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Part 2. Love's Captivity - Book 9. The Captive In Leash |
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_ PART II. LOVE'S CAPTIVITY BOOK IX. THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH _They were standing on the hill-top, watching the last glimmer of the sinking moon. As the faint perfume of the clover came to them upon the warm evening wind, she sighed, and whispered--
She paused. "Go on," he said, and she quoted--
Section 1. Thyrsis made his plans and packed his few belongings. There came another pass from the "higher regions", and he took the night-train once more, and came to the little town upon the shores of Lake Ontario. Once more the sun shone on the crystal-green water, and the cold breeze blew from off the lake. There was still snow in the ravines of the deep woods, but Thyrsis got his tent out of the farmer's barn, and patched up the holes the mice had gnawed, and put it up on the old familiar spot. It was strange to him to be there without Corydon. There were so many things to remind him of her--a sudden memory would catch him unawares, and stab him like a knife. There was the rocky headland where they had swam, and there was the pine-tree that the lightning had splintered, one day while they were standing near. When darkness came, and he was unpacking a few old things that they had left up in the country, his loneliness seemed to him almost more than he could bear; he sat by the little stove, holding a pair of her old faded slippers in his hands, and felt his tears trickling down upon them. But it took him only a day or two to drive such things out of his mind. There was no time for sentiment now--it was "Clear ship for action!" For once in his life he was free, and had a chance to work. He was full of his talk with Mr. Ardsley, and meant to do his best to be "practical." And so behold him wandering about in the water-soaked forests, or tramping the muddy roads, or sitting by his little stove while the cold storms beat upon the tent--wrestling with his unruly Pegasus, and dragging it back a hundred times a day to what was proper, and human, and interesting! The neighbors had warned him that it was too early for tenting, but Thyrsis had vowed he would stand it. And now, as if to punish him for his defiance, there was emptied out upon him the cave of all the winds; for four weeks there were such storms of rain and sleet and snow as the region had never known in April. There were nights when he sat wrapped in overcoats and blankets, with a fire in the stove; and still shivering for the gale that drove through the canvas. There came one calm, starlit night when he lay for hours almost frozen, and sat up in the morning to find a glass of water at his bedside frozen solid. Thirteen degrees the thermometer showed, according to the farmer; and oh, the agony of getting out of bed, and starting a fire with green wood! In the end Thyrsis poured in half a can of kerosene, and got the stove red-hot; and then he turned round to warm his back, and smelled smoke, and whirled about to find his tent in a blaze! With a bucket of water and a broomstick he beat out the fire, and went for a run to warm up. But when he came back there was more wind, so that he could not keep warm in the tent, and more rain, so that he could not find shelter in the woods. In the end he discovered a ruined barn, in a corner of which he would sit, wrapped in his blankets and writing with cold fingers. Perhaps all these mishaps had something to do with the refusal of his ideas to flow. But apparently it was in vain that Thyrsis tried at any time to work at things that were interesting to other people. Perhaps he could have worked better at them, if there had not been so many things that were interesting to _him_. He would find himself confronted with the image of the society clergyman, or of the sleek editor in his club, or some other memory out of the world of luxury and pride. And each day came the newspaper, with its burden of callousness and scorn; and perhaps also a letter from Corydon, with something to goad him to new tilts with the enemies of his soul. So, before long, almost without realizing it, he was putting the "interesting" things aside, and girding himself for another battle. His message was still undelivered; and in vain he sought to content himself by blaming the world for this. Until he had forced the world to hear him, he had simply not yet done his work. He must take his thought and shape it anew--into some art-work finer, stronger, truer than he had yet achieved. Day after day he pondered this idea--eating with it and walking with it and sleeping with it; until at last, of a sudden, the vision came to him. It came late at night, while he was undressing; and he sat for five or ten minutes, with his shirt half off, as if in a trance. Then he put the shirt on again, and went out to wander about the woods, laughing and talking to himself. "Genius surrounded by Commercialism"--that was his theme; and it would have to be a play. Its hero would be a young musician, a mere boy, a master of the demon-voices of the violin; he would be rapt in his vision, and around him a group of people who would be embodiments of the world and all its forces of evil. One by one they came trooping before Thyrsis' fancy, with all their trappings of pomp and power, their greatness and their greed--sinister and cruel figures, but also humorous, very creatures of the spirit of comedy! Yes, he had a comedy this time--a real comedy! Section 2. In this hour, of course, Thyrsis forgot all about the "plot" he had outlined to Mr. Ardsley, and about his promises to be "practical." Something arose within him, imperious and majestic, and swept all this out of the way with one gesture of the hand. He dropped everything else and plunged into the play. Never yet in his life had anything taken hold of him to such an extent; it drove him so that he forgot to eat, he forgot to sleep. He would work over some part of it until he was exhausted--and then, without warning, some other part would open out in a vista before him, and he would spring up in pursuit of that. Characters and episodes and dialogue, wild humor, scalding satire, grim tragedy--they thronged and jostled and crowded one another in his imagination. "The Genius" was the title of the play. Its protagonist had come home after completing his education in Vienna; and there was the family gathered to greet him. Mr. Hartman, the father, was a wholesale grocer--a business large enough to have brought wealth, but painfully tainted with "commonness". Then there was Mrs. Hartman, stout and tightly-laced, who had studied the science of elegance while her husband studied sugar. There was the elder son, who under his mother's guidance had married well; and Miss Violet Hartman, who was looking up to the perilous heights of a foreign alliance. Only of late had the family come to realize what an asset to their career this "Genius" might be. They had humored him in his strange whim to devote his life to fiddling; money had been spent on him freely--he brought home with him a famous Cremona instrument for which three thousand dollars had been paid. But now it was dawning upon them that this was an "ugly duckling"; he was to make his _debut_ in the metropolis, where an overwhelming triumph was expected; and then he would return to the home city in the middle West, and would play at _musicales_, which even the most exclusive of the "_elite_" must attend. There was also the great Prof. Reminitsky, the teacher who had made Lloyd, and had come to New York with him; and there was the Herr Prof. von Arne, of the University of Berlin, a world-renowned psychiatrist, author of "The Neurosis of Inspiration". The Herr Professor had come to America to make some studies for his forthcoming masterpiece on the religious mania; and he was glad to see his old friend Reminitsky, whose seventeen-year-old musical prodigy was most interesting material for study. Prof. Reminitsky was the world's greatest authority in the art of tearing the human soul to pieces by means of horse-hair rubbed with resin and scraped over the intestines of a pig. There were no tricks of finger-gymnastics and of tone-production that he had not mastered. As for the emotions produced thereby, he felt them, but in a purely professional way; that is, the convictions he had concerning them related to their effects upon audiences, and more especially upon the score or two of critical experts whose psychology had been his life-study. But having studied also the psychology of youth, he knew that his _protege_ must needs have other convictions concerning his performances. This was his supreme greatness--that he understood the paranoia of enthusiasm, and used this understanding to tempt his pupils to new heights of achievement. In all of which, of course, his friend von Arne was a great help to him. Von Arne had dug through a score of great libraries, and had travelled all the world over, frequenting cafes and salons, monasteries and prayer-cells, prisons and hospitals and asylums--wherever one might get new glimpses of the extraordinarily intricate phenomena of the aberration called "Genius". He had several thousand cases of it at his finger-tips--he had measured its reaction-times and calculated its cephalic index, and analyzed its secretions and tested it for indecan. He knew trance and clairvoyance, auto-suggestion and telepathic hallucination, epilepsy and hysteria and ecstasy; and over the head of any disputatious person he would swing the steam-shovel of his erudition, and bury the unfortunate beneath a wagon-load of Latin and Greek derivatives. Also, there was Moses Rosen, the business-manager. Moses was short, and wore a large diamond ring, and he also was a specialist in the phenomena of "Genius". He studied them from the point of view of the box-office, and his tests were quite as definite as those of the psychological laboratory. There came to Moses an endless stream of prodigies, all of them having long hair and picturesque aspects, and talking rapidly and rolling their eyes; the problem was to determine which of them had the faculty of true Genius, which not only talked rapidly and rolled its eyes, but also had the power of causing money to flow in through a box-office window. In this case Moses felt that the prospects were good; the only trouble being that the prodigy intended to render a _concerto_ by a strange composer--a stormy and unconventional thing which would annoy the critics. Moses suggested something that was "classic"; and agreed with Mrs. Hartman that there ought to be something corresponding to "good form" in music. Section 3. So all these strange creatures were poking and peering and smelling about the "Genius"; and meanwhile, there came at intervals faint strains of music from a distant room. At last Lloyd Hartman entered; beautiful, pale and sensitive--a haunted boy, and the most haunting figure that had yet come to Thyrsis' imagination. Also, it was the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken; for the character had come to him, not as a formula or a collection of phrases, but as an intuition, a part of his own soul; and he would work out a scene a score of times, finding words to phrase it, and then rejecting them. By what speeches could he give his sense of the gulf that lay between Lloyd and the people about him? For this boy could not cope with them in argument, he would have no mastery of the world of facts. He must be without any touch of sophistication, of cynicism; and yet, when he spoke to them, it must be clear that he knew them for different beings from himself. He would go with them meekly; but one would feel that it was because his path lay in their direction. When the point came that their ways parted, he would go his own way; and just there lay the seed of the tragi-comedy. The family gathers about him, and he answers their questions. He will wear the kind of tie that his sister prefers, and they may set any date they please for the _musicales_ at home. He hears the "copy" which Moses has prepared for his advertisements; and then he sits, absent-minded, while they talk about him. Music is in his thoughts, and gradually it steals into his aspect and the gestures of his hand. They watch him, and a pall comes over them: until at last the mother exclaims that he makes her nervous, and leads the family off. Then Miss Arnold is announced--Helena Arnold, who has been recommended as accompanist at the great concert. She is young and beautiful; and the two go into the next room to play, while the professors remain to talk over this new complication. Prof. von Arne, of course, lays especial emphasis upon the sex-element in psychopathology; he and Reminitsky have talked the subject out many years ago, and adopted a definite course of action. The abnormalities incidental to sex-repression were innumerable, and for the most part destructive; but there could be no question that all the more striking phenomena of the neurosis called "Genius" were greatly increased in their intensity by this means. So, in dealing with his pupils, and especially with a prodigy like young Hartman, Prof. Reminitsky would call into service all the paraphernalia of religious mysticism; teaching his pupil to regard woman as the object of exalted adoration, a being too holy to be attained to even in thought. And now, of course, when the proposed accompanist turns out to be a decidedly alluring young female, it is necessary to take careful heed. Meanwhile from the distance come bursts of wild music; and at last Helena returns--pale, and deeply agitated. "It is that _concerto!_" she says, and then asks to be excused from talking. Lloyd comes, and stands by the door watching her. When his teacher begins to open business negotiations, he asks him abruptly to leave them alone. Helena asks, "Who wrote that music?" He tells her a ghastly story of a titan soul who starved in a garret and shot himself, crushed by the mockery of the world. "I might have saved him!" the boy exclaims. "I was so busy with the music I forgot the man!" They talk about this epoch-making _concerto_, and how Lloyd means to force it upon the public. "And you shall play it with me!" he exclaims. "You are the first that has ever understood it!" "I cannot play it!" she protests; to which he answers, "It was like his voice come back from the grave!" And so we see these two souls cast into the crucible together. Section 4. The second act showed the aftermath of the great concert, and took place in the drawing-room of the Hartman family's apartment, at four o'clock in the morning. We see Moses and the two professors, who have not been able to tear themselves away; dishevelled, _distrait_, wild with vexation, they pace about and lament. Failure, utter ruin confronts them--the structure of their hopes lies in the dust! They blame it all on "that woman"--and members of the family concur in this. It was she who kept Lloyd to his resolve to play that mad _concerto;_ and then, to cast aside all the master had taught them, all the results of weeks of drilling--and to play it in that frantic, demonic fashion. Now the men await the morning papers, which will bring them the verdict of "the world"; and they shudder with the foreknowledge of what that verdict will be. Lloyd and Helena enter. They have been walking for hours, and have not been thinking of "the world". They listen, half-heeding, to the protests and laments; they could not help it, they explain--the music took hold of them. The two professors go off to get the papers, and Moses goes into the next room to rest; after which it becomes clear to the audience that Lloyd and Helena are fighting the sex-duel. "You do not care about people," she is saying, sombrely. To which his reply is, "It is not to be found in people." "And yet from people it must come!" she insists. He answers, "They do not even know what I mean; and they have no humility." "It is a problem," Lloyd continues, after a pause. "Shall one go on alone, or wait and bring others with him?--You have brought that problem into my life." She answers to this, "I cannot see how my love will hinder you." He replies, "If you love _me_, who will love my art?" So it goes--until the professors return with their freight of the world's Philistinism. And here came a scene, over which Thyrsis shook for many a day with merriment. The accounts of the concert are read; Moses awakens and comes in; and as the agony increases, the members of the family appear, one by one, clad in their dressing-gowns, and adding their lamentations to the chorus. Gone is all the prestige of the two professors, gone all the profits of Moses, gone all the visions of social triumphs in the city of the middle West! To all of which uproar the two listen patiently; until at last the mother, in a transport of vexation, turns upon Helena, and accuses her of ensnaring the boy. And then--the climax of the scene--Lloyd springs up; all that Genius in him, which has so far gone into music, turns now into rage and scorn. He pictures these people--pawing over his inspiration with their unclean hands--peering at it, weighing it, chaffering over it--taking it into the market-place to be hawked about. He shows them what they are, and what that "world" is, to which they would offer his muse as a whore. And then at the climax of his speech, as he is waving his violin in the air, the Herr Prof. von Arne ventures to put in a word; and the boy whirls upon him, and brings down the three thousand-dollar treasure upon the eminent psychiatrist's head! The third act, which was the hardest of all to write, was to take place in a garret. Lloyd has gone away alone, and three years have passed, and now he lies dying of a wasting disease. Helena has come to him again--and still they are fighting the duel. "A woman will do anything for a man but renounce him," says Lloyd; and she cannot understand this fierce instinct of his. She has come and found him; and he lies gasping for breath, and speaking in broken sentences. Yet he will not have her bring grief into his chamber; he has fought his way through grief, and through hatred and contempt, and now he lies at peace upon the bosom of nature. No longer is he wrapped up in his own vision; he has learned from the million suns in the sky and the million trees of the forest. He tells her that the thing called "Genius" springs ceaselessly from the heart of life. He has cast out fear; and with it he has cast out love. "What are you?" he asks. "What am I?" And he sets forth in blazing words his vision of the soul, which is as a flash of light in a raindrop, and yet one with the eternal process. As the fruit of his life he leaves one symphony in manuscript, and some pages of writing in which he has summed up his faith. That is enough, he says--that is victory; for that he fled away, and killed his love. The two professors come, having learned that Lloyd is dying. But even they cannot divert him. He tells von Arne that his learning will submit itself, and that scientists will be as gardeners, tending the young flowers of faith. His mother and father come, and he whispers that even for them there is hope--that in the deepest mire of respectability the spark of the soul still glows. His mother bursts into weeping by his bed, and he tells her that even from the dungeon of pride there may be deliverance. So he sends them all away to pray. Then Helena sits at the piano and plays a few bars of that sonata of Beethoven's which is an utterance of most poignant grief, and which some publisher has cruelly misnamed the "Moonlight". And after long silence, the dying man communes with his muse. A light suffuses the room, and he whispers, "Take thine own time; for the seeds of thy glories are planted in the hearts of men!" Section 6. Over these things Thyrsis would work for six hours at a stretch, sitting without moving a muscle; for days and nights he would wander about at random in the woods. He ate irregularly, of such things as he could put his hands upon; and sleep fled from him like a mistress spurned. When, after a couple of months, he had finished the task, there was an incessant throbbing in his forehead, and--alas for the sudden tumble from the heights of Parnassus!--he had lost almost entirely the power of digesting food. But the play was done. He sent it off to be copied, and wrote paeans of thanksgiving to Corydon. Once more he had a weapon, newly-forged and sharpened, wherewith to pierce that tough hide of the world! There remained the practical question: What did one do when he had a play completed? What was the first step to be taken? Thyrsis pondered the problem for several days; and then, as chance would have it, his eye was caught by a newspaper paragraph to the effect that "Ethelynda Lewis, the popular _comedienne_, is to be starred in a serious drama next season, under the management of Robertson Jones. Miss Lewis's play has not yet been selected." Now, as it happened, "Ethelynda Lewis" had been on the play-bill of "The Princess of Prague", that tragic "musical comedy" to which Thyrsis had been taken; but he never noticed the names of actors and actresses, and had no suspicions. He sent his manuscript to this future star; and a week later came a note, written on scented monogram paper in a tall and distinguished chirography, acknowledging the receipt of his play and promising to read it. Then Thyrsis turned to attack the manuscripts which had been accumulating while he was writing. They were coming more frequently now--apparently Mr. Ardsley liked his work. To Corydon, who had gone to the country with her parents, he wrote that he was getting some money ahead, and so she might join him before long. This brought him a deluge of letters; and it forced him to another swift descent into the world of reality. "I have told you nothing of my sufferings," wrote Corydon. "At least a score of times I have written you long letters and then torn them up, saying that your work must not be disturbed. But oh, Thyrsis, I do not think I can stand it much longer! Can you imagine what it means to be shut up in a boarding-house, without one living soul to understand about me?" She would go on to tell of her griefs and humiliations, her longings and rages and despairs. Then, too, Cedric was not growing as he should. "He is beautiful," she wrote, "and every one loves him. But he makes not the least attempt to sit up, and I am very much worried. I fear that I ought not to go on nursing him--I am too nervous to eat as I should. And then I think of the winter, and that we may still be separated, and I do not see how I am to stand it. It is as if I were in a prison. I think of you, and I cannot make you real to me." To all of which Thyrsis could only reply with vague hopes--and then go away for a tramp in the forest, and call to his soul for new courage. He had still troubles enough of his own. For one thing, the fiend in his stomach was not to be exorcised by any spell he knew. It was all very picturesque to portray one's hero as dying of disease; but in reality it was not at all satisfactory. Thyrsis did not die, he merely ate a bowl of bread and milk, and then went about for several hours, feeling as if there were a football blown up inside of him. He had a touching faith in the medical profession in those days, and whenever there was anything wrong with him, he would turn the problem over to a doctor and his soul would be at rest. In this case the doctor told him that he had dyspepsia--not a very difficult diagnosis--and gave him a bottle full of a red liquid to be taken after meals. To Thyrsis this seemed an example of the marvels of science, of the adjustment of means to ends; for behold, when he had taken the red liquid, the bread and milk disappeared as if by magic! And he might go on and eat anything else--if there was trouble, he had only to take more of the red liquid! So he plunged into work on a pot-boiler, and wrote Corydon to be of cheer, that the dawn was breaking. Section 7. Corydon, in the meantime, had received a copy of his play; and he was surprised at the effect it had upon her. "It is marvellous," she wrote; "it is like a blaze of lightning from one end to the other. And yet, much as I rejoice in its power, the main feeling it brought me was of anguish; for it seemed to me as if in this play you had spoken out of your inmost soul. Can it be that you are really chafing against the bond of our love? That you feel that I have hold of you and cling to you; and that you resent it, and shrink from me? Oh Thyrsis, what can I do? Shall I bid you go, and blot the thought of you from my mind? Is that what you truly want? 'A woman will do anything for a man but renounce him!' Did you not shudder for me when you wrote those words? "It is two o'clock in the morning, and so far I have not been able to sleep. I have lain awake with torturing thoughts; and then the baby wakened up, and I had to put him to sleep again--any indisposition of mine always affects him. I am sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, writing with a candle; and hoping to get myself sufficiently exhausted, so that I shall no longer lie awake. "Go and find your vision over my corpse, and may God bless you!...I wrote that hours ago, and I tried to mean it. I try to tell myself that I will take the child and go away, and crush my own hopes and yearnings, and give my life to him. But no--I cannot, I cannot! It is perfectly futile for me to think of that--I crave for life, and I cannot give up. There is that in me that will never yield, that will take no refusal. Sometimes I see myself as a woman of seventy, still seeking my life. Do you not realize that? I feel that I shall never grow old! "How strange a thing it is, Thyrsis, that you and I, who might do so much with so little chance, should have no chance at all. I read of other poets and their wives--at least they managed to have a hut on some hillside, and they did not absolutely starve. "I am tired now; perhaps I can sleep. But I will tell you something, Thyrsis--does it sound so very foolish? Not only will I never grow old, but I will never give up your love! Yes, some day you will find out how to seek your vision in spite of the fact that I am your wife!" Section 8. Another day, there would be moods of peace, and even of merriment; it was always like putting one's hand into a grab-bag, to open a new letter from Corydon. In after years he would read them, and strange were the memories they brought! "My Thyrsis," she wrote: "I have been reading a story of Heine in Zangwill's "Dreamers of the Ghetto". I did not know about Heine. He loved and married a sweet little woman of the people--Mathilde--who didn't appreciate his writings. I am not only going to love you, but I am going to appreciate your writings! Some day I am going to be educated--and won't it be fine when I am educated? "I keep very busy, but I have not so much time as I had last summer. I live almost all my life in hope--the present is nothing. I think I get more strength by gazing at my baby than in any other way. I wonder if I can ever infuse into him my inspiration and my desire. It is wonderfully exciting to me to think of what a free soul could do, if it possessed my spirit and my dreams. Ah, even you don't know! I smile to myself when I think how surprised you might some day be! Oh, my baby, my baby, surely you will not fail me--little soul that is to be. This is what I say to him, and then I squeeze him in ecstasy, and he coughs up his milk. Dear funny little thing, that is so pleased with a red, white and blue rattle. At present he is grinning at it ecstatically--and he is truly most horribly cunning. His favorite expression is 'Ah-boo, ah-boo'; and is not that just _too_ bright? Everybody tries to spoil him--even a twelve-year-old boy here wanted to kiss him. And wonder of wonders, he has two teeth appearing in his lower gums! Poor me--he bites hard enough as he is." And then again: "My Beloved: I am sitting with my candle once more. It is too hot for a lamp. I have been reading 'Paradise Lost', and truly I am astonished that it is so beautiful. Also I have been reading a book about Unitarianism, and I did not know that such things had been written. But I think it is hardly worth while to call one's self a Unitarian. I was thinking that I will go back and read the Bible through. I would not mind, if I knew I did not have to believe it. "Also; this week, I read 'Paul and Virginia'. Oh, do not write anything to me about our meeting, until you are sure it can be! It breaks my heart. "Did it ever occur to you that we might embark for the tropics? We'd have a hut, and I might learn to raise fruits and vegetables. I sigh for some verdant isle--and I am not joking. We might find some place where steamers came now and then, and some one in New York could attend to your manuscripts. "To-night I was trying to put my baby to sleep and he wouldn't go, but just lay in my lap and kicked and grinned. I tried to coax him to go to sleep, but if I was the least bit impatient he'd begin to cry. And then he'd grin at me so roguishly, as if to say, 'Let's play before I go to sleep!' Finally I looked right at him and said, 'Now, you have played long enough, and I wish you to be a good boy and go to sleep!' And then he laughed, and I put him on his side and he went to sleep! Wasn't that bright for a baby just seven months old? "I think I write you much more interesting letters than you write me. To be sure I have no books into which to put my thoughts. Also, I have a great deal of time to compose letters to you; Cedric wakes me up so much in the night, and often I cannot go to sleep again. It plays havoc with me as a rule; and yet sometimes, when I'm not too exhausted, there is a certain joy in watching by the dim candle light the rosy upturned face and the little groping mouth. Oh Thyrsis, he is all mine and yours, and we must make him glad he was borned, mustn't we?" Section 9. Such letters would come at a time when Thyrsis was almost prostrated with exhaustion; and great waves of loneliness and yearning would sweep over him. Ah God, what a fate it was--to labor as he labored, and then to have no means of recreation or respite, no hand to smooth his forehead, no voice to whisper solace! Who could know the tragedy of that aspect of his life? There came one day an incident that almost broke his heart. Down the lake came a private yacht, beautiful and swift, clean as a new penny, its bronze and white paint glistening in the sunlight. It anchored not far out from the point where Thyrsis camped, and a boat put off, and from it three young girls stepped ashore. They were slender and graceful, clad all in white--as spotless as the vessel itself, and glowing with health and joyfulness. They cast shy glances at the tent, and asked Thyrsis to direct them to the nearest farm-house; he watched them disappear through the woods, and saw them return with a basket of fruit. It was just at sunset, and there was a new moon in the sky, and the evening star trembled upon the bosom of the waters. There in the magic stillness lay the vessel--and suddenly came the sounds of a guitar, and of young voices singing. Wonderful to tell, they sang --not "ragtime" and "college songs," but the chorus of the "Rheintoechter," and Schubert's "Auf dem Wasser zu singen", and other music, unknown to Thyrsis, exquisite almost beyond enduring. It pierced him to the heart; he sat with his hands clenched, and every nerve of him a-quiver, and the hot tears raining down his cheeks. It was loveliness not of this earth, it was an apparition; that presence which had been haunting him ever since he had come to this spot--
The music died away, and rose again; and the deeps of his spirit were opened, and ecstasy and grief welled up together within him. Then he made out that the anchor was being lifted; and he was tempted to spring up and cry out to them to stay. But no--what did they know of him? What would they care about him? So he crouched by the bank, drinking greedily the precious notes; and as the yacht with its gleaming lights stole away into the twilight, all the poet's soul went yearning with it. Still he could hear the faint strains swelling--
He sat with his face hidden in his hands, shuddering. Here he was, wrestling in the pit with sickness and despair--and there above him were the heights of art. If only he could live with such music, what prodigies could he not perform. And they who possessed it--did it mean to them what it meant to him? They who had everything that life could offer--music and art, freedom and beauty and health--all the treasures of life as their birthright--had they never a thought of those who had nothing, and were set to slave in the galleys of their pleasure-craft? Thyrsis was always coming upon some aspect of this thing called Privilege. Corydon had suggested that there might be some work that she could do at home; and so one day he was looking over the advertisements in a newspaper, and came upon a composition by a man who was seeking a governess for his three children. It was written in a style all its own; it revealed a person accustomed to specify exactly what he wanted, and it occupied three or four inches, as if symbolic of the fact that he did not consider expense. He described the life of his children; they had servants and a tutor to attend to their physical and mental needs, and the father now sought a friend and, companion, to take charge of their spiritual and social development. The specifications evoked a picture of an establishment, in which all the community's resources, all the sciences and arts of civilization, were set at work to create joy and power for three young people. What a contrast it made with the care that little Cedric was getting, as revealed in his mother's letters! Thyrsis could see in his mind's eye the master and provider of this establishment. How well he knew the type--how often had he sat in some quiet corner and listened while it revealed itself. A man alert and aggressive; immaculate in appearance as the latest fashion-plate, and overlaid with a veneer of culture--yet underneath it still the predatory talons, the soul of the hawk. He was a "practical" man; that is, he understood profit. He was trained to see where profit lay, and swift to seize upon it. As a business-man he ruled labor, and crushed his competitors, and directed legislatures and political machines; as a lawyer he protected his kind from attack, as a judge he bent the law to the ends of greed. So he lived in palaces, and travelled about in private-cars and yachts, and had servants and governesses for his children, and valets and secretaries to attend himself. And whenever by any chance he got a glimpse of Thyrsis' soul, how he hated it! On the other hand, to Thyrsis he was a portent of terror. He ruled in every field of human activity; and yet one saw that if his rule continued, it would mean the destruction of civilization! Whenever Thyrsis met one of these men, whether in imagination or reality, he found himself with hands clenched, and every nerve of him a-tingle with the lust of combat. Section 10. A most trying thing it was to a man who carried the burden of the future in his soul--to have to wrestle with an obstinate stomach! But so it was again; the magic red liquid seemed to be losing its power. Then, the pot-boiler was not going well; and to cap the climax, the manuscripts stopped coming. Thyrsis, after waiting two or three weeks in suspense and dread, wrote to Mr. Ardsley, and received a reply to the effect that he would not be able to send any more. Mr. Ardsley had sent them because of his interest in the proposed "practical" novel; and now he had learned that the poet had been giving his time to the writing of an impossible play! Thyrsis' predicament was a desperate one, and drove him to a desperate course. It was now midsummer; and run down from overwork as he was, could he face the thought of returning to the sweltering city, to go to work in some office? Or was he to hire out as a farm-laborer, under he knew not what conditions? He recoiled from either of these alternatives; and then suddenly, as he racked his brains, a wild idea flashed over him. For years he had talked and dreamed of escaping from civilization. He had pictured himself upon some tropic island, where bananas and cocoanuts grew; or again in some Northern wilderness, where he might hunt and fish, and live like the pioneers. And now--why not do it? He had an axe and a rifle and a fishing-rod; and only a few days previously he had heard a man telling of a lake in the Adirondacks, where not a dozen people went in the course of a year. It was early one morning the idea came to him; and within an hour he had struck his tent and packed his trunk. He stowed his camp-stuff and bedding in a dry-goods box, and leaving his tent with the farmer, he purchased a ticket to a place on the edge of the wilderness. He put up at a village-hotel, and the next day drove fifteen miles by a stage, and five more by a wagon, and spent the night at a lumber-camp far in the wilderness. The next day, carrying as much of his belongings as he could, he walked three miles more, and came to the tiny lake that was his goal. It was perhaps half a mile long; the virgin forest hung about it like a great green curtain, and the shadows of the blue mountains seemed as if painted upon its surface. Thyrsis gave a gasp of delight as he pushed through the bushes and saw it; he stripped and plunged into the crystal water--and hot and tired and soul-sick as he was, the coolness of it was like a clasp of protecting arms. There was a rock rising from the centre, and he swam out and stood upon it, and gazed about him at all the ravishing beauty, and laughed and whooped so that the mountains rang with the echoes. He found an abandoned "open-camp", or shed, the roof of which he made water-proof with newspapers and balsam-boughs. He cut fresh boughs for his bed, and spread his blankets upon them, and went back to the lumber-shanties, and purchased a box of prunes and a bag of rice. There were huckleberries in profusion upon the hills, and in the lakes were fish, and in the forests squirrels and rabbits, partridges and deer. There were the game-laws, to be sure; but there was also a "higher law", as eminent authorities had declared. As one of the wits at the lumber-camp put it, "If any wild rabbit comes rushing out to bite you, don't you hesitate to defend yourself!" So, with the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents in his pocket-book, Thyrsis began the happiest experience of his life. He watched the sun rise and set behind the mountains; and sometimes he climbed to the summits to see it further upon its way. He watched the progress of the tempests across the lake, and swam in the water while the rain splashed his face and the lightning splintered the pines in the forest. He crouched in the bushes and saw the wild ducks feeding, and the deer that came at sunset to drink. He watched the loons diving, and spying him out with their wild eyes--sometimes, as they rose in flight, beating the surface of the water with a sound like thunder. At night he heard their loud laughter, and the creaking cries of the herons flying past. Sometimes far up in the hills a she-fox would bark, or some too-aged tree of the forest would come down with a booming crash. Thyrsis would lie in his open camp and watch the moonlight through the pines, and prayers of thankfulness would well up within him--
There had been much carrying and hard work to do before he was settled, and there was more of it all through his stay. He had to cook all his meals and clean up afterwards; and because the nights were cold and his blankets few, there was much firewood to be cut. Also, there was no food unless he went out and found it, and so he spent hours each day tramping about in the forests. By the time he had got home and had cleaned the game and cooked it, he was ravenously hungry, and there was never any question as to what would digest. This was just what he had sought; and so now, deliberately, he banned all the muses from his presence, and poured the rest of the dyspepsia-medicine into the lake. His muscles became hard, and the flush of health returned to his cheeks, and as he went about his tasks he laughed and sang, and shouted his defiance to the world. And to Corydon he wrote his newest plan--to earn a little in the city that winter, and come back in the early spring and build a log-cabin for herself and the baby! Section 11. Twice a week his mail came to the lumbercamp, in care of the friendly foreman. Each time that he went out to get it, he hoped for some new turn. There was a publisher interested in "The Hearer of Truth", and an editor was reading "The Higher Cannibalism"; also, and most important of all, Miss Ethelynda Lewis had now had "The Genius" for nearly two months, and had not yet reported. Thyrsis wrote to remind her, and after another two weeks, he wrote yet more urgently. At last came a note--"I have been away from the city, and have not had a chance to read the play. I will attend to it at once." And then, after three weeks more, Thyrsis wrote again--and at last came a letter that made his heart leap. "I have read your play", wrote the popular _comedienne_: "I am very much interested in it indeed. I have asked my manager to read it, and will write you again shortly." Thyrsis sent this to Corydon, and again there was rejoicing and expectation. "If only I can get the play on," he wrote, "our future is safe, for the profits from plays are enormous. It will be a great piece of luck if I have found the right person at the first attempt." More weeks passed. Thyrsis watched the pageant of autumn upon the mountains--he saw the curtains of the lake-shore change to gold and scarlet, and from that to pale yellow and brown; and now, with every lightest breeze that stirred, there were showers of leaves came fluttering to the ground. The deer left the lake-shore and took to the "hard-wood", and the drumming of partridges thundered at sunset. The nights were bitterly cold, and he spent a good part of his day chopping logs and carrying them to camp, so that he might keep a blazing fire all night. There were hunting-parties in the woods, and he got a deer, and sold part of it, and had the rest hanging near his camp. And then one night came the first snow-storm; in the morning it lay white and sparkling in the sunlight--and oh, the wonder of a hunting-trip, when the floor of the wilderness was like a page on which could be read the tale of all that happened in the night! One could hardly believe that so many creatures were in these woods--there were tracks everywhere one looked. Here a squirrel had run, and here a partridge; here had been a porcupine, with feet like a baby's, and here a fox, and here a bear with two cubs. And in yon hollow a deer had slept through the night, and here he had blown away the snow from the moss; here two bucks had fought; and here one of them had been started by a hunter, and had bounded away with leaps that it was a marvel to measure. Thyrsis nearly lost his life at these fascinating adventures; for another storm came up, and covered his tracks, and when he tried to find his way back by the compass, he found that he had forgotten which end of the needle pointed to the North! So he wandered about for hours; and in the end had to decide by the toss of a penny whether he should get out to the main road, or wander off into twenty miles of trackless wilderness, without either food or matches. Fortunately the penny fell right; and he spent the night at a farmhouse, and the next day got back to the lumber-camp. And there was a letter from Ethelynda Lewis! Thyrsis tore it open and read this incredible message: "Your play has been carefully considered, and I am disposed to accept it. It is certainly very unusual and interesting, and I think it can be made a success. There are, however, certain changes which ought to be made. I am wondering if you will come to the city, so that we can talk it over. It would not be possible to settle a matter so important by mail; and there is no time to be lost, for I am ready to go ahead with the work at once, and so is my manager." Section 12. Nothing that the mail had ever brought to Thyrsis had meant so much to him as this. He was transported with delight. Yes, for this he would go back to the city!--But then, he caught his breath, realizing his plight. How was he to get to the city, when he had only three dollars to his name? He turned the problem over in his mind. Should he send a telegram to some relative and beg for help? No, he had vowed to die first. Should he write to the actress, and explain? No, for that would kill his chances. There was just one way to be thought of; venison in the woods was worth eleven cents a pound, and the smallest of deer would get him to the city! And so began a great adventure. Thyrsis wrote Miss Ethelynda that he would come; and that night he loaded up some more buckshot "shells", and before dawn of the next day was out upon the hunt. The snow was gone now; and with soft shoes on his feet he wandered all day through the wilderness--and was rewarded by two chances to shoot at the white tails of flying deer. And then came night, and he rigged up a "jack", a forbidden apparatus made of a soap-box and a lantern and a tin-plate for a reflector. He had an ingenious arrangement of straps and cords, whereby he could fasten this upon his head; and he had found an old lumber-trail where the deer came to feed upon the soft grass. Down this he crept like a thief in the night, with the light gleaming ahead, and the deer tramping in the thickets and whistling their alarms. Now and then one would stand and stare, his eye-balls gleaming like coals of fire; and at last came the roar of the gun, and the jacklight tumbled to the ground. When Thyrsis lighted up again and went to examine, there were spots of blood upon the leaves--but no deer. So the next day he was up again at dawn, watching by one of the runways to the lake. And then came another tramp, through the thickets and over the mountains--and more shots at the "flags" of the elusive enemy. Thyrsis' back ached, and his feet were as if weighted with lead, but still he plodded on and on--it was his life against a deer's. If only he had had a boat, so that he could have set up his "jack" in that! But he had no boat--and so he wrapped himself in blankets and sat to watch another runway at sunset; and when no deer came he decided to stay on until the moon rose. It was a bitterly cold night, and his hands almost froze to the gun-barrel when he touched it. And the moon rose, and forthwith went behind a cloud--and then came a deer! There was hardly a trace of motion in the air, but somehow the creature half-scented Thyrsis; and so it stood and trumpeted to the night. Oh, the wildness of that sound--and the thumping of the heart of the hunter, and the breathless suspense, and the burning desire. The deer would take a step, and a twig would crack; and then it would stand still again, and Thyrsis would listen, crouching like a statue, clutching his weapon and striving to penetrate the darkness. And then the deer would take two or three more steps, and stand again; and then, in sudden alarm, bound away; and then come back again, step by step--fascinated by this mysterious thing there in the darkness. For three mortal hours that creature pranced and cavorted about Thyrsis, while he waited with chattering teeth; then in the end it took a sudden fright, and went bounding away through the thicket. So came another day's hunting; and at sundown another watch by a runway; and another deer, that approached from the wrong direction, and came upon a man, worn out by three days and nights of effort, lying sound asleep at his post! But there could be only one ending to this adventure. Thyrsis was out for a deer, and he would never quit until he got one. All his planning and wandering had availed him nothing; but now, the next morning, as he stepped out from his camp with a bucket in his hand--behold, at the edge of a thicket, a deer! Thyrsis stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly; and the deer stood staring at him. It was a time of agony. Should he try to creep back to his gun, or should he make a sudden dash? He started to try the latter, and had a pang of despair as the deer whirled and bolted away. He leaped to the camp and grabbed his gun and sprang out into sight again--and there, off to the right, was another deer. It was a huge buck, with wide-spreading antlers, rising out of the bushes where it stood. It saw Thyrsis, and started away; and in a flash he raised his gun and fired. He saw the deer stumble, and he fired the other barrel; and then he started in wild pursuit. He had been warned to beware of a wounded deer; but he forgot that--he forgot also that he had no more shells upon him. He ran madly through the forest, springing over fallen logs, plunging through thickets--he would have seized hold of the animal with his bare hands, if only he could have caught up with it. The deer was badly hurt. It would leap ahead, and then stumble, half falling, and then leap again. Even in this way, the distance it covered was amazing; Thyrsis was appalled at the power of the creature, its tremendous bounds, the shock of its fall, and the crashing of the underbrush before it. It seemed like a huge boulder, leaping down a precipice; and Thyrsis stood at a safe distance and watched it. According to the poetry-books he should have been ashamed--perhaps moved to tears by the reproachful look in the great creature's eyes. But assuredly the makers of the poetry-books had never needed the price of a railroad-ticket as badly as Thyrsis did! He only realized that night how desperate his need had been. He lay in his berth on board a train for the city--while back at his "open-camp" a wild blizzard was raging, and the thermometer stood at forty degrees below zero. But Thyrsis was warm and comfortable; and also he was brown and rugged, once more full of health and eagerness for life. All night he listened to the pounding of the flying train; and fast as the music of it went, it was not fast enough for his imagination. It seemed as if the rails were speaking--saying to him, over and over and over again, "Ethelynda Lewis! Ethelynda Lewis! Ethelynda Lewis!" _ |
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