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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 t.i.tle 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.