"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 pa.s.sionate, 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 G.o.ddess!
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 pa.s.s, 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 att.i.tude; 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 matinee, 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 pa.s.sing round of the ma.n.u.script 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 Antinous, and other remote subjects. Thyrsis a.s.sumed 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?