Meantime, of course, he was driving away at his new work. Domestic duties took up most of his morning; but he would get away into the woods in the afternoons, and in the evenings, when the family was asleep, he would work until far after midnight. He was bringing out basketfuls of books from the library of the university; and he lived another life in these—sharing, in a hundred different forms, the agony of the War. He was not writing yet; he was filling up his soul with the thing, making it a reservoir of impressions. Some times it would seem that the reservoir was nearly full, and he would be seized with a hunger to be at
work; he would go about possessed by it—absent-minded, restless, nervous when he was spoken to. It was hard for a man who listened all night to the death-groans of the thousands piled up before "Bloody Angle", to get up in the morning and be satisfactory in the role of "mother's assistant".
Here again was the torment of this matrimonial bond to a man who wished to be an artist. He had to live two lives, when one was more than he could attend to; he had to be always aware of another soul yearning for him, reaching out to him and craving his attention. To be sure, Corydon was interested in what he was doing; she even made heroic efforts to read the books that he was reading. But she had so many duties, and so many headaches; and when night came she was so tired! She would ask him to tell her about his vision ; and was not the thing untellable? Why else did he have to labor day and night, like a man possessed? He would explain this to her, and she would bid him go on and do his work and not mind her. But when he would take her at her word, and there would follow a week or two of indifference and preoccupation—then he would discover that she was again unhappy.
§ 4. THIS never ceased to be the case between them ; but perhaps it was intensified at this time by the fact that their sex-life had to be suppressed. This was a problem which they had talked out between them before they came away. Thyrsis, who was groping for the truth about these matters, had come to the conclusion that the factor which gave dignity and meaning to intercourse between a man and woman was the desire, or at any rate the willingness, to create a child. Corydon was not sure that she agreed with him in this;
but so far as their own case was concerned, it was quite clear that they could take no remotest chance of any accident—another child would mean certain destruction for all three of them. And so they had gone back to the "brother and sister" arrangement with which they had begun life. This was a simple matter for Thyrsis, who was utterly wrapped up in his book; it was not so simple for Corydon, though neither of them realized it, nor could have been brought to admit it. As usual, Corydon desired to be what he was, and to feel what he felt; and so Thyrsis did not realize how another side of her was being blighted. Hers was predominantly a love-nature; it was intolerable to her that any one she loved should not love her in return, and love her in the same way, and to the same extent; and now, when her entire being went out to him, she found herself obliged to suppress her emotions.
Sometimes the thing would break out in spite of her.
"Thyrsis," she would cry, "aren't you going to kiss me good-night?"
"Didn't I kiss you, dearest?" he would answer.
"Oh, but such a cold and perfunctory kiss!"
And so he would come and put his arms about her; but even while she held him thus, she would feel the life go out of his caresses, and see his eyes with a far-off expression. She would know that his thoughts were away upon some battle-field.
"Tell me, Thyrsis," she would exclaim. "Do you really love me?"
"Yes, dear," he would reply. "I love you."
"But how much do you love me?"
And then he would be dumb. What a question to ask him! As if he had the time and the energy to climb to those heights, to speak again that difficult language!
Had he not told her a thousand times how much he loved her! and could she not believe it and understand it?
"But why should it be so hard to tell me?" she would
^
protest.
And he would answer that to him it was a denial of love to explain or to make promises. He was as unchangeable as the laws of nature—he could no more be faithless to her soul than he could to his own.
"I want you to take that for granted," he would say; "to know it as you know that the sun will rise to-morrow morning."
"But, Thyrsis," she would answer, when he used this metaphor, "don't people sometimes like to go out and see the sun rise?"
§ 5. THE summer passed; and Thyrsis found to his dismay that his relentless muse had not yet permitted him to write a word. He had not a sufficient grasp upon his mighty subject—nor for that matter had he freedom to get by himself and wrestle it out. He shrunk from that death-grapple, while they were in this unsettled state. They could not stay in tents through the winter-time; and where were they to go?
Thyrsis was consumed with the desire to build a tiny house in these woods. He had roamed the country over, without finding any place that was habitable; and besides, he did not want to pay rent—he wanted a home of his own, however humble. He had meant to build one with the money from "The Hearer of Truth"; but now there came a statement from the publisher, showing that there would be due him on the book a trifle over eleven dollars!
He tried a new plan. He wrote out a "scenario" of
his projected novel, and sent this to his publisher, to see if he could get a contract in advance. He asked for five hundred dollars—with that he could build the house he wanted, and live for another six months, until the book was done. The publisher wrote him to come to the city, where, after some parleying, he submitted a proposition; he would advance the money and publish the book, paying ten per cent, royalty; but he must also have the option to publish the author's future writings for ten years upon the same basis.
This rather staggered Thyrsis. He was businessman enough by this time to realize that if he ever had a real success he could get fifteen or twenty per cent, upon his future work—there were even some authors who got twenty-five per cent. And moreover, he did not like to tie himself to this publisher, who was of the hard and grasping type. He went home to think it over, and in the end he wrote to Henry Darrell. He set forth the situation, and showed how much money it might mean to him—money which he would otherwise be able to devote to some useful purpose. It all depended upon what Darrell could do in the emergency.
He waited three weeks, and then came Darrell's reply, saying that he could not possibly do what Thyrsis wished. There were so many calls upon him—the Socialist paper was in trouble, and so on. Thereupon Thyrsis wrote to the publisher to say that he accepted the offer and would sign the contract; but in a couple of days he received a curt reply, to the effect that the publisher had changed his mind, and no longer cared to consider the arrangement. He had, as Thyrsis found afterwards, got rid of the enthusiastic young man who had inveigled him into "The Hearer of Truth"; and
perhaps also he had been reading the ridicule which the critics were pouring out upon that unhappy book.
So once more Thyrsis wrote to Darrell—a letter of agonized entreaty. He was at the most critical moment of his life; and now, at the very culmination of his effort, to have to give up would be a calamity he could simply not contemplate. If only he could finish the task, he would be saved; for this was a book that would grip men and shake them—that it should fail was simply unthinkable. He could make out with two hundred dollars ; and he besought his friend at any sacrifice to stand by him. He asked him to cable; and when, a couple of weeks later, the message came—"all right"—to Thyrsis it was like waking up and escaping from the grip of some terrible dream.