Corydon had been reading about “new thought”,
and she insisted that would be “holding the
idea” of death over the child. “The
thing for us to do,” she said, “is to
make up our minds—he must live, we must
know that he will live!”—It
was no time to argue about metaphysics, but Thyrsis
found this proposition a source of great perplexity.
How could a man make himself know what he did not know?
The crisis passed, and the child lived. But the
illness continued for a couple of weeks—and
how pitiful it was to see their baby, that had been
so big and rosy, and was now pale and thin and weak!
And when at last he got up and went outdoors again,
he caught a cold, and there was a relapse, and another
siege of the dread disease; the doctor had not warned
them sufficiently, it seemed. So there was a
week or two more of watching and worrying; and then
they had to face the fact that little Cedric would
be delicate for a long while—would need
to be guarded with care all through the spring.
Thyrsis blamed himself for all that had happened;
the weight of it rested upon him forever afterwards,
as if it were some crime he had committed. Sometimes
when he was overwrought and overdriven, he would lie
awake in the small hours of the morning, and this spectre
would come and sit by him. He had made a martyr
of the child he loved, he had sacrificed it to what
he called his art; and how had he dared to do it?
It was hard to think of a more cruel question to put
to a man. Himself, no doubt, he might scourge
and drive and wreck; but this child—what
were the child’s rights? Thyrsis would try
to weigh them against the claims of posterity.
What his own work might be, he knew; and to what extent
should he sacrifice it to the unknown possibilities
of his son? Some sacrifice there had to be—such
was the stern decree of the “economic screw.”
So Thyrsis once more was a field of warring motives;
once more he faced the curse of his life—that
he could not be as other men, he could not have other
men’s virtues. It was the latest aspect,
and the most tragic, of that impulse in him which
had made him fight so hard against marriage; which
had made him quote to Corydon the lines of the outlaw’s
song—
“The fiend whose lantern lights
the mead
Were
better mate than I!”
THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM
The scarlet flush of morning was in the sky; and
they stood upon the hill again, and watched the color
spreading.
“We must go,” she was saying. “But
it was worthwhile to come.”
“It was all worth-while,” he said—“all!”
And she smiled, and quoted some lines from the poem—
“Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like
quest wast bound;
Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!
Men gave thee nothing; but this happy
quest,
If men esteem’d thee feeble, gave thee
power,
If men procured thee trouble, gave thee
rest!"_
