Thyrsis went about quite drunk with the burning words with which the minstrel won the lady, and tore her free from the mockeries of convention, and that divinity that doth hedge about a princess. He bore her away, locked tightly in his arms, and all his own--into the great lonely mountains; and there lived the minstrel and the princess, the lord and the lady of an outlaw band. But the outlaws were cruel, and the minstrel sought goodness; and so there was a struggle, and he and the lady went yet deeper into the black forest, where they dwelt alone in a hut, he a prince of hunters and she a princess of love. But the outlaws led the despot to the place, and there was a battle; the princess was slain, and the minstrel escaped in the darkness. All night he roamed the forest, and in the morning he lay by the roadside with a bow in his hand, and when the despot rode by he rose and drove the shaft through his heart. Then they captured him, and tortured him, and he died with a song of mockery and defiance upon his lips.
Section 16. Now, when these things first came to Thyrsis, he whispered in awe that it would be a life-time before he could write them. And a year pa.s.sed thus, while every emotion of his life poured itself into some part of that story, and every note of music that he heard came out of the minstrel"s heart. At last the time came when he was so full of it that he could no longer find peace; when the wonder of it was such that he walked along the street laughing, and with tears in his eyes. Then he said to himself, "It must be done! Now! Now!" And he looked about him as a woman might, seeking some place for her labor.
That was in the late winter, when the professors at the university, and all his relatives and acquaintances, had given him up as a hopeless case. He had stopped all his writing for money--he had a hundred dollars laid by, and that would suffice him; and he was wandering about whispering to himself: "The spring-time! The spring-time! For it must be in the country!" When April had come he could stand it no longer--he must go! So he left all behind him, and set out for a place in the wilderness.
When he reached it, he found a lake that was all ice, and mountains that were all snow; the country people, who had never seen a poet, and knew not the subtle difference between inspiration and insanity, heard with wonder that he was going out into the woods. But he set out alone, through the snowy forest and along the lake-sh.o.r.e, to find some place far away, where he could build a hut, or even put up a tent; and when he was miles from the village, he came suddenly on a little wonderland that made his heart leap like the wild deer in the brake. Here was a dreamland palace, a vision beyond all thinking--a little shanty built of logs! It stood in a pretty dell, with a mountain streamlet dashing through it, and the mighty forest hiding it, and the lake spread out in front of it. It was all wet snow, and freezing rain, and mud and desolation; but Thyrsis saw the summer that was to be, and he sat down upon a stone and gazed at it, and laughed and sang for wonder and joy.
Then he fled back to the village, and found the owner of the earthly rights to this paradise, and hired it for a little gold; and then he moved out, in spite of the snow. At last his soul was free!
Twice a week they brought him provisions, and there he stayed. At first he nearly froze at night, and he had to write with his gloves on; but he did not feel the cold, because of the fire within. He climbed the mountains and yelled with the mad wind, and tramped through the bare, rocking forest, singing his minstrel songs. And all these days he walked with G.o.d, and there was no world at all save the world of nature.
Millions of young-hearted things sprang up out of the ground to welcome him; the forests shook out their dazzling sheen, and the wild birds went mad in the mornings. All the time Thyrsis was writing, writing--thrilling with his ecstasy, and pouring out all his soul.
He kept a little diary these days, and for weeks there was but one entry--"The book! The book!"
And then one day came a letter from his mother, saying that she was coming to the village nearby to spend the summer; also that Corydon"s mother was coming, and that Corydon would be with her!
BOOK II
THE SNARE
_The streamlet tinkled on. She sat, gazing about her at each familiar tree and rock. And meanwhile he was reading again from the book--
"Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first a.s.say"d!"
"Is that from "Thyrsis"?" she asked. "Read me those lines that we used, to love so much."
And so he turned the page, and read again--
"A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, Shy to illumine; and I seek it, too.
This does not come with houses or with gold, With place, with honor, and a flattering crew: "Tis not in the world"s market bought and sold-- But the smooth-slipping weeks Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired; Out of the heed of mortals he is gone, He wends unfollow"d, he must house alone; Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired."_
Section 1. On the train Corydon was writing a letter to a friend, to say where she was going, and that Thyrsis was there. "I don"t expect to see anything of him," she wrote. "He grows more egotistical and more contemptuous every day, and I cordially dislike him."
But when a man has spent three or four weeks with no company save the squirrels and the owls, there comes over him a mood of sociability, when the sight of a friendly face is an event. Thyrsis had now written several chapters of his book, and the first fury of his creative impulse had spent itself. So when Corydon stepped from the train, she found him waiting there to greet her; and he told her that he was laying in supplies for a feast, and that on the morrow she and her mother were to come out and see his fairy-palace and have a picnic dinner.
They came; and the May put on her finest raiment for their greeting. The sun shone warm and bright, and there was a humming and stirring in gra.s.s and thicket; one could feel the surge of the spring-time growth as a living flood. There was a glory of young green over the hill-sides, and a quivering sheen of white in the aspens and birches. Corydon clasped her hands and cried out in rapture when she saw it.
And Thyrsis, picturesque in his old corduroy trousers and his grey flannel shirt, played the host. He showed them his domestic establishment--wherein things were set in order for the first time since he had come. He told all his adventures: how the cold had crept in at night, and he had to fiddle to keep his courage up; how he had slept in a canvas-cot for the first time, and piled all the bedding on top, and wondered that he was cold; how he had left the pail with the freshly-roasted beef on the piazza, and a wild cat had carried off pail and all. He made fun of his amateur house-keeping--he would forget things and let them burn, or let the fire go out; and he had tried living altogether on cold food, to the great perplexity of his stomach.
Then he gave a demonstration of his hard-won culinary skill. He boiled rice and raisins, and fried bacon and eggs; and they had fresh bread and b.u.t.ter, and jam and pickles, and a festive cake. And after they had feasted, Thyrsis stretched himself and leaned back against the trunk of a tree, and gazed up at the sky, quoting the words of a certain one-eyed Kalandar, son of a king, "Verily, this indeed is life! "Tis pity "tis fleeting!"
Afterwards he took Corydon for a walk. They climbed the hill where he came to battle with the stormwinds, and to watch the sunsets and the moon rising over the lake. And then they went down into the glen, where the mountain streamlet tumbled. Here had been wood-sorrel, and a carpet of the white trillium; and now there was adder"s tongue, quaint and saucy, and columbine, and the pale dusty corydalis. There was soft new moss underfoot, and one walked as if in a temple.
Thyrsis pointed out a seat beside a deep bubbling pool. "Here"s where I sit and write," he said.
"And how comes the book?" asked Corydon.
"Oh, I"m hammering at it--that"s the best I can say."
"What is it?"
"Why--it"s a story. I suppose it"ll be called a romance, though I don"t like the word."
Corydon pondered for a moment. "I wouldn"t expect you to be writing anything romantic," she said.
Thyrsis, occupied with his own thoughts, observed, "I might call it a revolutionary romance."
"What is it about?"
He hesitated. "It happens in the middle ages," he said. "There"s a minstrel and a princess."
"That sounds interesting," said Corydon.
Now in the period of pregnancy the artist"s mood is one of secretiveness. But afterwards there comes a time for promulgation and rejoicing; and already there had been hints of this in the mind of Thyrsis. The great secret that he was cherishing--what would be the world"s reception of it? And now suddenly a wild idea came to him. He had heard somewhere that it is the women who read fiction. And was not Corydon a perfect specimen of the average middle-cla.s.s young lady, and therefore of that mysterious potentiality, "the public", to which he must appeal? Why not see what she would think of it?
He took the plunge. "Would you like me to read it to you?" he asked.
"Why, certainly," she replied, and then added, gently, "If it wouldn"t be a desecration."
"Oh, no," said Thyrsis. "You see, when it"s been printed, all sorts of people will read it."
So he went back to the house and brought the precious ma.n.u.script; and he placed Corydon in the seat of inspiration, and sat beside her and read.
In many ways this was a revolutionary romance. Thyrsis had not spent any of his time delving into other people"s books for "local color"; he was not relying for his effects upon gabardines and hauberks, and a sprinkling of "Yea, sires," and "prithees." His castle was but the vaguely outlined background of a stage upon which living hearts wrought out their pa.s.sions. One saw the banquet-hall, with its tapestries and splendor, and the master of it, the man of force; there were swift scenes that gave one a glimpse of the age-long state of things--
"Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne."
There was a quarrel, and a cruel sentence about to be executed; and then the minstrel came. His fame had come before him, and so the despot, in half-drunken playfulness, left the deciding of the quarrel to him. He was brought to the head of the table, and the princess was led in; and so these two met face to face.
Here Thyrsis paused, and asked, "Are you interested?"
"Go on, go on," said Corydon.
So he read about his princess, who was the embodiment of all the virtues of the unknown G.o.ddess of his fancy. She was proud yet humble, aloof yet compa.s.sionate, and above all ineffably beautiful. And as for the minstrel--
"The minstrel was fair and young.
His heart was of love and fire."
He took his harp, and first he pacified the quarrel, and then he sang to the lady. He sang of love, and the poet"s vision of beauty; but most of all he sang of the free life of the open. He sang of the dreams and the spirit-companions of the minstrel, and of the wondrous magic that he wields--
"Secrets of all future ages Hover in mine ecstasy; Treasures never known to mortals Hath my fancy hid for thee!"