Love's Pilgrimage eBook

Then, on top of it all, there came another calamity.  In the boarding-house with Corydon lived some elderly ladies, who had a remarkable faculty for divining the evil deeds of other people.  They had divined the evil deeds of Corydon and Thyrsis, and one of them was moved to come to Corydon’s mother one day, and warn her lest others should divine them too.  And so there was more agony; the discovery was made that Corydon had become a social outcast to all the maids and matrons of the summer population—­a girl who went to visit a poet in his lonely cabin, and stayed until unknown hours of the night.  And so there came to Thyrsis a note saying that Corydon must come no more to the cabin; and later in the day came Corydon herself, to bring the tidings that a telegram had come from the city, and that she and her mother were to leave the place the next day.

Thyrsis was aflame with anger, and was for going to the nearest parson and having the matter settled there and then.  But Corydon dissuaded him from this.

“I’ve been thinking it over,” she said, “and it’s best that I should go.  You must finish the book—­everything depends upon that, and you know that if I came here now you couldn’t do it.  But if I go away, there’ll be nothing to disturb you.  I can study meantime; and when we meet in the city in the fall, everything will be clear before us.”

She came and put herself in his arms.  “You know, dear heart,” she said, “it won’t be easy for me to go.  But I’m sure it’s for the best!”

And Thyrsis saw that she was right, and so they settled it.  She spent that day with him—­their last day; and floods of tenderness welled up in their hearts, and the tears ran down their cheeks.  It was only now that she was going that Thyrsis realized how precious she had become to him, and what a miracle of gentleness and trust she was.

They agreed that here, and not in the village, was the place for their parting.  So they poured out their love and devotion, and made their pledges for the future; and towards sundown he kissed her good-bye, and put her in the boat, and stood watching until it was a mere speck down the lake.  Then he went back to the house, with a great cavern of loneliness in his soul.

And in spite of all resolves, he was up with the dawn next day, and walking to the village—­he must see her once again!  He went to the depot with her, and upon the platform they said another farewell; thereby putting a seal upon Corydon’s damnation in the eyes of the maids and matrons of the summer population.

BOOK III

THE VICTIM HESITATES

They had opened a wooden box which lay beside them.

“Ten years!” she said.  “How they have faded!”

“And the creases are tight,” said he; “they will be hard to read.”

“Letters! letters!” she exclaimed—­“some of them sixty pages long!  How much would they make?”