Nor need he have made any apparent break with his convictions. In "society" one met all sorts of eccentrics—"babus" and "yogis", Christian Scientists, spiritualists and theosophists, Fletcherites, vegetarians and "raw-fcoders". And there would be ample room for his fad—it was quite "English" to be touched with Socialism. All that one had to do was to be entertaining in one's presentation of it, and to confine one's self to
its literary aspects—not setting forth plans for the expropriation of the house of Macintyre!
Thyrsis had one grievous handicap, of course. He would have had to keep his wife and child in the background ; for Corydon, alas, would not have scored as a giver of dinner-parties. From a woman like Mrs. Jesse Dyckman, skilled in intellectual fence, and merciless to her inferiors, Corydon would have turned tail and fled. Thyrsis was able to sit by and let Mrs. Dyckman wave the plumes of her wit and spread the tail-feathers of her culture before his astonished eyes, and at the same time occupy his mind with studying her, and working out her "economic interpretation". But Corydon took life too intensely, and people too personally for that.
But she would have let him go, if he had told her that it was best. So why should he not do it—why should he turn his back upon this opportunity, and return to the "soap-box in a marsh" to wrestle with loneliness and want? The fact of the matter was that the thing which seemed so easy to his intellect, was impossible to his character. Thyrsis could not have anything to do with these people without hypocrisy; merely to sit and talk pleasantly with them was to lie. They were to him the enemy, the thing he was in life to fight. And he hated all that they stood for in the world—he hated their ideas and their institutions, their virtues as well as their vices.
He had been down into the bottom-most pit of hell, and the sights that he had seen there had withered him up. How could he derive enjoyment from silks and jewels, from rich foods and fine wines, when he heard in his ears the cries of agony of the millions he had left behind him in that seething abyss? And should he trample upon their faces, as so many others had
trampled? Should he make a ladder of their murdered hopes, to climb out to fame and fortune? Not he!
It seemed to him sometimes, as he thought about it, that he alone, of all men living, had power to voice the despair of these tortured souls. Others had been down into that pit, and had come out alive; but who was there among them that was an artist; that could forge his hatred into a weapon, sharp enough and stout enough to be driven through the tough hide of the world of culture? To be an artist meant to have spent years and decades in toil and study, in disciplining and drilling one's powers; and who was there that had descended into the social inferno, and had come back with strength enough to accomplish that labor?
So it seemed to him that he was the bearer of a gospel, that he had to teach the world something it could otherwise not know. He had tried out upon his own person, and upon the persons of his loved ones, the effects of poverty and destitution, of cold and hunger, of solitude and sickness and despair. And so he knew, of his own knowledge, the meaning of the degradation that he saw in modern society—of suicide and insanity, of drunkenness and vice and crime, of physical and mental and moral decay. He knew, and none could dispute him! Therefore he must nerve himself for the struggle; he must deliver that message, and pound home that truth. He must keep on and on—in defiance of authority, in the face of all the obloquy and ridicule that the prostitute powers of civilization could heap upon him. He must live for that work, and die for it-to make real to the thinking world the infamies and the horrors of the capitalist regime.
BOOK XV THE CAPTIVE FAINTS
"Too quick despair er, wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on."
"Do you remember how you used to tell me that?" she whispered. "Hoping — always hoping!"
"And always young!" he added.
"How did I keep so?" she said, with wonder in her voice; and he read —
"Thou hearest the immortal chants' of old! — Putting his sickle to the perilous grain
In the hot corn-field of the Phrygian king, For thee the Lityerses-song again
Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing!"
Then a smile of mischief crossed her face, and she ashed, "Which Daphnis?"
§ 1. THYRSIS came back to his home in the country, divided between satisfaction over the four hundred dollars worth of booty he had captured, and a great uneasiness concerning his novel. It had had with the critics all the success that he could have asked, but unfortunately it did not seem to be selling. Already it had been out three weeks, and the sales had been only a thousand copies. The publisher confessed himself disappointed, but said that it was too early to be certain; they must allow time for the book to make its way, for the* opinions of the reviews to take effect.
And so, for week after week, Thyrsis watched and hoped against hope—the old, heart-sickening experience. In the end he came to realize that he had achieved that most cruel of all literary ironies, the succes d'estime. The critics agreed that he had written a most unusual book; but then, the critics did not really coun t—they had no way of making their verdict effective. What determined success or failure was the department-store public. It would take a whim for a certain novel; and when a novel had once begun to sell, it would be advertised and pushed to the front, and everything else would give way before it, quite regardless of what the critics had said. A book-review appeared only once, but an advertisement might appear a score of times, and be read all over the country. So the public would have pounded into its consciousness the statement that "Hearts Aflame", by Dorothy Dimple, was a masterpiece of character-drawing, full
of thrilling incident and alive with pulsing passion. The department-store public, which was not intelligent enough to distinguish between a criticism and an advertisement, would accept all these opinions at their face-value. And that was success; even the critics bowed to it in the end—as you might note by the change in their tone when they came to review the next work by this "popular" novelist.
So Thyrsis faced the ghastly truth that another year and a half of toiling and waiting had gone for nothing —the heights of opportunity were almost as far away as ever. He had to summon up his courage and nerve himself for yet another climb; and Corydon would have to face the prospect of another winter in the "soapbox in a marsh".
It was now November, and Thyrsis had written nothing but Socialist manifestoes for six months. He was restless and chafing again; but living in distress as they were, he could not get his thoughts together at all. He must have been a trying person to live in the house with at such a time. "You ask me to take love for granted," said Corydon to him once; "but how can I, when your every expression is contradictory to love?"
How could he explain to her his trouble? Here again was the pressure of that dreadful "economic screw", that was crushing their love, and all beauty and joy and hope in their hearts. They might fight against it with all the power of their beings; they might fall down upon their knees together, and pledge themselves with anguish in their voices and tears in their eyes; but still the remorseless pressure would go on, day and night, week after week, without a moment's respite.
There was this little house, for instance. It was all that Thyrsis wanted, and all that he would ever have
wanted; and yet he could not be happy in it, because Corydon was not happy in it. He must be plotting and planning and worrying, straining every nerve to get to another house; he might not even think of any other possibility—that would be treason to her. So always it seemed—he had to turn his face a way that he did not wish to travel, he had to go on against every instinct of his own nature. His love for Corydon was such that he would be ashamed whenever his own instincts showed themselves. But then he would go alone, and try to do his work, and then discover the havoc this had wrought in his own being.