Thyrsis had never heard such a speech as this in his life. When it was over, he went up to the platform where Darrell sat, looking more exhausted and pain-driven than ever; and in a few hesitating words he told of his interest, and asked for the speaker"s address, that he might write to him. And that night he posted a letter, introducing himself as a young writer, who felt impelled to learn more about Darrell"s ideas.
In reply came a note from the other, asking him to dine with him; and Thyrsis answered accepting.
Then, as chance would have it, he mentioned the circ.u.mstance to his mother. "Darrell!" she cried. "You don"t mean Henry Darrell!"
"Yes," said Thyrsis. "Why?"
"And you would meet that man?"
"Why not?" he asked, perplexed.
"Haven"t you read anything about him in the papers? That monster!"
"What do you mean?"
"A man who deserted his wife and children, and left them to starve, and ran away with some rich woman!"
Thyrsis recollected vaguely some sensational headlines, about the clergyman and college professor who had done the shocking things his mother spoke of, and was now a social outcast, and a preacher of anarchy and revolution. He recalled also that there had been a woman, beautiful and richly-dressed, with Darrell at the meeting.
The boy was not disturbed by all this, for he had long ago made up his mind that every man had to work out his own s.e.x-problems; in fact, his first impulse was to admire a man who had had the courage to face the world upon such an issue. But he was sorry he had mentioned it to his mother, for she wept bitterly when she found that he meant to accept the invitation. That was the culmination of her life"s defeat--that her son, who had been designed for a bishop, should be going to sit at table with Henry Darrell and his paramour!
Section 9. Thyrsis went to the apartment-hotel where Darrell lived, and was introduced to the beautiful lady as Mrs. Darrell, and they went down to the dining-room--where he noticed that everyone turned to stare at them as they entered. It made him feel that he must be doing something quite desperate; and yet it was not easy to imagine any wickedness of the man opposite to him--his voice was so kind, and his smile so gentle, and his whole aspect so appealing. He was dressed in black, and wore a soft black bow at his throat, which made still more conspicuous the pallor of his face; Thyrsis had never met a man he took to more quickly--there was something about him that was like a little child, calling for affection and sympathy.
Yet, also, there was the mind of a thinker. He was a man of culture, in the most vital sense of the word; he had swept the heavens of thought with a powerful telescope--had travelled, and knew many languages, and their literatures and arts. He had tested them all by a strong acid of his own; so that to talk with him was to discover the feet of clay of one"s idols.
He spoke of Dante and Angelo, who were two of his heroes; he told of great experiences among the latter"s t.i.tan frescos. He spoke of Mazzini, whose greatness as a writer the world had yet to appreciate; he spoke also of Wagner, whose music he valued less than his critical and polemical work. He told of modern artists both in Germany and Italy--revolutionary forces of whom Thyrsis had never heard at all. The day must come, said Darrell, when Americans would discover the great movements of contemporary thought, and realize their own provincialness.
America thought of itself as "the land of the free", and that made it hard to teach. It was obvious enough that there had never been any real freedom in America--only government by propertied cla.s.ses. The Revolution had been a rebellion of country gentlemen and city merchants; as one might know from the "const.i.tution" they had adopted--one of the greatest barriers to human progress ever devised. And so with the Civil War, which to Darrell was one of the deeds of the newly-risen monster of Capitalism.
They went upstairs again, and Thyrsis found another man seated in the drawing-room. He was introduced by the name of Paret, and Thyrsis recognized him as the editor of "The Beacon", a magazine of which he had chanced upon a copy some time before. It was the first Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it had repelled him because its editor had printed his own picture in a conspicuous place, and also because in his leading editorial he had dealt flippantly with an eminent reformer and philanthropist for whom Thyrsis had a profound respect.
But here was the editor himself--not merely his photograph: a little man, clad in evening dress, very neat and dapper. He had a black beard, trimmed to a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he impressed Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles. He lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to talk; save that every now and then he would punctuate the discussion with some droll reflection that stuck in one"s mind like a burr.
Some one spoke of certain evangelists who were conducting a temperance campaign among the workers in the steel-mills. Said Paret: "If I had to live in h.e.l.l, I"m sure I"d rather be drunk than sober!" And a little later Thyrsis spoke of a novel he had been reading, which set out to solve the problem of "capital and labor". Its solution seemed to be for the handsome young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, "No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again, Darrell was telling about the ten years"
struggle he had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given up in despair. Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-man, he understands a business proposition, and you can get somewhere; but when you talk with a preacher, and you think he"s been understanding you, you find that all the time he"s been thinking what Moses would have said about it."
There came other guests: a German, hard-fisted, bullet-headed--editor of an East Side labor-paper. Some one spoke of working-men losing their votes through being unemployed and cast adrift; and Thyrsis remembered this man"s grim comment, "They lose their votes, but they don"t lose their voices!" There came a young man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal battering-ram shook the inst.i.tutions of society so as to frighten even the author of "The Higher Cannibalism". There came also a poetess, whose work he had seen in the magazines, and with her a Russian youth who had come to study the thought of America, and was now going home, because America had no thought. Thyrsis had a good deal of patriotism left in him, and might have been angered by this stripling"s contempt; but the stripling spoke with such quiet a.s.surance, and his contempt was so boundless as to frighten one. "These people," he said--"they simply do not know what the intellectual life means!"
When Thyrsis went home that evening, he carried with him new ideas to ponder; also some of Darrell"s pamphlets and speeches--the product of his ten years" struggle to make the teachings of Christ of some authority in the Christian Church. Thyrsis sat up late, and read one of these pamphlets, an indictment of Capitalism from the point of view of the artist and spiritual creator. It was a magnificent piece of writing; it came to Thyrsis like an echo out of his own life. So, before he slept that night he had written a letter to Darrell, telling of his struggles and his defeats. "I do not ask you to help _me_" he wrote. "I ask you to read my work, and decide if that be worth saving. For ashamed as I am to say it, I am at the end of my resources, and if some help does not come, I do not know what will become of me."
Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and successful of the earth--the publishers and editors and authors, the college professors and clergymen, the statesmen and capitalists and philanthropists. And now, for the first time, he tried the Socialists. He trembled when he opened Darrell"s reply. Could it be that this man would be like all the rest?
But no, he was different! "Dear Brother:" he wrote. "I understand what you have told me, and I appreciate your position. Send me your ma.n.u.scripts at once; I leave to-morrow for a lecture-trip, and on my way I will read everything, and let you hear from me on my return. In the meantime, I should add that I am helping two Socialist publications, and a good many individuals too, and that my resources have been absurdly exaggerated in the public prints. I say this, that you may not overestimate what I might possibly be able to do."
Section 10. So Thyrsis sent a ma.n.u.script of his play, and a copy of his first novel, and a set of proofs of "The Hearer of Truth"; and then for a couple of weeks he waited in suspense and dread. He could not see how a man like Henry Darrell could fail to appreciate his work; but on the other hand, after so many disappointments and rebuffs, how could he bring himself to believe that any one would really give him aid?
At last came a second letter; a letter full of warm-hearted sympathy--pointing out the faults of immaturity in his work, but also recognizing its real merits. It closed with this all-important sentence: "I will do what I can to help you, so come and let us talk it over."
Thyrsis went; and as they sat in his study, Darrell put his arm about him, and told him a little of his own career. He had begun life as a street-waif, a newsboy and bootblack; and once when he was ill, he had gone to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had given him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter he had more sick days than well. He told how, at an early age, he had gone to a country college to seek an education as a divinity-student; he had arrived, weary and footsore, and with his last cent had bought a post-card to let his mother know that he was safe He told how, as a clergyman and college professor the gospel of the time had come to him; how he had preached and labored, amid persecution and obloquy, until he had come to realize that the Church was a dead sepulchre; and how at last he had thrown everything to the winds, and given himself to the working-cla.s.s political movement.
Then Thyrsis, scrupulous as ever, said, "I know nothing about Socialism.
I mean to study it; but I might not come to believe in it--how can I tell? I would not want you to help me under any misapprehension."
At which the other smiled gently. "I am working for the truth," he said.
They talked about Thyrsis and his needs. Presumably, he said, he would have money from his new book in the fall, but meantime he wanted to take his family into the country. He could live on thirty dollars a month; it would be a matter of some two hundred and fifty dollars. Darrell said he would give him this; and Thyrsis sat there, powerless to thank him, his voice trembling, and a mist of tears in his eyes.
He went on to tell his friend of the work that he meant to do. Darrell had said that to him the Civil War was a crime; but Thyrsis did not know what he meant by that. "I believe in my country!" he said. "It has tried for high things--and it will come to them! I know that it can be thrilled and roused, and made to see the shame into which it is fallen."
Darrell pressed his arm, and answered, with a smile, "I won"t argue with you about the War; you go ahead and write your book!"
So Thyrsis went home to Corydon, as one who brings a reprieve to a prisoner under sentence of death. Such a deliverance as it was to them!
And such transports of relief and grat.i.tude as they experienced! He sang the praises of Darrell, and of the new friends he had made at Darrell"s; also he brought an invitation for Corydon to come with him to an evening reception the next week. They were anxious to meet her, he said; and Corydon was anxious to go.
But, alas, this did not work out according to expectations. Thyrsis discovered now what his wife had meant when she wrote that suffering and humiliation were breaking down her character. She could not bear to meet intellectual people, to take part in the compet.i.tion of their life.
For the most part these were men and women of intense personalities, absorbed in their own ideas, keenly critical, and not very merciful to any sort of weakness. And Corydon was morbidly aware of her own lack of accomplishments, and acutely sensitive as to what others thought about her. A strange figure she must have made in any one"s drawing-room--with the old dress she had fixed up, and the lace-collar she had borrowed for the occasion, and the sad face with the large dark eyes. The talk of the company ran to politics; and Corydon had nothing to say about politics.
She could only sit in a corner while Thyrsis talked, and suffer agonies of humiliation.
To make matters worse, there came a literary lion that evening; one of the few modern writers whose books Corydon knew and loved. But when they were introduced, he scarcely looked at her; he went on talking to an East Side poetess whose opinions were fluent and ready. So Corydon found herself shunted into a corner with an unknown old lady. It was one of Corydon"s peculiarities that she abhorred old ladies; and this one questioned her about the feeding of infants and told her that she was ill-equipped for the responsibilities of motherhood!
On her way home she poured out her bitterness to Thyrsis. "I can see exactly how it is," she said. "They all think you"ve married a pretty face!"
"You haven"t given them much chance to think otherwise," he pleaded.
"They don"t want any chance," she exclaimed. "They"ve got it all settled! You are the rising light, which is to astonish the world--and I"m your youthful blunder. I stay at home and take care of the baby, and they all feel sorry for you."
"Do you want them to feel sorry for _you?_" he asked.
To which Corydon answered, "I don"t want them to know about me at all. I want to get away, and stay by myself, and get back my self-respect."
And so it was decided that in a couple of weeks more--the first of April--they would shake the dust of the city from their feet. They sent for their tent and other goods, and began inquiring about a place to camp.
Section 11. A few days more pa.s.sed; and then, one Sundav morning, Thyrsis" mother came to him in tears, with a copy of a newspaper "magazine-supplement" in her hand.
"Look at this!" she cried; and Thyrsis stared.
There was a full-page article, with many ill.u.s.trations, and a headline two inches deep--"Henry Darrell to found Free-Love Colony! Ex-college professor and clergyman buys farm to teach his doctrines." There was a picture of Darrell, standing upon a ladder and nailing up an announcement of his defiance to the inst.i.tution of marriage; and there were pictures of his wife and child, and of the farm he had bought, and a long account of the colony which he was organizing, and in which he meant to preach and practice his ideas of "free love".
Thyrsis was half dazed. "I don"t believe it!" he cried; whereat his mother wrung her hands.
"Not believe it!" she exclaimed. "Why, the paper even gives the price he paid for the place!"
So Thyrsis took the article and went to see Henry Darrell again; and there followed one of the most painful experiences of his life.
He found his friend like a man blasted by a stroke of lightning. His very physical appearance was altered; his voice shook and his eyes were wild, and he paced the room, his whole aspect one cry of agony.
He pointed Thyrsis to a lot of clippings that lay upon the table--the first editorial comments upon this new p.r.o.nouncement. There was one from an evening paper, which had close upon a million circulation, and had devoted its whole editorial page to a scathing denunciation, in which it was declared that "Prof. Darrell"s morality is that of the higher apes."
"Think of it!" the man cried. "And the thing will go from one end of the country to the other!"
"But"--gasped Thyrsis, bewildered--"then it is not true?"