could never be sure what would have happened in their lives--what would
have been the reaction of their different temperaments--if they had been
given any fair chance to live and grow as they wanted to. But here they
were, mashed together in this stew-pot of domesticity, with all the most
unlovely aspects of things forced continually upon their attention. Each
was in some way a handicap and a torment to the other--a means which
fate used to limit and crush and destroy the other; and as ever, they
had in their hours of anguish no recourse save to sit down and reason it
out together, and absolve each other from blame.
Thyrsis invented a phrase whereby he might make this point clear to
Corydon, and keep it in her thoughts. The phrase was “the economic
screw”; it pressed upon him, and through him it crushed her. All things
that he sought to be and could not be, all things that he would not be
and was; all that was hard and unloving in him--his irritability and
impatience, his narrowness and bitterness--in all this he showed her
that cruel force that was destroying them both.
It was a hard rôle for Thyrsis, to be the judge and the jury and the
executioner of the stern will of this “economic screw”. There was, for
instance, the episode of the “turkey-red table-cover”, which became a
classic in their later lives. Corydon was always chafing at the
bareness of their little home; and going into the shops in the town,
and discovering things which might have made it lovely. One evil day she
went alone; and when she came back, Thyrsis, as usual, pounced upon his
mail, and came upon a letter from a magazine-editor whom he had been
trying to please with an article, and who now scolded him mercilessly
for his obstinacy and his egotism and his didacticism, and all his other
unpublishable qualities. Then came the unwrapping of the bundles, and
Corydon’s guileless and joyful announcement that she had come upon
a wonderful bargain in the dry-goods store, a beautiful piece of
“turkey-red” cloth which would serve as the table-cover for which her
soul had been pining--and which she had obtained for the incredibly
small sum of thirty cents!
Whereupon, of course, Thyrsis began to exclaim in dismay. Thirty cents
was a third of all they had to live upon for a day! And to pay it for
a fool piece of rag for which they had no earthly need! So Corydon sank
down in the middle of the floor and dissolved in floods of tears; and at
the next trip into town the “turkey-red table-cover” was returned, and
over the bare board table there were new expositions of the theory of
the “economic screw”!
To these arguments Corydon would listen and assent. With her intellect
she was at one with him, and she strove to make this intellect supreme.
But always, deep underneath, was the other side of her being, that had
nothing to do with intellect, but was pure primitive impulse--and that
pushed and drove in her always, and carried her away the moment that
intellect loosened its brake. Corydon was ashamed of this primitive
self--she was always repudiating it, always shutting her eyes to it.
There was no way to wound her so deeply as to posit its reality and
identify it with her.
She was always fighting to make her temperament like Thyrsis’; she
despised her own temperament utterly, and set up his qualities as her
ideal. He was self-contained and masterful; he knew what he wanted and
how to get it; he was not dependent upon anyone else, he needed no one’s
approval or admiration; he could control his emotions, and destroy those
that inconvenienced him. So Corydon must be these things also; she _was_
these things, and no one must gainsay it! And if ever she had felt or
wished or said or done anything else--that was all misunderstanding or
delusion or accident; she would repudiate it with grief and indignation,
and proclaim herself the creature of pure reason that every person ought
to be!
But then would come something that appealed to her emotions--to her love
of beauty, her craving for joy; and there in a flash was the primitive
self again. The task of compelling Corydon to economy reminded her
husband of a toy which had been popular in his childhood days. The name
of it was “Pigs in Clover”; there were five little balls which you had
to coax into a narrow entrance, and while you were getting the last one
in, the other four were almost certain to roll out. It was a labor of
hours to get Corydon to recognize an unpleasant fact; and then--the next
day she had forgotten it. There were some things about himself and
his life that he could never get her to understand; for instance, his
preoccupation with the newspaper--that symbol of all that was hateful
in life. Just then was the beginning of the Russian revolution; and
to Thyrsis the Russian revolution was like the coming of relief to a
shipwrecked mariner. It was a personal thing to him--the overthrow of a
horror that pressed upon the life of every human being upon earth. And
so each day he hungered for the news, and when the paper came he would
pounce upon it.
“Now dearest,” he would say, “please don’t disturb me. I want to read.”
“All right,” she would answer; and five minutes would pass.
Then--“Do you want potatoes for supper, Thyrsis?”
“Yes, dear. But I’m reading now.”
“All right.” And then another five minutes.
“Thyrsis, who was Boadicea?”
“I’m reading now, dearest.”
“Oh yes.” And then another five minutes.
“Thyrsis, do you spell choke with an a?”
At which Thyrsis would put down the paper. “Tell me, Corydon--isn’t
there something I can do so that you won’t interrupt me?”
Instantly a look of pain would sweep across her face. “Do you have to
speak to me like that, Thyrsis? If you’d only just tell me, kindly and
pleasantly--”
“But I’ve told you three or four times!’
“Thyrsis! How can you say that?”
“But didn’t I?”
“Why, of course not!”
And then they would have an argument. He would bring up each case and
confront her with it; and how very unloving a procedure was that--and
how exasperating was his manner as he did it!