“No!” whispered Corydon. “You must not fail!”
They sat in silence for a while.
“How I wish that I could help you!” she said.
“Who can tell?” he answered. “Perhaps you may. A true friend is a rare thing to find.”
“I would do anything in the world to share in such a work.”
“You really mean that? As hard as it is?”
“I would bear anything,” she said. “I would go to the ends of the earth for it. I would fling away the whole world—just as you have done.”
“Ah, but are you strong enough? Could you stand it?”
“I don’t know that—I’m only a child. But I wouldn’t mind dying.”
And so it came. It came as the dawn comes, unheralded, unheeded—spreading wider, till the day is there. Months afterwards they talked about it, and Thyrsis asked, “When did I propose to you?”
“I don’t think you ever proposed to me,” she answered. “It just came. It had to come—there was no other way.”
“But when did I first kiss you?” he asked.
“I don’t know even that,” she said, and pondered.
“Did I kiss you that night when we sat on the hill?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have known it if you had,” said Corydon. “It was as natural for you to kiss me as it was for me to draw my breath.”
Section 7. The moon was high when they went down the hill, and he rowed her home. They were silent with the awe that was upon them. They found the people at home in a panic, but they scarcely knew this—and they scarcely troubled to explain.
Then Thyrsis went home, and spent half the night roaming about in excitement. And early in the morning he was sitting on the edge of his canvas-cot, whispering to himself again, “Corydon! Little Corydon!”
He could not think of work that day, but set out to walk to the village by the lonely mountain-road; and half-way there he met the girl, coming in the other direction. There was a light of wonder in her eyes; and also there was perplexity. For all that morning she had been whispering to herself, “Thyrsis! Thyrsis!”
They sat by the roadside to talk it over.
“Corydon,” he began, “I’ve been thinking about what we said last night, and it frightens me horribly. And I want to ask you please not to think about it any more. I could not take anyone else into my life—before God, I couldn’t be so cruel. I have been shuddering at the thought of it. Oh please, please, run away from me—before it is too late!”
“Is that the way it seems?” she asked.
“Corydon!” he cried. “I am a tormented man! There can’t be any happiness in the world for me. And you are so beautiful and so pure and so good—I simply dare not think of it! You must be happy, Corydon!”
“I have never yet been happy,” she said.
“Listen,” he went on—“there is a stanza of Walter Scott’s that came to me this morning—an outlaw song. It seemed to sum up all my feeling about it:
“ ‘Maiden! a nameless life I lead,
A nameless death I’ll die;
The fiend whose lantern lights the mead
Were better mate than I!’ ”
Corydon sat staring ahead. “You can’t frighten me away from you,” she said, in a low voice. “It isn’t worth your while to try. But let me tell you what I came to say. I’m so ignorant and so helpless—I didn’t see how I could be of any use to you. And so I wanted to tell you that you must do whatever seemed best to you—just don’t count me at all. You see what I mean—I’m not afraid for myself, but just for you. I couldn’t bear the thought that I might be in your way. I felt I had to come and tell you that, before you went back to your work.”
Now Thyrsis had set out with mighty battlements reared about him; and not all the houris and the courtesans of all the ages could have found a way to breach them. But before those simple sentences of Corydon’s, uttered in her gentle voice, and with her maiden’s gaze of wonder—the battlements crumbled and rocked.
And that was always the way of it. There were endless new explanations and new attitudes, new excursions and discoveries. They would part with a certain understanding, but they never knew with what view they would meet in the morning. They were swung from one extreme to the other, from certitude to doubt, from joy to dismay and despair. And so, day after day they would sit and talk, for uncounted hours. Corydon would come to the little cabin, or Thyrsis would come to the village, and they would wander about the roads or the woods, forgetting their meals, forgetting all the world. Once they wandered away into the mountains, and they sat until the dusk closed round them; they were almost lost that night.
“Of course,” Thyrsis had been saying, “we should not be married like other men and women.”
“No,” said Corydon, “of course not.”
“We should be brother and sister,” he said.
“Yes,” she assented.
“And it would not be real marriage—I mean, it would be just for the world’s eyes.”
“So I don’t see how it could hinder you,” Corydon added. “Whatever I did that was wrong, you would tell me. And then too, about money. I shouldn’t be any burden; for I have twenty-five dollars a month of my own.”
“I had no idea of that,” said Thyrsis.
“I’ve only had it for a year,” said Corydon. “An aunt left me nearly four thousand dollars. I can’t touch the principal until I’m thirty, but I have the income, and that will buy me everything I need. And so it would be just as if you didn’t have me to think of.”
“I don’t think the money side matters so much,” was his reply. “It’s only this summer, you see—until I’ve finished the book.”
Section 8. The key to all the future was the book; but alas, the book was not coming on. How could one write amid such excitement? This was a new kind of wine in Thyrsis’ blood. This was reality! And before it his dream-phantoms seemed to have dissolved into nothingness.
They would make a compact for so many days, and he would start to work; but he would find himself thinking of Corydon, and new problems would arise, and he would take to writing her notes—and finally realize in despair that he might as well go and see her.
Meantime Corydon would be wrestling with tasks of her own. They had talked over her development, and agreed that what she needed was discipline. And because Thyrsis had read her some of Goethe’s lyrics, she had decided to begin with German. Thyrsis had wasted a great deal of time with German courses in college, and so he was able to tell her everything not to do. He got her a little primer of grammar, just enough to make clear the language-structure; and then he set her to acquiring a vocabulary. He had little books full of words that he had prepared for himself, and these she drilled into her brain, all day and nearly all night. She stopped for nothing but to eat—in the woods when the weather was fair and in her room when it rained, she studied words, words, words! And she made amazing progress—while Thyrsis was wrestling with his angels she read Grimm’s fairy tales, and some of Heyse’s “Novellen,” and “Hermann and Dorothea,” and “Wilhelm Tell.”
But these were children’s tasks, and her pilgrimage was one of despair. Above were the heights where Thyrsis dwelt, inaccessible,