But the right knowledge lay far in the future; and meantime they were groping in ignorance, and disease was still a mysterious visitation that came upon them out of the night. "Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all
the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there hath been none like it, nor shall be like it any more."
Their own firstborn had iow been on the regime of the "child specialist" for a year and a half. He was big and fat and rosy, and according to all the standards they knew, a picture of health. He was the pride of his parents' hearts—the one success they had achieved, and to which they could turn their eyes. He was a frightful burden to them—the most noisy and irrepressible of children. But they struggled and worried along with him, and were proud of him—and even, in a stormy sort of way, were happy with him. But now a calamity fell upon him, bringing them the most terrible distress they had yet had to face in their lives.
§ 9. IT was all the worse because they laid the blame upon themselves. They were accustomed to attribute sickness to this or that trivial cause—if Corydon caught a cold, it was because she had sat in a draught, and if Thyrsis was laid up with tonsilitis, it was because he had gone out for kindling-wood without his hat. had been their wont to bundle the child up and turn him out to play; and one very cold day he had stood a long time under the woodshed, and had got chilled. So that night his head was hot, and he was fretful; and in the morning he would not eat, and apparently had a fever. They sent off in haste for the doctor; and the doctor came and examined him, and shook his head and looked very grave. It was pneumonia, he said, and a serious case.
So Corydon and Thyrsis had to put all things else aside, and gird themselves for a siege. There were
medicines to be administered every hour, and minute precautions to be taken to keep the patient from the slightest chill; he must be in a warm room, and yet with some ventilation. All these things they attended to, and then they would sit and gaze at the sufferer, dumb with grief and fear. Through the night Thyrsis sat by the bedside, while Cedric babbled and raved in delirium; and no suffering that he had ever experienced was equal to this.
How he loved this baby, how passionately, how cruelly! How he clung to him, blindly and desperately —the thought of losing him simply tore his heart to pieces! He would hold the hot hands, he would touch the little body; how he loved that body, that was so beautiful and soft and white! How many times he had bathed it and dressed it and hugged it to him! He would sit and listen to the fevered prattle, full of childish phrases which brought before him the childish soul—the wonderful, lovable thing, so merry and eager, so full of mischief and curiosity; with strange impulses of tenderness, and flashes of intelligence that thrilled one, and opened long vistas to the imagination. He was all they had, this baby—he was all they had saved out of the ruin of their lives, out of the shipwreck of their love. What sacrifices they had made for him—what agonies he represented! And now, the idea that they might never see him, nor touch him, nor hear his voice again!
Also would come agonies of remorse. Thyrsis would face the blunder they had made—it might have been avoided so easily, and now it was irrevocable! His whole body would shake with silent sobbing. Ah, this curse of their lives, this hideous shame—that they had not even been able to take proper care of their child!
This wrong, too, the world meant to inflict upon them —this supreme vengeance, this cruel punishment!
§ 10. THE doctor came next morning, and found the patient worse. This was the crisis, he said; if the little one lived through the night— And there he paused, seeing the agony in the eyes of the mother and father. They would do all they could, he said; they must hope for the best.
So the siege went on. Thyrsis sat through the night again—and Corydon, who could not rest either, would come into the room every little while, and listen and watch. They would hold each other's hand for hours, dumb with suffering; ghostly presences seemed to haunt the sick-chamber and set them to trembling. Thyrsis found himself thinking of that most terrible of all ballads, "The Erl-King". How he had shuddered once, hearing it sung!—
"Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind!"
All through the night he seemed to hear the hammer-strokes of the horse's hoofs echoing through his soul.
The child lived through the night, but the crisis was not yet over. The fever held on; the issue of life and death seemed to hang upon the flutter of an eyelid. There was one more night to be sat through>; and Thyrsis, whose restless intellect must needs be dealing with all issues, had by then fought his way through this terror also. They must get control of themselves at all hazards, he said; they must face the facts. If so the child should die—
He tried to say something of the sort to Corydon, seeking to steady her. But Corydon became almost
frantic at his words. "You must not say such a thing, you must not think such a thing!" she cried.
Corydon had been reading about "new thought", and she insisted that would be "holding the idea" of death over the child. "The thing for us to do," she said, "is to make up our minds—he must live, we must know that he will live!" —It was no time to argue about metaphysics, but Thyrsis found this proposition a source of great perplexity. How could a man make himself know what he did not know?
The crisis passed, and the child lived. But the illness continued for a couple of weeks—and how pitiful it was to see their baby, that had been so big and rosy, and was now pale and thin and weak! And when at last he got up and went outdoors again, he caught a cold, and there was a relapse, and another siege of the dread disease; the doctor had not warned them sufficiently, it seemed. So there was a week or two more of watching and worrying; and then they had to face the fact that little Cedric would be delicate for a long while—would need to be guarded with care all through the spring.
Thyrsis blamed himself for*all that had happened; the weight of it rested upon him forever afterwards, as if it were some crime he had committed. Sometimes when he was overwrought and overdriven, he would lie awake in the small hours of the morning, and this spectre would come and sit by him. He had made a martyr of the child he loved, he had sacrificed it to what he called his art; and how had he dared to do it?
It was hard to think of a more cruel question to put to a man. Himself, no doubt, he might scourge and drive and wreck; but this child—what were the child's rights? Thyrsis would try to weigh them against the
claims of posterity. What his own work might be, he knew; and to what extent should he sacrifice it to the unknown possibilities of his son? Some sacrifice there had to be—such was the stern decree of the "economic
screw."
So Thyrsis once more was a field of warring motives ; once more he faced the curse of his life—that he could not be as other men, he could not have other men's virtues. It was the latest aspect, and the most tragic, of that impulse in him which had made him fight sa hard against marriage; which had made him quote to Corydon the lines of the outlaw's song—
"The fiend whose lantern lights the mead Were better mate than I!"
BOOK XVI THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM
The scarlet flush of morning was in the sky; and they stood upon the hill again, and watched the color spreading.
"We must go," she was saying. "But it was worthwhile to come"