adventure. There came glorious days, when they took long tramps over the
hills; or when Thyrsis would carry the child upon his shoulder, and they
would wander about the meadows, picking daisies and clover, and making
garlands for Corydon. Once Cedric sat down upon a bumble-bee, and that
was hard upon him, and perhaps upon the bee. But for the most part the
little one was enraptured during these excursions. He was fascinated
with the flowers, and continually seeking for an opportunity to devour
some of them; while he was doing it he would wear such a roguish
smile--it was impossible not to believe that he understood the agitation
which these abnormal appetites occasioned in his parents. Corydon would
be seized with a sudden access of affection, and she would clutch him in
her arms and squeeze him, and fairly smother him with kisses. Of course
the youngster would protest wildly at this, and so not infrequently the
demonstration would end tragically.
“I can’t have any joy in my baby at all!” she would lament; and
Thyrsis would have to soothe the child, and plead with her to find more
practical ways of demonstrating her maternal devotion.
Cedric was beginning to make determined efforts to talk now, and he had
the most original names for things. His parents would adopt these into
their own speech, which thus departed rapidly from established usage.
They had to bring themselves to realize that if they went on in that
fashion, the child would never learn to speak so that any one else could
understand him. The grandmothers were most strenuous upon this point,
and would laboriously explain to the infant that chickens and pigeons
and sparrows were not all known as “ducky-ducks”; they would plead with
it to say “bottle of milk”, while its reckless parents were delighting
themselves with such perversions as “bobbu mookie-mook.”
Two or three times each week the farmer would bring their mail; and once
a week they would hire an old scare-crow of a horse, and a buggy which
might have passed for the one-horse shay in its ninety-ninth year, and
drive to a town for provisions. It was amazing what loads of provisions
a family of three could consume in the course of a week--especially when
one of them was following the “stuffing regime”. There had to be a lot
of figuring done to get it for the sum of thirty dollars a month; and
this put another grievous burden upon Thyrsis. Corydon, alas, had
no talents for figuring, and was cursed with a weakness for such
superfluities as clean laundry and coffee with cream. This was one more
aspect of the difference between the Hebrew and the Greek temperament;
and sometimes the Hebrew temperament would lose its temper, and the
Greek temperament would take to tears. The situation was all the more
complicated because of their pitiful ignorance. They really did not know
what was necessity and what was luxury. For instance, Thyrsis had read
somewhere that people could live without meat; but Corydon had never
heard of such an idea, and insisted with vehemence that it was an
absurdity.
However, there was no evading the issue of poverty; for the thirty
dollars was all they had. “The Hearer of Truth” had been out several
months now, and had not sold a thousand copies; and so it was to be
doubted if Thyrsis would ever get another dollar from that. Also, he
had heard from the translator of “The Genius”, and had agreed to accept
twenty-five dollars as an “honorarium” for the production of his play in
Germany--this princely sum to be paid when the play came out during the
following winter.
Meantime, of course, he was driving away at his new work. Domestic
duties took up most of his morning; but he would get away into the woods
in the afternoons, and in the evenings, when the family was asleep, he
would work until far after midnight. He was bringing out basketfuls of
books from the library of the university; and he lived another life in
these--sharing, in a hundred different forms, the agony of the War. He
was not writing yet; he was filling up his soul with the thing, making
it a reservoir of impressions. Some times it would seem that the
reservoir was nearly full, and he would be seized with a hunger to be
at work; he would go about possessed by it--absent-minded, restless,
nervous when he was spoken to. It was hard for a man who listened all
night to the death-groans of the thousands piled up before “Bloody
Angle”, to get up in the morning and be satisfactory in the rôle of
“mother’s assistant”.
Here, again was the torment of this matrimonial bond to a man who wished
to be an artist. He had to live two lives, when one was more than he
could attend to; he had to be always aware of another soul yearning for
him, reaching out to him and craving his attention. To be sure, Corydon
was interested in what he was doing; she even made heroic efforts to
read the books that he was reading. But she had so many duties, and so
many headaches; and when night came she was so tired! She would ask him
to tell her about his vision; and was not the thing untellable? Why
else did he have to labor day and night, like a man possessed? He would
explain this to her, and she would bid him go on and do his work and not
mind her. But when he would take her at her word, and there would follow
a week or two of indifference and preoccupation--then he would discover
that she was again unhappy.