Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
The music died away, and rose again; and the deeps
of his spirit were opened, and ecstasy and grief welled up together within him. Then he made out that the anchor was being lifted; and he was tempted to spring up and cry out to them to stay. But no—what did they know of him? What would they care about him? So he crouched by the bank, drinking greedily the precious notes; and as the yacht with its gleaming lights stole away into the twilight, all the poet's soul went yearning with it. Still he could hear the faint strains swelling—
"Blow, blow, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea!"
He sat with his face hidden in his hands, shuddering. Here he was, wrestling in the pit with sickness and despair—and there above him were the heights of art. If only he could live with such music, what prodigies could he not perform. And they who possessed it— did it mean to them what it meant to him? They who had everything that life could offer—music and art, freedom and beauty and health—all the treasures of life as their birthright—had they never a thought of those who had nothing, and were set to slave in the galleys of their pleasure-craft?
Thyrsis was always coming upon some aspect of this thing called Privilege. Corydon had suggested that there might be some work that she could do at home; and so one day he was looking over the advertisements in a newspaper, and came upon a composition by a man who was seeking a governess for his three children. It was written in a style all its own; it revealed a person accustomed to specify exactly what he wanted, and it occupied three or four inches, as if symbolic of the fact
that he did not consider expense. He described the life of his children; they had servants and a tutor to attend to their physical and mental needs, and the father now sought a friend anci companion, to take charge of their spiritual and social development. The specifications evoked a picture of an establishment, in which all the community's resources, all the sciences and arts of civilization, were set at work to create joy and power for three young people. What a contrast it made with the care that little Cedric was getting, as revealed in his mother's letters!
Thyrsis could see in his mind's eye the master and provider of this establishment. How well he knew the type—how often had he sat in some quiet corner and listened while it revealed itself. A man alert and aggressive; immaculate in appearance as the latest fashion-plate, and overlaid with a veneer of culture— yet underneath it still the predatory talons, the soul of the hawk. He was a "practical" man-; that is, he understood profit. He was trained to see where profit lay, and swift to seize upon it. As a business-man he ruled labor, and crushed his competitors, and directed legislatures and political machines; as a lawyer he protected his kind from attack, as a judge he bent the law to the ends of greed. So he lived in palaces, and travelled about in private-cars and yachts, and had servants and governesses for his children, and valets and secretaries to attend himself. And whenever by any chance he got a glimpse of Thyrsis' soul, how he hated it! On the other hand, to Thyrsis he was a portent of terror. He ruled in every field of human activity; and yet one saw that if his rule continued, it would mean the destruction of civilization ! Whenever Thyrsis met one of these men, whether in imagination or reality,
he found himself with hands clenched, and every nerve of him a-tingle with the lust of combat.
§ 10. A MOST trying thing it was to a man who carried the burden of the future in his soul—to have to wrestle with an obstinate stomach! But so it was again; the magic red liquid seemed to be losing its power. Then, the pot-boiler was not going well; and to cap the climax, the manuscripts stopped coming. Thyr-sis, after waiting two or three weeks in suspense and dread, wrote to Mr. Ardsley, and received a reply to the effect that he would not be able to send any more. Mr-Ardsley had sent them because of his interest in the proposed "practical" novel; and now he had learned that the poet had been giving his time to the writing of an impossible play!
Thyrsis' predicament was a desperate one, and drove him to a desperate course. It was now midsummer ; and ru'n down from overwork as he was, could he face the thought of returning to the sweltering city, to go to work in some office? Or was he to hire out as a farm-laborer, under he knew not what conditions? He recoiled from either of these alternatives; and then suddenly, as he racked his brains, a wild idea flashed over him. For years he had talked and dreamed of escaping from civilization. He had pictured himself upon some tropic island, where bananas and cocoanuts grew; or again in some Northern wilderness, where he might hunt and fish, and live like the pioneers. And now—why not do it? He had an axe and a rifle and a fishing-rod; and only a few days previously he had heard a man telling of a lake in the Adirondacks, where not a dozen people went in the course of a year.
It was early one morning the idea came to him; and
within an hour he had struck his tent and packed his trunk. He stowed his camp-stuff and bedding in a dry-goods box, and leaving his tent with the farmer, he purchased a ticket to a place on the edge of the wilderness. He put up at a village-hotel, and the next day oVo-ve fifteen miles by a stage, and five more by a wagon, and spent the night at a lumber-camp far in the wilderness. The next day, carrying as much of his belongings as he could, he walked three miles more, and came to the tiny lake that was his goal.
It was perhaps half a mile long; the virgin forest hung about it like a great green curtain, and the shadows of the blue mountains seemed as if painted upon its surface. Thyrsis gave a gasp of delight as he pushed through the bushes and saw it; he stripped and plunged into the crystal water—and hot and tired and soul-sick as he- was, the coolness of it was like a clasp of protecting arms. There was a rock rising from the centre, and he swam out and stood upon it, and gazed about him at all the ravishing beauty, and laughed and whooped so that the mountains rang with the echoes.
He found an abandoned "open-camp", or shed, the roof of which he made water-proof with newspapers and balsam-boughs. He cut fresh boughs for his bed, and spread his blankets upon them, and went back to the lumber-shanties, and purchased a box of prunes and a bag of rice. There were huckleberries in profusion upon the hills, and in the lakes were fish, and in the forests squirrels and rabbits, partridges and deer. There were the game-laws, to be sure; but there was also a "higher law", as eminent authorities had declared. As one of the wits at the lumber-camp put
it, "If any wild rabbit comes rushing out to bite you, don't you hesitate to defend yourself!"
So, with the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents in his pocket-book, Thyrsis began the happiest experience of his life. He watched the sun rise and set behind the mountains; and sometimes he climbed to the summits to see it further upon its way. He watched the progress of the tempests across the lake, and swam in the water while the rain splashed his face and the lightning splintered the pines in the forest. He crouched in the bushes and saw the wild ducks feeding, and the deer that came at sunset to drink. He watched the loons diving, and spying him out with their wild eyes—sometimes, as they rose in flight, beating the surface of the water with a sound like thunder. At night he heard their loud laughter, and the creaking cries of the herons flying past. Sometimes far up in the hills a she-fox would bark, or some too-aged tree of the forest would come down with a booming crash. Thyrsis would lie in his open camp and watch the moonlight through the pines, and prayers of thankfulness would well up within him—
"Peace of the forest, rich, profound, Gather me closely, fold me round 1"
There had been much carrying and hard work to do before he was settled, and there was more of it all through his stay. He had to cook all his meals and clean up afterwards; and because the nights were cold and his blankets few, there was much firewood to be cut. Also, there was no food unless he went out and found it, and so he spent hours each day tramping about in the forests. By the time he had got home and