Yet, also, there was the mind of a thinker. He was a man of culture, in the most vital sense of the word; he had swept the heavens of thought with a powerful telescope—had travelled, and knew many languages, and their literatures and arts. He had tested them all by a strong acid of his own; so that to talk with him was to discover the feet of clay of one's idols.
He spoke of Dante and Angelo, who were two of his heroes; he told of great experiences among the latter's
titan frescos. He spoke of Mazzini, whose greatness as a writer the world had yet to appreciate; he spoke also of Wagner, whose music he valued less than his critical and polemical work. He told of modern artists, both in Germany and Italy—revolutionary forces of whom Thyrsis had never heard at all. The day must come, said Darrell, when Americans would discover the great movements of contemporary thought, and realize their own provincialness. America thought of itself as "the land of the free", and that made it hard to teach. It was obvious enough that there had never been any real freedom in America—only government by propertied classes. The Revolution had been a rebellion of country gentlemen and city merchants; as one might know from the "constitution" they had adopted—one of the greatest barriers to human progress ever devised. And so with the Civil War, which to Darrell was one of the deeds of the newly-risen monster of Capitalism.
They went upstairs again, and Thyrsis found another man seated in the drawing-room. He was introduced by the name of Paret, and Thyrsis recognized him as the editor of "The Beacon", a magazine of which he had chanced upon a copy some time before. It was the first Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it had repelled him because its editor had printed his own picture in a conspicuous place, and also because in his leading editorial he had dealt flippantly with an eminent reformer and philanthropist for whom Thyrsis had a profound respect.
But here was the editor himself—not merely his photograph: a little man, clad in evening dress, very neat and dapper. He had a black beard, trimmed to a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he impressed Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles.
He lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to talk; save that every now and then he would punctuate the discussion with some droll reflection that stuck in one's mind like a burr.
Some one spoke of certain evangelists who were conducting a temperance campaign among the workers in the steel-mills. Said Paret: "If I had to live in hell, I'm sure I'd rather be drunk than sober!" And a little later Thyrsis spoke of a novel he had been reading, which set out to solve the problem of "capital and labor". Its solution seemed to be for the handsome young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, "No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again, Darrell was telling about the ten years' struggle he had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given up in despair. Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk economics with preachers. When you talk to a businessman, he understands a business proposition, and you can get somewhere; but when you talk with a preacher, and you think he's been understanding you, you find that all the time he's been thinking what Moses would have said about it."
There came other guests: a German, hard-fisted, bullet-headed—editor of an East Side labor-paper. Some one spoke of working-men losing their votes through being unemployed and cast adrift; and Thyrsis remembered this man's grim comment, "They lose their votes, but they don't lose their voices!" There came a young man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal battering-ram shook the institutions of society so as to frighten even the author of "The Higher Canni-
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balism". There came also a poetess, whose work he had seen in the magazines, and with her a Russian youth who had come to study the thought of America, and was now going home, because America had no thought. Thryrsis had a good deal of patriotism left in him, and might have been angered by this stripling's contempt; but the stripling spoke with such quiet assurance, and his contempt was so boundless as to frighten one. "These people," he said—"they simply do not know what the intellectual life means!"
When Thyrsis went home that evening, he carried with him new ideas to ponder; also some of Darrell's pamphlets and speeches—the product of his ten years' struggle to make the teachings of Christ of some authority in the Christian Church. Thyrsis sat up late, and read one of these pamphlets, an indictment of Capitalism from the point of view of the artist and spiritual creator. It was a magnificent piece of writing; it came to Thyrsis like an echo out of his own life. So, before he slept that night he had written a letter to Darrell, telling of his struggles and his defeats. "I do not ask you to help me," he wrote. "I ask you to read my work, and decide if that be worth saving. For ashamed as I am to say it, I am at the end of my resources, and if some help does not come, I do not know what will become of me."
Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and successful of the earth—the publishers and editors and authors, the college professors and clergymen, the statesmen and capitalists and philanthropists. And now, for the first time, he tried the Socialists. He trembled when he opened Darrell's reply. Could it be that this man would be like all the rest?
But no, he was different! "Dear Brother:" he wrote.
"I understand what you have told me, and I appreciate your position. Send me your manuscripts at once; I leave to-morrow for a lecture-trip, and on my way I will read everything, and let you hear from me on my return. In the meantime, I should add that I am helping two Socialist publications, and a good many individuals too, and that my resources have been absurdly exaggerated in the public prints. I say this, that you may not overestimate what I might possibly be able to do."
§ 10. So Thyrsis sent a manuscript of his play, and a copy of his first novel, and a set of proofs of "The Hearer of Truth"; and then for a couple of weeks he waited in suspense and dread. He could not see how a man like Henry Darrell could fail to appreciate his work; but on the other hand, after so many disappointments and rebuffs, how could he bring himself to believe that any one would really give him aid ?
At last came a second letter; a letter full of warmhearted sympathy—pointing out the faults of immaturity in his work, but also recognizing its real merits. It closed with this all-important sentence: "I will do what I can to help you, so come and let us talk it
over.'
Thyrsis went; and as they sat in his study, Darrell put his arm about him, and told him a little of his own career. He had begun life as a street-waif, a newsboy and bootblack; and once when he was ill, he had gone to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had given him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter he had more sick days than well. He told how, at an early age, he had gone to a country college to seek an education as a divinity-student; he had arrived, weary and footsore, and with his last cent had bought
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a post-card to let his mother know that he was safe. He told how, as a clergyman and college professor, the gospel of the time had come to him; how he had preached and labored, amid persecution and obloquy, until he had come to realize that the Church was a dead sepulchre; and how at last he had thrown everything to the winds, and given himself to the working-class political movement.
Then Thyrsis, scrupulous as ever, said, "I know nothing about Socialism. I mean to study it; but I might not come to believe in it—how can I tell? I would not want you to help me under any misapprehension."