“And a home without a landlady!” she added.
“And with no saloon underneath!” said he. “And no street-cars and no screaming children in front of it!”
Instead there was the night with its thousand eyes, and the lake, with the moon-fire flung wide across it, and the pine-trees singing in the wind.
“Brr! it’s cold!” exclaimed Corydon.
“We’ll have to sleep with our clothes on for a while,” said he. And yet they laughed aloud in glee. “It’s all we want!”
“It’s all we ever could want!” declared Corydon. “Oh, let’s work hard and earn money enough, so that we can stay here beneath the open sky, and not have to go back into slavery!”
Then, in the morning, the joy of a plunge in the icy lake, and of a run in the woods, and of breakfast eaten in the warm sunlight! There was much work still to be done; Thyrsis had to build a stand of shelves and a table for the tent, and a table and a bench outside; and then all their belongings had to be unpacked and set in order. Such fun as they had laying out the imaginary partitions in their house; two bedrooms and a library, a kitchen and a pantry—and all outdoors for a living-room!
They would count this the beginning of their love; at last they were free to love, and to be happy as they chose. There was no longer anyone to criticize them scarcely anyone to know about them; their only contact with the world was when they went for the mail and for provisions. They learned that the washer-woman who came for their clothes was ashamed for the poverty in which they lived, and that some of the neighbors suspected them of being oil-smugglers; on two occasions came sheriffs from distant counties to compare Thyrsis with the photographs and descriptions of long-sought bank-burglars and murderers. But although Thyrsis had often declared that he would rob a bank to secure his freedom to work, he had not yet done it, and so these experiences only added piquancy to their adventure.
It was a life such as might have been lived in the Garden of Eden. They cooked and ate and studied out doors, in a sunny glade when it was cool, and in the shade of a great oak-tree when it was warm. They wandered about in the forest, they bathed naked in the crystal lake—diving from the rocky headland, and afterwards standing upon it and drying themselves in the sun. Corydon was now free to fling away the conventionalities which had hampered her in the city; by way of signalizing her enfranchisement she cut short her hair—that untamed, rebellious hair which had taken so long to dry and to braid and to keep in order!
So they lived, in daily touch with the great heart of Nature. They saw the sun rise on one side of the rocky headland, and set upon the other; they watched the great storms sweep across the lake, and the lightnings stab into the water. Sometimes, at night, the gale would shake their tent until they could not be sure if it was wind or thunder; but the stays held fast, and they slept untroubled. And then the storm would pass, and in the morning there would be the lake, sparkling in the sunlight; and the sky, clear as crystal, with the white gulls wheeling about, and grey-blue herons standing near the shore.