Then, too, the training of the baby was going badly. He lived in close contact with nervous people who were disturbed if he cried; and so Corydon's energies were given to a terrified effort to keep him from crying. He must be dandled and rocked to sleep, he must be played with and amused, and have everything he cried for; and it was amazing how early in life this little creature learned the hold which he had upon his mother. His chief want had come to be to sleep all day and lie awake half the night; and during these hours of wakefulness he pursued the delightful pastime of holding some one's hand and playing with it. Corydon, nervous and sick and wrestling with melancholia, would have to lie awake for uncounted hours and submit to this torment. The infant had invented a name for the diversion; he called it "Hoodaloo mungie"—which being translated signified "Hold your finger". To the mother this was like the pass-word of some secret order of demons, who preyed upon and racked her in the night; so that never after in her life could she hear the phrase, even in jest, without experiencing a nervous shock.

Section 6. This was a period of great hopefulness for Thyrsis, but also of desperate struggle. For until the production of his play in January, he had somehow to keep alive, and that meant more hack-work. Also he had to lay something by, for after the rehearsals the play would go on the road for a couple of weeks, to be "tried on the dog"; and during that period he must have money enough to travel, and stay at hotels, and also to take Corydon with him, if possible.

The rehearsals began an interesting experience for him; he was introduced into a new and strange world. Thyrsis himself was shy, and disposed to run away and hide his emotions; but here were people—the actor-folk—whose business it was to live them in sight of the world. And these emotions were their life; they were very intense, yet quick both to come and to go. Such people were intensely personal; they were like great children, vain and sensitive, their moods and excitements not to be taken too seriously. But it was long before Thyrsis came to realize this, and meanwhile he had some uncomfortable times. To each of the players, apparently, the interest of a play centered in those places in which he was engaged in speaking his lines; and to each the author of the play was a more or less benevolent despot, who had the happiness of the rest of the world in his keeping. Once at a rehearsal, when Thyrsis was engaged in cutting out one of the speeches attributed to "Mrs. Hartman", he discovered that lady standing behind him in a flood of tears!

In the beginning Thyrsis paid many visits to the apartment on Riverside Drive; for Miss Lewis professed to be very anxious that he should consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to her ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis' portrayal of Helena—it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going to make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some "charming" lines into her part. "You boy!" she would exclaim. "I believe you are as obstinate as your hero!" Miss Lewis was only two years older than the "boy", but she saw fit to adopt this grandmotherly attitude toward him.

And then came Robertson Jones, suggesting a man who could play the part of Lloyd. But Miss Lewis declared indignantly that she would not have him, because he was not handsome enough. "If," she vowed, "I've got to make love to a man and be rejected by him, at least I'm not going to have it an ugly man!" When an actor was finally agreed upon and engaged, Thyrsis had a talk with him, and it seemed as if Miss Lewis, in her preoccupation with his looks, had overlooked the matter of his brains. But Thyrsis was so new at this game that he did not feel capable of judging. He shrunk from the thought of having any actor play his part—that was so precious and so full of meaning to him.

But when the rehearsals began, Thyrsis speedily forgot this feeling. The most sensitive poet to the contrary notwithstanding, the purpose of a play is to be acted; and Thyrsis was like an inventor, who has dreamed a great machine, and now sees the parts of it appearing as solid steel and brass; sees them put together, and the great device getting actually under way.

The rehearsals were held in a little hall on the East Side, and thither came the company—six men and three women. There was no furniture or setting, they all wore their street clothing, and in the beginning they went through their parts with the manuscript in their hands. And yet—they had been selected because they resembled the characters in the play; and every time they went over the lines they gave them with more feeling and understanding. So—vaguely at first, and then more clearly—the poet began to see them as incarnations of his vision. These characters had been creatures of his fancy; they had lived in it, he had walked and talked and laughed and wept with them. Now to discover them outside him—to be able to hear them with his physical ears and see them with his physical eyes—was one of the strangest experiences of his life. It was so thrilling as to be almost uncanny. It was a new kind of inspiration, of that strange "subliminal uprush" which made the mystery of his life. And it was a kind that others could experience with him. Corydon would come every day to the rehearsals, and for four or five hours at a stretch they would sit and watch and listen in a state of perfect transport.

Section 7. Also, there were things not in the manuscript which were sources of interest and delight. There was Mr. Tapping, the stage director, for instance; Thyrsis could see himself writing another play, just to get Mr. Tapping in. He was a man well on in years, and wrecked by dissipation—almost bald and toothless, and with one foot crippled with gout. Yet he was a perfect geyser of activity— bounding about the stage, talking swiftly, gesticulating—like some strange gnome or cobold out of the bowels of the earth. Thyrsis was the creator of the play, so far as concerned the words; but this man was to be the creator of it on the stage. And that, too, required a kind of genius, Thyrsis perceived.

Mr. Tapping had talked the problems out with him at the beginning—talking until two o'clock in the morning, in a super-heated office filled with the smoke of ten thousand dead cigars. He talked swiftly, eagerly, setting forth his ideas; to Thyrsis it was a most curious experience—to hear the vision of his inmost soul translated into the language of the Tenderloin! "Your fiddler's this kind of a guy," Mr. Tapping would say—"he knows he's got the goods, and he don't care whether those old fogies think he's dippy, or what the hell they think. Ain't that the dope, Mr. Author?" And Thyrsis would answer faintly that he thought that was "the dope."—This was a word that Mr. Tapping used every time he opened his mouth, apparently; it designated all things connected with the play—character, dialogue, action, scenery, music, costume. "That's the way to dope it out to them!" he would cry to the actors.

Miss Lewis, and Mr. Tilford, the leading man, moved through their parts with dignity; the stage director showed them the "business" he had laid out, but they did not trouble to act at rehearsals, and he did not criticize what they did. But all the other people had to be taught their roles and drilled in them; and that meant that Mr. Tapping had to have in him five actors and two actresses, and play all their seven parts as they came. Marvellous it was to see him do this; springing from place to place, and changing his whole aspect in a flash—now scolding shrewishly in the words of Violet Hartman, now discoursing, with the accent and manner of Prof, von Arne, upon the psychopathia sexualis of Genius.

He did not know all the parts, of course; but that was never allowed to trouble him. He would take a sentence out of the actor's lips, and then go on to elaborate it in his Tenderloin dialect; or, if the scene was highly emotional, and required swift speech, he would fall back upon the phrase "and so and so, and so and so." He could run the whole gamut of human emotions with those words, "and so and so."

"No, that's no good!" he would cry to "Mrs. Hartman." "What are those words?—'Wretched, ungrateful son—do you care nothing at all for your parents' feelings? Do you owe us nothing for what we have done? And so and so? And so and so? And so and so?'" Mr. Tapping's voice would rise to a wail; and then in a flash he would turn to Moses Rosen (he called all the actors by their character-names). "That's your cue, Rosen, you rush in left centre, and throw up your hands—right here—see? And what's your dope?—oh yes—'I have spent seven thousand dollars on this thing! You have ruined me! You have betrayed me! And so and so! And so and so! And so and so!'— And then you run over here to the professor—'You have trapped me! And so and so!'"

Day by day as the work progressed, and the actors came to know their lines, Thyrsis' excitement grew. The great machine was running, he was getting some sense of the power of it! And new aspects of it were revealed to him; there came the composer who was to do the incidental music, and the orchestra-leader who was to conduct it; there came the costume-designer and the scene-painter, and even the press-agent who was to "boost" the play, and wanted picturesque details about the author's life. Corydon and Thyrsis were invited to go with Mr. Tilford to select a wig, and with Mr. Tapping to see the carpenters who were building the various "sets", in a big loft over near the North River. As the two walked home each day after these adventures, it was all they could do to keep from hugging each other on the street.

It was a thing of especial moment to Thyrsis, because it was the first time in his life that his art had received any assistance from the outside world—the first time this world had done anything but scold at him and mock him. Here at last was recognition—here was success! Here were material things submitting themselves to his vision, coming to him humbly to be taught, and to co-operate in the creation of beauty! So Thyrsis caught sudden glimpses of what his life might have been. He was like a man who had been chained in a black dungeon, and who now gets sight of the green earth and the blue sky, and smells the perfume of the flowers and hears the singing of the birds. With forces such as this at his command, the power of his vision would be multiplied tenfold; and he was transported with the delight of the discovery, he and Corydon found their souls once more in this new hope.

So out of these moods there began the burgeoning of new plans in his mind. Even amid the rush of rehearsals, he was dreaming of other things to write; some time before "The Genius" had reached the public, he had finished the writing of "The Utopians"—that fragment of a vision which was perhaps the greatest thing he ever did, and certainly the most characteristic.

Section 8. As usual, the immediate occasion of the writing was trivial enough. It was his "leading lady" who was responsible for it. Miss Lewis had taken a curious fancy to Thyrsis—he was a new type to her, and it pleased her to explore him. "How in the world did you ever get him to marry you?" she would exclaim to Corydon. "I could as soon imagine a marble statue making love to me!" And she told others about this strange poet, who was obviously almost starving, and yet had refused to let Richard Haberton revise his play for him, and had all but refused to let Robertson Jones Inc., produce it. Before long she came to Thyrsis to say that one of her friends desired to meet him, and would he come to a supper-party.

Thyrsis heard this with perplexity.

"A supper-party!" he exclaimed. "But I can't!"

"Why not?"

"Why—I have no clothes."

"Nobody expects a poet to have clothes," laughed Miss Lewis. "Come in the garments of your fancy. And besides, Barry's a true Bohemian."

Barry Creston, the giver of this party, was one of the sons of "Dan" Creston, the mine-owner and "railroad-king", who a short while before had been elected senator from a Western state under circumstances of great scandal. "The old man's a hard character, I guess," said Miss Lewis; "but you must not believe all you read in the papers about Barry."

"I never read anything about him," said the other; and so Miss Lewis went on to explain that Griswold, the Wall Street plunger, had got a divorce from his wife after throwing her into Barry's arms; and that Barry's sister had married an Austrian arch-duke who had maltreated her, and that Barry had kicked him out of a hotel-window in Paris.

This invitation was a cause of much discomfort to Thyrsis. He had not come to the point where he was even curious about the life of the Barry Crestons of the world; and yet he did not like to hurt Miss Lewis' feelings. She made it evident to him that she was determined to exhibit her "lion"; and so he said "all right."

The supper party was at the Cafe de Boheme, which was an Aladdin's palace buried underground beneath a building in the "Tenderloin". Fountains splashed in marble basins, and birds sang amid the branches of tropical flowering trees, while on a little stage a man in the costume and character of a Paris apache sang a song of ferocious cynicism. And after him came a Japanese juggler of prodigious swiftness, and then a fat German woman in peasant guise who sang folk-songs, and wound up with "O, du lieber Augustin!" After which the company joined in the chorus of "Funiculi, funicula" and "Gaudeamus igitur"—for the patrons of the "Boheme" were nothing if they were not cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan also was the company at Barry Creston's table. On one side of Thyrsis was Miss Lewis, and on the other was Mlle. Armand, the dancer who had set New York in a furore. Opposite to her was Scarpi, the famous baritone; and then there was Massey, a sculptor from Paris, and Miss Rita Seton, of the "Red Hussars" Company, and a Miss Raymond, a gorgeous creature with a red flamingo feather in her hat, who had been Massey's model for his sensational figure of "Aurora".

Finally there was Barry Creston himself: a new type, and a disconcerting one. He was not at all the "gilded youth" whom Thyrsis had expected to find; he was a man of about thirty, widely cultured, urbane and gracious in his manner, and quite evidently a man of force. He was altogether free from that crude egotism which Thyrsis had found to be the most prominent characteristic of the American man of wealth. He spoke in French with Armand and in Italian with Scarpi and in German with the head-waiter who worshipped before him; and yet one did not feel that there was any ostentation about it—all this was his monde. And although he exhaled an atmosphere of vast wealth, this, too, seemed a matter of course; he assumed that you also were provided with unlimited funds—that all the world, in fact, was in the same fortunate case. Evidently he was well-known at the "Boheme", for the waiters gathered like flies around the honey-pot, and the august head-waiter himself took the order, and beamed his approval at Barry's selections. So presently there flowed in a stream of costly viands, served in outre and fantastic fashion—many of them things not known even by name to Thyrsis. There were costly wines as well, and at the end an ice in the shape of a great basket of fruit, wonderfully carved and colored like life, resting upon a slab of ice, which in turn was set in a silver tray with handles.

Thyrsis was dazed at all this waste, and at the uproar in the place, where dozens of other parties were squandering money in the same blind fashion, and all laughing, chatting, joining in the choruses with the performers on the stage. Now and then he would catch a little of his host's conversation, which was of all the capitals of Europe, and of art-worlds, the very existence of which was unknown to him. And then, on his left hand, there was Mlle. Armand, deftly picking off the leaves of an artichoke and dipping them into mayonnaise, and saying in her little bird's voice, "They tell me, Monsieur, that you have du genie. Oh, you should go to Paree to live—it is not here that one appreciates du genie!" And, then while Thyrsis was working out an explanation of his failure to visit Paris, some one in the cafe caught sight of Scarpi, and there was a general call for him; and according to the genial custom of the "Boheme" he stood up, amid tumultuous applause, and sang one of his own rollicking songs.

So the revelry went forward, while Thyrsis marvelled, and tried to hide his pain. There could be no question of any enjoyment for him—when he knew that the cost of this affair would have paid all his expenses for a winter! Doubtless what Barry Creston spent for his cigars would have saved Thyrsis and his family from misery all their lives; and he wondered if the man would have cared had he known. Barry was one of the princes of the new dispensation; and sometimes princes were compassionate, Thyrsis reflected. Apparently this one was all urbanity and charm, having no thought in life save to play the perfect host to brilliant artists and demi-mondaimes, and to skim the cream off the top of civilization.

But then suddenly the conversation took a new turn, and Thyrsis got another view of the young prince. There had been trouble out in the Western mines; and some one mentioned it—when in a flash Thyrsis saw the set jaw and the clenched fist and the steel grey eye of old "Dan" Creston. (Thyrsis had read somewhere a sketch of this senator, whose fortune was estimated at fifty millions, and who ran the governments of three states.) Barry, it seemed, had had charge of the mines for three years—that was how he had won his spurs. In those days, he said, there had been no unions—he told with a quiet smile how he had broken them. Now again "agitators" had crept in, so that in some of the camps the men were being moved out bodily, and replaced by foreigners, who knew a good job when they had it. To make this change had taken the militia; but it would be done thoroughly, and afterwards there would be no more trouble.

The supper-party broke up about two o'clock, and Miss Raymond, the lady of the flamingo hat, was the only one who showed any effects from all the wine that had been consumed. Thyrsis, to his great surprise discovered that his host had taken a fancy to him, and had asked Miss Lewis to bring him out to luncheon at the Creston place in the country. And so came the wonderful experience which brought to him the vision of "The Utopians."

Section 9. They went, one Saturday morning, in Miss Lewis' automobile—out to Riverside Drive, and up the valley of the Hudson. This was in itself a Utopian experience for Thyrsis, who had never before taken a trip in one of these magic chariots. It leaped over the frozen roads like a thing of life, and he lay back in the cushioned seats and closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the machinery, imagining what life might be for him, if he could rest like this when he was worn from overwork. It was like some great adventure in music, like a minstrel's chanting of heroic deeds; it was Nature with all her pageantry unrolled in a panorama before his eyes. And meantime Miss Lewis was chattering on about the play and its prospects; and about other plays and their prospects; and about the people at the supper-party and their various loves and hates.

So they came to the great stone castle of the Crestons, set upon a mountain-top overlooking the valley of this "American Rhine." Thyrsis gasped when he saw it, and he gasped many times again while Barry was showing them about. For this place was a triumph of a hundred arts and sciences; into its perfections had gone all the skill of the architects and designers, the weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors of a score of centuries and climes. The very dairies, the stables, the dog-kennels were things to be wondered at and studied; and in the vast halls were single pictures over which Thyrsis would fain have lingered for hours. Then, best of all, the great portico, with its stone pillars, and its view of the noble river, and of the snow-clad hills, dazzling in the sunlight!

They had luncheon; after which Barry played upon the organ, and Miss Lewis sat beside him and left Thyrsis to wander at will. He made his way out to the portico, and paced back and forth there; and while the organ rolled and thundered to him, the majesty of the scene swept over him, and in towering splendors his soul arose. He thought of the wretched room in which he was pent, he thought of his starved and struggling life; and all the rage of his defeated genius awoke in him. In the name of that genius he uttered his defiance, and by the title of it he took possession of this castle, and of all things it contained. Yes—for he was the true lord and master of it—he was the prince disinherited! And the meaning of it, its excuse for being, was this brief hour! For this its glories had been assembled; for this the architects and designers, the weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors had labored in a score of centuries and climes; for this the great organ had been built, and for this the great musician had composed—that he might behold, in one hour of transfiguration, what the life of man would be in that glad time when all the arts of civilization were turned to the fostering of the soul! When he who carried in the womb of his spirit the new life of the ages, would be loved instead of being hated, would be cherished instead of being neglected, would be reverenced instead of being mocked! When palaces would be built for him and beauty and joy would be gathered for him, and the paths would be made clear before his feet! So out of boundless love and rapture would he speak to men, and bring to them those gifts that were beyond price, the treasures of his unfolding inspiration.

So it was that the Utopians came to Thyrsis; those men of the future, worshippers of joy! They came to him, alive and in the flesh, beautiful and noble, gracious and free-hearted—as some day they will come, if so the earth endure; as they will stand upon that portico, and listen to that music, and gaze upon the valley of that American Rhine! And will they remember the long-dead dreamer, and how they walked with him there and spoke with him; how they put their arms about him, and gave him of their love and understanding? Will they remember what shuddering rapture their touch conveyed to him; how the tears ran down his cheeks, and he pledged his soul to yet more years of torment, so only their glory might come to be upon earth? Will they read the blazing words in which he pictured them, the trumpet-blast he sounded to the dead souls of his time?

Thyrsis knew that this was the greatest hour of his life, and he fought like mad to hold it. But that might not be—the music ceased, and he heard the voices of his host and Miss Lewis. They came to the door; and then Thyrsis' thoughts came back quickly to earth. For he saw that Barry Creston's arm was about the woman, and she was leaning upon him; nor did they separate when they saw him, but stood there, smiling; so that at last Thyrsis had solved for him the problem of their relationship. It was not so that the Utopians loved, he thought, as he watched them; and found himself wondering if young Creston was as imperious with his women as he was with the slaves in his Western mines.

The car came to the door, and they parted from their host and sped back to the city. "What do you think of him?" asked Miss Lewis—and went on in a burst of confidence to tell him that it was to this prince of the new dispensation that he owed the great chance of his life. For it was Barry Creston who had given the Broadway "show-girl" the start that had made her a popular comedienne; it was Barry Creston who had awakened in her an interest in the "drama of ideas", and had set her to fermenting with new ambitions; and finally it was Barry Creston who in a moment of indulgence had promised the money which had set the managers and actors and musicians, the stage-carpenters and scene-painters and press-agents to work at the task of embodying "The Genius"!

Section 10. It may have been a coincidence; but from that hour dated the process of Thyrsis' disillusionment concerning the production of his play. Could it be, he asked himself, that such wealth as Barry Creston's could buy true art? Could it be that forces set in motion by it could really express his vision? "Genius surrounded by Commercialism", had been the formula of his play; and did not the formula describe his own position as well as Lloyd's?

A strange thing was this theatrical business—the business of selling emotions! One had really to feel the emotions, in order to portray them with force; yet one had at the same time to appraise them with the eye of the business-man—one must not feel emotions that would not pay. Also, one boomed and boosted his own particular emotions, celebrating their merits in the language of the circus-poster. If you had taken up a certain play, you considered it the greatest play that had ever made its bow to Broadway; and you actually persuaded yourself to believe it—at least those who made the real successes were men who possessed that hypnotic power.

There was, for instance, Mr. Rosenberg, the press-agent and advertising-man. He was certain that "The Genius" was a play of genius, and its author a man of genius; and yet Thyrsis knew that if it had been Meyer and Levinson, across the street, who were producing it, Mr. Rosenberg would have called it "rot". Mr. Rosenberg was to Thyrsis a living embodiment of Moses Rosen in the play—so much so that he felt the resemblance in the names to be perilous, and winced every time he heard Rosenberg speak of Rosen. But fortunately neither Rosenberg nor Rosen possessed a sense of irony, and so there were no feelings hurt. Thyrsis had written the play without having met either a press-agent or the head of a music-bureau; he had drawn the character of Moses after the fashion of the German, evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner consciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer who works out the orbit of a new planet, and afterwards discovers it with his telescope.

As the preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis found himself more and more disturbed about the production. He was able to judge of the actors now, and they seemed to him to be cheap actors—to be relying for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis. All he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was to bring up the eternal question of the lack of "charm" in her part. Poor Ethelynda was also getting into an unhappy frame of mind; she had begun to doubt whether the "drama of ideas" was her forte after all—and whether the ideas in this particular drama were real ideas or sham. She got the habit of inviting friends in to judge it, and she was always of the opinion of the last friend; so the production was like a ship whose pilot has lost his bearings.

The time drew near for the opening-performance, which was to be given in a manufacturing city in New England. The nerves of all the company were stretched to the breaking point; and overwrought as he was himself, Thyrsis could not but pity the unhappy "leading lady", who could hardly keep herself together, even with the drugs he saw her taking.

The "dress-rehearsal" began at six o'clock on Sunday evening; and from the very start everything went wrong. But Thyrsis did not know the peculiar fact about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes wrong; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at some member of the company; and he sent them back, over and over again through the scenes—it was midnight before they finished the first act, and it was six o'clock in the morning before they finished the second, and it was nearly noon of Monday before the wretched men and women went home to sleep.

Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hardearned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-broken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel—cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he would have to say that he was not hungry, and then go off and get something at a corner grocery.

The hour of the performance came; and Thyrsis, like a gambler who has staked all his possessions upon the turn of one card, sat in a box and watched the audience and the play. The house was crowded; and the play-wright saw with amazed relief that all his agonies of the night before had been needless—the performance went without a hitch from beginning to end. And also, to his unutterable delight, the play seemed to "score". He had gazed at the rows of respectable burghers of this prosperous manufacturing town, and wondered what understanding they could have of his tragedy of "genius". But they seemed to be understanding; at any rate they laughed and applauded; and when Lloyd smashed the violin over von Arne's head and the curtain went down, there was quite a little uproar.

Thyrsis came out and made his timid speech, which was also applauded; and then came the last act, and the women got out their handkerchiefs on schedule time, and Mr. Rosenberg stood behind Thyrsis in the box, rubbing his hands together gleefully. So the play-wright sent a telegram to his wife, saying that the play was a certain success; and then he went to bed, assuredly the happiest man who had ever slept in that fifty-cent hotel!

But alas—the next morning, there were the local papers; and with one accord they all "roasted" the play! Their accounts of it sounded for all the world like the play itself—those extracts which the two professors had read from the criticisms of Lloyd's concert! Thyrsis wondered if the critics must not have taken offence at the satire!

Then, going to the theatre, the first person he met was Rosenberg, who sent another chill to his heart. "First nights are always good," said Mr. Rosenberg. "It was all 'paper', you know. To-night is the real test."

And so the second performance came; and in the theatre were some two hundred people, and the occasion was the most awful "frost" that ever froze the heart of an unhappy partisan of the "drama of ideas". After which, according to schedule, the play moved to another manufacturing town; and in the theatre were some two hundred and fifty people—and a frost some ten degrees lower yet!

Section 11. So at twelve o'clock that night there was a consultation in a room at the hotel, attended by Thyrsis and Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping and Mr. Jones.

"You see," said the last named; "the play is a failure."

"Absolutely!" said Mr. Tapping.

"I knew it would be!" cried Miss Lewis.

"And you?" asked Mr. Jones of Thyrsis.

"It has not succeeded in these towns," said Thyrsis. But then—how could it succeed, except where there are intellectual people? You promised to take it to New York."

"It's no use!" declared Jones. "New York would laugh it dead in one night."

"It would," said Mr. Tapping, decisively.

"I knew it all along," cried Miss Lewis.

So they went on for ten minutes; and then, "What are you going to do?" asked Thyrsis, in terror.

"The play must be altered," said Jones.

"How altered?"

"It must be altered as Miss Lewis asked you at first."

Thyrsis sprang up. "What!" he cried.

"It must be done!" said Mr. Jones.

"It must," said Mr. Tapping.

"I knew it all along!" cried Miss Lewis again.

"But I won't stand for it!" exclaimed Thyrsis, wildly.

"It must be done!" said Mr. Jones, in his heaviest steam-roller tone.

"But I won't have it!"

"What'll you do?"

"I'll go to law! I'll get an injunction."

"What is there in our contract to prevent our altering the play?" demanded the man.

"What!" gasped Thyrsis. "You know what our understanding was!"

"Humph!" said the other. "Can you prove it?"

"And do you mean that you would go back on that understanding?"

"And do you mean that you expect me to see this money wasted and the play sent to pot?"

Thyrsis, in his agony, turned to Miss Lewis. "Will you let him break our bargain?" he cried.

"But what else is there to be done?" she answered.

"Don't you see that the play is a failure? And don't you see the plight you've got me in?"

Thyrsis was dumb with dismay. He stared from one of these people to another, and his heart went down—down. He saw that his case was hopeless. He had no one to help him or to advise him, and he had less than eleven dollars in his pocket.

"What do you propose to do?" he asked, weakly.

"I have already telegraphed to Richard Haberton," said Jones. "He will meet us and see the next two performances; and then we'll lay the company off until we get some kind of a practical play."

And so the steam-roller rolled and the matter was settled; and Thyrsis, broken-hearted, bid the trio farewell, and took an early train back to New York.

He never saw any member of the company again—and he never saw the "practical play" which Mr. Richard Haberton made out of "The Genius". What was done he gathered from the press-clippings that came to him—the famous author of "The Rajah's Diamond" caused Helena to fall into Lloyd's arms at the end of the second act, and had them safely if not happily married at the beginning of the third. Also he wrote several "charming" scenes for Ethelynda Lewis, and two weeks later the play had a second opening in another manufacturing town of New England—where the critics, awed by the name of the distinguished dramatist upon the play-bills, were moved to faint praise. But perhaps it was that Mr. Richard Haberton required more than two weeks' time for the evolving of real "charm"; at any rate the audience came in no larger numbers to see this new version, and the misbegotten production lived for another six performances, and died a peaceful death at the very gates of the metropolis.

And such was the end of Thyrsis' career as a play-wright. In return for all his labors and his agonies he received some weeks later a note from Robertson Jones, Inc., to the effect that the books of "The Genius" showed a total deficit of six thousand seven hundred and forty-two dollars and seventeen cents; and accordingly, under the contract, there was nothing due to the author.



BOOK XI

THE TORTURE-HOUSE



_They sat in the darkness, watching where the starlight gleamed upon the water.

"We had always hope," she was saying. "How endlessly we hoped!"

"Could we do it now?" he asked; and after a pause, he quoted from the poem—

"Unbreachable the fort Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall; And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows, And near and real the charm of thy repose, And night as welcome as a friend would fall!"_

Section 1. Thyrsis came home beaten and crushed, worn out with overwork and worry, his heart black with rage and bitterness and despair. He met Corydon in the park, and she listened to his story, white and terrified. She had swallowed all her disappointment, had stayed at home with the baby while he went with the play; and now the outcome of it all was this!

"What are you going to do?" she whispered; and he answered, "I don't know. I don't know."

She saw the terrible state he was in, and she dared not utter a single word of her own grief. She bit her lip, and choked back her tears. "This is my life," she thought to herself; "I must endure, endure—that is all!"

He could not afford even to sit and talk with her very long; there was no time to indulge in the luxury of despair. His money was gone, and he was in debt for some that he had borrowed. Since irregular eating had been telling upon him again, he had been getting his meals with an acquaintance of the family, who kept a boarding-house uptown. On the strength of his prospects, she had trusted him for four dollars a week; and now the play had failed, and he had to go and tell her, and listen to new protests as to his folly in refusing to "get a position". But in the end she bade him stay on; and so he was divided between his shame, and the need of something to eat day by day.

Time dragged on, and still there was no gleam of light. There were shameful hours in these weeks—he touched the lowest point yet in his life. This was a typical cheap boarding-house, a place where the drudges of trade were herded; it was a home of sordidness and ugliness—to Thyrsis its people seemed like carefully selected types of all things that he hated in the world. There was a young broker's clerk, whose patter was of prices, and of fortunes made without service. There was a grey-haired bookkeeper for a giant "trust", a man who could not have had more pride in that great engine of exploitation, or more contempt for its victims, had he been the president and chief owner thereof. There was a young divinity-student, who made greedy reaches for the cake-plate, and who summed up for Thyrsis all the cant and commonness of the church. There was a dry-goods clerk, who wore flaring ties, and who played the role of a "masher" upon the avenue every evening. And finally there was a red-faced Irish-man who wore large shiny cuffs and a false diamond, and who held some political job, and was voluble in behalf of "the organization".

Among these people Thyrsis sat three times a day, silent and tortured, paying a high price for each morsel of food he ate. But also he was lonely, and craving any sort of respite; and in the course of time he became acquainted with several of the younger men. One of the diversions in their pitiful and narrow lives was to gather in some room and indulge in petty gambling; sitting for hours upon hours with their faculties alert upon the attempt to get from each other some small fraction of that weekly stipend which kept them alive. Sometimes they played "penny-ante", and sometimes vingt et un; once, as it chanced, they needed another player, and they urged Thyrsis to join them.

And so, for the first time in his life, Thyrsis learned what it meant to lay his soul upon the lap of the goddess of chance. From eight o'clock that evening until two the next morning, he sat in a suffocating room full of cigarette-smoke, trying in vain to win back the dollar or two he had lost at the outset; flushed and trembling with excitement, and hating himself with a bitter and tormenting hatred. And so he discovered his vice; he discovered that he had in him the soul of the gambler! And all the rest of the winter he had to wrestle with that shame. He would go to his dinner, tired and heartsick; and they would ask him to play again; and he—the man who carried a message for humanity in his heart—he would yield! Three times during that winter he fell into the mire; on Washington's birthday he began to play in the morning, and stopping only for meals, he played until long after midnight. Forever afterwards he was a humbler and a gentler man because of that experience; understanding how squalor abases one, and how swiftly and stealthily an evil passion closes its grasp about the soul.

Section 2. Of this shameful thing he said not a word to Corydon. But he avoided meeting her, because of the depths of his despair. And so at last there came a letter from her—a long and unusual one. Corydon, too, was having her troubles, it appeared.

"I am writing in haste," she said; "I shall mail the letter at once, before my resolution fails me. At least a dozen times I have made up my mind to tell you or to write you what is here, and each time I have turned back. But now I have got to a stage where I must have your help.

"I enclose a long letter which I wrote you years ago, before we were married. I was looking over some old papers the other day and came upon it. Generally when I wrote you letters that I did not send, I tore them up; but something led me to keep this one—I had a feeling that some day it would be interesting as a curiosity. You see, I am always persuading myself that I can get over this trouble, and learn to laugh at it; and I am always succeeding—but only to have it crop up in some different form. I have told you a little of it now and then—but stop and read the enclosed, and you will see."

So Thyrsis read the old letter—a missive of anguish and terror, and beginning with elaborate preludings and hesitations:

"I implore you to be patient with me this once; and when I have gotten through, I want you still to love me, if possible. I have been trying to get the courage to write you something that is so mean and low, childish and almost imbecile, that there have been moments in which my horror of it was absolutely unspeakable; when I have imagined myself as a soul damned, when I thought that if you knew, you would think I had a diseased brain. I only ask you to read patiently what I am going to write; but know that every word is a horrible effort, that it is torture and humiliation to me to write it. I have a feeling now as though I were psychologically dissecting something.

"It must have been eight years ago, when I was sick in bed; in a fever or delirium I conceived the idea that there was a coffin under my bed. The thought took hold of me, somehow, like an octopus, and I used to writhe under it, and get into fearful perspirations. I never went near a bed that I didn't think of this thing with the same horror.

"And so I seemed to have created a nervousness, a sense of dread, before which I was absolutely helpless. I cannot tell you how hopelessly or fearfully I suffered, or what depths of despondency and despair and blackness I was cast into. I cannot understand how a creature could so manufacture torments for itself. But this is not all, just for once have mercy—and yet even now I am laughing at myself!

"The winter I was sixteen I was much disappointed that I could not go to college, and almost the whole winter, when I was not diverted, I would brood over this habit. As I grew older, it would come to me in spasms, and it seemed to my dawning sense so monstrously child- like, so insane, that I was aghast that it had power to affect me. I can find no words to tell you of the unspeakable horror with which I saw, in my older days, that a thought could so torment me; the mere fact of its being able to torment I could never forget. I know it was silly, unreasonable; and yet every time it came to me I would be plunged into a hopelessness and melancholy, than which I can honestly conceive nothing more fearful upon earth.

"Well, I continued to pursue myself with this morbidity (I would almost, rather kill myself than write this). As I got older my terror was less, but my melancholy greater, until I would be only half conscious of what I was allowing myself to do. I seemed to have engendered within myself a hob-goblin. Once—it was only last winter—I saw a nasty word written on a fence, and it sent a shudder through me, for I knew it would follow me and make me think of other things like it. I felt, since thoughts have such power to terrorize me, how can I ever get away from them?

"Oh, how I have struggled—tried to say it was not true—that I was just as sane as other people! And this made my thirst for beauty all the more maddening, and my melancholy all the more complete! So I have lived, at intervals, and words cannot describe the hell that I have endured, the more horrible because it seemed to me so unreasonable, so insane. It occurred to me more or less this summer, though in a milder form; but it often frightened me more than ever, as I felt how beautiful you were, and what you would think of me, if you knew I was capable of being the prey of such thoughts. So they were always more dreadful to me.

"Can you possibly understand how the thought of a word could make me shudder? The mere idea of my being capable of thinking of anything that was not beautiful! When I longed to be only the embodiment of beauty—and sometimes I am beautiful! I look into the glass, and I seem to have something in my face that is a promise of a glory to come—a light, a something,—I love to imagine it. And then, that a thought should knock me prone, and make me cringe—from the mere fact of its lowness and meanness!

"For the last two or three days I have again victimized myself; and when I was not studying I was asking myself in anguish what was the matter with me, and if there was no hope for me on earth. I dodged around and tried to laugh it off, then I went to the piano and lost myself in the dissatisfaction of my playing; but when I stopped, I was conscious of a great depression, as though I were chained in a dungeon. I jumped up, and said I could stand it no longer. I will tell Thyrsis, I said; but no, I will die first! I added. He could not tolerate me afterwards, he would think me only fit for the insane-asylum. Oh, why should I be so cursed? And then, somehow, I imagined that I told you, and that you laughed at me, that you pitied me—and that you held out your hand, and said, 'Come, you shall find beauty—poor, deluded, wretched, little creature!' I really imagined that this had happened, and I was relieved as with a draught of fresh air.

"Oh, God in Heaven, to think that I could ever have been so degraded! My head hurts, and I absolutely am dazed, to think that I have been able to write you of something for which (though it has not been my making) I am so ashamed and humiliated I can hardly hold my head up. I think in my short life I have atoned for the sins of many souls."

Section 3. Such was the old-time letter. "And now," wrote Corydon, "I don't want you to think that if I did not send you this, it was because I was afraid to do it, or unwilling to trust to your love. It was simply because I felt that I could conquer these things—that it would be weak and contemptible of me not to do so. Nor is the reason I write you now that I have not been able to conquer them, that I am still at the mercy of such habits. I am a grown woman, and I am not afraid of words; I tell myself this a hundred times; and it is true—and yet there is a way in which it is not true. The thing is so intricate—I never get to the end of it; I rid myself of the fear of a hateful idea, but there remains the fact that I should have been afraid; there is the fear of fear. And then comes a flood of shame—that I should have it in me to be afraid of fear!

"Thyrsis, as I write to you now I see clearly how perfectly preposterous and unreal all this is; and again there comes to me the impulse to tear up this letter, and banish the troop of hob-goblins from my mind. But no, this time I am determined to make a clean breast of the thing—for I see that secrecy and solitude are what it feeds on. If I were happy and busy with you such ideas would have no power over me. But think how it is, with my loneliness and despair! I don't want to say anything to make your task harder—but oh, Thyrsis, it is frightful to have nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait! The baby wakes me up in the night and I lie for hours—it is at such times that these phantoms take hold of me. Do you realize that I literally never know what it is to have more than three or four consecutive hours of sleep?

"No, I am not insane, I tell myself; I am not insane! It is the circumstances of my life that cause this melancholia and misery. It has been my life, from the very beginning—for what a hopeful and joyous creature I would have been, had I only had a chance as a girl! I know that; and you must tell it to me, and help me to believe it."

Thyrsis read this with less surprise than Corydon had imagined; for she had been wont to drop hints about her trouble from time to time. He was shocked, however, to find what a hold it had taken upon her; the thing sent a chill of fear to his heart. Could it be after all that she had some taint? But he saw at once that he must not let her see any such feeling; the least hint of it would have driven her to distraction. On the contrary, he must minimize the trouble, must help her to laugh it away, as she asked.

He went to meet her in the park, and found her in an agony of distress; she had mailed the letter, and then she had wished to recall it, and had been struggling ever since with the idea that he would be disgusted with her. Now, when she found that such was not the case, that he still loved her and trusted her, she was transported with gratitude.

"But dearest," he said, "how absurd it is to be ashamed of an idea! If ugly things exist, don't we have to hear of them and know of them? And so why frighten ourselves because they are in our minds?"

"But Thyrsis," cried she, "they are so hateful!"

"Yes," he said. "But then the more you hate them, the more they haunt you!"

"That's just it!" she exclaimed.

"But what harm can they do? Can they have any effect upon your character? You must say to yourself that all this is a consequence of the structure of your brain-cells. What could be more futile than trying to forget? As if the very essence of the trying was not remembering!"

So Thyrsis went on to argue with her. He made her promise him that in future she would tell him of all her obsessions, permitting no fear or shame to deter her; and so thereafter he would have to listen periodically to long accounts of her psychological agonies, and help her to hunt out the "hob-goblins" from the tangled thickets of her mind. They were forever settling the matter, positively and finally—but alas, only to have something unsettle it again. So Thyrsis had to add to his other accomplishments the equipment of a psycho-pathologist; he brushed up his French, and read learned treatises upon the researches in the Salpetriere, and the theories of the "Nancy School".

Section 4. Another month passed by, and still there was no rift in the clouds. Once more Corydon was forbidden to see him, and so her pain grew day by day. At last there came another letter, voicing utter despertion. Something must be done, she declared, she was slowly going out of her mind. Thyrsis could have no idea of the shamefulness of her position, the humiliations she had to face. "I tell you the thing is putting a brand upon my soul," she wrote. "It is something I shall never get over all my life. It is withering me up—it is destroying my self-respect, my very decency; it is depriving me of my power to act, or even to think. People come in, relatives or friends—even strangers to me—and peer at me and pry into my affairs; I hear them whispering in the parlor—'Hasn't he got a position yet?' or 'How can she have anything to do with him?' The servants gossip about me—the woman I have for a nurse despises me and insults me, and I have not the courage to rebuke her. To-day I went almost wild with fury—I rushed into the bathroom and locked the door and flung myself upon the floor. I found myself gnawing at the rug in my rage—I mean that literally. That is what life has left for me!

"I tell you you must take me away, we must get out of this fiendish city. Let us go into the wilderness as you said, and live as we can—I would rather starve to death than face these things. Let us get into the country, Thyrsis. You can work as a farm-hand, and earn a few dollars a week—surely that could not be a greater strain upon us than the way things are now."

When Thyrsis received this, he racked his brains once more; and then he sat down and wrote a letter to Barry Creston. He told how he had worked over the play, and how it had gone to ruin; he told of his present plight. He knew, he said, that Mr. Creston had been interested in the play, and that he was a man understood the needs of the artist-life. Would he lend two hundred dollars, which would suffice until Thyrsis could get another work completed?

He waited a week for a reply to this; and when it arrived he opened it with trembling fingers. He half expected a check to fall fluttering to the floor; but alas, there was not a single flutter. "I have read your letter," wrote the young prince, "and I have considered the matter carefully. I would do what you ask, were it not for my conviction that it would not be a good thing for you. It seems to me the testimony of all experience, that artists do their great work under the spur of necessity. I do not believe that real art can ever be subsidized. It is for men that you are writing; and you must find out how to make men hear you. You may not thank me for this now, but some day you will, I believe."

After duly pondering which communication, Thyrsis racked his wits, and bethought him of yet another person to try. He sat himself down and addressed Mr. Robertson Jones. He explained that he was in this cruel plight, owing to his having devoted so many months to "The Genius." Even the actors had received something for the performances of the play they had given; but the author had received nothing at all. He asked Mr. Jones for a personal loan to help him in a great emergency; and he promised to repay it at the earliest possible moment. To which Mr. Jones made this reply—"Inasmuch as the failure of the play was due solely to your own obstinacy, it seems to me that your present experiences are affording exactly the discipline you need."

Section 5. However, there are many ups and downs in the trade of free-lance writer. The very day after he had received this letter, there came, in quick succession two bursts of sunlight through the clouds of Thyrsis' despair. The first was a letter, written in a quaint script, from a man who explained that he was interested in a "Free People's Theatre" in one of the cities of Germany. "You will please to accept my congratulations," he wrote; "I had never known such a play as yours in America to be written. I should greatly be pleased to translate the play, so that it might be known in Germany. Our compensation would have to be little, as you will understand; but of appreciation I think you may receive much in the Fatherland."

To which Thyrsis sent a cordial response, saying that he would be glad of any remuneration, and enclosing a copy of the manuscript of "The Genius". And then—only two days later—came the other event, a still more notable one; a letter from the publisher who had been number thirty-seven on the list of "The Hearer of Truth". Thyrsis had got so discouraged about this work that he now sent it about as a matter of routine, and without thinking of it at all. Great, therefore, was his amazement when he opened the letter and read that this publisher was disposed to undertake it, and would be glad to see him and talk over terms.

Thyrsis went, speculating on the way as to what strange manner of being this publisher might be. The solution of the mystery he found was that the publisher was new at the business, and had entrusted his "literary department" to a very young man who had enthusiasms. The young man held his position for only a month or two; but in that month or two Thyrsis got in his "innings".

The publisher wished to bring the book out that spring. He offered a ten per cent royalty, and the trembling author summoned the courage to ask for one hundred dollars advance; when he got it, he was divided between his delight, and a sneaking regret that he had not tried for a hundred and fifty!

The very next day came the contracts and the money; Thyrsis marvelled at the fact that there were people who could sign checks for a hundred dollars, and apparently not mind it in the least. With the money he was able to pay all his debts, and also a bill which Corydon had received from a "specialist" who had been treating her. This was a new habit that Corydon was developing, as a result of headaches and backaches and other obscure miseries. These amiable "specialists" permitted one to run up a bill with them; and so, whenever Thyrsis made a new "strike", there were always debts to eat up the greater part of it.

They had now another hope to lure them; new proofs to read, and in due time, new reviews. But it would be fall before they could expect more money from the book, and meantime there was still the problem of the summer. So, as usual, Thyrsis was plotting and planning, groping about him and trying one desperate scheme after another; his head was like a busy workshop, from which came every hour new plans, new expedients, new experiments. And meanwhile, of course, deep down in his soul there was forming the new work, that some day would emerge and take possession of him, driving everything else from his consciousness.

People would repeat to him, over and over, their dreary formula—"Get a position! Get a position!" And patiently, unwearyingly, Thyrsis would set himself to explain to them what it was like to be inspired. It was not perversity upon his part, it was not conceit; it was no more these than it was laziness. It was something that was in him—something that he had not put there himself, something that he could not take out of himself; a thing that took possession of him, without any intention upon his part, without any permission; a thing that required him to do certain acts, and that tore him to pieces if he did not do them. And how should he be blamed because he could not do as other men—because he could not take care of himself, nor even of his wife and child? Because he could not have any rights, because he could not possess the luxuries of manhood and self-respect? Because, in short, he was cast out into the gutter for every dog to snarl at and for every loafer to spurn? Could it be that in this whole civilization, with its wealth and power, its culture and learning, its sciences and arts and religions—there was not to be found one single man or woman who could recognize such a state of affairs, and realize what it meant?

Section 6. About this time Thyrsis thought of another plan. Perhaps he might get some one to publish the play in book form—that would bring him a little money, and possibly also it might help him to interest some other manager or actor. So he took the manuscript to his friend Mr. Ardsley, who told him it would not sell, and then gave him another lecture upon his folly in not having written the "practical" novel; and then he took it to the publisher for whom Prof. Osborne acted as reader. So he had another conference with that representative of authority.

"I'll get him some day," Thyrsis had said to himself, after their last interview; and he found that he had almost "got" him now. There was no chance of the play's selling, said the professor, and therefore no recommending it for publication; but it was indeed a remarkable piece of work—one might possibly say that it was a great piece of work.

To which the author responded, "Why can't one say that surely?"

"I'm not quite sure," said the other, "whether your violinist is a genius, or only thinks he is."

Thyrsis pondered this. "That's rather an important question," he said.

"Yes," admitted the other.

"There ought to be some way of deciding such a question definitely."

"Yes, there ought to be."

"But there isn't?"

"No—I'm afraid there isn't. We know too little about genius as yet."

"But, professor," said Thyrsis, "you are a critic—you write books of criticism. And that's the one question a critic has to answer."

"Yes, I know," said Prof. Osborne.

"And yet, when you face the issue, you give up."

"It has generally taken a long time to decide such a matter," was the professor's reply.

"Yes, it has," said the other; "and meantime the man is starved out."

There was a pause. "You have never had any such experience yourself?" asked Thyrsis. "Of inspiration, I mean."

"No," was the answer. "I couldn't pretend to."

"So your judgments are never from first-hand knowledge?"

The professor hesitated. "I am dealing with you frankly—-" he began.

"I know," said Thyrsis, "and I appreciate that. You understand that it's an important point for me to get clear. I've felt that all along about you—I've felt it about so many others who set themselves against me. And yet I have to bear the burden of their condemnation—"

"I never condemned you," interposed the other.

"Ah, but you did!" cried Thyrsis. "You told me that I knew less about writing than anyone in your class! And you spoke as one who had authority."

"But you had given no indications in the class-room—"

"I know! I know! I tried to get you to see the reason. I wanted to create literature; and you set me down with a lot of formulas—you told me to write about 'The Duty of the College Man to Support Athletics!'"

"It's difficult to see," began Prof. Osborne, "how we could teach college boys to create literature—"

"At least," said the other, "you need not follow a method which would make it impossible for one of them to create literature if he had it in him."

"Does it seem to you as bad as that?" asked the professor, a little disturbed.

"It truly does," said Thyrsis.

"But what would you say we could do?"

To which the boy replied, "You might try to get your pupils to feel one deep emotion about life, or to think one worth-while thought; then they might stand a chance of knowing how it feels to write."

Section 7. Thyrsis was still reading in the papers and magazines of philanthropists and public-spirited citizens; and he was still sitting down to write them and explain his plight. He would beg them to believe that he wanted nothing but a bare living; and he would send copies of his books or articles or manuscripts, and ask these people to read them. And about this time an unusual thing happened—one of these philanthropists answered his letter. He wrote that he did not agree with Thyrsis' ideas, by any means, but appreciated the power of his writing, and was certain that he had a career before him. Whereupon Thyrsis made haste to follow up his advantage, and wrote another letter—one of the most intense and impassioned that he ever composed in his life.

He told about the new book he was dreaming. For years he had read his country's history, and lived in it and thrilled with it. Especially had he read the Civil War; and now he was planning a book that should hold the War, and all the meanings of the War, as a wine-cup holds the rich flavors and aromas of the grape. A titan struggle it had been, the birth-agony of a nation; and it was a thing to be contemplated with amazement, that it should have produced so little in the way of art. Half a dozen poems there were; but of novels not one above the grade of juvenile fiction.

What Thyrsis was planning was a new form; a series of swift visions, of glimpses into the very heart of the nation's agony. He described some of the scenes that were haunting him and driving him. The winter's night in the ditches in front of Marye's Heights, when the dead and dying lay piled in windrows, and the soul of a people sobbed in despair! The night on the field of Gettysburg, when the young soldier lay wounded, but rapt in his vision, seeing the hosts of the victorious future defiling upon that hallowed ground! The ghastly scenes in Andersonville, and the escape, and the long journey filled with perils; and the siege of Petersburg, and the surrender; and last of all the ecstasy of the dying man in the capital, when the grim, war-worn legions were tramping for two days through the city. Such, wrote Thyrsis, was the book that he wished to compose, and that was being stifled in him for the lack of two or three hundred dollars.

Upon the receipt of this letter the philanthropist wrote again, suggesting that the poet come to see him and talk things over. He sent the price of a railroad ticket to Boston; and so Thyrsis made the acquaintance of a new world—one might almost say of a whole new system of worlds.

For here was the Athens of America, the hub of the universe. In Boston they worshipped culture, they lived in literature and art and the transcendental excellences; and by the way of showing that there was no snobbery in them, they opened the gates of their most august mansions to this soul-sick poet, and invited him to tea.

Thyrsis got a strange impression among these people, who were living upon their knees before the shrine of their own literary history. One was treading here upon holy ground; in these very houses had dwelt immortal writers—their earthly forms had rested in these chairs, and their auras yet haunted the dim religious light of these drawing-rooms. There were old people who had known them in the flesh, and could tell anecdotes about them—to which one listened in reverent awe; at every gathering one met people who were writing biographies and memoirs of them, or editing their letters and journals, or writing essays and appreciations, criticisms and commentaries and catalogs and bibliographies. And to be worthy of the visitations of such hallowed influences, one must guard one's mind as a temple, a place of silences and serenities, to which no vulgar things could penetrate; one excluded all the uproar of these days of undisciplined egotism—above all things else one preserved an attitude of aloofness from that which presumed to call itself "literature" in such degenerate times.

To have become acquainted with these high standards was perhaps worth the rent of a room and the cost of some food and clean collars. So Thyrsis reflected when, after his week of waiting, he had his interview with the benevolent philanthropist, who explained to him, at great length, how charity had the effect of weakening the springs of character, and destroying those qualities of self-reliance and independence which were the most precious things in a man.

Section 8. It was a curious coincidence, one that seemed almost symbolic—that Thyrsis should have gone from the Brahmins of Boston to the Socialists of the East Side!

In one of the publishing-houses he visited, Thyrsis had met a young man who gave him a Socialist magazine to read; as the magazine was published in the next building, Thyrsis went in and met the editor. About this time they were crowning a new king in England, and Thyrsis, who had no use for kings, wrote a sarcastic poem which the Socialist editor published free of charge. And so the boy discovered a new way in which he could relieve his feelings.

"I see what you want," he admitted, in his arguments with this editor; "and it's the same thing as I want—every man with any sense must see that, in the ultimate outcome, all this capital will be owned by the public and not by private individuals. But what I object to is the way you go at it. The industrial process is a necessary thing; it is drilling and disciplining the workers. They are not yet fitted for the responsibility of managing the world."

"But," asked the editor, "what's to be the sign when they are fitted?"

"When they have been educated," Thyrsis answered.

To which the editor responded, "Who is to educate them, if we don't?"

That was an interesting point; and Thyrsis found little by little that a new light was dawning upon him. He had somehow conceived of industrial evolution as something vast and intangible and mechanical, something that went on independent of men, and that could not be hurried or delayed. What this editor pointed out was that the process was a definite one, that it went on in the minds of men, and involved human effort—of which the publishing of Socialist literature was a most essential part.

"You ought to hear Darrell," said the man; and a few days later he wrote Thyrsis a note, asking him to go to a hall over on the East Side that evening.

Thyrsis went, and found a working-men's meeting-room, ill-lighted and ill-ventilated, with perhaps two hundred people in it. The chairman introduced the speaker of the evening; and so Thyrsis got his first glimpse of Henry Darrell.

He was something over forty years of age, slight of build; his face was pale to the point of ghostliness, and this impression was heightened by a jet black mustache and beard. One's first thought was that this man was no stranger to suffering.

He was not a good speaker, in the conventional sense, he fumbled for words, and repeated himself—and yet from his first sentence Thyrsis found himself listening spellbound. The voice went through him like the toll of a bell; never in all his life had he heard a speaker who put such a burden of anguish into his words—who gave such a sense of gigantic issues, of age-long destinies hanging in the balance, of world-embracing hopes and powers struggling to be born. Here was a prophet who carried in his soul the future of the race; who in the sudden flashes of his vision, in the swift rushes of his passionate pleadings, evoked from the deeps of the consciousness forces that one contemplated with terror—confronted one with martyrdoms and agonies and despairs.

"Revolution" was his title; he pictured modern civilization as it presented itself to the proletarian man—a gigantic Moloch, to which human lives were fed, a monster from whose dominion there was no deliverance, even in the uttermost parts of the earth. He pictured accident, disease and death, unemployment and starvation, child-labor, prostitution, war; he was the voice of the dispossessed of the earth, the man beneath the machine, ground up body, mind and soul in this "world-wide mill of economic might". And he showed how this man dragged down with him all society; how the chain that bound the slave was fastened also to the master—so that from the poverty and oppression and degradation of this "downmost man" came all the ulcers that festered in the social body. He saw the great economic machine grinding on day and night, the mighty forces rushing to their culmination. He saw the toiling millions pressed deeper and deeper into the mire; he saw their blind, convulsive struggles for deliverance; he saw over them the gigantic slave-driver with his thousand-lashed whip—the capitalist state, class-owned class-administered—backed by the capitalist church and the capitalist press and capitalist "public sentiment". So the hopes of the people went down in blood and reaction sat enthroned. The nations, ridden by despotisms, and whirled into senseless wars, ran the old course of militarism, imperialism, barbarism; and so civilization slid back yet again into the melting-pot!

Thyrsis had never heard such a speech as this in his life. When it was over, he went up to the platform where Darrell sat, looking more exhausted and pain-driven than ever; and in a few hesitating words he told of his interest, and asked for the speaker's address, that he might write to him. And that night he posted a letter, introducing himself as a young writer, who felt impelled to learn more about Darrell's ideas.

In reply came a note from the other, asking him to dine with him; and Thyrsis answered accepting.

Then, as chance would have it, he mentioned the circumstance to his mother. "Darrell!" she cried. "You don't mean Henry Darrell!"

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "Why?"

"And you would meet that man?"

"Why not?" he asked, perplexed.

"Haven't you read anything about him in the papers? That monster!"

"What do you mean?"

"A man who deserted his wife and children, and left them to starve, and ran away with some rich woman!"

Thyrsis recollected vaguely some sensational headlines, about the clergyman and college professor who had done the shocking things his mother spoke of, and was now a social outcast, and a preacher of anarchy and revolution. He recalled also that there had been a woman, beautiful and richly-dressed, with Darrell at the meeting.

The boy was not disturbed by all this, for he had long ago made up his mind that every man had to work out his own sex-problems; in fact, his first impulse was to admire a man who had had the courage to face the world upon such an issue. But he was sorry he had mentioned it to his mother, for she wept bitterly when she found that he meant to accept the invitation. That was the culmination of her life's defeat—that her son, who had been designed for a bishop, should be going to sit at table with Henry Darrell and his paramour!

Section 9. Thyrsis went to the apartment-hotel where Darrell lived, and was introduced to the beautiful lady as Mrs. Darrell, and they went down to the dining-room—where he noticed that everyone turned to stare at them as they entered. It made him feel that he must be doing something quite desperate; and yet it was not easy to imagine any wickedness of the man opposite to him—his voice was so kind, and his smile so gentle, and his whole aspect so appealing. He was dressed in black, and wore a soft black bow at his throat, which made still more conspicuous the pallor of his face; Thyrsis had never met a man he took to more quickly—there was something about him that was like a little child, calling for affection and sympathy.

Yet, also, there was the mind of a thinker. He was a man of culture, in the most vital sense of the word; he had swept the heavens of thought with a powerful telescope—had travelled, and knew many languages, and their literatures and arts. He had tested them all by a strong acid of his own; so that to talk with him was to discover the feet of clay of one's idols.

He spoke of Dante and Angelo, who were two of his heroes; he told of great experiences among the latter's titan frescos. He spoke of Mazzini, whose greatness as a writer the world had yet to appreciate; he spoke also of Wagner, whose music he valued less than his critical and polemical work. He told of modern artists both in Germany and Italy—revolutionary forces of whom Thyrsis had never heard at all. The day must come, said Darrell, when Americans would discover the great movements of contemporary thought, and realize their own provincialness. America thought of itself as "the land of the free", and that made it hard to teach. It was obvious enough that there had never been any real freedom in America—only government by propertied classes. The Revolution had been a rebellion of country gentlemen and city merchants; as one might know from the "constitution" they had adopted—one of the greatest barriers to human progress ever devised. And so with the Civil War, which to Darrell was one of the deeds of the newly-risen monster of Capitalism.

They went upstairs again, and Thyrsis found another man seated in the drawing-room. He was introduced by the name of Paret, and Thyrsis recognized him as the editor of "The Beacon", a magazine of which he had chanced upon a copy some time before. It was the first Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it had repelled him because its editor had printed his own picture in a conspicuous place, and also because in his leading editorial he had dealt flippantly with an eminent reformer and philanthropist for whom Thyrsis had a profound respect.

But here was the editor himself—not merely his photograph: a little man, clad in evening dress, very neat and dapper. He had a black beard, trimmed to a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he impressed Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles. He lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to talk; save that every now and then he would punctuate the discussion with some droll reflection that stuck in one's mind like a burr.

Some one spoke of certain evangelists who were conducting a temperance campaign among the workers in the steel-mills. Said Paret: "If I had to live in hell, I'm sure I'd rather be drunk than sober!" And a little later Thyrsis spoke of a novel he had been reading, which set out to solve the problem of "capital and labor". Its solution seemed to be for the handsome young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, "No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again, Darrell was telling about the ten years' struggle he had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given up in despair. Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-man, he understands a business proposition, and you can get somewhere; but when you talk with a preacher, and you think he's been understanding you, you find that all the time he's been thinking what Moses would have said about it."

There came other guests: a German, hard-fisted, bullet-headed—editor of an East Side labor-paper. Some one spoke of working-men losing their votes through being unemployed and cast adrift; and Thyrsis remembered this man's grim comment, "They lose their votes, but they don't lose their voices!" There came a young man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal battering-ram shook the institutions of society so as to frighten even the author of "The Higher Cannibalism". There came also a poetess, whose work he had seen in the magazines, and with her a Russian youth who had come to study the thought of America, and was now going home, because America had no thought. Thyrsis had a good deal of patriotism left in him, and might have been angered by this stripling's contempt; but the stripling spoke with such quiet assurance, and his contempt was so boundless as to frighten one. "These people," he said—"they simply do not know what the intellectual life means!"

When Thyrsis went home that evening, he carried with him new ideas to ponder; also some of Darrell's pamphlets and speeches—the product of his ten years' struggle to make the teachings of Christ of some authority in the Christian Church. Thyrsis sat up late, and read one of these pamphlets, an indictment of Capitalism from the point of view of the artist and spiritual creator. It was a magnificent piece of writing; it came to Thyrsis like an echo out of his own life. So, before he slept that night he had written a letter to Darrell, telling of his struggles and his defeats. "I do not ask you to help me" he wrote. "I ask you to read my work, and decide if that be worth saving. For ashamed as I am to say it, I am at the end of my resources, and if some help does not come, I do not know what will become of me."

Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and successful of the earth—the publishers and editors and authors, the college professors and clergymen, the statesmen and capitalists and philanthropists. And now, for the first time, he tried the Socialists. He trembled when he opened Darrell's reply. Could it be that this man would be like all the rest?

But no, he was different! "Dear Brother:" he wrote. "I understand what you have told me, and I appreciate your position. Send me your manuscripts at once; I leave to-morrow for a lecture-trip, and on my way I will read everything, and let you hear from me on my return. In the meantime, I should add that I am helping two Socialist publications, and a good many individuals too, and that my resources have been absurdly exaggerated in the public prints. I say this, that you may not overestimate what I might possibly be able to do."

Section 10. So Thyrsis sent a manuscript of his play, and a copy of his first novel, and a set of proofs of "The Hearer of Truth"; and then for a couple of weeks he waited in suspense and dread. He could not see how a man like Henry Darrell could fail to appreciate his work; but on the other hand, after so many disappointments and rebuffs, how could he bring himself to believe that any one would really give him aid?

At last came a second letter; a letter full of warm-hearted sympathy—pointing out the faults of immaturity in his work, but also recognizing its real merits. It closed with this all-important sentence: "I will do what I can to help you, so come and let us talk it over."

Thyrsis went; and as they sat in his study, Darrell put his arm about him, and told him a little of his own career. He had begun life as a street-waif, a newsboy and bootblack; and once when he was ill, he had gone to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had given him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter he had more sick days than well. He told how, at an early age, he had gone to a country college to seek an education as a divinity-student; he had arrived, weary and footsore, and with his last cent had bought a post-card to let his mother know that he was safe He told how, as a clergyman and college professor the gospel of the time had come to him; how he had preached and labored, amid persecution and obloquy, until he had come to realize that the Church was a dead sepulchre; and how at last he had thrown everything to the winds, and given himself to the working-class political movement.

Then Thyrsis, scrupulous as ever, said, "I know nothing about Socialism. I mean to study it; but I might not come to believe in it—how can I tell? I would not want you to help me under any misapprehension."

At which the other smiled gently. "I am working for the truth," he said.

They talked about Thyrsis and his needs. Presumably, he said, he would have money from his new book in the fall, but meantime he wanted to take his family into the country. He could live on thirty dollars a month; it would be a matter of some two hundred and fifty dollars. Darrell said he would give him this; and Thyrsis sat there, powerless to thank him, his voice trembling, and a mist of tears in his eyes.

He went on to tell his friend of the work that he meant to do. Darrell had said that to him the Civil War was a crime; but Thyrsis did not know what he meant by that. "I believe in my country!" he said. "It has tried for high things—and it will come to them! I know that it can be thrilled and roused, and made to see the shame into which it is fallen."

Darrell pressed his arm, and answered, with a smile, "I won't argue with you about the War; you go ahead and write your book!"

So Thyrsis went home to Corydon, as one who brings a reprieve to a prisoner under sentence of death. Such a deliverance as it was to them! And such transports of relief and gratitude as they experienced! He sang the praises of Darrell, and of the new friends he had made at Darrell's; also he brought an invitation for Corydon to come with him to an evening reception the next week. They were anxious to meet her, he said; and Corydon was anxious to go.