Love's Pilgrimage Part 50

What they saw was that they had got securely strapped upon their rack the man who had threatened their power, who had laid bare its sources and exposed its iniquity. And they meant that if ever he came out of their torture-chamber, it should be so mangled and crippled that never again would he lift a finger against them!

The gist of the "Darrell case", when you got right down to it, was a quarrel over property; it was the snarling of wolves who had been disturbed at their feeding. Darrell had denounced wealth and the exploiters of wealth, and now he had married a woman of wealth; and was he to get away with his prize? That was the meaning of all the loud halloo--for that the hounds were unleashed and the hunting-horns sounded. Thyrsis pictured the men who "wrote up" the Darrell story.

He had known them in the newspaper-world--the servants of the giant publicity-machine; living and working in the roar and rush of it, in a stifling atmosphere where the finer qualities of the soul were poisoned and withered over night. They lived their lives, almost without exception, by means of alcohol and coffee and tobacco; they were scornful, disillusioned, cynical beyond all telling and all belief.

Their only G.o.d in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth was "copy". To such men there were two possible bonds of interest in a woman--the first being l.u.s.t, and the second money. In the case of Henry Darrell they found both these motives; and so how clear the story was to them!

Thyrsis thought, also, of the men who owned and managed the papers; those who had turned loose the hunt and directed it. Rich men were they, who had built these publicity machines for their own purposes. And what were they in their private lives? Some of them were notoriously dissolute; and still others hid their ways under a veil of hypocrisy--just as in their editorials they hid their cla.s.s-interests under pretenses of principle. And how easy it would have been for Darrell to get what he wanted without losing his reputation--if only he had been willing to follow the example of these eminent citizens!

Thyrsis knew one man, the editor of an appallingly respectable journal, who had invited a young girl to his wife's home and there attempted to seduce her. He knew the proprietor of another, whose cheerful custom it was to go about among his newly-married women-friends and suggest that, inasmuch as he was a "superman," and their husbands were weaklings, they should let him become in secret the father of their children.

This amateur eugenist was accustomed to maintain that the great men in history had for the most part been b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; and Thyrsis, knowing this fact about him, would read editorials in his papers, in which Henry Darrell was denounced as an enemy of the home!

Meantime Thyrsis was reading Darrell's books and pamphlets, and coming to realize what a mind was here being destroyed. For this man, it seemed to him, was master of the n.o.blest prose utterance that had been heard in America since Emerson died. He went again to hear him speak, in another ill-lighted and stuffy hall before less than a hundred people; and the pain of this was more than he could bear. He went home that night with his friend, and labored with him with all the force of his being. "You stay here," he declared, "and put yourself at the mercy of your enemies!

You waste your faculties contending with them--even knowing about them is enough to destroy you. And all the while you might escape from them altogether--might do your real work, that the world knows nothing of.

No one can hinder you. And when you have written the book of your soul, then your tormentors will be--they will be like the tormentors of Dante!

Go away! Go away to Europe, where you can be free!"

And so before long, he stood upon a steamer-pier and waved Henry Darrell and his wife farewell. And every now and then would come letters, telling of long, long agonies; for Darrell had to fight for those few rare days when ill health would permit him to think. So year by year he labored at what Thyrsis knew, if it was ever finished, would be America's first world-poem; and in the meantime eminent statesmen and moralists who were alarmed at the progress of "Socialist agitation", would continue to conjure up before the public mind the night-mare spectre of the once-respected clergyman, who had deserted his weeping wife and children, and run away with a rich woman to found a "free-love colony"!

Section 14. A couple of days after the Darrells sailed, Thyrsis set out himself to find a home. On account of the new book, he would have to be near a library, and so he had selected a college-town not far from New York. He went there now, and put up for a week at a students'

boarding-house, while prosecuting his search.

A strange experience it was to him, after the years of struggle and contact with the world, to come back to that academic atmosphere; to find men who were still peacefully counting up the "feminine endings"

in Shakespeare's verse, and writing elaborate theses upon the sources of the Spenserian legends. Upon his excursions into the country some of these young men would tramp with him--thres.h.i.+ng out, student-fas.h.i.+on, the problems of the universe; and how staggering it was to meet a man who was about to receive a master's degree in literature--and who regarded Arthur Hugh Clough as a "dangerous" poet, and Tennyson's "Two Voices" as containing vital thought, and T. H. Green as the world's leading philosopher! And this was the "education" that was dispensed at America's most aristocratic university--for this many millions of dollars had been contributed, and scores of magnificent buildings erected!

Thyrsis saw that a partial explanation lay in the fact that in connection with the university there existed a great theological seminary. Some of these future ministers came also to the boarding-house, and Thyrsis listened to their shop-talk--about the difference between "transubstantiation" and "consubstantiation", and the status of the controversy over the St. John Gospel. He heard one man cite arguments from Paley's "Moral Philosophy"; and another making bold to state that he was uncertain about the verbal inspiration of the Pentateuch!

To Thyrsis, as he listened to these discussions, it was as if he felt a black shadow stealing across his soul. He wondered why he should hate these men with a personal hatred; he tried to argue with himself that they must be well-meaning and earnest. The truth was that they seemed to him just like the law-students, men moved by sordid and low ideals; the only difference was that their minds were not so keen as the lawyers'.

Thyrsis was coming little by little to understand the economic causes of things, and he perceived that this theological world represented a stagnant place in the stream of national culture; it being a subsidized world, maintained half by charity, vital men turned from it; it drew to itself the feebler minds, or such as wished to live at ease, and not inquire too closely into the difference between truth and falsehood.

Section 15. A few miles out from the town Thyrsis found a farm with an abundance of wild woodland, where the farmer gave him permission to camp. And so he went back and got some lumber, and loaded his tent and supplies on a wagon, and wrote Corydon that he would meet her the next afternoon. With the help of the farmer's boy he labored the rest of the day at building the platform, and putting up the tent, and getting their belongings in order. The next day he was up at dawn, constructing tables and stands; and later on he hired the farmer's "jagger-wagon", and drove in for Corydon and Cedric and the trunks.

It was a glorious spring day, of turquoise sky and glinting suns.h.i.+ne; and later, when the sun was low, the woods were flushed with a glow of scarlet and purple. It lent a glory to the scene, shedding a halo about the commonest tasks; the unpacking of blankets and dishes, the ranging of groceries upon shelves. They were free from all the world at last--they were setting out upon the journey of their lives together!

So it was with singing and laughter that they went at their work. The baby crawled about on the tent-floor and got into everybody's way, and crowed with delight at the novel surroundings; and later on his mother gave him his supper and put him to bed; and then she spread a feast of bread and b.u.t.ter, and fresh milk and eggs and a can of fruit, and they sat down to the first meal they had eaten together in many a long, long month.

They were tired and ravenously hungry; but their happiness of soul was keener even than any physical sensation, and they sat leaning upon their elbows and gazing across the table, reading the wonder in each other's eyes.

"It has been a year since we parted!" whispered Corydon.

"Just a year!" he said. "It seems like ten of them."

"And do you remember, Thyrsis, how we prayed! How we prayed for this very hour!"

He took her hands in his. Once more they renewed their pledges of devotion; once more the vision of their hopes unrolled before them.

"From now on," he whispered, "our life is our own! We can make it whatever we will. Let us make it something beautiful."

And so there they made a compact. They would speak no more of the year that was past; it was a bad dream, and now it was gone. Let it be swept from their thoughts, and let them go on to make the future what they desired it to be.

BOOK XII

THE TREADMILL

_They sat in the little cabin, where she had been reading some lines from the poem again--

"O easy access to the hearer's grace When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!"

"Ah, yes!" he said. "But our lot was cast in a different time."

She put her hand upon his. "Even so," she said; and then turned the page, and read once more--

"What though the music of thy rustic flute Kept not for long its happy, country tone; Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat-- It failed, and thou wast mute!

Yet hadst thou always visions of our light!_"

Section 1. The _mise-en-scene_ of their new adventure in domesticity was a tent eighteen feet by twelve; but as the side-walls were low, they could walk only in the centre, and must range their belongings at the sides. To the left, as one entered the tent, there stood a soapbox with a tiny oil-stove upon it; and then a stand, made out of a packing-box, to hold their dishes, their cooking-utensils and their limited supply of provisions. Next down the line came a trunk, and in the corner the baby's crib--which had been outgrown by the farmer's children, and purchased by Thyrsis for a dollar. At the rear was a folding-table, and above it a board from which Corydon hung her clothing; along the other wall were her canvas cot, and a little stand with some books, and a wash-stand and another trunk.

Some distance off in the woods stood a second tent, seven feet square, in which Thyrsis had a cot for himself, and also a canvas-chair in which he sat to receive the visits of his muse. They got their drinking water from a spring near by; there was a tiny stream beside the tent which provided their was.h.i.+ng-water. In this stream Thyrsis hollowed out a flat basin, in which they might set their b.u.t.ter-crock, and a pail of milk, and a larger pail that held their meat. Below that was a deeper pool from which they dipped water, and lower yet a third pool, with a board on which Corydon might sit and wash diapers, to her heart's content and her back's exhaustion.

The tent had been old when Thyrsis got it, and as this was the third season he had used it, it was dark and dun of hue. They had not noticed this at the outset as they had put it up on a bright, suns.h.i.+ny day, and also before the trees had put out all their foliage. But now, when rain came, they found that they had to light a lamp in order to read in the tent; and, of course, it was on rainy days that they had to be inside.

Thyrsis did not realize the influence which this tent had upon his wife's spirits; it was only after he saw her made physically ill by having to live in a room with yellow wall-paper, that he came to understand the power which her surroundings had over Corydon.

If they'so much as touched a finger to the roof of the tent while it was raining, a steady dripping would come through at that point. Then, as the rains grew heavier, water took to running down the pole that stood in the centre of the tent, and formed a pool in the middle of the floor, so that Thyrsis had to get the axe and cut a hole there. And, of course, there was no way to dry anything; the woods, which were low, were turned into a swamp, and one's shoes became caked with mud, and there was no keeping the tent-floor clean.

In this place they had to keep an able-bodied, year-and-a-half-old baby!

There was no other place to keep him. He could not be allowed on the damp floor, nor where he could touch the top of the tent; so Thyrsis set up sticks at all four corners of his crib, and tied strong twine about them, making a little pen; and therein they put the baby, and therein he had to stay. He had his rattle and his rubber-doll and his blocks and the rest of his gim-cracks; and after he had howled long enough to satisfy himself that there was no deliverance from his prison, he settled back and accepted his tragic fate. There came occasions when Corydon was sick, and unable to move; then Thyrsis would put up his umbrella and take Cedric to his own tent, where he would draw a chalk-line across the floor. One-half of the forty-nine square feet of s.p.a.ce was his, and in it he would sit and read and study; in the other half the baby would play. After long experience he came to realize that at such times Papa would not pay any attention to him, and that crossing the chalk-line involved getting one's "mungies" spanked.

There were other troubles that fell upon them. At first, it being April, it was cold at night; and they had no stove, and no room for a stove.

Later on the ceaseless rains brought a plague of mosquitoes; and so Thyrsis had to rig up a triangular door and cover the entrance to the tent with netting; and when the weather grew better, he had to get more netting and construct a little house, in which the baby could play outdoors. And then there had to be more spankings of "mungies", to teach the infant that this mysterious mosquito-bar must not be walked through, nor pulled at, nor poked with sticks, nor even eaten.

They prayed for fair days, and a little suns.h.i.+ne; and it seemed as if the weather-demons had discovered this, and were playing with them.

There would come a bright morning, and they would spread a rug in the baby's cage, and hang out all their damp belongings to dry; and then would come a sudden shower, and baby and rug and belongings would all have to pile back into the tent. And then it would clear again, and everything would go out once more; and they would prepare dinner, and be comfortably settled to eat, when it would begin to sprinkle again.

They would move in the clothing and the baby, and when it began to rain harder, they would move in the table and the food; and forthwith the rain would cease. Because it was poor fun eating in a dark tent by lamp-light, amid the odor of gas-stove and cooking, they might move out once more--but only to repeat the same experience over again.

For six weeks after their arrival there was not a day without rain, and it would rain sometimes for half a week without ceasing. So everything they owned became damp and mouldy--all their clothing, their food, the very beds upon which they slept. One of their miseries was the lack of place to keep things; all their odds and ends had to be stowed away under the cots--where one might find clothing, and books, and ma.n.u.scripts, and a hammock, and an umbrella, and some shoes, and a box of prunes, and a sack of potatoes, and half a ham. When water got in at the sides of the tent and wet all these objects, and the bedclothing hung over the floor and got into them, it was trying to the temper to have to rummage there.

Section 2. Before she left the city Corydon had taken the baby to consult a famous "child-specialist"--at five dollars per consultation; she had received the dreadful tidings that Cedric was threatened with the "rickets". So she had come out to the country with one mighty purpose in her soul. "Under-nourishment", the doctor had said; and he had laid out a regular schedule. Six times daily the unhappy infant was to be fed; and each time some elaborate concoction had to be got ready--practically nothing could be eaten in a state of nature. The first meal would consist of, say a poached egg on a piece of toast, and the juice of an orange, with the seeds carefully excluded; the next of some chicken broth with a cracker or two, and the pulp of prunes with the skins removed; the next of some beef chopped up and pounded to a pulp and broiled, together with a bit of mashed potato or some other cooked vegetable; the next of some gruel, with cream and sugar, and some more prunes.

And these operations, of course, took the greater part of Corydon's day; she would struggle at them until she was ready to drop, and when she had to give up they would fall to Thyrsis. Some of them fell to him quite frequently--for instance, the pounding of the meat. It had to have all the fat and gristle carefully cut out; and there had to be a clean board, and a clean hammer, both of which must be sc.r.a.ped and washed afterwards; and whenever by any chance Corydon let the meat stay on the fire a second too long, so that it got hard, the whole elaborate operation had to be gone over again--was not the baby's life at stake?

It was quite vain for him to protest as to the pains that Corydon took to remove every tiniest fragment of the skin of a stewed prune. "Surely, dearest," he would argue, "the internal arrangements of a baby are not so delicate as to be torn by a tiny bit of prune-skin!"

But to Corydon the internal arrangements of babies were mysterious things--to be understood only by a child-specialist at five dollars per visit. "He told me what to do," she would say; "and I am going to do it."