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 m?dchen”, 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 na?ve 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 m?dchen” 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!
