LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE
"I got that impression from her," said the other. "And now let me tell you—if you do that, it'll be something you'll never forgive yourself for as long as you live. In the first place, you may lose your wife. It's a very dangerous thing, and a woman is seldom the same after it. You might make it impossible for her ever to have a child again, and so blast her whole life. You'll have to trust her in the hands of some vile scoundrel—you understand, of course, that it's a crime?"
"I suppose so," said Thyrsis.
"It's a crime not only against the law—it's a crime against God. And it's the curse of our age!"
There was a pause.
"What's the matter with Corydon, anyway?" demanded the doctor.
"She's so young!" cried Thyrsis.
"Nonsense! She's nineteen now, isn't she? And she couldn't be in better condition."
"But she's so undeveloped—mentally, I mean."
"There's nothing in the world will develop her like maternity. And can't you see that she wants the baby?"
"Wants it!" shouted Thyrsis.
"Why, of course! She's dead in love with you, boy. And she wants the baby! Why shouldn't she have it?"
"If I could only make you understand— " protested Thyrsis, feebly.
"Yes!" exclaimed the doctor. "That's what they all say! Not a day passes that some woman doesn't sit in this office and say it! Each case is different from any other case that ever was or could be. They tell me how much they suffer, and what a state their nerves are in, and how busy they are, and how poor they are
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—their social duties, and their artistic duties, and their religious duties, and their philanthropic duties! And they weep and wring their hands, and tell me agonizing stories, and they offer me any sum I could ask—many a time I might earn a thousand dollars by something that wouldn't take me ten minutes, if only I didn't have a conscience!—Go away, boy, and get those ideas out of vour head!"
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§ 4. So Thyrsis went away, with a new realization of the seriousness of his position, with a new sense of the grip in which he was fast. It was a conspiracy of Nature, a conspiracy of all the world! It was a Snare!
All through this love-adventure, even when most under the sway of his emotions, Thyrsis' busy mind had been groping and reaching for an understanding of it. Little by little this had come to him—and now the picture was complete. He had beheld the last scene of the panorama; he had got to the moral of the tale!
He had been the sport of cosmic forces, of the blind and irresistible reproductive impulse of Nature. Step by step he had been driven, he had played his part according to the plan. He had hesitated and debated and resolved and decided—thinking that he had something to do with it all! But now he looked back, and saw himself as a leaf swept along by a torrent. And all the while the torrent had known its destination ! He had had many plans and many purposes, but always Nature had had but one plan and one purpose—which was the Child!
Twelve months ago Thyrsis had been a boy, carefree and happy, rapt in his dream of art; and now here he was, a married man, with the cares of parenthood
on his shoulders! If anyone had told him that such a trick could be played upon him, he would have laughed at them. How confident he had been—how certain of his mastery of life ! And now he was in the Snare!
Dismayed as he was, Thyrsis could not but smile as he realized it. The artist in him appreciated the technique of the performance. How cunningly it had all been managed—how cleverly the device had been hidden, how shrewdly the bait had been selected!
He went back over the adventure. What a fuss he and Corydon had made about it! What a vast amount of posturing and preluding, of backing and filling! And how solemnly they had taken it—how earnestly they had believed in the game! What convictions had weighed upon them, what exaltations had thrilled them —two pitiful little puppets, set here and there by unseen hands! Rehearsing from prologue to curtain the age-long drama, the drama of Sex that had been played from the beginning of the world!
He marvelled at the prodigality that Nature had displayed—at the treasures she had squandered to accomplish her purpose! She would create a million eggs to make one salmon; and she had created a million emotions to make one baby! What poems she had written for them—what songs she had composed for them! She had emptied the cornucopias of her gifts into their lap! She had strewn the pathway with roses before them, she had filled their mouths with honey, and their ears with the sound of sweet music; she had blinded them, she had stunned them, she had sent them drunken and reeling to their fate!
And the elaborate set of pretenses and illusions that she had invented for them! The devices to lull their suspicions—the virtues and renunciations, the humili-
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ties and the consecrations! Corydon had been frightened and evasive; Nature had made him suffer, so as to break her down! And he had been proud and defiant ; and so Corydon, the meek and gentle, had been turned into a heroine of revolt! Nay, worse than that; those very powers and supremacies that he had thought were his protection—were they not, also, a part of the Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and his exaltations—what had they been but a lure for the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff about the grouse's neck, the gold and purple of the butterfly's wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, ineffable genius—that had been the plume of the partridge, the crowning glory before which his mate had capitulated!
These images came to Thyrsis, until he burst into wild, sardonic laughter. He saw himself in new and grotesque lights; he was the peacock, spreading his gorgeousness before a dazzled and wondering world; he was the young rooster, strutting before his mate, and thrilling with the knowledge of his own importance! He was each of the barnyard creatures by turn, and Corydon was each of the fascinated females. And somewhere, perhaps, stood the farmer, smiling complacently—for should there not be somewhere a farmer in this universal barnyard?
But then, the laughter died; for he thought of Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee", and shuddered at the fate of the male-creature. He was a mere accident in the scheme of Nature—she wasted all his splendors to accomplish the purpose of an hour. And now it had been accomplished. He had had his moment of ecstasy, his dizzy flight into the empyrean; and now behold him falling, disembowelled and torn, an empty shell!
But no—it was not quite that way, Thyrsis told himself, after further reflection. In the human hive the male creature was not only the bearer of the seed, he was also the worker. And so there was one more function he had to perform. All those fine frenzies of his, his ideals and his enthusiasms—they had served their purpose, and would fade; but before him there was still a future—a drab and dreary future of perpetual pot-boiling!
He recalled their bridal-night. All that had puzzled him in it and startled him—how clear it was now! Cory don had shrunk from him, just enough to lure him; and then, suddenly, her whole being had seemed to change—she had caught him, and held him fast. For he had accomplished her purpose; he had gotten her with child! And so he must stand by her—he must bring her food, that she might give the child life! And for that purpose she would hold him; for that she would use every art of which she was mistress—the whole force of her being would go into it!
She would not know this, of course; she would do it blindly and instinctively, as she had done everything so far. She would do it by those same generous and beautiful qualities that had made him hers! Therein lay the humor of his whole adventure—there lay the deadly nature of this Snare. The cords of it were woven out of love and tenderness, out of ecstasy and aspiration; and they were wound about his very heartstrings, so that it would kill him to pull them loose. And he would never pull them loose—he saw that in a sudden vision of ruin! She would be noble to the uttermost limit of nobleness. She would threaten to destroy herself—and so he would save her! She would bid him cast her away—and so he would stand by her to