Just now the tension had reached the breaking point; the craving for solitude and peace was eating him up.
"What is it that you want?" asked Corydon, one day.
"I want to be where I don't have to see anybody," he cried. "I want to rough it in a tent, as I did once before."
"But it's too late to go to the Adirondacks, Thyrsis!"
"I know that," he said. "But there are other places."
He had heard of one in Virginia—in that very Wilderness of which he had written so eloquently, but had never seen. "Isn't there some one who could come and stay with you?" he pleaded.
"I don't know," replied Corydon. But the next day, as fate would have it, there came a letter from Delia Gordon, saying that she had finished a certain stage of her study-course, and was tired out and in fear of break-down. So an invitation was sent and accepted, and Thyrsis secured the respite which he craved.
And so behold him as a hermit once more, settled in a deserted cabin not far from the battle-field of Spot-sylvania. He had got rid of the vermin in the cabin
by burning sulphur, and had stocked his establishment with a canvas-cot and a camp-stool and a lamp and an oil-can, and the usual supply of beans and bacon and rice and corn-meal and prunes. Also he had built himself a rustic table, and unpacked a trunkful of blankets and dishes and writing-pads and books. So once more his life was his own, and a thing of delight to him.
He had promised himself to live off the country, as he had before; but the principal game here was the wild turkey, and the wild turkey proved itself a shy and elusive bird. It was not occupied with meditations concerning literary masterpieces; and so it had a great advantage over Thyrsis, who would forget that he had a gun with him after the first half-hour of a "hunt".
§ 2. IT had now become clear to Thyrsis that he had nothing more to expect from his novel; it had sold less than two thousand copies, which meant that it had not earned the money which had already been advanced to him. But all that was now ancient history—the entrenchments and graveyards of the Wilderness battlefield were not more forgotten and overgrown with new life than was the war-book in Thyrsis' mind. He had had enough of being a national chronicler which the nation did not want; he had come down to the realities of the hour, to the blazing protest of the new Revolution.
For ten years now Thyrsis had been playing at the game of professional authorship; he had studied the literary world both high and low, and had seen enough to convince him that it was an impossible thing to produce art in such a society. The modern world did not know what art was, it was incapable of forming such
a concept. That which it called "art" was fraud and parasitism—its very heart was diseased.
For the essence of art was unselfishness; it was an emotion which overflowed, and which sought to communicate itself to others from an impulse of pure joy. It was of necessity a social thing; the supreme art-products of the race had been, like the Greek tragedy and the Gothic cathedral, a result of the labor of a whole community. And what could the modern man, a solitary and predatory wolf in the wilderness of laissez faire —what could he conceive of such a state of soul? What would happen to a man who gave himself up to such a state of soul, in a community where the wolf-law and the wolf-customs prevailed?
A grim purpose had been forming itself in Thyrsis* mind. He would suppress the artist in himself for the present—he would do it, cost whatever agony it might. He would turn propagandist for a while; instead of scattering his precious seed in barren soil, he would set to work to make the soil ready. There was seething in his mind a work of revolutionary criticism, which would sweep into the rubbish-heap the idols of the leisure-class world.
It was his idea to go back to first principles; to study the bases of modern society, and show how its customs and institutions came to be, and interpret its art as a product of these. He would show what the modern artist was, and how he got his living, and how this moulded his work. He would take the previous art-periods of history and study them, showing by what stages the artist had evolved, and so gaining a standpoint from which to prophesy what he would come to be in the future. Only once had an attempt ever been made to apply to questions of art the methods of
science—in Nordau's "Degeneration". But then Nor-dau's had been pseudo-science—three-quarters impertinence and conceit. The world still waited to understand its art-products in the light of scientific Socialism.
Such was the task which Thyrsis was planning. It would mean years of study, and how he was to get the means to do it, he could not guess. But he had his mind made up to do it, though it might be the last of his labors, though everything else in his life might end in shipwreck. He went about all day, possessed with the idea; it would be a colossal work, an epoch-making work—it would be the culmination of his efforts and the vindication of his claims. It would save the men who came after him; and to save the men who came after him had now become the formula of his life.
§ 3. THYRSIS would come back from a sojourn such as this with all his impulses of affection and sympathy renewed; he would have had time to miss Corydon, and to realize how closely he was bound to her. He would be eager to tell her all his adventures, and the wonderful plans which he had formed.
But this time it was Corydon who had adventures to narrate. He realized as soon as he saw her that she had something upon her mind; and at the first occasion she led him off to his own study, and shut the door. He got a fire going, and she sat opposite him and gazed at him.
"Thyrsis," she said, "I hardly know how to begin."
It was all very formal and mysterious. "What is it, dear?" he asked.
"It's something terrible," she whispered. "I'm afraid you're going to be angry."
"What is it?" he repeated, more anxiously.
"I was angry myself, at first," she said; "but I've got over it now. And I want you please to be reasonable."
"Go on, dear."
"Thyrsis," she whispered, after a pause, "it's Harry."
"Harry?"
"Harry Stuart, you know."
"Oh," said he. He had all but forgotten the young drawing-teacher, whom he had left doing Socialist cartoons.
"Well?" he inquired.
"You see, Thyrsis, I always liked him very much. And he's been coming up here—quite a good deal. I didn't see why he shouldn't come—Delia liked him too, and she was with us most of the time. Was it wrong of me to let him come?"
"I don't know," said he. "Tell me."
"Perhaps it's silly of me," Corydon continued, hesitatingly—"but I'm always imagining things about people. And he seemed to me to have such possibilities. He has—how shall I say it "
"I recall your saying he had soulful eyes," put in Thyrsis.
"You'll make fun of it all, of course," said Corydon. "But it's really very tragic. You see, he's never met a woman like me before."
"I can believe that, my dear."
"I mean—a woman that has any real ideas. He would ask me questions by the hour; and we talked about everything. So, of course, we talked about love; and he—he asksd if I was happy."
.592 LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE
"I see," said Thyrsis, grimly. "Of course you said that you were miserable."
"I didn't say much. I told him that your work was hard, and that my courage wasn't always equal to my task. Anyone can see that I have suffered."
"Yes, dear," said Thyrsis, "of course. Go on."
"Well, one day—it was last Friday—he came up with a carriage to take us driving. And Delia had a headache, and wanted to rest, and so Harry and I went alone. I—I guess I shouldn't have gone, but I didn't realize it. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we both had a good time—in fact, I don't know when I have been so contentedly happy. We stopped to gather wild flowers, and once we sat by a little stream; and of course, we talked and talked, and before I realized it, twilight was falling, and we were a long way from home."