§ 3. As the result of such extravagances, when they had got as far as the month of Februar}^, Thyrsis' bank-account had sunk to almost nothing. However, he had been getting ready for this emergency; he had prepared a scenario of his new book, setting forth the
ideas it would contain and the form which it would take. This he sent to his publisher, with a letter saying that he wanted the same contract and the same advance as before.
And again he waited in breathless suspense. He knew that he had here a work of vital import, one that would be certain to make a sensation, even if it did not sell like a novel. It was, to be sure, a radical book—perhaps the most radical ever published in America; but on the other hand, it dealt with questions of literature and philosophy, where occasionally even respectable and conservative reviews permitted themselves to dally with ideas. Thyrsis was hoping that the publisher might see prestige and publicity in the adventure, and decide to take a chance; when this proved to be the case, he sank back with a vast sigh of relief. He had now money enough to last until midsummer, and by that time the book would be more* than half done—and also the farm would be paying.
But alas, it seemed with them that strokes of calamity always followed upon strokes of good fortune. At this time Corydon's ailments became acute, and her nervous crises were no longer to be borne. There were anxious consultations on the subject, and finally it was decided that she should consult another "specialist". This was an uncle of Mr. Harding's, a man of most unusual character, the clergyman declared; the latter was going to the city, and would be glad to introduce Cory don.
So, a couple of days later came to Thyrsis a letter, conveying the tidings that she was discovered to be suffering from an abdominal tumor, and should undergo an immediate operation. It would cost a hundred dollars, and the hospital expenses would be at least as much; which meant that, with the bill-paying
that had already taken place, their money would all be gone at the outset!
But Thyrsis did not waste any time in lamenting the inevitable. He was rather glad of the tidings, on the whole—at least there was a definite cause for Corydon's suffering, and a prospect of an end to it. Both of them had still their touching faith in doctors and surgeons, as speaking with final and godlike authority upon matters beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mind. The operation would not be dangerous, Cory-don wrote, and it would make a new woman of her.
"If I could only have Delia Gordon with me," she added, "then my happiness would be complete. Only think of it, she left for Africa last week! I know she would have waited, if she'd known about this.
"However, I shall make out. Mr. Harding is going to be in town for more than a week—he is attending a conference of some sort, and he has promised to come and see me in the hospital. I think he likes to do such things—he has the queerest professional air about it, so that you feel you are being sympathized with for the glory of God. But really he is very beautiful and good, and I think you have never appreciated him. I am happy to-day, almost exhilarated; I feel as if I were about to escape from a dungeon."
§ 4. SUCH was the mood in which she went to her strange experience. She liked the hospital-room, tiny, but immaculately clean ; she liked the nurses, who seemed to her to be altogether superior and exemplary beings —moving with such silence and assurance about their various tasks. She slept soundly, and in the morning they combed and plaited her hair and prepared her for the ceremony. There came a bunch of roses to her
room, with a card from Mr. Harding; and these were exquisite, and made her happy, so that, when the doctor arrived, she went almost gaily to the operating-room.
Everything there aroused her curiosity; the pure white walls and ceiling, shining with matchless cleanness, the glittering instruments arranged carefully on glass tables, the attentive and pleasant-faced nurses, standing also in pure white, and the doctor in his vestments, smiling reassuringly. In the centre of the room was a large glass table, long enough for a reclining body, and through the sky-light the sun poured a pleasing radiance over all. "How beautiful!" exclaimed Corydon; and the nurses exchanged glances, and the old doctor failed to hide an expression of surprise.
"I wish all my patients felt like that," said he. "Now climb up on the table."
Corydon promptly did so, and another doctor who was to administer the anaesthetic came to her side. "Take a very deep breath, please," he said, as he placed over her mouth a white, cone-shaped thing that had a rather suffocating odor. Corydon was obedience itself, and breathed.
In a moment her body seemed to be falling from her. "Oh, I don't like it!" she gasped.
"Breathe deeply, and count as far as you can," came a voice from far above her.
"Stop!" whispered Corydon. "Oh, I don't want— I want to come back!"
Then she began to count—or rather some strange voice, not hers, seemed to count for her; as the first numbness passed, farther and farther away she seemed to dissolve, to become a disembodied consciousness poised in a misty ether. And at that moment—so she told Thyrsis afterwards—the face of Mr. Harding seemed
to appear just above her, and to look at her with a pained and startled expression. It was a beautiful face, she thought; and she knew that everything she felt was being immediately registered in Mr. Harding's mind. They were two affinitized beings, suspended in the centre of a cosmos; their soul intelligences were all that had been left of the sentient world after some cataclysm.
"I always knew that about us," thought Corydon, and she realized that the face before her understood, even though at the moment it, too, was dissolving. "I wonder why" -she mused—"why—' And then the little spark went out.
Two hours later the doctor was bending over her, anxiously scrutinizing her passive face. "Nurse, bring me some ice-water," he was saying. "She takes her time coming to." And sharply he struck her cheek and forehead with his finger-tips; but she showed no sign.
Deep down in some mysterious inner chamber, beneath the calm face, there was being enacted a grim spirit-drama. Corydon's soul was making a monstrous effort to return to its habitation; Corydon felt herself hanging, a tortured speck of being, in a dark and illimitable void. "This may be Hell," she thought. "I have neither hands nor feet, and I cannot fight; but I can will to get back!" This effort cost her inexpressible agony.
A strange incessant throbbing was going on in the black pit over which she seemed suspended. It had a kind of rhythm—metallic, and yet with a human resonance. It began way down somewhere, and proceeded with maddening accuracy to ascend through the semitones of a gigantic scale. Each beat was agony to her; it ascended to a certain pitch in merciless crescendo,
then fell to the bottom again, and began anew its swift, maddeningly accurate ascent. Each time it ascended a little higher, and always straining her endurance to the uttermost, and bringing a more vivid realization of agony. "Will you stop here," it seemed to pulsate. "No, no, I will go on," willed Corydon. "You shall not keep me, I must escape, I must get out." But it kept up incessantly, ruthlessly, its strange, formless, soundless din, until the spirit writhed in its grasp.
Finally it seemed to Corydon that she was getting nearer—nearer to something, she knew not what. The blackness about her seemed to condense, and she found herself in what was apparently the middle of a lake, and some dark bodies with arms were trying to drag her down. "No, no," she willed to these forms, "you shall not. I do not belong here, I belong up—up!" And by a violent effort she escaped—into sensations yet more agonizing, more acute. The vibrations were getting faster and faster, whirling her along, stretching her consciousness to pieces. "Will it never end?" she thought. "Have mercy!" But after an eternity of such repetition, she found a bright light staring at her, and a frightful sense of heaviness, like mountains piled upon her. Also, eating her up from head to foot, was a strange, unusual pain; yes, it must be pain, though she had never felt anything like it before. She moaned; and there came a spasm of nausea, that seemed to tear her asunder.