"I am sorry to have to tell you that the decision has been adverse to using your story. My own opinion of it has not changed in the least; but I have been unable to induce my associates to view it in the same light. They seem to be unanimous in the opinion that your work is too radical for us to put to the front. We have a very conservative, fastidious, and sophisticated constituency ; and this is one of the limitations by which we are bound. I am more than sorry that things have turned out so, and I trust I need hardly say that I shall be glad to read anything else that you may have to submit to us."
And there it was! "A conservative, fastidious, and sophisticated constituency!" Thyrsis believed that he
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would never forget that phrase while he lived. Could one get up a thing like that anywhere in the world save in Boston?
It was a bitter and cruel disappointment—the more so because it had taken six weeks of his precious time. But there was nothing to be done about it save to send off the manuscript to another magazine. And when it had come back from there he sent it to another, and to yet another—paying each time a total of eighty cents to the express-company, a sum which was very hard for him to spare. To make an ending at once to the painful episode, he continued to send it from one place to another, until "The Hearer of Truth" had had the honor of being declined by a total of fifteen magazines and twenty-two publishing-houses. The pilgrimage occupied a period of nineteen months—after which, to Thyrsis' great surprise, the thirty-eighth concern offered to publish it. And so the book was brought out, with something of a flourish, and met with its thirty-eighth rejection—at the hands of the public!
BOOK VII THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED
The shadow of a dark cloud had fallen upon the woods, and the voices of the birds were strangely hushed.
''There is a spell about this place for me," she said, and quoted —
"Here came 1 often, often in old days — Thyrsis and I, we still had Thyrsis then!"
'Where is Thyrsis now?" she asked; and he smiled sadly, and responded:
"Ah me! this many a year My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday! Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart Into the world and wave of men depart!"
§ 1. THEY returned to the city early in October— not so much because they minded the cold in the tent, as because their money was gone, and it was not easy to do hack-work at a distance. One had to be on the spot, to interview the editors, to study their whims and keep one's self in their minds; otherwise some one.else got the work.
So Thyrsis came back to his "world"; and he found this world up in arms against him. All the opposition that he had ever had to face was nothing to what he faced now. Society seemed to have made up its collective mind that he should give in; and every force it could use was brought to bear upon him—every person he knew joined in the assault upon him.
He was bound to admit that they had all the arguments on their side. He had gone his own obstinate way, in defiance of all advice and of all precedent; and now he saw what had come of it—exactly what every common-sense person had foreseen. He and Corydon had tried their "living as brother and sister"—and here she was with child! And that was all right, no one proposed to blame him for it; it was what people had predicted, and they were rather pleased to have their predictions come true—to see the bubble of his pretenses burst, and to be able to point out to him that he was like all other men. What they wanted now was simply that he should recognize his responsibility, and look out for Corydon's welfare. Living in tenement-rooms and in tents, like gypsies and savages, was all right by way of a lark; it was all very picturesque and romantic in
a novel; but it would not do for a woman who was about to become a mother. Corydon had been delicately reared. She was used to the comforts and decencies of life; and to get her in her present plight and then not provide these things for her would be the act of a scoundrel.
All through his life the world had had but one message for Thyrsis: "Go to work!" From the world's point of view his languages and literatures, his music and writing were all play; to "work" was to get a "position". And now this word was dinned into his ears day and night, the very stones in the street seemed to cry it at him—"Get a position! Get a position!"
As chance would have it, the position was all ready. In the higher regions they were preparing to open a branch of a great family establishment abroad, and Thyrsis was invited to take charge of it. He would be paid three thousand dollars a year at the start, and two or three times as much ultimately; and what more could he want? He knew nothing about the work, but they knew his abilities—that if he would undertake it, and give his attention to it, he would succeed. He would meet people of culture, they argued, and be broadened by contact with men; as for Corydon, it would make her whole life over. Surely, for her sake, he could not refuse!
Thyrsis had foreseen just such things. He had braced himself to meet the shock, and the world found him with his hands clenched and his jaws set. There was no use in arguing with him, he had but one answer— "No! No! No!" He would not take that position, and he would not take any other position—neither now, nor at any future time. He was not a business-man, he was an artist; and an artist he would remain to the end. It might as well be understood at the outset; there was
THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED 257
nothing that the world could do or say to him that would move him one inch. They might starve him, they might kill him, they might do what they could or would -but never would he give in.
"But—what are you going to do?" they cried.
He answered, "I am going to write my books."
"But you have already written two books, and nothing has come of them!"
"Something may come of them yet," he said. "And if it doesn't, I shall simply go on and write another, and another, and another. I shall continue to write so long as I have the strength left in me; I shall be trying to write when I die."
And so, while they argued and pleaded and scolded and wept, he stood in silence. They could not understand him—he smiled bitterly as he realized how impossible it was for them to understand even the simplest thing about him. There was the dapper corporation lawyer and his exquisite young wife, who came to argue about it; and Thyrsis asked them not to tell Corydon why they had come. He saw them look at each other significantly, and he could 'read their thought—that he was afraid of his wife's importunities. And how could he explain to them what he had really meant—that if they had told Corydon they had come to persuade him to give up his art, Corydon would probably have found it impossible to be even decently polite to them !
§ 2. So Thyrsis went away, carrying the burden of the scorn and contempt of every human soul he knew. It was in truth a dark hour in his life. He was at his wit's end for the bare necessities. He had reached the city with less money in his pocket than he had had the year before; and all the ways by which he had got
money seemed to have failed him at once. All the editors who published book-reviews seemed to have a stock on hand; or else to know of people whose style of writing pleased their readers better. And none of them seemed to fancy any ideas for articles that Thyrsis had to suggest.
Worst of all, the editor of the "'Treasure Chest" turned down the pot-boiler which he had been writing up in the country. He would not say anything very definite about it—he just didn't like the story—it had not come up to the promise of the scenario. He hinted that perhaps Thyrsis was not as much interested in his work as he had been before. It seemed to be lacking in vitality, and the style was not so good. Thyrsis offered to rewrite parts of the story; but no, said the editor, he did not care for the story at all. He would be willing to have Thyrsis try another, but he was pretty well supplied with serials just then, and could not give much encouragement.