Love's Pilgrimage Part 68

Section 9. There came from the higher regions a pa.s.s upon a steamer to Florida; and so Thyrsis sailed away. With a determined effort he took all his cares, and locked them back in a far chamber of his mind. He would not think about Corydon, nor about what he would do for money when he came home; more important yet, he would clear the book out of his thoughts--he would not permit it to gnaw at him all day and all night.

And by these resolves he stood grimly. He walked the deck for hours every day; he watched the foaming green waters, and the gulls wheeling in the sky, and the sun setting over the sea, and the new moon showering its fire upon the waves. Gradually the air grew warm, and ice and snow became as an evil dream. A land of magic it seemed to which Thyrsis came--the beauty of it enfolded him like a clasp of love. He saw pine-forests, and swamps with alligators in them, and live oaks draped with trailing grey moss. The clumps of palmettos fascinated him--he had seen pictures of such trees in the tropics, and would hardly have been astonished to see a herd of elephants in their shadows.

He found a beach, snow-white and hard, upon which he walked for uncounted miles. He gathered strange sh.e.l.ls and crabs, and watched the turkey-buzzards on the sh.o.r.e, and the slow procession of the pelicans, sailing past above the tops of the breakers. He saw the black fins of the grampuses cutting the water, and thought that they were sharks.

He stood for hours at a time up to his waist in the surf, casting for sea-ba.s.s; he got few fish, but joy and excitement he got in abundance.

Then, back upon the hammocks--to walk upon the hard sh.e.l.l roads, and see orange and lemon-groves, and gardens filled with roses and magnolias, and orchards of mulberry and fig-trees. Truly this must have been the land which the poet had described--

"Where every prospect pleases, And only man is vile."

Thyrsis stayed in a humble boarding-house, but nearby was one of the famous winter-resorts of the Florida East Coast, and he was free to go there, and wander about the lobbies and piazzas of the palatial hotels, and watch the idle rich at their diversions. A strange society they were--it seemed as if the sc.u.m of the civilization of forty-five states had been blown into this bit of back-water. Here were society women, jaded with dissipation; stock-brokers and financiers, fleeing from the strain of the "Street"; here were parasites of every species, who, having nothing to do at home--or perhaps not even having any home--had come to this land of warmth to prolong their orgies. They raced over the roads and beaches in autos, and over the water in swift motor-boats; they dressed themselves half a dozen times a day, they fed themselves upon rich and costly foods, they gambled and gossiped and drank and wantoned their time away. As he watched them it was all that Thyrsis could do to keep himself from beginning another manifesto for the "Appeal to Reason". Oh, if only the toilers of the nation could be brought here, and shown what became of the wealth they produced!

As if to complete his study of winter-resort manners and morals, Thyrsis encountered a college acquaintance whose father had become enormously rich through a mining speculation, and was here with a party of friends in a private-train. So he was whirled off in one of half a dozen automobiles, and rode for a hundred miles or so to an inland lake, and sat down to an _al fresco_ luncheon of such delicacies as _pate de fois gras_ and jellied grouse and champagne. Afterwards the young people wandered about and amused themselves, and the elders played "bridge", in the face of all the raptures of this wonderland of nature.

A strange and sombre figure Thyrsis must have seemed to these people, with his brooding air and his worn clothing; he rode home in an auto with half a dozen youths and maidens, and while they flashed by lakes and rivers that gleamed in the golden moon-light, and by orchards and gardens from which the mingled scents of millions of blossoms were wafted to them, these voung people jested together and laughed and sang.

And Thyrsis lay back and watched them and studied them. Their music was what is called "rag-time"--they had apparently found nothing better to do with their lives than to learn hundreds of verses and melodies, of which the subject-matter was the whims and moods of the half-tamed African race--their vanities and their barbarous impulses, and above all their hot and l.u.s.tful pa.s.sions. Song after song they poured forth, the substance of which was summed up in one line that Thyrsis happened to carry away with him--

"Ah lubs you, mah honey, yes, Ah do!"

It seemed to him such a curious and striking commentary upon the stage which leisure-cla.s.s culture had reached, in the course of its reversion to savagery.

Section 10. Thyesis came home after three weeks, browned and refreshed, and ready to take up the struggle again. He came with the cup of his love and sympathy overflowing; eager to see Corydon, and to tell her his adventures, and to share with her his store of new hope.

He found her reclining on the piazza of the farm-house. The April buds were bursting upon the trees, and the odor of spring was in the air; also, the flush of health was stealing back into Corydon's cheeks. How beautiful she looked, and how soft and gentle was her caress, and what wistfulness and tenderness were in the smile with which she greeted him!

There was the baby also, tumultuous and excited. Thyrsis took him upon his knee, and while he fondled him and played with him, he told Corydon about his trip. But in a short while it became evident to him that she had something on her mind; and finally she sent the baby away to play, and began, "There is something I have to tell you."

"Yes, dear?" he said.

"It is something very, very important."

"Yes?" he repeated.

"I--I don't know just how to begin," said Corydon. "I hope you are not going to be angry."

"I can't imagine myself being angry just now," he replied; and then, struck by a sense of familiarity in this introduction, he asked, with a smile, "You haven't been seeing Harry Stuart, have you?"

Corydon frowned at the words. "Don't speak of that!" she said, quickly.

"I am not joking."

He saw that she was agitated, and so he fell silent.

"I hesitated a long time about telling you," she went on. "But you must know. I am sure it's right to tell you."

"By all means, dearest," he answered.

"It's a long story," she said. "I must go back to my first operation."

And then she began, and told him how she had found herself thinking of Mr. Harding, and of the strange vision she had had; she told of all her fevered excitements, and of her confession to him. When she finished she was trembling all over, and her face and throat were flushed.

Thyrsis sat for a while in silence, looking very grave. "I see," he said.

"You--you are not angry with me?" she asked.

"No, I'm not angry," he replied. "But tell me, what has been going on since?"

"Well," said Corydon, "Mr. Harding has been coming here to see me. He saw I needed help, and he couldn't refuse it. It was--it was his duty to come."

"Yes," said the other. "Go on."

"Well, I think he had an idea that the whole thing was a product of my sickness; and when I was well again, it would all be over."

"And is it, Corydon?"

She sat staring in front of her; her voice sank to a whisper. "No," she said. "It--it isn't."

"And does he know that?" asked Thyrsis.

"He knows everything," she replied. "I don't need to tell him things."

"But have you talked about it with him?"

"A little," she said. "That is, you see, I had to explain to him--to apologize for what I had done in the hospital. I wanted him to know that I wouldn't have said anything to him, if I hadn't been so very ill."

"I see," said Thyrsis.

"And I want you to understand," added Corydon, quickly-"you must not blame him. For he's the soul of honor, Thyrsis; and he can't help how he feels about me-any more than I can help it. You must know that, dear!"

"Yes, I know that."

"He's been so good and so n.o.ble about it. He thinks so much of you, Thyrsis--he wouldn't do you wrong, not by a single word. He said that to me---over and over again. He's frightened, you know, that either of us might do wrong. He's so sensitive-I think he takes things more seriously than anybody we've ever known."

"I understand," said Thyrsis; and then, after a pause, he inquired, "But what's to come of it?"

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"What are you going to do?"

"Why, I don't know that there's anything to do, Thyrsis. What would there be?"

"But are you going on being in love with him forever?"

"I--I don't see how I can tell, Thyrsis. Would it do any harm?"

"It might grow on you," he said, with a slight smile. "It sometimes does."

"Mr. Harding said we ought never to speak of it again," said she. "And I guess he's right about that. He said that our lives would always be richer, because we had discovered each other's souls; that it would help us to grow into a n.o.bler life."

"I see," said Thyrsis. "But it's a trifle disconcerting at first. I'll need a little time to get used to it."