Love's Pilgrimage eBook

The deer was badly hurt.  It would leap ahead, and then stumble, half falling, and then leap again.  Even in this way, the distance it covered was amazing; Thyrsis was appalled at the power of the creature, its tremendous bounds, the shock of its fall, and the crashing of the underbrush before it.  It seemed like a huge boulder, leaping down a precipice; and Thyrsis stood at a safe distance and watched it.  According to the poetry-books he should have been ashamed—­perhaps moved to tears by the reproachful look in the great creature’s eyes.  But assuredly the makers of the poetry-books had never needed the price of a railroad-ticket as badly as Thyrsis did!

He only realized that night how desperate his need had been.  He lay in his berth on board a train for the city—­while back at his “open-camp” a wild blizzard was raging, and the thermometer stood at forty degrees below zero.  But Thyrsis was warm and comfortable; and also he was brown and rugged, once more full of health and eagerness for life.  All night he listened to the pounding of the flying train; and fast as the music of it went, it was not fast enough for his imagination.  It seemed as if the rails were speaking—­saying to him, over and over and over again, “Ethelynda Lewis!  Ethelynda Lewis!  Ethelynda Lewis!”

BOOK X

THE END OF THE TETHER

They sat still watching upon the hill-top, drinking in the scent of the clover.

“Ah, if only we might have come back here!” she sighed.  “If only tee had never had to leave!”

“That way lies unhappiness” he said.

“Perhaps,” she answered; and then quoted—­

   ’Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
        In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp’d hill! 
    Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?”

“I wonder,” said he, “if the poet put as much into these stanzas as we find in them!"_

Section 1.  Through the summer Corydon had been living week by week upon the hope that her husband would be able to send for her; all through the fall she had been dreaming of the arrangements they would make for the winter.  But by now it had become clear that they would have to be separated for a part of the winter as well.  She had sent him long letters, full of hopes and yearnings, anxieties and rebellions; but in the end she had brought herself to face the inevitable.  And then it transpired that even a greater sacrifice was required of her—­she was to be forbidden to see Thyrsis at all!  If a man did not support his wife, said the world, it was common-sense that he should not have any wife; that was the quickest way to bring him to his senses.  And so the two had threshed out that problem, and chosen their course; they would live in the same city, and yet confine themselves to writing letters!