sufficiently plowed up with agony, they might behold the deeps of each
other’s souls. Being at their last gasp, and driven to desperation, they
would make the convulsive effort, and break the crust of dullness and
commonplace, and reveal again the mighty forces hidden in their depths.
At such hours he beheld Corydon as she was, the flaming spirit, the
archangel prisoned in the flesh. If only he could have found the key to
those deep chambers, so that he could have had access to them always!
But alas, they knew only one path that led to them, and that through the
valley of despair. From despair it led to anguished struggle, and from
struggle to defiance, to rage and denunciation--and thence to visions
and invocations, raptures and enthralments. So this night, for instance,
behold Corydon, first holding her husband’s hands, and shuddering with
awe, and pledging her faith all over again; and then, later on, when the
dawn was breaking, sitting in the cold moonlight with a blanket flung
about her, her wild hair tossing, and in her hand the revolver with
which she had meant to destroy herself. Behold her, making sport of her
own life-drama--turning into wildest phantasy her domestic ignominies,
her inhibitions and her helpmate’s blunderings; evoking the hosts of
the future as to a festival, rehearsing the tragedy of her soul with all
posterity as her audience. When once these mad steeds of her fancy were
turned loose, one could never tell where their course would be; and
strange indeed were the adventures that came to him who rode with her!
There seemed to be no limit to the powers of this subliminal woman
within Corydon. Her cheeks would kindle, her eyes would blaze, and
eloquence would pour from her--the language of great poetry, fervid and
passionate, with swift flashes of insight and illumination, tumultuous
invocations and bursts of prophecy. Thyrsis would listen and marvel.
What a mind she had--sharp, like a rapier, swift as the lightning-flash!
The powers of penetration and understanding, and above all the sheer
splendors of language--the blazes of metaphor, the explosions of
coruscating wit! What a tragic actress she might have made--how she
would have shaken men’s souls, and set them to shuddering with terror!
What an opera-singer she could have been, with that rich vibrant voice,
and the mien of a disinherited goddess!
It was out of such hours that the faith of their lives was made; and it
was out of them also that Thyrsis formed his idea of woman. To him woman
was an equal; and this he not only said with his lips, he lived it in
his feelings. The time came when he went out into the world, and learned
to understand the world’s idea, that woman meant vanity and pettiness
and frivolity; but Thyrsis let all this pass, knowing the woman-soul.
Somewhere underneath, not yet understood and mastered, was pent this
mighty force that in the end would revolutionize all human ideas and
institutions. Here was faith, here was vision, here was the power of all
powers; and how was it to be delivered and made conscious, and brought
into the service of life?
Most women liked Thyrsis, because they divined in some vague way this
attitude; and some men hated him for the same reason. These men, Thyrsis
observed, were the slave-drivers; they held that woman was the weaker
vessel, and for this they had their own motives. There were women,
too, who liked to be ruled; but Thyrsis never argued with them--it was
enough, he judged, to treat any slave as a free man, or any servant as a
gentleman, and sooner or later they would divine what he meant, and the
spirit of revolt would begin to flicker.
BOOK XIII
THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE
_They stood upon the porch of the little cabin, listening to the silence
of the night.
“How far away it all seems!” she said--
“How many a dingle on the loved hill-side
Hath since our day put by
The coronals of that forgotten time!”
“It makes one feel old,” he said--“like the coming of the night!”
“The night!” she repeated, and went on--
“I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train;--
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope once crush’d less quick to spring again!”_
Section 1. Throughout this long winter of discontent came to them one
ray of hope from the outside world. “The Genius” was given in the
little town in Germany, and Thyrsis’ correspondent sent the twenty-five
dollars, and wrote that it had made a great impression, and that more
performances were to be expected. Then, after an interval, Thyrsis was
surprised to receive from his clipping-bureau some items to the effect
that his play was to be produced in one of the leading theatres in
Berlin. He wrote to his correspondent for an explanation, and learned
to his dismay that his play had been “pirated”; it was, of course, not
copyright in Germany, and so he had no redress, and must content himself
with what his friend referred to as “the renowns which will be brought
to you by these performances”.
The play came out, in the early spring, and apparently made a
considerable sensation. Thyrsis read long reviews from the German
papers, and there were accounts of it in several American papers. So
people began to ask who this unknown poet might be. The publishers of
“The Hearer of Truth” were moved to venture new advertisements of the
book--whereby they sold perhaps a hundred copies more; and Thyrsis was
moved to pay some badly--needed money to have more copies of the play
made, so that he might try to interest some other manager. He carried
on a long correspondence with a newly-organized “stage society”,
which thought a great deal about trying the play at a matinée, but did
nothing.
Also, Thyrsis received a letter from one of the country’s popular
novelists, who had heard of the play abroad, and asked to read it.
When he had read it and told what an interesting piece of work it was,
Thyrsis sat down and wrote the great man about his plight, and asked
for help; which led to correspondence, and to the passing round of the
manuscript among a group of literary people. One of these was Haddon
Channing, the critic and essayist, who was interested enough to write
Thyrsis several long letters, and to read the rest of his productions,
and later on to call to see him. Which, visit proved a curious
experience for the family.
He arrived one day towards spring, when it chanced that Corydon was in
town visiting the dentist. Thyrsis had just finished his dinner when he
saw two people coming through the orchard, and he leaped up in haste
to put the soiled dishes away, and make the place as presentable as
possible. Mr. and Mrs. Channing had come in their car (they lived
in Philadelphia), and were followed by an escort of the farmer’s
children--since an automobile was a rare phenomenon in that
neighborhood. The entrance to the peach-orchard proved not wide enough
for the machine, so they had to get out and walk; and this they found
annoying, because the ground was wet and soft. All of which seemed to
emphasize the incongruity of their presence.
Haddon Channing might have been described as a dilettante radical. He
employed a highly-wrought and artificial style, which scintillated with
brilliant epigram; one had a feeling that it rather atoned for the evils
in human life, that they became the occasion of so much cleverness in
Channing’s books. Perhaps that was the reason why most people did not
object to the vagueness of his ideas, when it came to any constructive
suggestion. In fact he rather made a point of such vagueness--when
you tried to do anything about a social evil, that was politics, and
politics were vulgar. One could never pin Channing down, but his idea
seemed to be that in the end all men would become free and independent
spirits, able to make their own epigrams; after which there would be no
more evil in the world.
And here he was in the flesh. It seemed to Thyrsis as if he must have
made a study of his own books, and then proceeded to fit his person
and his clothing, his accent and his manner, to make a proper setting
thereto. He was tall and lean, immaculate and refined; he spoke
with airy and fastidious grace, pouring out one continuous stream of
cleverness--any hour of his conversation was equivalent to a volume of
his works at a dollar and a quarter net.
Also, there was Mrs. Channing, gracious and exquisite, looking as if she
had stepped out of one of Rossetti’s poems. She was a poetess herself;
writing about Acteon, and Antinoüs, and other remote subjects. Thyrsis
assumed that there must be something in these poems, for they were given
two or three pages in the thirty-five-cent magazines; but he himself had
never discovered any reason why he should read one through.
Section 2. They seated themselves upon his six-foot piazza; and Thyrsis,
who had very little sense of personality, and was altogether wrapped up
in ideas, was soon in the midst of a free and easy discussion with them.
It seemed ages since he had had an opportunity to exchange opinions with
anyone except Corydon. With these people he roamed over the fields
of literature; and as they found nothing to agree about anywhere, the
conversation did not flag.
A strange experience it must have been to them, to come to a lonely
shanty in the woods, and encounter a haggard boy, in a cotton-shirt and
a pair of frayed trousers, who was all oblivious of their elegance,
and unawed by their reputation, and who behaved like a bull in the
china-shop of their orderly opinions. Mrs. Channing, it seemed, was
completing her life-work, a volume which was to revolutionize current
criticism, and lead the world back to artistic health; to her, modern
civilization was a vast abortion, and in Greek culture was to be sought
the fountain-head of health. She sang the praises of Athenian literature
and art and life; there was sanity and clarity, there was balance and
serenity! And to compare it with the jangled confusion and the frantic
strife of modern times!
To which Thyrsis answered, “We’d best let modern times alone. For here
you’ve all facts and no generalization; and in the case of the Greeks
you’ve all generalization and no facts.”
And so they went at it, hot and heavy. Mrs. Channing, her Greek serenity
somewhat ruffled, insisted that she had studied the facts for herself.
The other proceeded to probe into her equipment, and found that she knew
Homer and Sophocles, but did not know Aristophanes so well, and did not
know the Greek epigrams at all. Thyrsis maintained that the dominant
note in the Greek heritage was one of bewilderment and despair; in
support of which alarming opinion he carried the discussion from the
dreams of Greek literature to the realities of Greek life. Did Mrs.
Channing know how the Greeks had persecuted all their great thinkers?
Did she know anything about the cruelties of their slave-code?
“Have you ever studied Greek politics?” he asked. “Do you realize, for
instance, that it was the custom of statesmen and generals who were
defeated by their political rivals, to go over to the enemy and lead an
expedition against their homes?”
“Isn’t that putting it rather strongly?” asked Mrs. Channing.
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “Didn’t the conquerors of both Salamis
and Platasa afterwards sell out to the Persian king? And then you talk
about the noble ideal of woman which the Greeks developed! Don’t you
know that it was nothing but a literary tradition?”
“I had never understood that,” said Mrs. Channing.
To which the other answered: “It was handed down from imaginary Homeric
days. The Greek lady of the Periclean age was a domestic prisoner and
drudge.”
Section 3. Then, late in the afternoon, came Corydon; and this part of
the adventure must have seemed stranger yet to the Channings. Corydon
wore a shirt-waist and a ten-cent straw hat, trimmed with some white
mosquito-netting, and an old blue skirt which she had worn before her
marriage, and had enlarged little by little during the period of her
pregnancy, and had taken in again after the baby was born. Also she was
pale and sad-looking, much startled by the sight of the automobile,
and the sudden apparition of elegance. She got rid of her armfuls of
groceries and bundles, and seated herself in an inconspicuous place,
and sat listening while the argument went on. For a full hour she never
uttered a word; only once during the controversy over the “Greek lady”,
Mrs. Channing turned to her and asked, “Don’t you agree with me?” But
Corydon could only answer, “I don’t know, I have not read much history.”
And who was there to tell the visitor that this strange, wide-eyed girl
knew more about the tragedies and terrors of the Greek temperament than
she with all her culture and her college-degrees could have learned in
many life-times?
The two stayed to supper, and Corydon and Thyrsis set out the meal
upon the rustic outdoor table; they apologized for their domestic
inadequacies, but Mrs. Channing declared that she “adored picknicking”.
The evening was spent in more discussion; and finally it was decided
that the visitors should stay over night at the hotel in town, and come
out again in the morning.
Thyrsis concluded, as he thought the matter over, that the two must have
been fascinated by this domestic situation, and curious to look deeper
into it. Perhaps they saw “material” in it; or perhaps it was that
Haddon Channing was really impressed by Thyrsis’ powers, and sought to
understand his problems and help him. Whatever may have been the motive
for it, when they came the next morning, the critic took Thyrsis for a
walk in the woods and proceeded to discuss his affairs. And meanwhile
his wife had set herself to the task of probing the innermost corners of
Corydon’s soul.
The burden of Channing’s discourse was Thyrsis’ impatience and lack of
balance, his fanaticism and his too great opinion of his own work. “My
dear fellow,” he said, “you are the most friendless human being I have
ever encountered upon earth. How can you expect to interest men if you
don’t get out into the world and learn what they are doing?”
“That means to get a position, I suppose?” said Thyrsis.
“No, not necessarily--” began the other.
“But I haven’t money to live in the city otherwise.”
That was too definite for Channing, and he went off on another tack. He
had been reading “The Higher Cannibalism”, and he could not forgive it.
A boy of Thyrsis’ age had no right to be seething with such bitterness;
there must be some fundamental and terrible cause. He was destroying
himself, he was eating out his heart in this isolation; he was so
wrapped up in his own miseries, his own wrongs--in all the concerns of
his own exaggerated ego!
They were seated beside a little streamlet in the woods. “What you
need is something to get you out of yourself,” the critic was
saying--“something to restore your sanity and balance. It’ll come to you
some day. Perhaps it’ll be a love-affair--you’ll meet some woman who’ll
carry you away. I know the sort you need--they grow in the West--the
great brooding type of woman-soul, that would fold you in her arms and
give you a little peace.”
Thyrsis was silent for a space. “You forget,” he said, in a low voice,
“that I am already married.”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “Such things have happened, even so,”
he said.
Thyrsis had taken his part in the conversation before this, defending
himself and setting forth his point of view. But now he fell silent. The
words had cut him to the quick. It seemed to him an insult and a bitter
humiliation; here, at his home, almost in the presence of his wife! What
was the man’s idea, anyway?
And suddenly he turned upon Channing with the question, “You think that
I’ve married a doll?”
The other was staggered for a moment. “I don’t know what you’ve
married,” he replied.
“No,” said Thyrsis. “Then how can you advise me in such a matter?”
“I see that you’re not happy--” the other began.
“Yes,” said the boy. “But I don’t want any more women.”
There was a pause, while Thyrsis sat pondering, Should he try to explain
to this man? But he shook his head. No, it would be useless to try. “She
is not in your class,” he said.
“How do you mean?” asked the other.
“She has none of your culture, none of your social graces. She can’t
write, and she can’t sing--she can’t do anything that your wife does.”
“I’m afraid,” said Channing, in a low voice, “you don’t take my remarks
in the right spirit.”
“Even suppose that she were not what you call a ‘great woman-soul’,”
persisted Thyrsis--“at least she has starved and suffered for me; and
wouldn’t common loyalty bind me to her?”
“I have tried to do something very difficult,” said the other, after a
silence. “I have tried to talk to you frankly. It is the most thankless
task in the world to tell a man his own faults.”
“I know,” said Thyrsis. “And that’s all right--I’m perfectly willing. I
don’t mind knowing my faults.”
“It is evident that you have resented it,” declared the other.
Thyrsis answered with a laugh, “Don’t you admit of replies to your
criticisms? Suppose I’m pointing out some of your faults--your faults as
a critic?”
Channing said that he did not object to that.
“Very well, then,” said Thyrsis. “I simply tell you that you have missed
the point of my trouble. There’s nothing the matter with me but poverty
and lack of opportunity; and there’s nothing else the matter with my
wife. We’re doing our best, and it’s the simple fact that we’ve endured
and dared more than anybody we’ve ever met. And that’s all there is to
it.”
It was evident that Channing was deeply hurt. He turned the conversation
to other matters, and pretty soon they got up and strolled on. When they
came near to the house, he went off to see his chauffeur, and Thyrsis
stood watching him, and pondering over the episode.
It was the same thing that had happened to him in the city; it was the
thing that would be happening to him all the time. He saw that however
wretched he might be with Corydon, he would always take her part against
the world. Whatever her faults might be, they were not such as the world
could judge. Rather would he make it the test of a person’s character,
that they should understand and appreciate her, in spite of her lack
of that superficial thing called culture--the ability to rattle off
opinions about any subject under the sun.
So it was that loyalty to Corydon held him fast. So her temperament was
his law, and her needs were his standards; and day by day he must become
more like her, and less like himself!
Section 4. He returned to the house, entering by the rear door. The baby
was lying in the room asleep, and out upon the piazza, he could hear
Corydon and Mrs. Channing. Corydon was speaking, in her intense voice.
“The trouble with me,” she was saying, “is that I have no confidence!
Other women are sure of themselves--they are self-contained, serene,
satisfied.”
“But why shouldn’t you be that way?” Thus Mrs. Channing.
“I aim too high,” said Corydon. “I want too much. I defeat myself.”
“Yes,” said the other, “but why--”
“It’s been the circumstances of all my life! I’ve been
defeated--thwarted--repressed! Everything drives me back into myself.
There is nothing I can _do_--I can only endure and suffer and wait. So
all the influences in my life are negative--
‘I was sick with the Nay of life--
With my lonely soul’s refrain!’”
“What is that you are quoting?” asked Mrs. Channing.
“It’s from a poem I wrote,” said Corydon.
“Oh, you write poetry?”
“I couldn’t say that,” was the reply. “I have no technique--I never
studied anything about it.”
“But you try sometimes?”
“I find it helps me,” said Corydon--“once in a great while I find lines
in my mind; and I put them together, so that I can say them over, and
remind myself of things.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Channing. “Tell me the poem you quoted.”
“I--I don’t believe you’d think much of it,” said Corydon, hesitating.
“I never expected anybody--
“I’d be interested to hear it,” declared her visitor.
So Corydon recited in a low voice a couple of stanzas which had come to
her in the lonely midnight hours. Thyrsis listened with interest--he had
never heard them before:
“What matters the tired heart,
What matters the weary brain?
What matters the cruel smart
Of the burden borne again?
I was sick with the Nay of life--
With my lonely soul’s refrain;
But the essence of love is strife,
And the meaning of life is pain.”
There was a pause. “Do you--do you think that is worth while at all?”
asked Corydon.
“It is evidently sincere,” replied Mrs. Channing. “I think you ought to
study and practice.”
“I can’t make much effort at it--”
But the other went on: “What concerns me is the attitude to life it
shows. It is terrible that a young girl should feel that way. You must
not let yourself get into such a state!”
“But how can I help it?”
“You must have something that occupies your mind! That is what you need,
truly it is! You’ve got to stop thinking about yourself--you’ve got to
get outside yourself, somehow!”
Thyrsis caught his breath. He could tell from the tone of the speaker’s
voice that she was laboring with Corydon, putting forth all her energies
to impress her. He was tempted to step forward and cry out, “No, no!
That’s not the way! That won’t work!”
But instead, he stood rooted to the spot, while Mrs. Channing went
on--“This unhappiness comes from the fact that you are so self-centred.
You must get some constructive work, my dear, if it’s only training your
baby. You must realize that you are not the only person who has troubles
in the world. Why, I know a poor washerwoman, who was left a widow with
four children to care for--”
And then suddenly Thyrsis heard a voice cry out in anguish, “Oh, oh!
stop!” He heard his wife spring up from her chair.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. Channing.
“I can’t listen to you any more!” cried Corydon. “You don’t know what
you’re saying!--You don’t understand me at all!”
There was a pause. “I’m sorry you feel that,” said Mrs. Channing.
“I had no right to talk to you!” exclaimed the other. “There’s no one
can understand! I have to fight alone!”
At this point Thyrsis went into the kitchen, and made some noise that
they would hear. Then he called, “Are you there, dearest?”
“Yes,” said Corydon; and he went out upon the piazza. He saw her
standing, white and tense.
“Are you still talking?” he said, with forced carelessness.
And as Mrs. Channing answered “Yes,” Corydon said, quickly, “Excuse me a
moment,” and went into the house.
So the poet sat and talked with his guest about the state of the weather
and the condition of the roads; until at last her husband arrived,
saying that it was time they were starting. Corydon did not appear
again, and so finally Thyrsis accompanied them out to their car, and saw
them start off. They promised to come again, but he knew they would not
keep that promise.
Section 5. He went back to the house, and after some search he found
Corydon down in the woods, whither she had fled to have out her agony.
“Has that woman gone?” she panted, when he came near.
“Yes, dear,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“Oh!” cried Corydon. “How dared she! How dared she!”
“Get up, sweetheart,” said Thyrsis. “The ground is wet.”
“She’s gone off in her automobile!” exclaimed the girl, passionately.
“She spent last night at a hotel that charged twelve dollars a day,
and then she told me about her washerwoman! Now she’s gone back to her
beautiful home, with servants and a governess and a piano and everything
else she wants! And she talked to me about ‘occupation’! What _right_
had she to come here and trample on my face?”
“But why did you let her, dearest?”
“How could I _help_ myself? I had no idea--”
“But how did you get started?”
“I’ve nobody to confide in--nobody!” cried Corydon. “And she wanted
to know about me--she led me on. I thought she sympathized with me--I
thought she understood!”
“She’s a woman of the world, my dear.”
“She was just pulling me to pieces! She wanted to see how I worked!
Don’t you see what she was looking for, Thyrsis--she thought I was
_material!_”
“She only writes about the Greeks,” said Thyrsis, with a smile.
“I’m a horrible example! I’m neurasthenic and self-centred--I’m the
modern woman! She read me a long lecture like that! I ought to get
busy!”
“Dearest!” he pleaded, trying to soothe her.
“Busy”! repeated Corydon, laughing hysterically. “Busy! I wash and dress
and amuse a baby! I get six meals a day for him, I get three meals for
us, and clean up everything. And the rest of the day I’m so exhausted I
can hardly stand up, and a good part of the time I’m sick besides. And
then, if I think about my troubles, it’s because I’ve nothing to do!”
“My dear,” Thyrsis replied, “you should not have put yourself at her
mercy.”
“How I hate her!” cried Corydon. “How I _hate_ her!”
“You must learn to protect yourself from such people, Corydon.”
“I won’t meet them at all! I’m not able to face them--I’ve none of their
weapons, none of their training. I don’t want to know about them, or
their kind of life! They have no souls!”
“It isn’t easy for them to understand,” said Thyrsis. “They have never
been poor--”
“That woman talks about the Greek love of beauty! What sacrifice has she
ever made for beauty--what agony has she ever dared for it? And yet
she can prattle about it--the phrases roll from her! She’s been
educated--polished--finished! She’s been taught just what to say! And I
haven’t been taught, and so she despises me!”
“It’s deeper than that, my dear,” he said. “You have something in you
that she would hate instinctively.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve told you before, dearest. It’s genius, I think.
“Genius! But what use is it to me, if it is? It only unfits me for life.
It eats me up, it destroys me!”
“Some day,” he said, “you will find a way to express it. It will come,
never fear.--But now, dear, be sensible. The ground is wet, and if you
sit there, you will surely be laid up with rheumatism.”
He lifted her up; but she was not to be diverted. Suddenly she turned,
and caught him by the arms. “Thyrsis!” she cried. “Tell me! Do you blame
me as she does? Do you think I’m weak and incompetent?”
Whatever answer he might have been inclined to make, he saw in her
wild eyes that only one answer was to be thought of. “Certainly not, my
dear!” he said, quickly. “How could you ask me such a question?”
“Oh, tell me! tell me!” she exclaimed. And so he had to go on, and
sing the song of their love to her, and pour out balm upon her wounded
spirit.
But afterwards he went alone; and then it was not so simple. Little
demons of doubt came and tormented him. Might it not be that there was
something in the point of view of the Channings? He took Corydon at her
own estimate--at the face value of her emotions; but might it not
be that he was deluding himself, that he was a victim of his own
infatuation?
He would ponder this; he tried to have it out with himself for once.
What did he really think about it? What would he have told Corydon if he
had told her the bald truth? But such doubts could not stay with him for
long. They brought shame to him. He was like a man travelling across the
plains, who comes upon the woman he loves, being tortured by a band of
Apaches; and who is caught and bound fast, to watch the proceedings.
Would such a man spend his time asking whether the woman was weak and
incompetent? No--his energies would be given to getting his arms loose,
and finding out where the guns were. He would set her free, and give
her a chance; and then it would be time enough to measure her powers and
pass judgment upon her.
Section 6. It was a long time before the family got over that
visitation. Corydon burned all Channing’s books and she wrote a long and
indignant letter to Mrs. Channing, and then burned the letter. Thyrsis
never told her about his conversation with the husband, for he knew she
would never get over that insult. For himself, he concluded that
the Channings were lucky in having got into a quarrel with them, as
otherwise he would surely have compelled them to lend him some money.
In truth, the advent of some fairy-godmother or Lady Bountiful was badly
needed just then. They had struggled desperately to keep within the
thirty-dollar limit, but it could no longer be done. Illnesses were
expensive luxuries; and there was the typwriting of the book--some
twenty dollars so far; also, there were many things that happened when
one was running a household--a tooth-ache, or a telegram, or a hot-water
bottle that got a hole in it, or a horse that ran away and broke a
shaft. Little by little the bills they had been obliged to run up at the
grocer’s and the butcher’s and the doctor’s had been getting beyond
the limits of their monthly check; and to cap the climax, there came a
letter from Henry Darrell, saying that the next two checks would be the
last he could possibly send.
So Thyrsis set to work once more at the shell of that tough old oyster,
the world. He made out a “scenario” of the rest of his new book, and
sent it with the part he had already done to his friend Mr. Ardsley.
Then for three weeks he waited in dread suspense; until at last came a
letter asking him to call and talk over his proposition.
Mr. Ardsley had been reading all Thyrsis’ manuscripts, nor had he failed
to note the triumph of “The Genius” abroad. It became at once apparent
to Thyrsis that the new book had scored with him; it was a book that
could hardly fail, he said--if only it were finished as it had been
begun. Thyrsis made it clear that he intended to finish it; no man
could gaze into his wild eyes, and hear him talk of it in breathless
excitement, without realizing that he would die, if need be, rather than
fail.
So then the author went in to have a talk with the head of the firm.
He spread out the treasures of his soul before this merchant, and
the merchant sat and appraised them with a cold and critical eye. But
Thyrsis, too, had learned something about trade by this time, and was
watching the merchant; he made a desperate effort and summoned up the
courage to state his demands--he wanted five hundred dollars advance, in
installments, and he wanted fifteen per cent. royalty upon the book. To
his wonder and amazement the merchant never turned a hair at this; and
before they parted company, the incredible bargain had been made, and
waited only the signing of the contracts!
Thyrsis went out from the building like a blind man who had suddenly
received his sight. It seemed to him at that moment as if the last
problem of his life had been solved. He sent off a telegram to Corydon
to tell her of the victory, and a letter to Darrell, saying that he need
send no more money--that the path was clear before his feet at last!
Section 7. This marked a new stage in the family’s financial progress;
and as usual it was signalized by a grand debauch in bill-paying. Also
there was a real table-cover for Corydon, and a vase in which she
might put spring-flowers; there were new dresses for the baby, and more
important yet, a new addition to the house. This was to be a sort of
lean-to at the rear, sixteen feet wide and eight feet deep, and divided
into two apartments, one of which was to be the kitchen, and the other
an extra bed-room. For they were going to keep a servant!
This was a new decision, to which they had come after much hesitation
and discussion. It would be a frightful expense--including the cost
of the extra food it would add over thirty dollars a month to their
expenses; but it was the only way they could see the least hope of
freedom, of any respite from household drudgery. It had been just a year
now since they had set out upon their adventure in domesticity; and in
that time Corydon figured that she had prepared two thousand meals for
the baby. She had fed each one of them, spoonful by spoonful, into
his mouth; and also she had washed two thousand spoons and dishes, and
brushed off two thousand tables, and swept two thousand floors. And with
every day of such drudgery the heights of music and literature seemed
further away and more unattainable.
Thyrsis had seen something of servants in earlier days--he had memories
of strange figures that during intervals of prosperity had flitted
through his mother’s home. There had been the frail, anaemic Swedish
woman, who lived on tea and sugar, and afterwards had gone away and
borne nine children, more frail and anaemic than herself; there had been
the stout personage with the Irish brogue who had dropped the Christmas
turkey out of the window and had not taken the trouble to go down after
it; there had been the little old negress who had gone insane, and
hurled the salt-box at his mother’s head. But Thyrsis was hoping that
they might avoid such troubles themselves; he had an idea that
by watching at Castle Garden they might lay hold upon some young
peasant-girl from Germany, who would be untouched by any of the
corruptions of civilization. “A sort of Dorothea”, he suggested to
Corydon; and they agreed that they would search diligently and find such
a “_treffliches Mädchen_”, who would be trusting and affectionate, and
would talk in German with the baby.
So now he spent several days hunting in strange places; and at last, in
a dingy East-side employment-office, he came upon his _Schatz_. She was
buxom and hearty, and fairly oozed good-nature at every pore; she had
only been a week in the country, and was evidently naïve enough for
any purpose whatever. She had no golden hair like Dorothea, but was
swarthy--her German was complicated with a Hungarian accent, and with
strange words that one had not come upon in Goethe and Freitag, and
could not find in any dictionary.
Thyrsis helped to gather up her various bags and bundles, and
transported her out to the country. On the train he set to work to gain
her confidence, and was forthwith entertained with the tale of all her
heart-troubles. Back in the Hungarian village she had fallen in love
with the son of a rich farmer, quite in Hermann and Dorothea fashion;
but alas, in this case there had been no “_gute verstandige Mutter_” and
no “_würdiger Pfarrer_”--instead there had been a hateful step-mother,
and so the “_treffliches Mädchen_” had had to come away.
They reached the little cottage at last; and then what a house-cleaning
there was, what scrubbing of floors; and brushing out the cobwebs, and
scouring of lamp-chimneys and scraping of kettles and sauce-pans! And
what a relief it was for Corydon and Thyrsis to be able to go off for
a walk together, without first having to carry the baby up to the
farm-house! And how very poetical it was to come back and discover
Dorothea with the baby in her lap, feeding it a supper of _butter-brod_
with a slice of raw bacon!
As time went on, alas, it came more and more to seem that the
Dorothea idyl had not been meant to be taken as a work of realism. The
“_treffliches_ _Maedchen_” was perhaps _too_ kind-hearted; her emotions
were too voluminous for so small a house, her personality seemed to
spread all over it. She would sing Hungarian love-ditties at her work;
and somehow calling these “folksongs” did not help matters. Also, alas,
she distributed about the house strange odors--of raw onions, boiled
cabbage and perspiration. So, after three weeks, poor Dorothea had to be
sent away--weeping copiously, and bewildered over this cruel misfortune.
Corydon and Thyrsis went back again to washing their own dishes; being
glad to pay the price for quietness and privacy, and vowing that they
would never again try, to “keep a servant”.
Section 8. The spring-time had come; not so much the spring-time of
poets and song-birds, as the spring-time of cold rains and wind. But
still, little by little, the sun was getting the better of his enemies;
and so with infinite caution they reduced the quantity of the baby’s
apparel, and got him and his “bongie cowtoos” out upon the piazza.
Meantime Thyrsis was over at his own place, wrestling with the book
again. He had told himself that it would be easy, now that he was free
from the money-terror. But alas, it was not easy, and nothing could make
it easy. If he had more energy, it only meant that his vision reached
farther, and set him a harder task. Never in his life did he write a
book, the last quarter of which was not to him a nightmare labor. He
would be staggering, half blind with exhaustion--like a runner at the
end of a long race, with a rival close at his heels.
Also, as usual, his stomach was beginning to weaken under the strain.
He would come over sometimes, late in the afternoon, and lay his head
in Corydon’s lap, almost sobbing from weariness; and yet, after he had
eaten a little and helped her with the hardest of her tasks, he would go
away again, and work half through the night. There was nothing else he
could do--there was no escaping from the thing; if he lay down to rest,
or went for a walk, it would be only to think about it the whole time.
He would feel that he was not getting enough exercise, and he would
drive himself to some bodily tasks; but there was never anything that he
could do, that he did not have the book eating away at his mind in the
meantime. It was one of the calamities of his life that there was no way
for him to play; all he could do was to take a stroll with Corydon, or
to tramp over the country by himself.
He finished the book in May; and he knew that it was good. He sent it
off to Mr. Ardsley, and Mr. Ardsley, too, declared himself satisfied,
and sent the balance of the money. So Thyrsis sank back to get his
breath, and to put back some flesh upon his skeleton. He was wont to say
when he was writing, one could measure his progress upon a scales; every
five thousand words he finished cost him a Shylock’s price.
This summer was, upon the whole, the happiest time they had yet known.
The book was scheduled to appear early in September; and they had money
enough to last them meantime, with careful economy. Their little home
was beautiful; they planted some sweet peas and roses, and Thyrsis even
began to dig at a vegetable-garden. Also, it was strawberry-time, and
cherry-time was near; nor did they overlook the fact that they lived
in close proximity to a peach-orchard. These, perhaps, were prosaic
considerations, and not of the sort which Thyrsis had been accustomed to
associate with spring-time. But this he hardly realized--so rapidly was
the discipline of domesticity bringing his haughty spirit to terms!
He built a rustic seat in the woods, where they might sit and read; he
built a table beside the house, where the dishes might be washed under
the blue sky; and he perfected an elaborate set of ditches and dykes, so
that the rain-storms would not sweep away their milk and butter in the
stream. He talked of building a pen for chickens--and might have done
so, only he discovered that the perverse creatures would not lay except
at the time when eggs were cheap and one did not care so much about
them. He even figured on the cost of a cow, and the possibility of
learning to milk it; and was so much enthralled by these bucolic
occupations that he wrote a magazine-article to acquaint his struggling
brother and sister poets with the fact that they, too, might escape to
the country and live in a home-made house!
With the article there went a picture of the house, and also one of
the baby, who had been waxing enormous, and now constituted a fine
advertisement. The winter had seemed to agree with him, and the summer
agreed with him even better. Thyrsis would smile now and then, thinking
of his ideas of martyrdom; it was made evident that one member of the
family was not minded for anything of the sort. The parents might
become so much absorbed in their soul-problems that they forgot the
dinner-hour; but one could have set his watch by the appetite of the
baby. Nature had provided him, among other protections, with a truly
phenomenal pair of lungs; and whenever life took a course that was not
satisfactory to him, he would roar his face to a terrifying purple.
He was one overwhelming and incessant outcry for adventure. He would
toddle all day about the place, getting his “mungies” into all sorts of
messes. He was hard to fit into so small a place, and there were times
when his parents were tempted to wish that some phenomenon a trifle less
portentous had fallen to their lot. But for the most part he was a great
hope--a sort of visible atonement for their sufferings. He at least
was an achievement; he was something they had done. And he could not be
undone, nor doubted--he put all skepticism to flight. In his vicinity
there was no room for pessimistic philosophies, for _Weltschmerz_ or
_Karma_.
Thyrsis would sit now and then and watch him at play, and think thoughts
that went deep into the meaning of things. Here was, in its very living
presence, that blind will-to-be which had seized them and flung them
together. And it seemed to Thyrsis that somehow Nature, with her strange
secret chemistry, had reproduced all the elements they had brought to
that union. This child was immense, volcanic, as their impulse had been;
he was intense, highly-strung, and exacting--and these qualities too
they had furnished. Curious also it was to observe how Nature, having
accomplished her purpose, now flung aside her concealments and devices.
From now on they existed to minister to this new life-phenomenon, to
keep it happy and prosperous and she cared not how plain this might
become to them--she feared not to taunt and humiliate them. And they
accepted her sentence meekly, they no longer tried to oppose her. Her
will was become an axiom which they never disputed, which they never
even discussed. No matter what might happen to them in future, the Child
must go on!
Section 9. Thyrsis utilized this summer of leisure to begin a course of
reading in Socialism--a subject which had been stretching out its arms
to him ever since he had made the acquaintance of Henry Darrell. He had
held away from it on purpose, not wishing to complicate his mind with
too many problems. But now he had finished with history, and was free to
come back to the world of the present.
There were the pamphlets that Darrell had given him, and there was
Paret’s magazine. Strange to say, the latter’s reckless jesting with the
philanthropists and reformers no longer offended Thyrsis--he had been
travelling fast along the road of disillusionment. Also, there was a
Socialist paper in New York--“The Worker”; and more important still,
there was the “Appeal to Reason”. Thyrsis came upon a chance reference
to this paper, which was published in a little town in Kansas, and he
was astonished to learn that it claimed a circulation of two hundred
thousand copies a week. He became a subscriber, and after that the
process of his “conversion” was rapid.
The Appeal was an “agitation-paper”. Its business was to show that side
of the capitalist process which other publications tried to conceal, or
at any rate to gild and dress up and make presentable. Each week came
four closely-printed newspaper-pages, picturing horrors in mills and
mines, telling of oppression and injustice, of unemployment and misery,
accident, disease and death. There would be accounts of political
corruption--of the buying of legislatures and courts, of the rule of
“machines” of graft in city and state and nation. There would be tales
of the manners and morals of the idle rich, set against others of the
sufferings of the poor. And week by week, as he read and pondered,
Thyrsis began to realize the absurd inadequacy of the placid statement
which he had made to his first Socialist acquaintance--that the solution
of such problems was to be left to “evolution”. It became only too clear
to him that here was another war--the class-war; and that it was being
fought by the masters with every weapon that cunning and greed could lay
hands upon or contrive. In that struggle Thyrsis saw clearly that his
place was in the ranks of the disinherited and dispossessed.
This was not a difficult decision; for in the first place he was one of
the disinherited and dispossessed himself; and in the next place, even
before the “economic screw” had penetrated his consciousness, he had
been a rebel in his sympathies and tastes. Jesus, Isaiah, Milton,
Shelley--such men as these had been the friends of his soul; and he had
sought in vain for their spirit in modern society--he had thought that
it was dead, and that he, and a few other lonely dreamers in garrets,
were the only ones who knew or cared about it. But now he came upon the
amazing discovery that this spirit, driven from legislative-halls and
courts of justice, from churches and schools and editorial sanctums, had
flamed into life in the hearts of the working class, and was represented
in a political party which numbered some thirty millions of adherents
and cast some seven million votes!
Beginning nearly a century ago, these workmgmen had taken the spirit of
Jesus and Isaiah and Milton and Shelley, and had worked out a scientific
basis for it, and a method whereby it could be made to count in
the world of affairs. They had analyzed all the evils of modern
society--poverty and luxury, social and political corruption,
prostitution, crime and war; they had not only discovered the causes of
them, but had laid down with mathematical precision the remedies, and
had gone on to carry the remedies into effect. In every civilized land
upon the globe they were at work as a political party of protest; they
were holding conventions and adopting programs; they had an enormous
literature, they were publishing newspapers and magazines, many of them
having circulations of hundreds of thousands of copies.
The strangest thing of all was this. Thyrsis was an educated man--or was
supposed to be. He had spent five years in schools, and nine years in
colleges and universities; he had given the scholars of the world full
opportunity to guide him to whatever was of importance. Also, he had
been an omnivorous reader upon his own impulse; and here he was, at the
end of it all--practically ignorant that this enormous movement existed!
In economic classes in college there had, of course, been some mention
of Socialism; but this had been of the utopian variety, the dreams of
Plato and St. Simon and Fourier. There had been some account of the
innumerable communities which had sprung up in America--with careful
explanation, however, that they had all proven failures. Also one heard
vaguely of Marx and Lassalle, two violent men, whose ideas were still
popular among the ignorant masses of Europe, but could be of no concern
to the fortunate inhabitants of a free Republic.
And then, after this, to come upon some piece of writing--such as, for
instance, the “Communist Manifesto”! To read this mile-stone in the
progress of civilization, this marvellous exposition of the development
of human societies, and of the forces which drive and control them; and
to realize that two lonely students, who had cast in their lot with
the exploited toilers, had been able to predict the whole course of
political and industrial evolution for sixty years, and to foresee
and expound with precision the ultimate outcome of the whole
process--matters of which the orthodox economists were still as ignorant
as babes unborn!
Or to discover the writings of such a man as Karl Kautsky, the
intellectual leader of the modern movement in Germany; such books as
“The Social Revolution”, and “The Road to Power”--in which one seemed to
see a giant of the mind, standing in a death-duel with those forces of
night and destruction that still made of the fair earth a hell! With
what accuracy he was able to measure the strength of these powers of
evil, to anticipate their every move, to plan the exact parry with which
to meet them! To Thyrsis he seemed like some general commanding an army
in battle, with the hopes of future ages hanging upon his skill. But
this was a general who fought, not with sword and fire, but with ideas;
a conqueror in the cause of “right reason and the will of God”. He wrote
simply, as a scientist; and yet one could feel the passion behind
the quiet words--the hourly shock of the incessant conflict, the grim
persistence which pressed on in the face of obloquy and persecution, the
courage which had been tested through generations of anguish and toil.
Thyrsis’ mind rushed through these things like prairie-fire; and all the
time that he read, his wonder grew upon him. How _could_ he have been
kept ignorant of them? He was quick to pounce upon the essential fact,
that this was no accident; it was something that must have been planned
and brought about deliberately. He had thought that he was being
educated, when in reality he was being held back and fenced off from
truth. It was a world-wide conspiracy--it was that very class-war which
the established order was waging upon these men and their ideas!
Section 10. It was not difficult for any one to understand the ideas,
if he really wished to. They began with the fact of “surplus value”. One
man employed another man for the sake of the wealth he could be made to
produce, over what he was paid as wages. That seemed obvious enough;
and yet, what consequences came from following it up! Throughout human
history men had been setting other men to work; whether they were called
slaves, or serfs, or laborers, or servants, the motive-power which had
set them to work had been the desire for “surplus value”. And as the
process went on, those who appropriated the profits combined for
mutual protection; and so out of the study of “surplus value” came the
discovery of the “class-struggle”. Human history was the tale of the
arising of some dominating class, and of the struggle of some subject
class for a larger share of what it produced. Human governments were
devices by which the master-class preserved its power; and whatever may
have been the original purposes of arts and religions, in the end they
had always been seized by the master-class, and used as aids in the same
struggle.
One came to the culmination of the process in modern capitalist society.
Here was a class entrenched in power, owning the sources of wealth, the
huge machines whereby it was produced, and the railroads whereby it was
distributed, and above all, the financial resources upon which the other
processes depended. One saw this class holding itself in power by means
of the policeman’s club and the militiaman’s rifle, by machine-gun and
battle-ship; one saw that, whether by bribery or by outright force, it
had seized all the powers of government, of legislatures and executives
and courts. One saw that in the same way it had seized upon the
sources of ideas; it controlled the newspapers and the churches and the
colleges, that it might shape the thoughts of men and keep them content.
It set up in places of authority men whose views were agreeable to
it--who believed in the beneficence of its rule and the permanence of
its system; who would pour out ridicule and contempt upon those who
suggested that any other system might be conceivable. And so the
class-war was waged, not merely in the world of industry and politics,
but also, in the intellectual world.
And step by step, as the processes of capitalism culminated, this war
increased in bitterness and intensity. For, of course, as capital
heaped up and its control became concentrated, the ratio of exploitation
increased. The great mass of labor was unorganized and helpless; whereas
the masters had combined and fixed their prices; and so day by day the
cost of living increased, and misery and discontent increased with it.
As capital expanded, and new machines of production were added, there
were more and more goods to sell, and more and more difficulty in
finding markets; and so came overproduction and unemployment, panics
and crises; so came wars for foreign markets--with new opportunities
of plunder for the exploiters and new hardships and new taxes for the
producers. And so was fulfilled the prophecy of Marx and Engels; under
the pressure of bitter necessity the proletariat was organizing and
disciplining itself, training its own leaders and thinkers forming
itself into a world-wide political party, whose destiny it was to
conquer the powers of government in every land, and use them to turn out
the exploiters, and to put an end to the rule of privilege.
This change was what the Socialists meant by the “revolution”--the
transfer of the ownership of the means of production; and it was about
that issue that the class-war was waged. Nothing else but that counted;
without that all reform was futility, and all benevolence was mockery,
and all knowledge was ignorance. So long as the means of producing
necessities were owned by a few, and used for the advantage of a few,
just so long must there be want in the midst of plenty, and darkness
over all the earth. Whatever evil one went out into the world to combat,
he came to realize that he could do nothing against it, because it was
bound up with the capitalist system, was in fact itself that system.
If little children were shut up in sweat-shops, if women were sold into
brothels, it was not for any fault of theirs, it was not the work of any
devil--it was simply because of the “surplus value”. they represented.
If weaker nations were conquered and “civilized”, that, too, was for
“surplus value”. And these epidemics of “graft” that broke out upon the
body politic--they were not accidental or sporadic things, and they were
not to be remedied by putting any number of men in jail; they were to
be understood as the system whereby an industrial oligarchy had rendered
impotent a political democracy, and had fenced it out from the fields of
privilege.
And so also was it with the dullness and sterility that prevailed in the
intellectual world. The master-class did not want ideas--it only wanted
to be let alone; and so it put in the seats of authority men who
were blind to the blazing beacon-fires of the future. It would be no
exaggeration to say that the intellectual and cultural system of the
civilized world was conducted, whether deliberately or instinctively,
for the purpose of keeping the truth about exploitation from becoming
clear to the people.
The master-class owned the newspapers and ran them. It had built and
endowed the churches, and taught the clergy to feed out of its hand. In
the same way it had founded the colleges, and named the trustees, who
in turn named the presidents and professors. The ordinary mortal took
it for granted that because venerable bishops and dignified editors and
learned college-professors were all in agreement as to a certain truth,
there must be some inherent probability in that truth; and never once
perceived how the cards were stacked and the dice loaded--how those
clergymen and editors and professors had all been selected because they
believed that truth to be true, and believed the contrary falsehood to
be false!
And how smoothly and automatically the system worked! How these
dignitaries stood together, and held up each other’s hands, maintaining
the august tradition, the atmosphere of authority and power! The bishops
praising the editors, and the editors praising the professors, and the
professors praising the bishops! And when the circle was completed,
what _lése_ _majesté_ it seemed for an ordinary mortal to oppose their
conclusions!
The bishops, one perceived, were “orthodox”--that is to say they were
concerned with barren formulas; and they were “spiritual”--they were
concerned with imaginary future states of bliss. The editors were “safe”
and “conservative”--that is to say, their souls were dead and their
eyes were sealed and their god was property. And when it came to the
selecting of the college professors, of the men who were to guide and
instruct the forthcoming generations--what precautions would be taken
then! What consultations and investigations, what testimonials and
interviews and examinations! For after all, in these new days, it could
be no easy matter to find men whose minds were sterilized, who could
face without blenching all the horrors of the capitalist regime! Who
could see courts and congresses bought and sold; who could see children
ground up in mills and factories, and women driven by the lash of want
to sell their bodies; who could see the surplus of the world’s wealth
squandered in riot and debauchery, and the nations armed and drilled and
sent out to slaughter each other in the quest for more. Who could know
that all these things existed, and yet remain in their cloistered halls
and pursue the placid ways of scholarship; who could teach history which
regarded them as inevitable; who could care for literature that had been
made for the amusement of slave-drivers, and art which existed for the
sake of art, and not for the sake of humanity; who could know everything
that was useless, and teach everything that was uninteresting, and could
be dead at once to the warnings of the past, and to all that was vital
and important in the present.
Section 11. Not since he had discovered the master-key of Evolution had
Thyrsis come upon any set of ideas that meant so much to him. It was not
that these were new to him--they were the stuff out of which his whole
life had been made; but here they were ordered and systematized--he had
a handle by which to take hold of them. The name of this handle was “the
economic interpretation of history”. And its import was that ideas
did not come by hazard, or out of the air, but were products of social
conditions; and that when one knew by what method the wealth of any
community was produced, and by what class its “surplus value” was
appropriated--then and then only could one understand the arts and
customs, the sciences and religions, which that community would evolve.
In the light of this great principle Thyrsis had to revise all his
previous knowledge; he had to cast out tons of rubbish from the chambers
of his mind, and start his thinking life all over again. Just as,
in early days, he had exchanged miracles and folk-tales for facts of
natural science; so now he saw political institutions and social codes,
literary and artistic canons, and ethical and philosophical systems, no
longer as things valid and excellent, having relationship to truth--but
simply as intrenchments and fortifications in the class-war, as devices
which some men had used to deceive and plunder some other men. What a
light it threw upon philosophy, for instance, to perceive it, not as
a search for truth, but as a search for justification upon the part
of ruling classes, and for a basis of attack upon the part of
subject-classes!
So, for instance, on the one side one found Rousseau, and on the other
Herbert Spencer. Thyrsis had read Spencer, and had cordially disliked
him for his dogmatism and his callousness; but now he read Kropotkin’s
“Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution”, and came to a realization of how
the whole science of biology had been distorted to suit the convenience
of the British ruling-classes. _Laissez-faire_ and the Manchester school
had taught him that “each for himself and the devil take the hindmost”
was the universal law of life; and he had accepted it, because there
seemed nothing else that he could do. But now, in a sudden flash, he
came to see that the law of life was exactly the opposite; everywhere
throughout nature that which survived was not ruthless egotism, but
co-operative intelligence. The solitary and predatory animals were now
almost entirely extinct; and even before the advent of man with his
social brain, it had been the herbivorous and gregarious animals which
had become most numerous. When it came to man, was it not perfectly
obvious that the races which had made civilization were those which had
developed the nobler virtues, such as honor and loyalty and patriotism?
And now it was proposed to trample them into the mire of “business”; to
abandon the race to a glorified debauch of greed! And this travesty
of science was taught in ten thousand schools and colleges throughout
America--and all because certain British gentlemen had wished to work
their cotton-operatives fourteen hours a day, and certain others had
wished to keep land which their ancestors had seized in the days of
William the Conqueror! Shortly after this Thyrsis came upon Edmond
Kelly’s great work, “Government, or Human Evolution”; and so he realized
that Herbert Spencer’s social philosophy had at last been cleared out of
the pathway of humanity. And this was a great relief to him--it was one
more back-breaking task that he did not have to contemplate!
Section 12. Then one of his Socialist friends sent him Thorstein
Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”; a book which he read in a
continuous ebullition of glee. Truly it was a delicious thing to find a
man who could employ the lingo of the ultra-sophisticated sociologist,
and use it in a demonstration of the most revolutionary propositions.
The drollery of this was all the more enjoyable because Thyrsis
could never be sure that the author himself intended it--whether his
sesquipedalian irony might not be a pure product of nature, untouched by
any human art.
Veblen’s book might have been called a study of the ultimate destiny
of “surplus value”; an economic interpretation of the social arts and
graces, of “fashions” and “fads”. Where men competed for the fruit of
each other’s labor, the possession of wealth was the sign of excellence.
This excellence men wished to demonstrate to others; and step by step,
as the methods of production and exploitation changed, one might trace
the change in the methods of this demonstration. The savage chief began
with nose-rings and anklets, and the trophies of his fights; then, as
he grew richer, he would employ courtiers and concubines, and shine by
vicarious splendor. He would give banquets and build palaces--the end
being always “the conspicuous consumption of goods”.
Later on came those stages when he no longer had to gain his wealth by
physical prowess; when cunning took the place of force, and he ruled by
laws and religions and moral codes, and handed down his power through
long lines of descendants. Then ostentation became a highly specialized
and conventionalized thing--its criterion changing gradually to
“conspicuous waste of time”. Those characteristics were cultivated which
served to advertise to the world that their possessor had never had to
earn wealth, nor to do anything for himself; the aristocrat became a
special type of being, with small feet and hands and a feeble body, with
special ways of walking and talking, of dressing and eating and
playing. He developed a separate religion, a separate language, separate
literatures and arts, separate vices and virtues. And fantastic and
preposterous as some of these might seem, they were real things, they
were the means whereby the leisure-class individual took part in the
competition of his own world, and secured his own prestige and the
survival of his line. Some philosopher had said that virtue is a product
like vinegar; and it was a pleasant thing to discover that French heels
and “picture-hats” and course-dinners were products also.
Thyrsis would read passages of this book aloud to Corydon, and they
would chuckle over it together; but the reading of it did not bring
Corydon the same unalloyed delight. In the leisure-class _régime_, the
woman is a cherished possession--for it is through her that the ability
to waste both time and goods can best be shown. So came Veblen’s grim
and ironic exposition of the leisure-class woman, an exposition which
Corydon found almost too painful to be read. For Corydon’s ancestors, as
far back as documents could trace, had been members of that class. They
had left her the frail and beautiful body, conspicuously useless
and dependent; they had left her all the leisure-class impulses and
cravings, all the leisure-class impotences and futilities to contend
with. They had taught her nothing about cooking, nothing about sewing,
nothing about babies, nothing about money; they had taught her only the
leisure-class dream of “love in a cottage”--and she had run away with a
poor poet to try it out!
The depth of these instincts in Corydon was amusingly illustrated by the
fact that she always woke up dull and discouraged, and was seldom really
herself until afternoon; and that along about ten o’clock at night, when
for the sake of her health she should have been going to bed, she would
be laughing, talking, singing, ablaze with interest and excitement.
Thyrsis would point this out to her, and please himself by picturing the
role which she should have been filling--wearing an empire gown and
a rope or two of rubies, and presiding in an opera-box or a _salon_.
Corydon would repudiate all this with indignation; but all the same
she never escaped from the phrases of Veblen--she remained his
“leisure-class wife” from that day forth. Not so very long afterwards
they came upon Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler”; and Thyrsis shuddered to observe
that of all the heroines in the world’s literature, that was the one
which most appealed to her. Nor did he fail to observe the working of
the thing in himself; the subtle and deeply-buried instinct which made
him prefer to be wretched with a “leisure-class wife” rather than to be
contented with a plebeian one!
BOOK XIV
THE PRICE OF RANSOM
_The faint grey of dawn was stealing across the lake; and still the
spell was upon them.
“There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here
Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair.”
So she whispered; and he answered her--
“He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,
Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.
Some life of men unblest
He knew, which made him droop, and filled his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground._”
Section 1. In the course of that summer there befell Corydon an
adventure; Thyrsis had gone off one day for a walk, and when he came
back she told him about it--how a young lady had stopped at the house to
ask for a drink of water, and had sat upon the piazza to rest, and
had talked with her. Now Corydon was in a state of excitement over a
discovery.
Whenever Thyrsis met a stranger, it was necessary for him to go through
elaborate intellectual processes, to find the person out by an exchange
of ideas. And if by any chance the person was insincere, and used ideas
as a blind and a cover, then Thyrsis might never find him out at all.
In other words, he took people at the face-value of their cultural
equipment; and only after long and tragic blunderings could he by any
chance get deeper. But with his wife it happened quite otherwise; this
case was the first which he witnessed, but the same thing happened
many times afterwards. With her there would be a strange flash of
recognition; it was a sort of intuition, perhaps a psychic thing--who
could tell? By some unknown process in soul-chemistry, she would divine
things about a person that he might have been a life-time in finding
out.
It might be a burst of passionate interest, or on the other hand, of
repugnance and fear. And long years of practice taught Thyrsis that this
instinct of hers was never to be disregarded. Not once in all her life
did he know her to give her affection to a base person; and if ever
he disregarded her antipathies, he did it to his cost. Once they were
sitting in a restaurant, and a man was brought up to be introduced by
a friend; he was a person of not unpleasant aspect, courteous and
apparently a gentleman, and yet Corydon flushed, and could scarcely keep
her seat at the table, and would not give the man her hand. Years after
Thyrsis came upon the discovery about this man, that he made a practice
of unnatural vices.
He came home now to find Corydon flushed with excitement. “She has such
a beautiful soul!” she exclaimed. “I never met anyone like her. And we
just took to each other; she told me all about herself, and we are going
to be friends.”
“Who is she?” asked Thyrsis.
“She’s visiting Mr. Harding, the clergyman at Bellevue,” was the answer.
Bellevue was a town in the valley, on the other side from the
university; it had a Presbyterian church, whose young pastor Thyrsis had
met once or twice in his tramps about the country. This Miss Gordon, it
seemed, was the niece of an elderly relative, his housekeeper; she
was studying trained nursing, and afterwards intended to go out as a
missionary to Africa.
“She’s so anxious to meet you,” Corydon went on. “She’s coming up to see
me to-morrow, and she’s going to bring Mr. Harding. You won’t mind, will
you, Thyrsis?”
“I guess I can stand it if he can,” said Thyrsis, grimly.
“You mustn’t say anything to hurt their feelings,” said Corydon,
quickly. “She’s terribly orthodox, you know; and she takes it so
seriously. I was surprised--I had never thought that I could stand
anybody like that.”
Thyrsis merely grunted.
“I guess ideas don’t matter so much after all,” said Corydon. “It’s a
deep nature that I care about. But just fancy--she was pained because
the baby hadn’t been baptized!”
“You ought to have hid the dreadful truth,” said he.
“I couldn’t hide things from her,” laughed Corydon, “But she says I can
make a Socialist out of her, and she’ll make a Christian out of me!”
His reply was, “Wait until she discovers the sensuous temperament!”
But Corydon answered that Delia Gordon had a sensuous temperament also.
“She seemed to me like a Joan of Arc. Just think of her going away from
all her family, to a station on the Congo River! She told me all about
it--how wretched the people are, and what the women suffer. She woke
up in the middle of the night, and a voice told her to go--told her the
name of the place. And she’d never heard it before, and hadn’t had the
least idea of going away!”
Thyrsis was unmoved by this miracle. “I suppose,” he said, “you’ll be
hearing voices yourself, and going with her. Tell me, is she pretty?”
“You wouldn’t call her pretty,” said Corydon, after a little thought.
“She’s just--just dear. Oh, Thyrsis, I simply fell in love with her!”
“You certainly chose an odd kind of an affinity,” he said. “A
Presbyterian missionary!”
“It’s worse than that,” confessed Corydon. “She’s a Seventh-day
Adventist.”
“Good God! And what may that be?”
“Why, she keeps Saturday instead of Sunday. She calls it the Sabbath.
And she thinks that ‘evolution’ is wicked, and she believes in some kind
of a hell! She’s not just sure what kind, apparently.”
“You watch out,” said he, “or the first thing you know she’ll be
baptizing the baby behind your back.”
“Would that do any good?” asked Corydon, guilelessly.
He laughed as he answered, “It would, from her point of view.”
To which she replied, “Well, if we didn’t know it and the baby didn’t, I
guess it wouldn’t do any harm.”
“And it might save him from some kind of a hell!” added Thyrsis.
Section 2. Miss Gordon came the next morning, Mr. Harding with her; and
the four sat out under the trees and talked. She was a girl some three
years older than Corydon, but much more mature; she was short, but
athletic in build, and with a bright personality. Thyrsis could see at
once those fine qualities of idealism and fervor which had attracted
Corydon; and to his surprise he found that, in addition to her religious
virtues, the Lord had generously added a sense of humor. So Delia Gordon
was really a person with whom one could have a good time.
The Lord had not been quite so generous with the Rev. Mr. Harding,
apparently. Mr. Harding was about thirty years of age, tall and
finely-built, with a slight, fair moustache, and a rather girlish
complexion. He was evidently of a sentimental inclination, very
sensitive, and a lovable person; but the sense of humor Thyrsis judged
was underdeveloped. He was inclined towards social-reform, and had a
club for working-boys in his town, of which he was very proud; he asked
Thyrsis to come and give a literary talk to these boys, and Thyrsis
replied that his views of things were hardly orthodox. When the
clergyman asked for elucidation, Thyrsis added, with a smile, “I don’t
believe that Jonah ever swallowed the whale”. Whereupon Mr. Harding
proceeded with all gravity to correct his misapprehension of this
legend.
The fires of friendship, thus suddenly lighted between the two girls,
continued to burn. Delia Gordon came nearly every day to see Corydon,
and once or twice Corydon went down to the town and had lunch with her.
They told each other all the innermost secrets of their hearts, and in
the evening Corydon would retail these to Thyrsis, who was thus put
in the way to acquire that knowledge of human nature so essential to a
novelist. Delia had never been in love, it seemed--her only passion was
for savage tribes along the Congo; but Mr. Harding had been involved
in a heart-tragedy some time ago, and was supposed to be still
inconsolable. Incredible as it might seem, he was apparently not in love
with Delia.
Also, needless to say, the pair did not fail to thresh out problems
of theology. Delia made in due course the dreadful discovery of the
sensuous temperament; and also she probed to the depths the frightful
ocean of unorthodoxy that was hid beneath the placid surface of Corydon.
But strange to say, this did not repel her, nor make any difference in
their friendship. Thyrsis took that for the sign of a liberal attitude,
but Corydon corrected him with a shrewd observation--“She’s so sure of
her own truth she can’t believe in the reality of any other. She _knows_
I’ll come to Jesus with her some day!”
It was a wonderful thing to Thyrsis to see his wife’s happiness just
then; she was like a flower which has been wilting, and suddenly
receives a generous shower of rain. It was just what he had prayed for;
having seen all along that her wretchedness was owing to her being shut
up alone with him. So now he did his best to repress his own opinions,
and to let the two friends work out their problem undisturbed.
“Oh, Thyrsis,” Corydon exclaimed to him, one night, “if I could only
have her with me, I’d be happy always!”
“Then why don’t you get her to stay with you?” asked Thyrsis, quickly.
“Ah, but she wouldn’t think of it,” said Corydon. “She doesn’t really
care about anything in the world but her Congo savages!”
“We might try,” said he. “When does she complete her course?”
“Not until the end of the year.”
“Well, we can do a lot of arguing in that time. And when the book is
out, we’ll have money enough, so that we can offer to pay her. She might
become a sort of ‘mother’s helper.’”
Section 3. So Thyrsis began a struggle with Jesus and the Congo savages,
for the possession of Delia’s soul. He set to work to interest her in
his work; he gave her his first novel, which contained no theology at
all; and also “The Hearer of Truth”--the social radicalism of which
he was pleased to see did not alarm her. And then he gave her the
war-novel, and saw with joy how she was thrilled over that. He laid
himself out to make his purpose and his vision clear to her; and then,
one afternoon, when Corydon had a headache and was taking a nap, he led
her off to a quiet place in the woods, and set before her all the bitter
tragedy of their lives.
He pictured the work he had to do, and the loneliness to which this
consigned Corydon; he told her of the horrors they had so far endured,
and what effect these had had upon his wife. He showed her what her
power was--how she could make life possible for both of them. For she
had that magic key which Thyrsis himself did not possess, she could
unlock the treasure-chambers of Corydon’s soul.
But alas, Thyrsis soon perceived that his efforts had been in vain.
Delia was stirred by his eloquence, but the only effect was to move her
to an equally eloquent account of the sufferings of the natives of the
Congo basin. It was important that he should get his books written; but
how much more important it was that some help should be carried to these
unhappy wretches! They never saw any books, they were altogether beyond
his reach; and who was to take the light to them? She told him harrowing
tales of sick women, beaten and tortured and burned with fire to drive
the devils out of them.
Thyrsis met this by attempting to broaden the girl’s social
consciousness. He showed her how the waves of intelligence, beginning at
the top, spread to the lowest strata of society--changing the character
of all human activities, and affecting the humblest life. He showed her
the capitalist system, and explained how it worked; how it reached to
the savage in the remotest corner of the earth, and seized him and made
him over according to its will. It was true, for instance--and not in
any poetic sense, but literally and demonstrably true--that the fate
of the Congo native was determined in Wall Street, and in the financial
centres of London and Paris and Brussels and Berlin. The essential thing
about the natives was that they represented rubber and ivory. And Delia
might go there, and try to teach them and help them, but she would
find that there were forces engaged in beating them down and destroying
them--forces in comparison with which she was as helpless as a child. It
was true of the Congo blacks, as it was true of the people of the slums,
of the proletariat of the whole earth, that there was no way to help
them save to overthrow the system which made of them, not human beings,
but commodities, to be purchased and passed through the profit-mill, and
then flung into the scrap-heap.
But Thyrsis found to his pain that it was impossible to make these
considerations of any real import to Delia. She understood them, she
assented to them; but that did not make them count. Her impulses came
from another part of her being. Her savages were naked and hungry and
ignorant and miserable; and they needed to be fed and clothed, and more
important yet, to be baptized and saved. She was all the more impelled
to her task by the fact that all the forces of civilization were arrayed
against her. The fires of martyrdom were blazing in her soul. She meant
to throw herself over a precipice--and the higher the precipice, and
the more jagged the rocks beneath, the greater was the thrill which the
prospect brought her.
Section 4. They went back to the house; as Delia had arranged to
spend the night with them, and as Corydon’s headache was better, the
controversy was continued far into the evening. Thyrsis took no part
in it, he listened while Corydon pleaded for herself, and pictured her
loneliness and despair.
Delia put her arms about her. “Don’t you see, dear,” she argued--“all
that is because you are without a faith! You cast out Jesus, and deny
him; and so how can _I_ help you? If you believed what I do, you would
not be lonely, even if you were in the heart of Africa.”
“But how can I believe what isn’t _true?_” cried Corydon; and so the
skeletons of theology came forth and rattled their bones once more.
A couple of hours must have passed, while Thyrsis said nothing, but
listened to Delia and watched her, probing deeply into the agonies and
futilities of life. He had given up all hope of persuading her to stay
with them; he thought only of the tragedy, that this noble spirit should
be tangled up and blundering about in the mazes of a grotesque dogma.
And the time came when he could endure it no more; something rose up
within him, something tremendous and terrible, and he laid hold of Delia
Gordon’s soul to wrestle with it, as never before had he wrestled with
any human soul except Corydon’s.
The truth of the matter was that Thyrsis loved the religious people;
it was among them that he had been brought up, and their ways were
his ways. This was a fact that came to him rarely now, for he was
hard-driven and bitter; but it was true that when he sneered at the
church and taunted it, he was like a parent who whips a child he loves.
Perhaps Paret had spoken truly in one of his cruel jests--that when a
man has been brought up religious, he can never really get over it, he
can never really be free.
So now Thyrsis spoke to Delia as one who was himself of the faith of
Jesus; he cried out to her that what she wanted was what he wanted, that
all her attitudes and ways of working were his. And here were monstrous
evils alive upon the earth--here were all the forces of hell unleashed,
and ranging like savage beasts destroying the lives of men and women!
And those who truly cared, those who had the conscience and the faith of
the world in their keeping--they were wasting their time in disputations
about barren formulas, questions which had no relationship to human
life! Questions of the meaning of old Hebrew texts that had often no
meaning at all, and of folk-tales and fairy-stories out of the nursery
of the race--the problem of whether Jonah had swallowed the whale, or
the whale had swallowed Jonah--the problem of whether it was on Friday
or Saturday that the Lord had finished the earth. Because of such things
as this, they drove all thinking men from their ranks, they degraded and
made ridiculous the very name of faith! As he went on, the agony of
this swept over Thyrsis--until it seemed to him as if he had the whole
Christian Church before him, and was pleading with it in the voice
of Jesus. Here was a new crucifixion--a crucifixion of civilization!
Thyrsis cried out in the words, “Oh ye of little faith!” Truly, was it
not the supreme act of infidelity, to make the spirit of religion, which
was one with the impulse of all life--the force that made the flower
bloom and oak-tree tower and the infant cry for its food--to make it
dependent upon Hebrew texts and Assyrian folk-tales! Delia preached to
him about “faith”; but what was her faith in comparison with his, which
was a faith in all life--which trusted the soul of man, and reason as
part of the soul of man, a thing which God had put in man to be used,
and not to be feared and outraged.
Then came Delia. She would not admit that her faith depended upon texts
and legends; it was a faith in the living God. She was not afraid of
reason--she did not outrage it--
“But you do, you do!” cried Thyrsis. “Your whole attitude is an outrage
to it! You never speak of ‘science’ except as an evil thing. You told
Corydon that ‘evolution’ was wicked!”
“I don’t see how evolution can help my faith”--began the other.
“That’s just it!” cried Thyrsis again. “That is exactly what I mean!
You do not pay homage to truth, you do not seek it for its own sake!
You require that it should fit into certain formulas that you have set
up--in other words that it should not interfere with your texts and your
legends! And what is the result of that--you have paralyzed all your
activities, you have condemned your intellectual life to sterility! For
we live in an age of science, we cannot solve our problems except by
means of it; the forces of evil are using it, and you are not using it,
and so you are like a child in their hands! Not one of the social
wrongs but could be put an end to--child-labor, poverty and disease,
prostitution and drunkenness, crime and war! But you don’t know how, and
you can’t find out how--simply because you have thrown away the sharp
tools of the intellect, and filled your mind with formulas that mean
nothing! How can you understand modern problems, when you know
nothing about economics? You have rejected ‘evolution’--so how can you
comprehend the evolution of society? How can you know that civilization
at this hour is going down into the abyss--dragging you and your
churches and your Congo savages with it? I who do understand these
things--I have to go out and fight alone, while you are shut up in your
churches, mumbling your spells and incantations, and poring over your
Hebrew texts! And think of what I must suffer, knowing as I do that
the spirit that animates you--the fervor and devotion, the ‘hunger and
thirst after righteousness’--would banish horror from the earth forever,
if only it could be guided by intelligence!”
Section 5. All this, of course, was effort utterly wasted. Thyrsis
poured out his pleadings and exhortations, his longing and his pain;
and when he had finished, the girl was exactly where she had been
before--just as distrustful of “science”, and just as blindly bent upon
getting away to her savages and binding up their wounds and baptizing
them. And so at last he gave up in despair, and left Delia to go to bed,
and went out and sat alone in the moonlight.
Afterwards, though it was long after midnight, Corydon came out and
joined him. He saw that she was flushed and trembling with excitement.
“Thyrsis!” she whispered. “That was a marvellous thing!”
He pressed her hand.
“And all thrown away!” she cried.
“You realized that, did you?” he asked.
“I realized many things. Why you set so much store by ideas, for
instance! I see that you are right--one has to think straight!”
“It’s like a steam-engine,” said Thyrsis. “It doesn’t matter how
much power you get up, or how fast you make the wheels go--unless the
switches are set right, you don’t reach your destination.”
“You only land in the ditch!” added Corydon. “And that’s just the way I
felt to-night--she’d take your argument every time, and dump it into a
ditch. And she’d see it there, and not care.”