iv rate, so it was—he went on to drive Thyrsis into
a corner, to tear open his very soul. Also, he manifested anger; it was a deliberate affront that the boy should stand out like this. And Thyrsis, in great distress of soul, explained that he did not mean it that way—he apologized abjectly for his obstinacy. It was the ideas that he had tried to put into his play, and that he could not give up!
"But," persisted the manager—"write other plays, and put your ideas into them. If you've once had a Broadway success, then you can write anything you please, and you can make your own terms for production."
That thought had already occurred to Thyrsis; it was the one that nearly broke down his resistance. He would probably have surrendered, had the play not been so fresh from his mind, and so dear to him; if he had had time enough to become dissatisfied with it, as he had with his first novel—or discouraged about its prospects, as he had with "The Hearer of Truth"! But this child of his fancy was not yet weaned; and to tear it from his breast, and hand it to the butcher— no, it could not be thought of!
§ 4». So he parted from Mr. Jones, and went home, to pass two of the most miserable days of his life. He had pronounced his "Apage, Satanas!" —he had turned his back upon the kingdoms of the earth. And so presumably—virtue being its own reward—he should have been in a state of utter bliss. But Thyrsis had gone deeper into that problem, and asked himself a revolutionary question: Why should it always be that Satan had the kingdoms of the earth at his bestowal? Thyrsis did not want any kingdoms—he only wanted a chance to live in the country with his wife and child.
And why, in order to get these things, must a poet submit himself to Satan?
Then came the third morning after his interview; and Thyrsis found in his mail another letter from Robertson Jones, Inc. It was a letter brief and to the point, and it struck him like a thunderbolt.
"Miss Ethelynda Lewis has decided that she wishes to accept your play as it stands. I enclose herewith a contract in duplicate, and if the terms are acceptable to you, will you kindly return one copy signed, and retain the other yourself."
Thyrsis read, not long after that, of a young playwright who died of heart-failure; and he was not surprised—if all playwrights had to go through experiences such as that. He could hardly believe his eyes, and he read the letter over two or three times; he read the contract, with Mr. Jones' impressive signature at the bottom. He did not know anything about theatrical contracts, but this one seemed fair to him. It provided for a royalty upon the gross receipts, to be paid after the play had earned the expenses of its production. Thyrsis had hoped that he might get some cash in advance, but that was not mentioned. In the flush of his delight he concluded that he would not take the risk of demanding anything additional, but signed the contract and mailed it, and sent a telegram to acquaint Corydon with the glorious tidings.
§5. ONE of the consequences of this triumph was that Thyrsis purchased a new necktie and half a dozen collars; and another was that an angry world was in some part appeased, and permitted the struggling poet to see his wife and child once more.
They met in the park; and strange it was to him to
see Corydon after six months' absence. She was beautiful as ever, somewhat paler, though still with the halo of motherhood about her. He could scarcely realize that she was his; she seemed like a dream to him—like some phantom of music, thrilling and wonderful, yet frail and unsubstantial. She clung to his arm, trembling with delight, and pouring out her longing and her grief. There came to them one of those golden hours, when the deeps of their souls welled up, and they pledged themselves anew to their faith.
Even stranger it was to see the child; to be able to look at him all he pleased, and to speak to him, and to hold him in his arms! He was as beautiful as Thyrsis could have wished, and the father had no trouble at all in being interested in him; his smiles were things to make the angels jealous. Thyrsis would push his carriage out into the park, and they would sit upon a bench and gaze at him—each making sure that the other had missed none of his fine points.
He was beginning to make sounds now, and had achieved the word "puss-ee". This originally had signified the woolly kitten he carried with him, but now by a metonymy it had come to include all kinds of living things; and great was the delight of the parents when a big red automobile flashed past, and the baby pointed his finger, exclaiming gleefully, "Puss-ee!" It is an astonishing thing, how little it takes to make parents happy; regarded purely as an abstract proposition, it would be difficult to explain why two people who possessed between them a total of sixty-four teeth, more or less, should have been so much excited by the discovery that the baby had four.
But parenthood, as Thyrsis found, meant more than charming baby-prattle and the counting of teeth. Little
Cedric's tiny fingers were twisted in his heart-strings —he loved him with a love the intensity of which frightened him when he realized it. And sometimes things went wrong, and then with a pang as from the stab of a knife would come the thought that he might some day lose this child. So much pain and toil a child cost, so much it took of one's strength and power; and then, such a fragile thing it was—exposed to so many perils and uncertainties, to the ravages of so many diseases, that struck like a cruel enemy in the dark! Corydon and Thyrsis were so ignorant—they were like children themselves; and where should they turn for knowledge? There were doctors, of course; but this took so much money—and even with all the doctors, see how many babies died!
Thyrsis was learning the bitter truth of Bacon's saying about "giving hostages to fortune." And dearly as he loved the child, the artist in him cried out against these ties. Where now was that care-free outlook, that recklessness, that joy in life as a spectacle, which made up so much of the artist's attitude? When one had a wife and child one no longer enjoyed tragedies —one lived them ; and one got from them, not katharsis, but exhaustion. One became timid and cautious and didactic, and. other inartistic things. One learned that life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not its goal!
Cedric had been weaned; but still he was not growing properly. Could it be that there was something wrong with what they fed him ? Corydon would come upon advertisements telling of wonderful newly-discovered foods for infants, and giving pictures of the rosy and stalwart ones who were fed upon these foods. She would take to buying them—and they were not cteap foods
either. Then, during the winter, the child caught cold; and they took that to mean that it had been in some way exposed—that was what everybody said, and what the name "cold" itself suggested. So Corydon would add more flannel dresses and blankets, until the unfortunate mite of life would be in a purple stew. And still, apparently, these mysterious "colds" were not to be thwarted. Thyrsis felt that in all this there must be something radically wrong, and yet he knew not what to do. Surely it should not have been such a task to keep life in one human infant.
Then, too, the training of the baby was going badly. He lived in close contact with nervous people who were disturbed if he cried; and so Corydon's energies were given to a terrified effort to keep him from crying. He must be dandled and rocked to sleep, he must be played with and amused, and have everything he cried for; and it was amazing how early in life this little creature learned fhe hold which he had upon his mother. His chief want had come to be to sleep all day and lie awake half the night; and during these hours of wakefulness he pursued the delightful pastime of holding some one's hand and playing with it. Corydon, nervous and sick and wrestling with melancholia, would have to lie awake for uncounted hours and submit to this torment. The infant had invented a name for the diversion; he called it "Hoodaloo mungie" -which being translated signified "Hold your finger". To the mother this was like the pass-word of some secret order of demons, who preyed upon and racked her in the night; so that never after in her life could she hear the phrase, even in jest, without experiencing a nervous shock.