"Ah!" cried Corydon, swiftly. "But that need not be so!"
"But it is so!" he answered.
"No, no!" she protested. "You must not say that! That is giving up—and I felt such a different mood in you to-night! I wanted to tell you—we must do something about it, Thyrsis! It made me ashamed of my own life. Here I am, failing miserably—and all that work crying out to be done! I don't think I ever had such a sense of your power before—the things you might do, if only you could get free, if only I didn't stand in your way! Oh, can't we cast the old mistakes behind us, and go out into the world and preach that message?"
"But, my dear," said Thyrsis, "that wouldn't appeal to you always. Your temperament "
"Never mind my temperament!" she cried. "I am sick
of it, ashamed of it; I want the world to hear that trumpet-call! I want you to break your way into the churches—to make them listen to you, and realize their blasphemy of life!"
She caught hold of him and clung to him; he could feel, like an electric shock, the thrill of her excitement. He marvelled at the effect his words had produced upon her—realizing all the more keenly, in contrast with Delia, what a power of mind he had here to deal with. "Dearest," he said, "I must put these things into my books. You must stand by me and help me to put them into my books!"
§ 6. DELIA GORDON went away to take up her work in the city; but for many months thereafter that missionary impulse stayed with them. They would find themselves seized with the longing to throw aside everything else, and to go out and preach Socialism with the living voice. They were still immersed in its literature; they read Bellamy's "Looking Backward", and Blatch-ford's "Merrie England", and Kropotkin's "Appeal to the Young". They read another book about England that moved them even more—a volume of sketches called "The People of the Abyss", by a young writer who was then just forging to the front—Jack London. He was the most vital among the younger writers of the time, and Thyrsis watched his career with eager interest. There was also not a little of wistful hunger in his attitude—he had visions of being the next to be caught up and transported to those far-off heights of popularity and power.
Also, they were kept in a state of excitement by the Socialist papers and magazines that came to them. There was a great strike that summer, and they fol-
lowed the progress of it, reading accounts of the distress of the people. Every now and then the pain of these things would prove more than Thyrsis could bear, and he would blaze out in some fiery protest, which, of course, the Socialist papers published gladly. So little by little Thyrsis was coming to be known in "the movement". Some of his friends among the editors and publishers made strenuous protests against this course, but little dreaming how deeply the new faith had impressed him.
In truth it was all that Thyrsis could do to hold himself in; it seemed to him that he no longer cared about anything save this fight of the working-class for justice. He was frightened by the prospect, when he stopped to realize it; for he could not write anything but what he believed, and one could not live by writing about Socialism. He thought of his war-book, for instance. It was but two or three months since he had finished it, and it was his one hope for success and freedom ; and yet already he had outgrown it utterly. He realized that if he had had to go back and do it over, he could not; he could never believe in any war again, never be interested in any war again. Wars were struggles among ruling-classes, and whoever won them, the people always lost. Thyrsis was now girding up his loins for a war upon war.
So there were times when it seemed that a literary career would no longer be possible to him; that he would have to cast his lot altogether with the people, and find his work as an agitator of the Revolution. One day a marvellous plan flashed over him, and he came to Corydon with it, and for nearly a week they threshed it over, tingling with excitement. They would sell their home, and raise what money they could, and
got themselves a travelling van and a team of horses, and go out upon the road on a Socialist campaign!
It was a perfectly feasible thing, Thyrsis declared; they would carry a supply of literature, and would get a commission upon subscriptions to Socialist papers. He pictured them drawing up on the main street of some country town, and ringing a dinner-bell to gather the people, and beginning a Socialist meeting, He would make a speech, and Corydon would sell pamphlets and books; they had animated discussions as to whether she might not learn to make a speech also. At least, he argued, she might sing Socialist songs!
Thyrsis was forever evolving plans of this sort; plans for doing something concrete, for coming into contact with the world of every day. The pursuit of literature was something so cold and aloof, so comfortable and conventional; one never pressed the hand of a person in distress, one never saw the light of hope and inspiration kindling in another's eyes. So he would dream of running a publishing-house or a magazine, of founding a library or staging a play, of starting a colony or a new religion. And then, after he had made himself drunk upon the imagining, he would take himself back to his real job. For that summer his only indiscretions were to buy several thousand copies of the "Appeal to Reason", and hire the old horse and buggy, and distribute them over some thirty square miles of country; also to help to organize a club for the study of Socialism at the university; and finally, when he was in the city, to make a fiery speech at a meeting of some "Christian Socialists." Because of this the newspaper reporters dug out the accounts of his earlier adventures, and "wrote him up" with malicious bantering. And this, alas—as the publisher pointed out—
was a poor sort of preparation for the launching of the war-novel.
Needless to add, the two did not fail to wrestle with those individuals whom they met. Thyrsis got a collection of pamphlets, judiciously selected, and gave them to the butcher and the grocer, the store-clerks and the hack-drivers in the town. But a college-town was a poor place for Socialist propaganda, as he realized with sinking heart; its population was made up of masters and servants, and there was even more snobbery among the servants than among the masters. The main architectural features of the place were fraternity-houses and "eating-clubs", where the sons of the idle rich disported themselves; once or twice Thyrsis passed through the town after midnight, and saw these young fellows reeling home, singing and screaming in various stages of intoxication. Then he would think of little children shut up in cotton-mills and coal-mines, of women dying in pottery-works and lead-factories; and on his way home he would compose a screed' for the "Appeal to Reason".
§ 7. ANOTHER victim of their fervor was the Rev. Mr. Harding, who stopped in to see them several, times upon his tramps. Thyrsis would never have dreamed of troubling Mr. Harding, but Corydon found "something in him", and would go at him hammer and tongs whenever he appeared. It must have been a novel experience for the clergyman; it seemed to fascinate him, for he came again and again, and soon quite a friendship sprang up between the two. She would tell Thyrsis about it at great length, and so, of course, he had to change his ideas about Mr. Harding.
"Don't you see how fine and sensitive he is?" she would plead.
"No doubt, my dear," said Thyrsis. "But don't you think he's maybe just a bit timid?"
"Timid," she replied. "But then think of his training! And think what you are!"
"Yes, I suppose I'm pretty bad," he admitted.
This discussion took place after he and Mr. Harding had had an argument, in which Thyrsis had remarked casually that modern civilization was "crucifying Jesus all over again." And when Mr. Harding asked for enlightenment, Thyrsis answered, "My dear man, we crucify him according to the constitution. We teach the profession of crucifying him. We invest our capital in the business of crucifying him. We build churches and crucify him in his own name!"