“They should break loose.”
“That is easy for you to say,” said Corydon. “You have no ties.”
“I did have them—I might have them still. But I broke them.”
“Ah, but you are a man!”
“What difference does that make?”
“It makes all the difference in the world. You can earn money, you can go away by yourself. But suppose you were a girl—shut up in a home, and told that that was your ‘sphere’?”
“I’d fight,” said Thyrsis—“I’d break my way out somehow, never fear. If one doesn’t break out, it simply means that his desire is not strong enough.”
Thyrsis had been surprised at the depth of Corydon’s interest in his manuscript; he had not supposed that she would be so susceptible to anything of the imagination. And now he was surprised to see that her hands were clenched tightly, and that she sat staring ahead of her intently.
“Are you dissatisfied with your life?” he asked.
“Is there anything in it that I could be satisfied with?” she cried.
“I had no idea of that,” he said.
“No,” she replied; “that only shows how stupid you can be!”
“But—you never showed any signs—”
“Didn’t you know that I was trying to prepare for college last year?”
“Yes; but you gave it up.”
“What could I do? I had no help—no encouragement. I was groping like a blind person. And I told you about it.”
“But I told you what to study,” objected Thyrsis.
“Yes,” said the girl; “but how could I do it? You know how to study—you’ve been taught. But I don’t know anything, and I don’t know how to find anything out. I began on the Latin, but I didn’t even know how the words should be pronounced.”
“Nobody else knows that,” observed Thyrsis, somewhat inconsequently.
“It was all so dull and dreary,” she went on—“everything they would have had me learn. I wanted things that had life in them, things that were beautiful and worth while—like this book of yours, for instance.”
“I am really delighted that you like it,” said Thyrsis, touched by that.
“Tell me the rest of it,” she said.
Section 3. Thyrsis told his story at some length; in the ardor of her sympathy his imagination took fire, and he told it eloquently, he discovered new beauties in it that he had not seen before. And Corydon listened with growing delight and amazement.
“So that is the way you spend your time!” she exclaimed.
“That is the way,” he said.
“And that is why you live like a hermit!”
“Yes, that is why.”
“And you think that you would lose your vision if you went among people?”
“I know that I should.”
“But how do you know?”
“I know because I have tried. You don’t realize how hard I have to work over a thing like this. I have carried it in my mind for a year; I have lived for nothing else—I have literally had no other interest in the world. Every sentence I have read to you has been the product of work added to work—of one impulse piled upon another—of thinking and criticizing and revising. Just the little bit I have done has taken me a whole month, and I have hardly stopped to eat; it’s been my first thought in the morning and my last at night. And when the mood of it comes to me, then I work in a kind of frenzy that lasts for hours and even days; and if I give up in the middle and fall back, then I have to do it all over again. It’s like toiling up a mountain-side.”
“I see,” whispered Corydon. “And then, do you expect to have no human relationships as long as you live?”
Thyrsis pondered for a moment. “Did you ever read Mrs. Browning’s poem, ‘A Musical Instrument’?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
“It’s a most beautiful poem,” he said; “and it’s hardly ever quoted or read, that I can find. It tells how the great god Pan came down by the river-bank, and cut one of the reeds to make himself a pipe. He sat there and played his music upon it—
‘Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies reviv’d, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
‘Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.’ ”
Thyrsis paused. “Do you see what it means?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Corydon, “I see.”
“ ‘Making a poet out of a man!’ That is one of the finest lines I know. And that’s the way I feel about it—I have given up all other duties in the world. If I can write one book, or even one poem, that will be an inspiration to men in the future—why, then I have done far more than I could do by a lifetime given to helping people around me.”
“I never understood before,” said Corydon.
“That is the idea the minstrel tries to voice to the princess. At first he pours out his soul to her; but then, when he finds that she loves him, he is afraid, and tries to persuade her not to come with him. He tells her how lonely and stern his life is; and she has been born to a gentle life—she has her station and her duty in the world. But the more he pleads the hardness of his life, the more she sees she must go with him. Even if the end be death to her, still she will be an inspiration to him, and give wings to his music. ‘Be silent,’ she tells him—‘let me fling myself away for a song! To do one deed that the world remembers, to utter one word that lives forever—that is worth all the failure and the agony that can come to one woman in her lifetime!’ ”
Corydon sat with her hands clasped. “Yes,” she said, “that is the way she would feel!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” remarked the other. “I must make it real; and I’ve been afraid about it. Would she really go with him?”
“She would go if she loved him,” said Corydon.
“If she loved him. But she must love his art still more.”
“She must love him,” said Corydon.
Thyrsis shook his head. “It would not do for her to go with him for that,” he said.
“Why not? Doesn’t he love her?”
“Yes; but he is afraid to tell her so. They dare not let that sway them.”
“I don’t understand. Why not?”
“Because personal love is a limited thing, and comparatively an ignoble thing.”
“I don’t see how there can be anything more noble than true love between a man and a woman,” declared Corydon.
“It depends on what