"If you mean by love a sense of oneness in the pursuit of an ideal, then I agree with you," said Thyrsis. "But if you mean what love generally means--a mutual admiration, the worshipping of another personality--then I don"t."
"And are lovers not even to be interesting to each other?" cried Corydon.
But the poet did not shrink even from that. "I don"t think a woman could be interesting to me--except in so far as she was growing. And she must always know that if she stopped growing, she would cease to be interesting. That is not a matter of anybody"s will, it seems to me--it is a fact of soul-chemistry."
"I don"t think you will find many women to love you on that basis," said Corydon.
"I never expected to find but one," was Thyrsis" reply; "and I may not find even one."
She sat watching him for a moment. "I had never realized the sublimity of your egotism," she said. "It would never occur to you to judge anyone else by your own standards, would it?"
"That is very well put," laughed Thyrsis. "As a matter of fact, I have a maxim that I count all things lost in the world but my own soul."
"Why is that?"
"Because I can depend on my own soul; and I have not yet met anything else in life of which I can say that."
Again there was a pause. "You are as hard as iron!" exclaimed the girl.
"I am harder than anything you can find for your simile," he answered.
"I know simply that there is no force existing that can turn me from my task."
"You might meet some woman who would fascinate you."
"Perhaps," he replied. "I have done things I"m ashamed of, and I"ve a wholesome fear of doing more of them. But I know that that woman, whoever she might be, would wake up some morning and find me missing."
Then for a while he sat staring at the eddies in the pool below. "I have a vision of another kind of woman," he said--"a woman to whom my ideal would be the same compelling force that it is to me--a living thing that would drive her, that she was both master of, and slave to, as I am. So that she would feel no fears, and ask no favors! So that she would not want mercy, nor ask pledges--but just give herself, as I give myself, and take the chances of the game. Don"t you think there may be just one such woman in the world?"
"Perhaps," was the reply. "But then--mightn"t a woman be sure of your ideal, but not of you?"
"As to that," said Thyrsis, "she would have to know me.
"As to that," said Corydon, "she would have to love you."
And Thyrsis smiled. "As in most arguments," he said, "it"s mainly a matter of definitions."
Section 5. At this point there came a call from the distance, and Corydon started. "There is mother," she exclaimed. "How the afternoon has flown!"
"And must you go home now?" he asked.
"I"m afraid so," she replied. "We have a long row."
"I"m sorry," he said. "I wanted to advise you about books to read. You must let me help you to find what you are seeking."
"Ah," said Corydon, "if you only will!"
"I will do anything I can," he said. "I am ashamed of not having helped you before."
They had risen and started towards the house. "Can"t you come to-morrow, and we can talk it over," he said.
"But I thought you were going to work," she objected.
"I can spare another day," he replied. "A rest won"t hurt me, I know.
And it"s been a real pleasure to talk to you this afternoon."
So they settled it; and Thyrsis saw them off in the boat, and then he went back to the little cabin.
On the steps he stood still. "Corydon!" he muttered. "Little Corydon!"
That was always the way he thought of her; not only because he had known her when she was a child, but because this expressed his conception of her--she was so gentle and peaceable and meek. She was now eighteen, and he was only twenty, but he felt towards her as a grandfather might.
But now had come this new revelation, that astonished him. She had been deeply stirred by his work--she had loved it; and this was no affectation, it was out of her inmost heart. And she was not really contented at all--she had quite a hunger for life in her!
It had been like an explosion; the barriers had been destroyed between them, and he saw her as she really was. And he could hardly believe it--all through the adventures that followed he would find himself standing in the same kind of daze, whispering to himself--"Corydon!
Little Corydon!"
He did not try to do any work that evening. He thought about her, and the problem of her life. She had stirred him strangely; he saw her beautiful with a new kind of beauty. He resolved that he would put her upon the way to some of the joy she sought.
She came early the next morning, and they sat by the lake-sh.o.r.e and talked. They talked about the things she needed to study, and how she should study them; about the books she had read and the books she was to read next. And from this they went on to a hundred questions of literature and philosophy and life. They became eager and excited; their thoughts took wings, and they lost all sense of time and place. There were so many things to be discussed!
Corydon, in spite of all her anti-clericalism, believed in immortality; she laid claim to intuitions and illuminations concerning it. And to Thyrsis, on the other hand, the idea of immortality was the consummation of all unfaith. To him life was a bubble upon the stream of time, a shadow of clouds upon the mountains; there was nothing about it that could be or should be immortal.
"The act of faith," he cried, "is to give ourselves into the arms of life, to take it as it comes, to rejoice in its infinite unfoldment, the "plastic dance of circ.u.mstance"; to behold the budding flower and the new-born suns as equal expressions of the joy of becoming. But people are weak, they love themselves, and they set themselves up as the centre of existence!"
But Corydon was personal, and loved life; and she stood out that death was unthinkable--that she had the sense of infinity within her. Thyrsis strove to make her see that one was to wreak one"s hunger for infinity at each moment, and not put it off to any future age; that life was a thing for itself, and needed no sequel to justify it. "It is a free gift, and we have no claim upon it; we must take it on the terms of the giver."
From that they came to religion. Thyrsis loved the forms of the old faiths, because of the poetry there was in them; and so he wrestled with Corydon"s paganism. He tried to show her how one could read "Paradise Lost" and the English prayer-book, precisely as one read Virgil and Homer; to which Corydon answered that she had been to Sunday-school.
"But you once believed in Santa Claus!" he retorted. "And does that make you quarrel with him now? Every time you read a novel, don"t you pretend to believe in people who never existed?"
He went on to show her how much she lost of the sublime and inspiring things of the past. He took the story of Jesus. It mattered not in the least if it was fiction or fact--it was there, as an achievement of the human spirit. He showed her the man of the gospels--not the stained-gla.s.s G.o.d with royal robes and shining crown, but the humble workingman, with his dream of a heaven nearby, and a father who loved his children without distinction. He went about among the poor and humble, the world"s first revolutionist; teaching the supremacy of the soul--a doctrine which was to be as dynamite beneath the pillars of all established inst.i.tutions. He lived as a tramp and an outcast, and he died the death of a criminal; and now those who had murdered him were using his doctrines to enslave the world!--All this was a new idea to Corydon, and she resolved forthwith that she would begin her readings with the New Testament.
Section 6. So it went, until Thyrsis looked up with a start, and saw that the shadows were falling. It was five o"clock, and they had not stopped to eat! Even so, they had no time to cook, but made a cold meal--and talked all the time they were eating.
Then Corydon said, "I must start for home."
"You won"t want any supper," said Thyrsis. "Let"s see the sunset first."
"But mother will be expecting me," she objected.
"She"ll know you"re all right," he replied.
So they climbed the hill, and sat and watched the sunset and the rising full moon. The air was clear, and the sky like opal, and the pale, pearly tints of the clouds were ravishing to behold. To Thyrsis it seemed that these colors were an image of the soul that was disclosed to him. He would have been at a loss for words to describe the extraordinary sense of purity that Corydon gave to him; it was not simply her maidenhood--it was something far more rare than that.
Here was an utterly perfect human soul; a soul without speck or blemish--without a base idea, with no trace of a vanity, unaware what a pretense might be. The joy and wonder of life welled spontaneously in her, she moved to a n.o.ble impulse as a cloud moves before the wind. She was like a creature from the skies they were watching.
And here, in the silver moonlight, a memorable hour came to them.
Thyrsis told her of his consecration, and why he lived his hermit-life.
He had known for years that he was not as other men; and now every hour it was becoming clearer to him. He shrunk from the word, because it had been desecrated by the world; but it was Genius. More and more frequently there was coming to him this strange ecstasy, the source of which he could not guess; it was like the giving way of flood-gates within him--the pouring in of a tide of wonder and joy. It made him tremble like a leaf, it made him cry aloud and fall down upon the ground exhausted. And yet, whatever the strain might be, he never lost his grip upon himself; rather, all the powers of his mind seemed to be multiplied--it seemed as if all existence became one with his soul.
Never before had he uttered a word of this to anyone. No one could understand the burden it had laid upon him. For this was the thing that all the world was seeking, for the lack of which the world was dying; and it was his to give or to withhold, to lose or to save. He had to forge it and shape it, he had to embody it, to set it forth in images and symbols. And that meant a terrific labor, a feat of mental and emotional endurance quite indescribable. He must hold it, though it burned like fire; he must clutch it to his bosom, though it tore at his heart-strings.