Love's Pilgrimage Part 69

"Mr. Harding is very anxious to know you better," remarked Corydon. "But you see, he's afraid of you, Thyrsis. You are so direct--you get to the point too quickly for him."

"Um--yes," said he. "I can imagine that."

"And he thinks you distrust him," she went on--"just because he's orthodox. But he's really not half as backward as you think. His faith means a great deal to him. I only wish I had such a faith in my own life."

To which Thyrsis responded, "G.o.d knows, my dear, I wish you had."

Section 11. The young clergyman came to call the next afternoon, and the three sat upon the lawn and talked. They talked about Florida, and then about Socialism--as was inevitable, after Thyrsis had described the population of the East Coast hotels. But he felt constrained and troubled--he did not know just how a man should conduct himself with his wife's lover; and so in the end he excused himself and strolled off.

He came back as Mr. Harding was leaving; and it seemed to him that the other's face wore a look of pain and distress. Also, at supper he noted that Corydon was ill at ease.

"Something has gone wrong with your program?" he inquired.

To which Corydon answered, "Mr. Harding thinks he ought not to come any more."

"Not come any more?"

"He says I don't need him now. And he thinks--he thinks it isn't right.

He's afraid to come."

And so a week pa.s.sed, and the young clergyman was not seen again.

Thyrsis noticed that his wife was silent a great deal; and that when she did talk, she talked about Mr. Harding. His heart ached to see her as she was, so pitifully weak and appealing. She was scarcely able to walk alone yet; and she complained also that her mind had been weakened by the frightful ordeal she had undergone. It exhausted her to do any thinking at all; and she seemed to have forgotten nearly all she knew--there were whole subjects upon which her mind appeared to be a blank.

So he gave up trying to think about his book, and went about all day pondering this new problem. It was one of the laws of the marriage state that he must suffer whenever she suffered. It was never permitted to him to question the reality of any of her emotions; if they were real to her, they were real in the only sense that counted; and he must take them with the entire tragic seriousness that she took them, he must regard them as inevitable and fatal. For himself, he could change or suppress emotions--that ability was the most characteristic fact about him; but Corydon could not do it, and so he was not permitted to do it. That would be to manifest the "cold" and "stern" self, which was to Corydon an object of abhorrence and fear.

So now he went about all day, brooding over this trouble. He would come to Corydon and see her gazing across the valley with a melancholy look upon her features; he would see her, with her sweet face as if suffused with unshed tears. And what was he to do about it? Was he to rebuke her--however gently--and urge her to suppress this yearning? To do that would be to plunge her into abysses of grief. Or was he to come to her, and utter his own love to her, and draw her to him again? He knew that he could do that--he was conceited enough to believe that with his eloquence and his power of soul, he could have wiped Mr. Harding clean out of her thoughts in a few days. But then, when he had done it, he would have to go back to the task of revolutionizing the world's critical standards; and what would become of Corydon after that? What she needed, he told himself, was a love that was not a will o' the wisp and a fraud, but a love that was real and unceasing; she needed the love of a man, and not of an artist!

Here were two young people who were in love with each other; and according to the specifications of the moral code, they had their minds made up to sublime renunciation. But then, Thyrsis had a moral code of his own, and in it renunciation was not the only law of life.

It was only when he thought of losing Corydon, that he realized to the full how much he loved her. Then all their consecrations and their pledges would come back to him; he would hold her as the greatest human soul that he had ever met. But it was a strange paradox, that precisely the depth of his love for her made him willing to think of losing her.

He loved her for herself, and not for anything she gave him; he wanted her to be happy, he wanted her to grow and achieve, and in order to see her do this he would make any sacrifice in the world. In how many hours of insight had it become clear to him that he himself could never make her happy--that he was not the man to be her husband! Now it seemed as if the time had come for him to prove that he meant what he had said--that he was willing to stand by his vision and to act upon it.

So after one day of especial unhappiness, he made up his mind to a desperate resolve; and at night, when all the household was asleep, he went over to his lonely study and sat down with a pen in his hand, and summoned the spirit of Mr. Harding before him.

"I have concluded to write you a letter," he began. "You will find it a startling and unusual one. I can only beg you to believe that I have written it after much hesitation, and that it represents most earnest and prayerful thought upon my part.

"Since my return, I have become aware of the situation which has developed between yourself and my wife. Her welfare is dearer to me than anything else in the world; and after thinking it over, I concluded that her welfare required that I should explain to you the relations.h.i.+p which exists between us. It seems unlikely that you could know about it otherwise, for it is a very unusual relations.h.i.+p.

"I suppose there is no need for me to tell you that Corydon is not happy. She never has been happy as my wife, and I fear that she never will be. She is by nature warm-hearted, craving affection and companions.h.i.+p. I, on the other hand, am by nature impersonal and self-absorbed--I am compelled by the exigencies of my work to be abstracted and indifferent to things about me. I perceived this before our marriage, but not clearly enough to save her; it has been her misfortune that I have loved her so dearly that I have been driven to attempt the impossible. I am continuually deceiving myself into the belief that I am succeeding--and I am continually deceiving Corydon in the same way. It has been our habit to talk things out between us frankly; but this is a truth from which we have shrunk instinctively.

I have always seen it as the seed of what must grow to be a bitter tragedy.

"The possibility that Corydon might come to love some other man was one that I had not thought of--it was very stupid of me, no doubt. But now it has happened; and I have worked over the problem with all the faculties I possess. A man who was worthy of Corydon's love would be very apt, under the circ.u.mstances, to feel that he must crush his impulses towards her. But when we were married, it was with the agreement that our marriage should be binding upon us only so long as it was for the highest spiritual welfare of both; and by that agreement it is necessary that we should stand at all times. My purpose in writing to you is to let you know that I have no claim upon Corydon which prohibits her from continuing her acquaintance with you; and that if in the course of time it should become clear that Corydon would be happier as your wife than as mine, I should regard it as my duty to step aside. Having said this, I feel that I have done my part. I leave the matter in your hands, with the fullest confidence in your sincerity and good faith."

Thyrsis wrote this letter, and read it a couple of times. Then he decided to sleep over it; and the next morning he wakened, and read it again--with a shock of surprise. He found it a startling letter. It opened up vistas to his spirit; vistas of loneliness and grief--and then again, vistas of freedom and triumph. If he were to mail it, it would be irrevocable; and it would probably mean that he would lose Corydon.

And _could_ he make up his mind to lose her? His swift thoughts flew to their parting; there were tears in his eyes--his love came back to him, as it had when he thought she was dying. But then again, there came a thrill of exultation; the captive lion within him smelt the air of the jungle, and rattled his chains and roared.

Throughout breakfast he was absent-minded and ill at ease; he bid Corydon a farewell which puzzled her by its tenderness, and then started to walk to Bellevue with the letter. Half way in, he stopped. No, he could not do it--it was a piece of madness; but then he started again--he _must_ do it. He found himself pacing up and down before the post office, where for nearly an hour he struggled to screw his courage to the sticking-point. Once he started away, having made up his mind that he would take another day to think the matter over; but after he had walked half a mile or so, he changed his mind and strode back, and dropped the letter in the box.

And then a pang smote him. It was done! All the way as he walked home he had to fight with an impulse to go back, and persuade the postmaster to return the letter to him!

Section 12. Thyrsis figured that the fatal doc.u.ment would reach Mr.

Harding that afternoon; and the next morning in his anxiety he walked a mile or two to meet the mail-carrier on his way. Sure enough, there was a reply from the clergyman. He tore it open and read it swiftly:

"I received your letter, and I hasten to answer. I cannot tell you the distress of mind which it has caused me. There has been a most dreadful misundertanding, and I can only hope that it has not gone too far to be corrected. I beg you to believe me that there has been nothing between your wife and myself that could justify the inference you have drawn.

Your wife was in terrible distress of spirit, and I visited her and tried to comfort her--such is my duty as a clergyman, as I conceive it. I did nothing but what a clergyman should properly do, and you have totally misunderstood me, and also your wife, who is the most innocent and gentle and trusting of souls. She is utterly devoted to you, and the idea that the help I have tried to give her should be the occasion of any misunderstanding between you is dreadful for me to contemplate.

"I must implore you to believe this, and dismiss these cruel suspicions from your mind. If I were to be the cause of breaking up your home, and wrecking Corydon's life, it would be more than I could bear. I have a most profound belief in the sanct.i.ty of the inst.i.tution of marriage, and not for anything in the world would I have been led to do, or even to contemplate in my own thoughts, anything which would trespa.s.s upon its obligations. I repeat to you with all the earnestness of which I am capable that your idea is without basis, and I beg you to banish it from your mind. You may rely upon it that I will not see your wife again, under any circ.u.mstances imaginable."

Thyrsis read this, and then stared before him with knitted brows. "Why, what's the matter with the man?" he said to himself. And then he read the letter over again, weighing its every phrase. "Did he think my letter was sarcasm?" he wondered. "Did he think I was angry?"

He went to his study and got the rough draft of his own letter, and reread and pondered it. No, he concluded, it was not possible that Mr.

Harding had thought he was angry. "He's trying to dodge!" he exclaimed.

"He can't bring himself to face the thing!"

But then again, he wondered. Could it be that the man was right; could it be that Corydon had misunderstood him and his att.i.tude? Or had he perhaps experienced a reaction, and was now trying to deny his feelings?

For several hours Thyrsis pondered the problem; and then he went and sat by her, as she was reading on the piazza. "You haven't heard anything more from Mr. Harding, have you?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Corydon.

"What do you suppose he intends to do?"

"I--I don't know," she said. "I don't think he means to come back."

"But why not, dear?"

"He's afraid to trust himself, Thyrsis."

"You think he really cares for you, then?"

"Yes, dear."

"But, how can you be sure?" he asked.

At which Corydon smiled. "A woman has ways of knowing about such things," she said.

"I wish you'd tell me about it," said he.

But after a little thought, she shook her head. "Maybe some day, but not now. It wouldn't be fair to him. It isn't going any further, and that's enough for you to know."

"He must be unhappy, isn't he?" said Thyrsis, artfully.

"Yes," she answered, "he's unhappy, I'm sure. He takes things very seriously."

Thyrsis paused a moment. "Did he tell you that he loved you?" he asked.

"No," said Corydon. "He--he wouldn't have permitted himself to do that.

That would have been wrong."