And so there they made a compact. They would
speak no more of the year that was past; it was a
bad dream, and now it was gone. Let it be swept
from their thoughts, and let them go on to make the
future what they desired it to be.
THE TREADMILL
They sat in the little cabin, where she had been
reading some lines from the poem again—
“O easy access to the hearer’s
grace
When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!”
“Ah, yes!” he said. “But our
lot was cast in a different time.”
She put her hand upon his. “Even so,”
she said; and then turned the page, and read once
more—
“What though the music of
thy rustic flute
Kept not for long its happy, country tone;
Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy
note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,
Which task’d thy pipe too sore,
and tired thy
throat—
It failed, and thou wast mute!
Yet hadst thou always visions of our light!_”
Section 1. The mise-en-scene of their
new adventure in domesticity was a tent eighteen feet
by twelve; but as the side-walls were low, they could
walk only in the centre, and must range their belongings
at the sides. To the left, as one entered the
tent, there stood a soapbox with a tiny oil-stove
upon it; and then a stand, made out of a packing-box,
to hold their dishes, their cooking-utensils and their
limited supply of provisions. Next down the line
came a trunk, and in the corner the baby’s crib—which
had been outgrown by the farmer’s children,
and purchased by Thyrsis for a dollar. At the
rear was a folding-table, and above it a board from
which Corydon hung her clothing; along the other wall
were her canvas cot, and a little stand with some
books, and a wash-stand and another trunk.
Some distance off in the woods stood a second tent,
seven feet square, in which Thyrsis had a cot for
himself, and also a canvas-chair in which he sat to
receive the visits of his muse. They got their
drinking water from a spring near by; there was a tiny
stream beside the tent which provided their washing-water.
In this stream Thyrsis hollowed out a flat basin,
in which they might set their butter-crock, and a
pail of milk, and a larger pail that held their meat.
Below that was a deeper pool from which they dipped
water, and lower yet a third pool, with a board on
which Corydon might sit and wash diapers, to her heart’s
content and her back’s exhaustion.
The tent had been old when Thyrsis got it, and as
this was the third season he had used it, it was dark
and dun of hue. They had not noticed this at
the outset as they had put it up on a bright, sunshiny
day, and also before the trees had put out all their
foliage. But now, when rain came, they found that
they had to light a lamp in order to read in the tent;
and, of course, it was on rainy days that they had
to be inside. Thyrsis did not realize the influence
which this tent had upon his wife’s spirits;
it was only after he saw her made physically ill by
having to live in a room with yellow wall-paper, that
he came to understand the power which her surroundings
had over Corydon.
