Thyrsis was unmoved by this miracle. "I suppose," he said, "you"ll be hearing voices yourself, and going with her. Tell me, is she pretty?"
"You wouldn"t call her pretty," said Corydon, after a little thought.
"She"s just--just dear. Oh, Thyrsis, I simply fell in love with her!"
"You certainly chose an odd kind of an affinity," he said. "A Presbyterian missionary!"
"It"s worse than that," confessed Corydon. "She"s a Seventh-day Adventist."
"Good G.o.d! And what may that be?"
"Why, she keeps Sat.u.r.day instead of Sunday. She calls it the Sabbath.
And she thinks that "evolution" is wicked, and she believes in some kind of a h.e.l.l! She"s not just sure what kind, apparently."
"You watch out," said he, "or the first thing you know she"ll be baptizing the baby behind your back."
"Would that do any good?" asked Corydon, guilelessly.
He laughed as he answered, "It would, from her point of view."
To which she replied, "Well, if we didn"t know it and the baby didn"t, I guess it wouldn"t do any harm."
"And it might save him from some kind of a h.e.l.l!" added Thyrsis.
Section 2. Miss Gordon came the next morning, Mr. Harding with her; and the four sat out under the trees and talked. She was a girl some three years older than Corydon, but much more mature; she was short, but athletic in build, and with a bright personality. Thyrsis could see at once those fine qualities of idealism and fervor which had attracted Corydon; and to his surprise he found that, in addition to her religious virtues, the Lord had generously added a sense of humor. So Delia Gordon was really a person with whom one could have a good time.
The Lord had not been quite so generous with the Rev. Mr. Harding, apparently. Mr. Harding was about thirty years of age, tall and finely-built, with a slight, fair moustache, and a rather girlish complexion. He was evidently of a sentimental inclination, very sensitive, and a lovable person; but the sense of humor Thyrsis judged was underdeveloped. He was inclined towards social-reform, and had a club for working-boys in his town, of which he was very proud; he asked Thyrsis to come and give a literary talk to these boys, and Thyrsis replied that his views of things were hardly orthodox. When the clergyman asked for elucidation, Thyrsis added, with a smile, "I don"t believe that Jonah ever swallowed the whale". Whereupon Mr. Harding proceeded with all gravity to correct his misapprehension of this legend.
The fires of friendship, thus suddenly lighted between the two girls, continued to burn. Delia Gordon came nearly every day to see Corydon, and once or twice Corydon went down to the town and had lunch with her.
They told each other all the innermost secrets of their hearts, and in the evening Corydon would retail these to Thyrsis, who was thus put in the way to acquire that knowledge of human nature so essential to a novelist. Delia had never been in love, it seemed--her only pa.s.sion was for savage tribes along the Congo; but Mr. Harding had been involved in a heart-tragedy some time ago, and was supposed to be still inconsolable. Incredible as it might seem, he was apparently not in love with Delia.
Also, needless to say, the pair did not fail to thresh out problems of theology. Delia made in due course the dreadful discovery of the sensuous temperament; and also she probed to the depths the frightful ocean of unorthodoxy that was hid beneath the placid surface of Corydon.
But strange to say, this did not repel her, nor make any difference in their friendship. Thyrsis took that for the sign of a liberal att.i.tude, but Corydon corrected him with a shrewd observation--"She"s so sure of her own truth she can"t believe in the reality of any other. She _knows_ I"ll come to Jesus with her some day!"
It was a wonderful thing to Thyrsis to see his wife"s happiness just then; she was like a flower which has been wilting, and suddenly receives a generous shower of rain. It was just what he had prayed for; having seen all along that her wretchedness was owing to her being shut up alone with him. So now he did his best to repress his own opinions, and to let the two friends work out their problem undisturbed.
"Oh, Thyrsis," Corydon exclaimed to him, one night, "if I could only have her with me, I"d be happy always!"
"Then why don"t you get her to stay with you?" asked Thyrsis, quickly.
"Ah, but she wouldn"t think of it," said Corydon. "She doesn"t really care about anything in the world but her Congo savages!"
"We might try," said he. "When does she complete her course?"
"Not until the end of the year."
"Well, we can do a lot of arguing in that time. And when the book is out, we"ll have money enough, so that we can offer to pay her. She might become a sort of "mother"s helper.""
Section 3. So Thyrsis began a struggle with Jesus and the Congo savages, for the possession of Delia"s soul. He set to work to interest her in his work; he gave her his first novel, which contained no theology at all; and also "The Hearer of Truth"--the social radicalism of which he was pleased to see did not alarm her. And then he gave her the war-novel, and saw with joy how she was thrilled over that. He laid himself out to make his purpose and his vision clear to her; and then, one afternoon, when Corydon had a headache and was taking a nap, he led her off to a quiet place in the woods, and set before her all the bitter tragedy of their lives.
He pictured the work he had to do, and the loneliness to which this consigned Corydon; he told her of the horrors they had so far endured, and what effect these had had upon his wife. He showed her what her power was--how she could make life possible for both of them. For she had that magic key which Thyrsis himself did not possess, she could unlock the treasure-chambers of Corydon"s soul.
But alas, Thyrsis soon perceived that his efforts had been in vain.
Delia was stirred by his eloquence, but the only effect was to move her to an equally eloquent account of the sufferings of the natives of the Congo basin. It was important that he should get his books written; but how much more important it was that some help should be carried to these unhappy wretches! They never saw any books, they were altogether beyond his reach; and who was to take the light to them? She told him harrowing tales of sick women, beaten and tortured and burned with fire to drive the devils out of them.
Thyrsis met this by attempting to broaden the girl"s social consciousness. He showed her how the waves of intelligence, beginning at the top, spread to the lowest strata of society--changing the character of all human activities, and affecting the humblest life. He showed her the capitalist system, and explained how it worked; how it reached to the savage in the remotest corner of the earth, and seized him and made him over according to its will. It was true, for instance--and not in any poetic sense, but literally and demonstrably true--that the fate of the Congo native was determined in Wall Street, and in the financial centres of London and Paris and Brussels and Berlin. The essential thing about the natives was that they represented rubber and ivory. And Delia might go there, and try to teach them and help them, but she would find that there were forces engaged in beating them down and destroying them--forces in comparison with which she was as helpless as a child. It was true of the Congo blacks, as it was true of the people of the slums, of the proletariat of the whole earth, that there was no way to help them save to overthrow the system which made of them, not human beings, but commodities, to be purchased and pa.s.sed through the profit-mill, and then flung into the sc.r.a.p-heap.
But Thyrsis found to his pain that it was impossible to make these considerations of any real import to Delia. She understood them, she a.s.sented to them; but that did not make them count. Her impulses came from another part of her being. Her savages were naked and hungry and ignorant and miserable; and they needed to be fed and clothed, and more important yet, to be baptized and saved. She was all the more impelled to her task by the fact that all the forces of civilization were arrayed against her. The fires of martyrdom were blazing in her soul. She meant to throw herself over a precipice--and the higher the precipice, and the more jagged the rocks beneath, the greater was the thrill which the prospect brought her.
Section 4. They went back to the house; as Delia had arranged to spend the night with them, and as Corydon"s headache was better, the controversy was continued far into the evening. Thyrsis took no part in it, he listened while Corydon pleaded for herself, and pictured her loneliness and despair.
Delia put her arms about her. "Don"t you see, dear," she argued--"all that is because you are without a faith! You cast out Jesus, and deny him; and so how can _I_ help you? If you believed what I do, you would not be lonely, even if you were in the heart of Africa."
"But how can I believe what isn"t _true?_" cried Corydon; and so the skeletons of theology came forth and rattled their bones once more.
A couple of hours must have pa.s.sed, while Thyrsis said nothing, but listened to Delia and watched her, probing deeply into the agonies and futilities of life. He had given up all hope of persuading her to stay with them; he thought only of the tragedy, that this n.o.ble spirit should be tangled up and blundering about in the mazes of a grotesque dogma.
And the time came when he could endure it no more; something rose up within him, something tremendous and terrible, and he laid hold of Delia Gordon"s soul to wrestle with it, as never before had he wrestled with any human soul except Corydon"s.
The truth of the matter was that Thyrsis loved the religious people; it was among them that he had been brought up, and their ways were his ways. This was a fact that came to him rarely now, for he was hard-driven and bitter; but it was true that when he sneered at the church and taunted it, he was like a parent who whips a child he loves.
Perhaps Paret had spoken truly in one of his cruel jests--that when a man has been brought up religious, he can never really get over it, he can never really be free.
So now Thyrsis spoke to Delia as one who was himself of the faith of Jesus; he cried out to her that what she wanted was what he wanted, that all her att.i.tudes and ways of working were his. And here were monstrous evils alive upon the earth--here were all the forces of h.e.l.l unleashed, and ranging like savage beasts destroying the lives of men and women!
And those who truly cared, those who had the conscience and the faith of the world in their keeping--they were wasting their time in disputations about barren formulas, questions which had no relationship to human life! Questions of the meaning of old Hebrew texts that had often no meaning at all, and of folk-tales and fairy-stories out of the nursery of the race--the problem of whether Jonah had swallowed the whale, or the whale had swallowed Jonah--the problem of whether it was on Friday or Sat.u.r.day that the Lord had finished the earth. Because of such things as this, they drove all thinking men from their ranks, they degraded and made ridiculous the very name of faith! As he went on, the agony of this swept over Thyrsis--until it seemed to him as if he had the whole Christian Church before him, and was pleading with it in the voice of Jesus. Here was a new crucifixion--a crucifixion of civilization!
Thyrsis cried out in the words, "Oh ye of little faith!" Truly, was it not the supreme act of infidelity, to make the spirit of religion, which was one with the impulse of all life--the force that made the flower bloom and oak-tree tower and the infant cry for its food--to make it dependent upon Hebrew texts and a.s.syrian folk-tales! Delia preached to him about "faith"; but what was her faith in comparison with his, which was a faith in all life--which trusted the soul of man, and reason as part of the soul of man, a thing which G.o.d had put in man to be used, and not to be feared and outraged.
Then came Delia. She would not admit that her faith depended upon texts and legends; it was a faith in the living G.o.d. She was not afraid of reason--she did not outrage it--
"But you do, you do!" cried Thyrsis. "Your whole att.i.tude is an outrage to it! You never speak of "science" except as an evil thing. You told Corydon that "evolution" was wicked!"
"I don"t see how evolution can help my faith"--began the other.
"That"s just it!" cried Thyrsis again. "That is exactly what I mean!
You do not pay homage to truth, you do not seek it for its own sake!
You require that it should fit into certain formulas that you have set up--in other words that it should not interfere with your texts and your legends! And what is the result of that--you have paralyzed all your activities, you have condemned your intellectual life to sterility! For we live in an age of science, we cannot solve our problems except by means of it; the forces of evil are using it, and you are not using it, and so you are like a child in their hands! Not one of the social wrongs but could be put an end to--child-labor, poverty and disease, prost.i.tution and drunkenness, crime and war! But you don"t know how, and you can"t find out how--simply because you have thrown away the sharp tools of the intellect, and filled your mind with formulas that mean nothing! How can you understand modern problems, when you know nothing about economics? You have rejected "evolution"--so how can you comprehend the evolution of society? How can you know that civilization at this hour is going down into the abyss--dragging you and your churches and your Congo savages with it? I who do understand these things--I have to go out and fight alone, while you are shut up in your churches, mumbling your spells and incantations, and poring over your Hebrew texts! And think of what I must suffer, knowing as I do that the spirit that animates you--the fervor and devotion, the "hunger and thirst after righteousness"--would banish horror from the earth forever, if only it could be guided by intelligence!"
Section 5. All this, of course, was effort utterly wasted. Thyrsis poured out his pleadings and exhortations, his longing and his pain; and when he had finished, the girl was exactly where she had been before--just as distrustful of "science", and just as blindly bent upon getting away to her savages and binding up their wounds and baptizing them. And so at last he gave up in despair, and left Delia to go to bed, and went out and sat alone in the moonlight.
Afterwards, though it was long after midnight, Corydon came out and joined him. He saw that she was flushed and trembling with excitement.
"Thyrsis!" she whispered. "That was a marvellous thing!"
He pressed her hand.
"And all thrown away!" she cried.
"You realized that, did you?" he asked.
"I realized many things. Why you set so much store by ideas, for instance! I see that you are right--one has to think straight!"
"It"s like a steam-engine," said Thyrsis. "It doesn"t matter how much power you get up, or how fast you make the wheels go--unless the switches are set right, you don"t reach your destination."