my dear."

"I mean--a woman that has any real ideas. He would ask me questions
by the hour; and we talked about everything. So, of course, we
talked about love; and he--he asked if I was happy."

"I see," said Thyrsis, grimly. "Of course you said that you were
miserable."

"I didn't say much. I told him that your work was hard, and that my
courage wasn't always equal to my task. Anyone can see that I have
suffered."

"Yes, dear," said Thyrsis, "of course. Go on."

"Well, one day--it was last Friday--he came up with a carriage to
take us driving. And Delia had a headache, and wanted to rest, and
so Harry and I went alone. I--I guess I shouldn't have gone, but I
didn't realize it. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we both had a
good time--in fact, I don't know when I have been so contentedly
happy. We stopped to gather wild flowers, and once we sat by a
little stream; and of course, we talked and talked, and before I
realized it, twilight was falling, and we were a long way from
home."

"Go on," said Thyrsis, as she hesitated.

"We started out. I recollected later, though I didn't seem to notice
it at the time--that Harry's voice seemed to grow husky, and he
spoke indistinctly. He had let the horse have the reins, and his arm
was on the back of my seat. I hadn't noticed it; but then--then--fancy
my horror--"

"Well?"

"It happened--all of a sudden." Corydon stammered, her cheeks
turning scarlet. "I felt his arm clasp me; and I turned and stared,
and his face was close to mine, and his eyes were fairly shining."

There was a pause. "What did you do?" asked the other.

"I just looked at him calmly, and said, 'Oh, how _could_ you?' And
at that he took his arm away quickly, and sat up stiff and straight,
with a terribly hurt expression. 'Forgive me,' he said. 'I was
mad.' And we neither of us spoke a word all the way home. And when
we came to the house, I jumped out of the carriage without saying
good-night."

Corydon sat staring at her husband, with her wide-open, anxious
eyes. "And was that all?" he asked.

"To-day I had a letter from him. He said he was going away, over the
Christmas holidays. He said that he was very much ashamed of
himself, and he hoped that I would be able to forgive him. And
that's all."

They sat for a while in silence. "You won't be too angry?" asked
Corydon, anxiously.

"I'm not angry at all," he said. "But naturally it's disturbing. I
don't like to have such things happen to you."

"It's strange, you know," said Corydon, "but I haven't seemed to
stay very indignant. He was so hurt, you know--and I can realize how
unhappy he's been. Curiously enough, I've even found myself thinking
that I'd like to see him again. And that puzzled me. I felt that I
ought to be quite outraged. That he should imagine he could hug
me--like any shop-girl!"

They spent many hours discussing this adventure; in fact it was a
week or two before they had disposed of it entirely. Thyrsis was
hoping that the experience might be utilized to persuade Corydon to
modify her utopian attitude towards young men with soulful eyes and
waving brown hair. He was at some pains to set forth to her the
psychology of the male creature--insisting that he knew more about
this than she did, and that his remarks applied to drawing-teachers
as well as to all other arts and professions.

The main question, of course, was as to their attitude towards
Harry Stuart when he returned. Corydon, it became clear, had
forgiven him; the phraseology of his letter was touching, and he was
now invested in the glamor of penitence. She insisted that the
episode might be overlooked, and that their friendship could go on
as before. But Thyrsis argued vigorously that their relationship
could never be the same again, and declared that they ought not to
meet.

"But then," Corydon protested, "he'll be at the Jennings! And I
can't snub him!"

"What does Delia think about it?" he asked.

"Dear me!" Corydon exclaimed. "I haven't told Delia a word of it!"

"Haven't told her! But why not?"

"Because she'd be horrified. She'd never speak to Harry Stuart
again!"

"But then you want _me_ to speak to him! And even to be cordial to
him! You want to go ahead and carry on a sentimental flirtation with
him--"

"Oh, Thyrsis!" she protested.

"But that's what it would come to. And how much peace of mind do you
suppose I'd have, while I knew that was going on?"

At which Corydon sighed pathetically. "I'm a fine sort of
emancipated woman!" she said. "Don't you see you're playing the role
of the conventional jealous husband?"

But as she thought over the matter in the privacy of her own mind
she was filled with perplexity, and wondered at herself. She found
herself actually longing to see Harry Stuart. She asked herself,
"Can it really be I, Corydon, who am capable of being interested in
any other man besides my husband?" She could not bring herself to
face the fact that it was true.

Section 4. Thyrsis went away, and took to wandering about the
country, wrestling with his new book. After the fashion of every
work that came to possess him, it seemed to possess him as no other
work had ever done before. His mind was in a turmoil with it, his
thoughts racing from one part to another; he would stop in the midst
of pumping a bucket of water or bringing in a supply of wood, to jot
down some notes that came to him. Each day he realized more fully
the nature of the task. Seated alone at night in his tiny cabin, his
spirit would cry out in terror at the burden that had been heaped
upon it.

He had decided upon the title of the book--"Art and Money: an Essay
in the Economic Interpretation of Literature". And then, late one
night, as he was pondering it, there had flashed over him the form
into which he should cast the work; he would make it, not only an
exposition of his philosophy, but the story of his life, the cry of
his soul. There had come to him an introductory statement; it was a
smashing thing--a thing that would arrest and stun! Disraeli had
said that a critic was a man who had failed as a creative writer;
and Thyrsis would take that taunt and make it into his battle-cry.
"I who write this," he would say--"I am a failure; I am a murdered
artist! I sit by the corpse of my dead dreams, I dip my pen into the
heart's blood of my strangled vision!" So he would indict the forces
that had murdered him, and through the rest of the book he would
pursue them--he would track them to their lair and corner them, and
slay them with a sharp sword.

Meantime Delia Gordon had gone back to her studies, and Corydon had
settled down to her lonely task. She washed and dressed and fed the
baby, and satisfied what she could of his insatiable demands for
play. Thyrsis would come and help to get the meals and wash the
dishes; but even then he was poor company--he was either tired out,
or lost in thought, and his nerves were in such a state that he
could not bear to be criticized. It was getting to be harder for him
to endure the strain of hearing complaints; and so Corydon shrunk
more and more into herself, and took to pouring out her soul in long
letters and journals.

"Is it possible," she wrote to Delia, "that to some people life is a
continuous expiation--an expiation of submerged hereditary sins, as
well as of conscious ones? A great deal of the time life seems to me
a hopeless puzzle; I am so utterly unfitted for the roles I labor to
play. Is it that I am too low for my environment? Or can it be that
I am too high? Surely there must some day be other things that women
can do in the world besides training children. I try to love my
task, but I have no talent for it, and it is a frightful strain upon
me. After one hour of blocks and choo-choo cars, I am perfectly
prostrated. I have been cheated out of the joys of motherhood, that
is the truth--the spring was poisoned for me at the very beginning.

"You must not mind my lamentations, dear Delia," she wrote in
another letter. "You can't imagine how lonely my life is--no, for it
is different when you are here. Oh, I am so weary! so weary! It
didn't use to be like this. Every moment of leisure I had I would
run and try to study; I would read something--I was always eager and
hungry. But now I am dull--I do not follow my inspirations. If only
Thyrsis and I might sometimes read together! I love to be read to,
but he cannot bear it--he reads three times as fast to himself, he
says. He will do it if I am sick; but even then it makes him
nervous, and I cannot help but know that, however he tries to hide
it. It is one of our troubles, but we know each other's states of
mind intuitively.

"Oh, Delia, was there ever a tragedy in the world like that of our
love? (Almost everything in our lives is pain, and so we are coming
to stand for pain to each other!) I ask myself sometimes if any two
people who love could stand what we have to stand. Sometimes I think
they could, if their love was different; but then that thought
breaks my heart! Why cannot our love be different, I ask!

"I had one of my frightful fits of unhappiness to-day. It was
nothing--it was my fault, I guess. I am very sensitive. But I think
it is a tendency of Thyrsis' temperament to try instinctively to
overcome mine. Apparently the only thing that will conquer him is
seeing me suffer; then he will give way--he will promise anything I
want, blame himself for his rigidity, scourge himself for his
blindness, do anything at all I ask. So I tell myself, everything
will be different now; the last problem is solved! I see how good
and kind he is, how noble his impulses are; he has never failed me
in the big things of life.

"I suppose Mr. Harding writes you about us. He was up here this
afternoon. He was very gentle and kind to me; he talked about his
religion. Did you tell him much about me? It is a singular thing,
how he seems to understand without being told. I realized to-day
that whenever we talk about my life, we take everything for granted.
Also, it seems strange that he does not blame me; generally people
who are conventional think that I am selfish, that I ought to be
loving my baby, instead of struggling with my pitiful soul.

"I wrote a little stanza the other night, dear Delia. Doesn't it
seem strange, that when I am at the last gasp with agony, I should
find myself thinking of lines of poetry? I called it 'Life'; you
will say that it is too sombre--

"'A lonely journey in a night of storm, Lighted by flashes of
inconstant faith, Goaded by multitudes of vague desires, And mocked
by phantoms of remote delight!'"

Section 5. Just at this time Corydon found herself the victim of
backaches and fits of exhaustion, for which there was no cause to be
discovered. Each attack meant that Thyrsis would have to drop his
work, and come and be housekeeper and nurse; he would have to
repress every slightest sign of the impatience, which, was burning
him up--knowing that if he gave vent to it, he would drive Corydon
half-wild with suffering. After two or three such crises, he made up
his mind that it was impossible for him to go on, until there was
some one to help her in these emergencies.

As a result of their farm-hunting expeditions, they had in mind a
place which was a compromise between their different requirements.
It had a good barn and plenty of fruit, and at the same time a view,
and a house with comfortable rooms, and wall-paper that was not
altogether unendurable. It was offered for four thousand dollars, of
which nearly three-quarters might remain upon mortgage; so they had
agreed that their future happiness would depend upon the war-book's
bringing them in a thousand dollars. Since this hope had failed, he
had applied to Darrell, and to Paret, but neither of them had the
money to spare. It now fell out, that just as he was at the point of
desperation, he received a letter from the clergyman who had married
them, Dr. Hamilton. This worthy man had been reading Thyrsis'
manuscripts and following his career; and he now wrote to tell how
greatly he had been impressed by the new novel. Whereupon the author
was seized by a sudden resolve, and packed up a hand-satchel and set
out for the city, with all the forces of his being nerved for an
assault upon this ill-fated clergyman.

Dr. Hamilton sat in his little office, looking pale and worn, his
face deeply seamed with lines of care. As the poet thought of it in
later years, he realized that this man's function in life was to be
a clearing-house for human misery--the wrecks of the competitive
system in all classes and grades of society came to him to pour out
their troubles and beg for help. It was not so very long afterwards
that he went to pieces from overwork and nervous strain; and Thyrsis
wondered with a guilty feeling how much his own assault had
contributed to this result. Assuredly it could not happen often that
a clergyman had to listen to a more harrowing tale than this
"murdered artist" had to tell.

The doctor heard it out, and then began to argue: like the
philanthropist in Boston, he was greatly troubled by the fear of
"weakening the springs of character". Being an "advanced" clergyman,
he was familiar with the pat phrases of evolutionary science--his
mind was a queer jumble of the philosophy of Herbert Spencer and
that of Thomas Г  Kempis. But Thyrsis just now was in a mood which
might have moved even Spencer himself; he was almost frantic because
of Corydon, whom he had left half-ill at home. He was not pleading
for himself, he said--he could always get along; but oh, the horror
of having to kill his wife for the sake of his books! To have to sit
by day by day and watch her dying! He told about that night when
Corydon had tried to kill herself; and now another winter was upon
them, and he knew that unless something were done, the spring-time
would not find her alive.

The suicide story turned the balance with the clergyman; Herbert
Spencer was put back upon the shelf, and Thomas Г  Kempis ruled the
day. Dr. Hamilton said that he would see one of his rich
parishioners, and persuade him to take a second mortgage on the
farm. And so Thyrsis went back, a messenger of wondrous tidings.

A few days later came the check. The deed had been got ready; and
Thyrsis drove to the farm, and carried off the farmer and his wife
to the nearest notary-public. The old man pleaded to stay in his
home until the new year, but Thyrsis was obdurate, allowing him only
a week in which to get himself and his belongings to another place.
And meantime he and Corydon were packing up. They drove to another
"vandew", and purchased more odds and ends of household stuff; and
Thyrsis had his little study loaded upon a wagon, and taken to the
new place.

A wonderful adventure was this moving! To enter a real house, with
two stories, and two pairs of stairs, and eight rooms, and a cellar,
and regular plastered walls, and no end of closets and shelves and
such-like domestic luxuries! To be able to set apart a whole room in
which the baby might spread himself with his toys and marbles and
dolls and picture-books--and without any one's having to stumble
over them, and break their owner's heart! To have a real parlor,
with a stove to sit by, and a table for a lamp, and shelves for
books; and yet another room to eat in, and another to cook in! To be
able to have a woman come to wash the dishes without making a bosom
friend of her, and having her hear all the conversation! To be able
to walk through fields and orchards and woodland, and know that they
belonged to one's self, and would some day shed their coat of snow
and blossom into new life! Thyrsis wished that he could have the
book out of his mind for a month, so that he might be properly
thrilled by this experience.

It was at the Christmas season, and therefore an appropriate times
for celebrating. He went down into the "wood-lot"--their own
"wood-lot"--and cut a spruce tree, and set it up in the dining-room;
they hung thereon all the contrivances which the associated
grandparents had sent down to commemorate an occasion which was not
only Christmas and house-warming, but the baby's third birthday as
well. Because of the triple conjunction, they invested in a fat
goose, to be roasted in the new kitchen-range; and besides this
there were some spare-ribs and home-made sausages with which a
neighbor had tempted them. It was a regular storybook Christmas,
with a snow-storm raging outside, and the wind howling down the
chimney, and an odor of molasses-taffy pervading the house.

Section 6. After which festivities Thyrsis bid farewell to his
family once more, and went away to wrestle with his angel. Weeks of
failure and struggle it cost him before he could get back what he
had lost--before he could recall those phrases that had once blazed
white-hot in his brain, and could see again the whole gigantic form
and figure of his undertaking. Many an hour he spent pacing his
little eight-foot piazza--four steps and a half each way, back and
forth; many a night he would sit before his little fourteen-inch
stove, so lost in his meditations that the stove would lose its
red-hot glow, and the icy gale which raged outside and rattled the
door would steal in through the cracks and set him to shivering.

Other times he would trudge through the snow and mud to the town,
spending the day in the library, and then bringing out an armful of
books to last him through the night. Thyrsis had read pretty
thoroughly the literature of the six languages he knew; but now--
this was the appalling nature of his task--he had to go back and
read it over again. He did not realize, until he got actually at the
work, what an utter overturning there would be in all his ideas. How
strange it was to return and read the "classics" of one's youth!
What oceans of futility one discovered, what mountains of
pretense--and with what forests of scholarship grown over them! It
seemed to Thyrsis that everywhere he turned the search-light of his
new truth, the structure of his opinions would topple like a house
of cards. Truly, here was a _"Götzendämmerung"_, an _"Umwertung
aller Werthe"!_

The worst of it was that he had to read, not only literature, but
also history--often his own kind of history, that had not yet been
written. If he wished to know the Shakespearean dramas as a product
of the aristocratic and imperialist ideal in the glory and
intoxication of its youth, he had to study, not only Shakespeare's
poetry, but the cultural and social life of the Elizabethan people.
And he could not take any man's word for the truth; he had to know
for himself. The thing that would avail him in this battle was not
eloquence and fervor, not the flashes of his irony and the white-hot
shafts of his scorn. What he must have were facts, and more
facts--and then again facts!

The facts were there, to be had for the gathering. Thyrsis again
could only compare himself to Aladdin in his palace. Could it be
believed that so many ideas had been left for one man to discover?
It seemed to him, that the kingdoms of literature lay at his mercy;
he was like a magician who has discovered a new spell, which places
his rivals in his power. He knew that this book, if he could ever
finish it, would alter the aspect of literary criticism, as a blow
changes the pattern in a kaleidoscope.

Thyrsis had failed many times before, but this time he felt that
success was in his hands; he knew the bookworld now, he was master
of the game. This would set them to thinking, this would stir them
up! He had got under the armor of his enemy at last, and he could
feel him wince and writhe at each thrust that he drove home. So he
wrought at his task, in a state of tense excitement, living always
in imagination in the midst of the battle, following stroke with
stroke and driving a rout before him.--So he would be for weeks; and
then would come the reaction, when he fell back exhausted, and
realized that his victory was mere phantasy, that nothing of it
really counted until he had completed his labor. And that would take
two years! Two years!

Section 7. From visions such as this Thyrsis came back to wrestle
with all the problems of a household; with pumps that froze and
drains that clogged, with stoves that went out and ashes that
spilled, with milk-boys that were late and kitchen-maids that were
snow-bound. He would leave his work at one or two o'clock in the
morning, and make his way through the snow and the storm to the
house, and crawl into bed, and then take his chances of being
awakened by the baby, or by some spell of agony with Corydon.

He might not sleep alone; that supreme symbol of domesticity Corydon
could not give up, and he soon ceased to ask for it. It seemed such
a little thing to yield; and yet it meant so much to him! The room
where he slept came to seem to him a chamber of terror, a place to
which he went "like the galley-slave at night, scourged to his
dungeon". It was a place where a crime was enacted; where the vital
forces of his being were squandered, and the body and soul of him
were wrung and squeezed dry like a sponge. This was marriage--it
was the essence of marriage; it was the slavery into which he had
delivered himself, the duty to which he was bound. And in how many
millions of homes was this same thing going on--this licensed
preying of one personality upon another? And the nightmare thing was
upheld and buttressed by all the forces of society--priests were
saying blessings over it and moralists were singing the praises of
it--"the holy bonds of matrimony", it was called!

It was all the worse to Thyrsis because there was that in him which
welcomed this animal intimacy. So he saw that day by day their lives
were slipping to a lower plane; day by day they were discovering new
weaknesses and developing new vices in themselves. Corydon was now a
good part of the time in pain of some sort; and the doctors had
accustomed her to stave off these crises with various kinds of
drugs, so that she had a set of shelves crowded with pills and
powders and bottles. She had learned to rely upon them in
emergencies, to plead for them when she was helpless; and so Thyrsis
saw her declining into an inferno. He would argue with her and plead
with her and fight with her; he would spend days trying to open her
eyes to the peril, to show her that it was better to suffer pain
than to resort to these treacherous aids.

Section 8. They still had their hours of enthusiasm, of course,
their illuminations and their resolutions. During the summer, while
browsing among the English magazines in the library, Thyrsis had
stumbled upon an astonishing article dealing with the subject of
health. He read it in a state of great excitement, and then took it
home and read it to Corydon. It told of the achievements of a
gentleman by the name of Horace Fletcher, who had once possessed
robust health, and lost it through careless living, and had then
restored it by a new system of eating. To Thyrsis this came as one
of the great discoveries of his life. For years every instinct of
his nature had been whispering to him that his ways of eating were
vicious; but he had been ignorant and helpless--and with all the
world that he knew in opposition to him. As he read the article, he
recalled a talk he had had with his "family doctor", way back before
his marriage, when he had first begun to notice symptoms of
stomach-trouble. He had suggested timidly that there might be
something wrong with his diet, and that if the doctor would tell him
exactly what he ought to eat, and how much and how often, he would
be glad to adopt the regimen. But the doctor had only laughed and
answered, "Nonsense, boy--don't you get to thinking about your
food!" And so Thyrsis had gone away, to follow the old plan of
eating what he liked. Health, it would seem, must be a spontaneous
and accidental thing, it could not be a deliberate and reasoned
thing.

But now he and Corydon became smitten with a passion of shame for
all their stupidity and their gluttony; they invested in Fletcher's
books, and set out upon this new adventure. They would help
themselves to a very small saucerful of food; and they would take of
this a very small spoonful--and chew--and chew--and chew. Mr.
Fletcher said that half an hour a day was enough for the eating of
the food one needed; but they, apparently, could have chewed for
hours, and still been hungry. They labored religiously to stop as
soon as they could pretend to be satisfied; the result of which was
that Thyrsis lost fourteen pounds in as many days--and it was many a
long year before he got those fourteen pounds back! He became still
more "spiritual" in his aspect; until finally he and Corydon set out
for a walk one day, and coming up a hill to their home they gave out
altogether, and first Thyrsis had to crawl up the hill and get
something to eat, and then take something down to Corydon!

However, in spite of all their blunders, this new idea was of
genuine benefit to them; at least it put them upon the right
track--it taught them the relationship between diet and disease.
They saw the two as cause and consequence--they watched the food
they ate affecting their bodies as one might watch a match affecting
a thermometer. They were no longer victims of the idea that health
must be a spontaneous and accidental thing--they were set
definitely to thinking about it, as something that could be achieved
by will and intelligence.

But the right knowledge lay far in the future; and meantime they
were groping in ignorance, and disease was still a mysterious
visitation that came upon them out of the night. "Thus saith the
Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. And there shall be a
great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there hath been
none like it, nor shall be like it any more."

Their own firstborn had low been on the _regime_ of the "child
specialist" for a year and a half. He was big and fat and rosy, and
according to all the standards they knew, a picture of health. He
was the pride of his parents' hearts--the one success they had
achieved, and to which they could turn their eyes. He was a
frightful burden to them--the most noisy and irrepressible of
children. But they struggled and worried along with him, and were
proud of him--and even, in a stormy sort of way, were happy with
him. But now a calamity fell upon him, bringing them the most
terrible distress they had yet had to face in their lives.

Section 9. It was all the worse because they laid the blame upon
themselves. They were accustomed to attribute sickness to this or
that trivial cause--if Corydon caught a cold, it was because she had
sat in a draught, and if Thyrsis was laid up with tonsilitis, it was
because he had gone out for kindling-wood without his hat. It had
been their wont to bundle the child up and turn him out to play; and
one very cold day he had stood a long time under the woodshed, and
had got chilled. So that night his head was hot, and he was fretful;
and in the morning he would not eat, and apparently had a fever.
They sent off in haste for the doctor; and the doctor came and
examined him, and shook his head and looked very grave. It was
pneumonia, he said, and a serious case.

So Corydon and Thyrsis had to put all things else aside, and gird
themselves for a siege. There were medicines to be administered
every hour, and minute precautions to be taken to keep the patient
from the slightest chill; he must be in a warm room, and yet with
some ventilation. All these things they attended to, and then they
would sit and gaze at the sufferer, dumb with grief and fear.
Through the night Thyrsis sat by the bedside, while Cedric babbled
and raved in delirium; and no suffering that he had ever experienced
was equal to this.

How he loved this baby, how passionately, how cruelly! How he clung
to him, blindly and desperately--the thought of losing him simply
tore his heart to pieces! He would hold the hot hands, he would
touch the little body; how he loved that body, that was so beautiful
and soft and white! How many times he had bathed it and dressed it
and hugged it to him! He would sit and listen to the fevered
prattle, full of childish phrases which brought before him the
childish soul--the wonderful, lovable thing, so merry and eager, so
full of mischief and curiosity; with strange impulses of tenderness,
and flashes of intelligence that thrilled one, and opened long
vistas to the imagination. He was all they had, this baby--he was
all they had saved out of the ruin of their lives, out of the
shipwreck of their love. What sacrifices they had made for him--what
agonies he represented! And now, the idea that they might never see
him, nor touch him, nor hear his voice again!

Also would come agonies of remorse. Thyrsis would face the blunder
they had made--it might have been avoided so easily, and now it was
irrevocable! His whole body would shake with silent sobbing. Ah,
this curse of their lives, this hideous shame--that they had not
even been able to take proper care of their child! This wrong, too,
the world meant to inflict upon them--this supreme vengeance, this
cruel punishment!

Section 10. The doctor came next morning, and found the patient
worse. This was the crisis, he said; if the little one lived through
the night--And there he paused, seeing the agony in the eyes of the
mother and father. They would do all they could, he said; they must
hope for the best.

So the siege went on. Thyrsis sat through the night again--and
Corydon, who could not rest either, would come into the room every
little while, and listen and watch. They would hold each other's
hand for hours, dumb with suffering; ghostly presences seemed to
haunt the sick-chamber and set them to trembling. Thyrsis found
himself thinking of that most terrible of all ballads, "The
Erl-King". How he had shuddered once, hearing it sung!--

"Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind!"

All through the night he seemed to hear the hammer-strokes of the
horse's hoofs echoing through his soul.

The child lived through the night, but the crisis was not yet over.
The fever held on; the issue of life and death seemed to hang upon
the flutter of an eyelid. There was one more night to be sat through
and Thyrsis, whose restless intellect must needs be dealing with all
issues, had by then fought his way through this terror also. They
must get control of themselves at all hazards, he said; they must
face the facts. If so the child should die--

He tried to say something of the sort to Corydon, seeking to steady
her. But Corydon became almost frantic at his words. "You must not
say such a thing, you must not think such a thing!" she cried.

Corydon had been reading about "new thought", and she insisted that
would be "holding the idea" of death over the child. "The thing for
us to do," she said, "is to make up our minds--he must live, we must
_know_ that he will live!"--It was no time to argue about
metaphysics, but Thyrsis found this proposition a source of great
perplexity. How could a man make himself know what he did not know?

The crisis passed, and the child lived. But the illness continued
for a couple of weeks--and how pitiful it was to see their baby,
that had been so big and rosy, and was now pale and thin and weak!
And when at last he got up and went outdoors again, he caught a
cold, and there was a relapse, and another siege of the dread
disease; the doctor had not warned them sufficiently, it seemed. So
there was a week or two more of watching and worrying; and then they
had to face the fact that little Cedric would be delicate for a long
while--would need to be guarded with care all through the spring.

Thyrsis blamed himself for all that had happened; the weight of it
rested upon him forever afterwards, as if it were some crime he had
committed. Sometimes when he was overwrought and overdriven, he
would lie awake in the small hours of the morning, and this spectre
would come and sit by him. He had made a martyr of the child he
loved, he had sacrificed it to what he called his art; and how had
he dared to do it?

It was hard to think of a more cruel question to put to a man.
Himself, no doubt, he might scourge and drive and wreck; but this
child--what were the child's rights? Thyrsis would try to weigh them
against the claims of posterity. What his own work might be, he
knew; and to what extent should he sacrifice it to the unknown
possibilities of his son? Some sacrifice there had to be--such was
the stern decree of the "economic screw."

So Thyrsis once more was a field of warring motives; once more he
faced the curse of his life--that he could not be as other men, he
could not have other men's virtues. It was the latest aspect, and
the most tragic, of that impulse in him which had made him fight so
hard against marriage; which had made him quote to Corydon the lines
of the outlaw's song--

   "The fiend whose lantern lights the mead
        Were better mate than I!"






BOOK XVI

THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM





_The scarlet flush of morning was in the sky; and they stood upon the
hill again, and watched the color spreading.

"We must go," she was saying. "But it was worthwhile to come."

"It was all worth-while," he said--"all!"

And she smiled, and quoted some lines from the poem--

   "Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;
        Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!
            Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,
        If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,
            If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest!"_

Section 1. This illness of the baby's had been a fearful drain upon
their strength; and Thyrsis perceived that they had now got to a
point where they could no longer stand alone. There must be a
servant in the house, to help Corydon, and do for the baby what had
to be done. It was a hard decision for him to face, for his money
was almost gone, and the book loomed larger than ever. But there was
no escaping the necessity.

They would get a married couple, they decided--the man could pay
for himself by working the farm. So they put an advertisement in a
city paper, and perused the scores of mis-spelled replies. After due
correspondence, and much consultation, they decided upon Patrick and
Mary Flanagan; and Thyrsis hired a two-seated carriage and drove in
to meet them at the depot.

It was all very funny; years afterwards, when the clouds of tragedy
were dispersed, they were able to laugh over the situation. Thyrsis
had been used to servants in boyhood, but that was before he had
acquired any ideas as to universal brotherhood and the rights of
man. Now he hated all the symbols and symptoms of mastership; he
shrunk from any sort of clash with unlovely personalities--he would
be courteous and deprecating to the very tramp who came to his door
to beg. And here were Patrick and Mary, very Irish, enormously
stout, and devotedly Roman Catholic, having spent all their lives as
caretakers of "gentlemen's country-places". They had most precise
ideas as to what gentlemen's country-places should be, and how they
should be equipped, and how the gentlemen of the country-places
should treat their servants. And needless to say, they found nothing
in this new situation which met with their approval. There were
signs of humiliating poverty everywhere, and the farm-outfit was
inadequate. As to the master and mistress, they must have been
puzzling phenomena for Patrick and Mary to make up their minds
about--possessing so many of the attributes of the lady and
gentleman, and yet being lacking in so many others!

Patrick was a precise and particular person; he wanted his work laid
out just so, and then he would do it without interference. As for
Mary--he stood in awe of Mary himself, and so he accepted the idea
that Corydon and Thyrsis should stand in awe of her too. Mary it was
who announced that their dietary was inadequate; she took no stock
at all in Fletcher and Chittenden--she knew that working-people
must have meat at least four times a week. Also Mary maintained that
their room was not large enough for so stout a couple. Also she
arranged it that Corydon and Thyrsis should get the dinner on
Sundays--the Roman Catholic church being five miles away, and the
hour of mass being late, and the horse very old and slow.

For two months Corydon and Thyrsis struggled along under the dark
and terrible shadow of the disapproval of the Flanagan family. Then
one day there came a violent crisis between Corydon and
Mary--occasioned by a discussion of the effect of an excess of
grease upon the digestibility of potato-starch. Corydon fled in
tears to her husband, who started for the kitchen forthwith, meaning
to dispose of the Flanagans; when, to his vast astonishment, Corydon
experienced one of her surges of energy, and thrust him to one side,
and striding out upon the field of combat, proceeded to deliver herself
of her pent-up sentiments. It was a discourse in the grandest style of
tragedy, and Mary Flanagan was quite dumbfounded--apparently this was
a "lady" after all! So the Flanagan family packed its belongings and
departed in a chastened frame of mind; and Corydon turned to her
spouse, her eyes still flashing, and remarked, "If only I had talked
to her that way from the beginning!"

Section 2. Then once more there was answering of advertisements, and
another couple was spewed forth from the maw of the metropolis--"Henery
and Bessie Dobbs", as they subscribed themselves. "Henery" proved to
be the adult stage of the East Side "gamin"; lean and cynical, full
of slang and humor and the odor of cigarettes. He was fresh from a
"ticket-chopper's" job in the subway, and he knew no more about farming
than Thyrsis did; but he put up a clever "bluff", and was so prompt
with his wits that it was hard to find fault with him successfully.
As for his wife, she had come out of a paper-box factory, and was as
skilled at housekeeping as her husband was at agriculture; she was
frail and consumptive, and told Corydon the story of her pitiful
life, with the result that she was able to impose upon her even more
than her predecessor had done.

"Henery" was slow at pitching hay and loading stone, but when the
season came, he developed a genius for peddling fruit; he was always
hungry for any sort of chance to bargain, and was forever coming
upon things which Thyrsis ought to buy. Very quickly the
neighborhood discovered this propensity of his, and there was a
constant stream of farmers who came to offer second-hand buggies,
and wind-broken horses, and dried-up cows, and patent hay-rakes and
churns and corn-shellers at reduced values; all of which rather
tended to reveal to Thyrsis the unlovely aspects of his neighbors,
and to weaken his faith in the perfectibility of the race.

Among Henery's discoveries was a pair of aged and emaciated mules.
He became eloquent as to how he could fatten up these mules and what
crops he could raise in the spring. So Thyrsis bought the mules, and
also a supply of feed; but the fattening process failed to take
effect-for the reason, as Thyrsis finally discovered, that the mules
were in need of new teeth. When the plowing season began, Henery at
first expended a vast amount of energy in beating the creatures with
a stick, but finally he put his inventive genius to work, and
devised a way to drive them without beating. It was some time before
Thyrsis noted the change; when he made inquiries, he learned to his
consternation that the ingenious Henery had fixed up the stick with
a pin in the end!

At any time of the day one might stand upon the piazza of the house
and gaze out across the corn-field, and see a long procession
marching through the furrow. First there came the mules, and then
came the plow, and then came Henery; and after Henery followed the
dog, and after the dog followed the baby, and after the baby
followed a train of chickens, foraging for worms. Little Cedric was
apparently content to trot back and forth in the field for hours;
which to his much-occupied parents seemed a delightful solution of
a problem. But it happened one day when they had a visit from Mr.
Harding, that Thyrsis and the clergyman came round the side of the
house, and discovered the child engaged in trying to drag a heavy
arm-chair through a door that was too small for it. He was wrestling
like a young titan, purple in the face with rage; and shouting, in a
perfect reproduction of Henery's voice and accent, "Come round here,
God damn you, come round here!"

There were many such drawbacks to be balanced against the joys of
"life on a farm". Thyrsis reflected with a bitter smile that his
experiences and Corydon's had been calculated to destroy their
illusions as to several kinds of romance. They had tried "Grub
Street", and the poet's garret, and the cultivating of literature
upon a little oatmeal; they had not found that a joyful adventure.
They had tried the gypsy style of existence; they had gone back "to
the bosom of nature"--and had found it a cold and stony bosom. They
had tried out "love in a cottage", and the story-writer's dream of
domestic raptures. And now they were chasing another will o' the
wisp--that of "amateur farming"! When Thyrsis had purchased half the
old junk in the township, and had seen the mules go lame, and the
cows break into the pear-orchard and "founder" themselves; when he
had expended two hundred dollars' worth of money and two thousand
dollars' worth of energy to raise one hundred dollars' worth of
vegetables and fruit, he framed for himself the conclusion that a
farm is an excellent place for a literary man, provided that he can
be kept from farming it.

Section 3. As the result of such extravagances, when they had got as
far as the month of February, Thyrsis' bank-account had sunk to
almost nothing. However, he had been getting ready for this
emergency; he had prepared a _scenario_ of his new book, setting
forth the ideas it would contain and the form which it would take.
This he sent to his publisher, with a letter saying that he wanted
the same contract and the same advance as before.

And again he waited in breathless suspense. He knew that he had here
a work of vital import, one that would be certain to make a
sensation, even if it did not sell like a novel. It was, to be sure,
a radical book--perhaps the most radical ever published in America;
but on the other hand, it dealt with questions of literature and
philosophy, where occasionally even respectable and conservative
reviews permitted themselves to dally with ideas. Thyrsis was hoping
that the publisher might see prestige and publicity in the
adventure, and decide to take a chance; when this proved to be the
case, he sank back with a vast sigh of relief. He had now money
enough to last until midsummer, and by that time the book would be
more than half done--and also the farm would be paying.

But alas, it seemed with them that strokes of calamity always
followed upon strokes of good fortune. At this time Corydon's
ailments became acute, and her nervous crises were no longer to be
borne. There were anxious consultations on the subject, and finally
it was decided that she should consult another "specialist". This
was an uncle of Mr. Harding's, a man of most unusual character, the
clergyman declared; the latter was going to the city, and would be
glad to introduce Corydon.

So, a couple of days later came to Thyrsis a letter, conveying the
tidings that she was discovered to be suffering from an abdominal
tumor, and should undergo an immediate operation. It would cost a
hundred dollars, and the hospital expenses would be at least as
much; which meant that, with the bill-paying that had already taken
place, their money would all be gone at the outset!

But Thyrsis did not waste any time in lamenting the inevitable. He
was rather glad of the tidings, on the whole--at least there was a
definite cause for Corydon's suffering, and a prospect of an end to
it. Both of them had still their touching faith in doctors and
surgeons, as speaking with final and godlike authority upon matters
beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mind. The operation would
not be dangerous, Corydon wrote, and it would make a new woman of
her.

"If I could only have Delia Gordon with me," she added, "then my
happiness would be complete. Only think of it, she left for Africa
last week! I know she would have waited, if she'd known about this.

"However, I shall make out. Mr. Harding is going to be in town for
more than a week--he is attending a conference of some sort, and he
has promised to come and see me in the hospital. I think he likes to
do such things--he has the queerest professional air about it, so
that you feel you are being sympathized with for the glory of God.
But really he is very beautiful and good, and I think you have never
appreciated him. I am happy to-day, almost exhilarated; I feel as if
I were about to escape from a dungeon."

Section 4. Such was the mood in which she went to her strange
experience. She liked the hospital-room, tiny, but immaculately
clean; she liked the nurses, who seemed to her to be altogether
superior and exemplary beings--moving with such silence and
assurance about their various tasks. She slept soundly, and in the
morning they combed and plaited her hair and prepared her for the
ceremony. There came a bunch of roses to her room, with a card from
Mr. Harding; and these were exquisite, and made her happy, so that,
when the doctor arrived, she went almost gaily to the operating-room.

Everything there aroused her curiosity; the pure white walls and
ceiling, shining with matchless cleanness, the glittering
instruments arranged carefully on glass tables, the attentive and
pleasant-faced nurses, standing also in pure white, and the doctor
in his vestments, smiling reassuringly. In the centre of the room
was a large glass table, long enough for a reclining body, and
through the sky-light the sun poured a pleasing radiance over all.
"How beautiful!" exclaimed Corydon; and the nurses exchanged
glances, and the old doctor failed to hide an expression of
surprise.

"I wish all my patients felt like that," said he. "Now climb up on
the table."

Corydon promptly did so, and another doctor who was to administer
the anaesthetic came to her side. "Take a very deep breath, please,"
he said, as he placed over her mouth a white, cone-shaped thing that
had a rather suffocating odor. Corydon was obedience itself, and
breathed.

In a moment her body seemed to be falling from her. "Oh, I don't
like it!" she gasped.

"Breathe deeply, and count as far as you can," came a voice from far
above her.

"Stop!" whispered Corydon. "Oh, I don't want--I want to come back!"

Then she began to count--or rather some strange voice, not hers,
seemed to count for her; as the first numbness passed, farther and
farther away she seemed to dissolve, to become a disembodied
consciousness poised in a misty ether. And at that moment--so she
told Thyrsis afterwards--the face of Mr. Harding seemed to appear
just above her, and to look at her with a pained and startled
expression. It was a beautiful face, she thought; and she knew that
everything she felt was being immediately registered in Mr.
Harding's mind. They were two affinitized beings, suspended in the
centre of a cosmos; "their soul intelligences were all that had been
left of the sentient world after some cataclysm.

"I always knew that about us," thought Corydon, and she realized
that the face before her understood, even though at the moment it,
too, was dissolving. "I wonder why"--she mused--"why--" And then the
little spark went out.

Two hours later the doctor was bending over her, anxiously
scrutinizing her passive face. "Nurse, bring me some ice-water," he
was saying. "She takes her time coming to." And sharply he struck
her cheek and forehead with his finger-tips; but she showed no sign.

Deep down in some mysterious inner chamber, beneath the calm face,
there was being enacted a grim spirit-drama. Corydon's soul was
making a monstrous effort to return to its habitation; Corydon felt
herself hanging, a tortured speck of being, in a dark and
illimitable void. "This may be Hell," she thought. "I have neither
hands nor feet, and I cannot fight; but I can _will_ to get back!"
This effort cost her inexpressible agony.

A strange incessant throbbing was going on in the black pit over
which she seemed suspended. It had a kind of rhythm--metallic, and
yet with a human resonance. It began way down somewhere, and
proceeded with maddening accuracy to ascend through the semi-tones
of a gigantic scale. Each beat was agony to her; it ascended to a
certain pitch in merciless crescendo, then fell to the bottom again,
and began anew its swift, maddeningly accurate ascent. Each time it
ascended a little higher, and always straining her endurance to the
uttermost, and bringing a more vivid realization of agony. "Will you
stop here," it seemed to pulsate. "No, no, I will go on," willed
Corydon. "You shall not keep me, I must escape, I must _get out_."
But it kept up incessantly, ruthlessly, its strange, formless,
soundless din, until the spirit writhed in its grasp.