"The fiend whose lantern lights the mead Were better mate than I!"

BOOK XVI

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!"_

Section 1. This illness of the baby's had been a fearful drain upon their strength; and Thyrsis perceived that they had now got to a point where they could no longer stand alone. There must be a servant in the house, to help Corydon, and do for the baby what had to be done. It was a hard decision for him to face, for his money was almost gone, and the book loomed larger than ever. But there was no escaping the necessity.

They would get a married couple, they decided--the man could pay for himself by working the farm. So they put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a city paper, and perused the scores of mis-spelled replies. After due correspondence, and much consultation, they decided upon Patrick and Mary Flanagan; and Thyrsis hired a two-seated carriage and drove in to meet them at the depot.

It was all very funny; years afterwards, when the clouds of tragedy were dispersed, they were able to laugh over the situation. Thyrsis had been used to servants in boyhood, but that was before he had acquired any ideas as to universal brotherhood and the rights of man. Now he hated all the symbols and symptoms of mastership; he shrunk from any sort of clash with unlovely personalities--he would be courteous and deprecating to the very tramp who came to his door to beg. And here were Patrick and Mary, very Irish, enormously stout, and devotedly Roman Catholic, having spent all their lives as caretakers of "gentlemen's country-places".

They had most precise ideas as to what gentlemen's country-places should be, and how they should be equipped, and how the gentlemen of the country-places should treat their servants. And needless to say, they found nothing in this new situation which met with their approval. There were signs of humiliating poverty everywhere, and the farm-outfit was inadequate. As to the master and mistress, they must have been puzzling phenomena for Patrick and Mary to make up their minds about--possessing so many of the attributes of the lady and gentleman, and yet being lacking in so many others!

Patrick was a precise and particular person; he wanted his work laid out just so, and then he would do it without interference. As for Mary--he stood in awe of Mary himself, and so he accepted the idea that Corydon and Thyrsis should stand in awe of her too. Mary it was who announced that their dietary was inadequate; she took no stock at all in Fletcher and Chittenden--she knew that working-people must have meat at least four times a week. Also Mary maintained that their room was not large enough for so stout a couple. Also she arranged it that Corydon and Thyrsis should get the dinner on Sundays--the Roman Catholic church being five miles away, and the hour of ma.s.s being late, and the horse very old and slow.

For two months Corydon and Thyrsis struggled along under the dark and terrible shadow of the disapproval of the Flanagan family. Then one day there came a violent crisis between Corydon and Mary--occasioned by a discussion of the effect of an excess of grease upon the digestibility of potato-starch. Corydon fled in tears to her husband, who started for the kitchen forthwith, meaning to dispose of the Flanagans; when, to his vast astonishment, Corydon experienced one of her surges of energy, and thrust him to one side, and striding out upon the field of combat, proceeded to deliver herself of her pent-up sentiments. It was a discourse in the grandest style of tragedy, and Mary Flanagan was quite dumbfounded--apparently this was a "lady" after all! So the Flanagan family packed its belongings and departed in a chastened frame of mind; and Corydon turned to her spouse, her eyes still flashing, and remarked, "If only I had talked to her that way from the beginning!"

Section 2. Then once more there was answering of advertis.e.m.e.nts, and another couple was spewed forth from the maw of the metropolis--"Henery and Bessie Dobbs", as they subscribed themselves. "Henery" proved to be the adult stage of the East Side "gamin"; lean and cynical, full of slang and humor and the odor of cigarettes. He was fresh from a "ticket-chopper's" job in the subway, and he knew no more about farming than Thyrsis did; but he put up a clever "bluff", and was so prompt with his wits that it was hard to find fault with him successfully. As for his wife, she had come out of a paper-box factory, and was as skilled at housekeeping as her husband was at agriculture; she was frail and consumptive, and told Corydon the story of her pitiful life, with the result that she was able to impose upon her even more than her predecessor had done.

"Henery" was slow at pitching hay and loading stone, but when the season came, he developed a genius for peddling fruit; he was always hungry for any sort of chance to bargain, and was forever coming upon things which Thyrsis ought to buy. Very quickly the neighborhood discovered this propensity of his, and there was a constant stream of farmers who came to offer second-hand buggies, and wind-broken horses, and dried-up cows, and patent hay-rakes and churns and corn-sh.e.l.lers at reduced values; all of which rather tended to reveal to Thyrsis the unlovely aspects of his neighbors, and to weaken his faith in the perfectibility of the race.

Among Henery's discoveries was a pair of aged and emaciated mules. He became eloquent as to how he could fatten up these mules and what crops he could raise in the spring. So Thyrsis bought the mules, and also a supply of feed; but the fattening process failed to take effect-for the reason, as Thyrsis finally discovered, that the mules were in need of new teeth. When the plowing season began, Henery at first expended a vast amount of energy in beating the creatures with a stick, but finally he put his inventive genius to work, and devised a way to drive them without beating. It was some time before Thyrsis noted the change; when he made inquiries, he learned to his consternation that the ingenious Henery had fixed up the stick with a pin in the end!

At any time of the day one might stand upon the piazza of the house and gaze out across the corn-field, and see a long procession marching through the furrow. First there came the mules, and then came the plow, and then came Henery; and after Henery followed the dog, and after the dog followed the baby, and after the baby followed a train of chickens, foraging for worms. Little Cedric was apparently content to trot back and forth in the field for hours; which to his much-occupied parents seemed a delightful solution of a problem. But it happened one day when they had a visit from Mr. Harding, that Thyrsis and the clergyman came round the side of the house, and discovered the child engaged in trying to drag a heavy arm-chair through a door that was too small for it.

He was wrestling like a young t.i.tan, purple in the face with rage; and shouting, in a perfect reproduction of Henery's voice and accent, "Come round here, G.o.d d.a.m.n you, come round here!"

There were many such drawbacks to be balanced against the joys of "life on a farm". Thyrsis reflected with a bitter smile that his experiences and Corydon's had been calculated to destroy their illusions as to several kinds of romance. They had tried "Grub Street", and the poet's garret, and the cultivating of literature upon a little oatmeal; they had not found that a joyful adventure. They had tried the gypsy style of existence; they had gone back "to the bosom of nature"--and had found it a cold and stony bosom. They had tried out "love in a cottage", and the story-writer's dream of domestic raptures. And now they were chasing another will o' the wisp--that of "amateur farming"! When Thyrsis had purchased half the old junk in the township, and had seen the mules go lame, and the cows break into the pear-orchard and "founder" themselves; when he had expended two hundred dollars' worth of money and two thousand dollars' worth of energy to raise one hundred dollars' worth of vegetables and fruit, he framed for himself the conclusion that a farm is an excellent place for a literary man, provided that he can be kept from farming it.

Section 3. As the result of such extravagances, when they had got as far as the month of February, Thyrsis' bank-account had sunk to almost nothing. However, he had been getting ready for this emergency; he had prepared a _scenario_ of his new book, setting forth the ideas it would contain and the form which it would take. This he sent to his publisher, with a letter saying that he wanted the same contract and the same advance as before.

And again he waited in breathless suspense. He knew that he had here a work of vital import, one that would be certain to make a sensation, even if it did not sell like a novel. It was, to be sure, a radical book--perhaps the most radical ever published in America; but on the other hand, it dealt with questions of literature and philosophy, where occasionally even respectable and conservative reviews permitted themselves to dally with ideas. Thyrsis was hoping that the publisher might see prestige and publicity in the adventure, and decide to take a chance; when this proved to be the case, he sank back with a vast sigh of relief. He had now money enough to last until midsummer, and by that time the book would be more than half done--and also the farm would be paying.

But alas, it seemed with them that strokes of calamity always followed upon strokes of good fortune. At this time Corydon's ailments became acute, and her nervous crises were no longer to be borne. There were anxious consultations on the subject, and finally it was decided that she should consult another "specialist". This was an uncle of Mr.

Harding's, a man of most unusual character, the clergyman declared; the latter was going to the city, and would be glad to introduce Corydon.

So, a couple of days later came to Thyrsis a letter, conveying the tidings that she was discovered to be suffering from an abdominal tumor, and should undergo an immediate operation. It would cost a hundred dollars, and the hospital expenses would be at least as much; which meant that, with the bill-paying that had already taken place, their money would all be gone at the outset!

But Thyrsis did not waste any time in lamenting the inevitable. He was rather glad of the tidings, on the whole--at least there was a definite cause for Corydon's suffering, and a prospect of an end to it. Both of them had still their touching faith in doctors and surgeons, as speaking with final and G.o.dlike authority upon matters beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mind. The operation would not be dangerous, Corydon wrote, and it would make a new woman of her.

"If I could only have Delia Gordon with me," she added, "then my happiness would be complete. Only think of it, she left for Africa last week! I know she would have waited, if she'd known about this.

"However, I shall make out. Mr. Harding is going to be in town for more than a week--he is attending a conference of some sort, and he has promised to come and see me in the hospital. I think he likes to do such things--he has the queerest professional air about it, so that you feel you are being sympathized with for the glory of G.o.d. But really he is very beautiful and good, and I think you have never appreciated him. I am happy to-day, almost exhilarated; I feel as if I were about to escape from a dungeon."

Section 4. Such was the mood in which she went to her strange experience. She liked the hospital-room, tiny, but immaculately clean; she liked the nurses, who seemed to her to be altogether superior and exemplary beings--moving with such silence and a.s.surance about their various tasks. She slept soundly, and in the morning they combed and plaited her hair and prepared her for the ceremony. There came a bunch of roses to her room, with a card from Mr. Harding; and these were exquisite, and made her happy, so that, when the doctor arrived, she went almost gaily to the operating-room.

Everything there aroused her curiosity; the pure white walls and ceiling, shining with matchless cleanness, the glittering instruments arranged carefully on gla.s.s tables, the attentive and pleasant-faced nurses, standing also in pure white, and the doctor in his vestments, smiling rea.s.suringly. In the centre of the room was a large gla.s.s table, long enough for a reclining body, and through the sky-light the sun poured a pleasing radiance over all. "How beautiful!" exclaimed Corydon; and the nurses exchanged glances, and the old doctor failed to hide an expression of surprise.

"I wish all my patients felt like that," said he. "Now climb up on the table."

Corydon promptly did so, and another doctor who was to administer the anaesthetic came to her side. "Take a very deep breath, please," he said, as he placed over her mouth a white, cone-shaped thing that had a rather suffocating odor. Corydon was obedience itself, and breathed.

In a moment her body seemed to be falling from her. "Oh, I don't like it!" she gasped.

"Breathe deeply, and count as far as you can," came a voice from far above her.

"Stop!" whispered Corydon. "Oh, I don't want--I want to come back!"

Then she began to count--or rather some strange voice, not hers, seemed to count for her; as the first numbness pa.s.sed, farther and farther away she seemed to dissolve, to become a disembodied consciousness poised in a misty ether. And at that moment--so she told Thyrsis afterwards--the face of Mr. Harding seemed to appear just above her, and to look at her with a pained and startled expression. It was a beautiful face, she thought; and she knew that everything she felt was being immediately registered in Mr. Harding's mind. They were two affinitized beings, suspended in the centre of a cosmos; "their soul intelligences were all that had been left of the sentient world after some cataclysm.

"I always knew that about us," thought Corydon, and she realized that the face before her understood, even though at the moment it, too, was dissolving. "I wonder why"--she mused--"why--" And then the little spark went out.

Two hours later the doctor was bending over her, anxiously scrutinizing her pa.s.sive face. "Nurse, bring me some ice-water," he was saying. "She takes her time coming to." And sharply he struck her cheek and forehead with his finger-tips; but she showed no sign.

Deep down in some mysterious inner chamber, beneath the calm face, there was being enacted a grim spirit-drama. Corydon's soul was making a monstrous effort to return to its habitation; Corydon felt herself hanging, a tortured speck of being, in a dark and illimitable void.

"This may be h.e.l.l," she thought. "I have neither hands nor feet, and I cannot fight; but I can _will_ to get back!" This effort cost her inexpressible agony.

A strange incessant throbbing was going on in the black pit over which she seemed suspended. It had a kind of rhythm--metallic, and yet with a human resonance. It began way down somewhere, and proceeded with maddening accuracy to ascend through the semi-tones of a gigantic scale.

Each beat was agony to her; it ascended to a certain pitch in merciless crescendo, then fell to the bottom again, and began anew its swift, maddeningly accurate ascent. Each time it ascended a little higher, and always straining her endurance to the uttermost, and bringing a more vivid realization of agony. "Will you stop here," it seemed to pulsate.

"No, no, I will go on," willed Corydon. "You shall not keep me, I must escape, I must _get out_." But it kept up incessantly, ruthlessly, its strange, formless, soundless din, until the spirit writhed in its grasp.

Finally it seemed to Corydon that she was getting nearer--nearer to something, she knew not what. The blackness about her seemed to condense, and she found herself in what was apparently the middle of a lake, and some dark bodies with arms were trying to drag her down. "No, no," she willed to these forms, "you _shall_ not. I do not belong here, I belong up--up!" And by a violent effort she escaped--into sensations yet more agonizing, more acute. The vibrations were getting faster and faster, whirling her along, stretching her consciousness to pieces.

"Will it never end?" she thought. "Have mercy!" But after an eternity of such repet.i.tion, she found a bright light staring at her, and a frightful sense of heaviness, like mountains piled upon her. Also, eating her up from head to foot, was a strange, unusual pain; yes, it must be pain, though she had never felt anything like it before. She moaned; and there came a spasm of nausea, that seemed to tear her asunder.

The doctor was standing by her. "She gave me quite a fright," he was saying. "There, that's it, nurse. She'll be sleeping sweetly in a minute." The nurse hurried forward, and Corydon felt a stinging sensation in her side, and then a delightful numbness crept over her.

"Oh, thank you, doctor," she whispered.

Section 5. The next week held for Corydon continuous suffering, which she bore with a rebellious defiance--feeling that she had been betrayed in some way. "If you had only told me," she wailed, to the doctor. "I would rather have stayed as I was before!" For answer he would pat her cheek and tell her to go to sleep.

The days dragged on. Every afternoon her mother came and read to her for several hours; and in the afternoons Mr. Harding would come, and sit by her bedside in his kind way and talk to her. Sometimes he only stayed a few minutes, but often he would spend an hour or so, trying to dispel the clouds of gloom and despondency that were hanging over her. Corydon told him of her vision in the operating-room, and strange to say he declared that he had known it all; also he said that he had helped her to fight her way back to life.