Thyrsis had turned to see the child. He looked at it, and clenched his hands to control his emotions. Yes, it was a man! it was a man! Not a monster, not a demon—a baby!
His boy! himself! God, what a ghastly thing to realize! It had his forehead, it had his nose! It was a caricature of himself! A caricature grotesque and impish, and yet one that no human being could mistake—a caricature by the hand of a master!
And it was a living thing! It had power of motion—it twisted and writhed, it bent its arms and legs! It winked its eyelids, it opened and shut its mouth, it breathed and made sounds! And it had feeling, too! It had cried out when it was struck!
Gently, with one finger, he touched it; and the contact with its flesh sent a shudder through every nerve of him. His child! His child! And a living child! A creature that would go on; that would eat and sleep and grow, that would learn to make sounds, and to understand things! That would come to think and to will! That would be a man!
“Is it—is it all right?” he asked the nurse, in a trembling whisper.
“It’s a magnificent boy,” she said. And then she struck a match, and held the light in front of its eyes; and the eyes turned to follow the light. “He sees!” she said.
Yes, he could see! And Thyrsis had already heard that he could speak! What could it not do—this marvellous object! It was Nature’s supreme miracle—it was the answer to all the riddles, the solution of all the mysteries! It was a vindication of the subterfuges, a reward for the sacrifices, a balm for the pain! It was the thing for which all the rest had been, it was the crown and consummation of their love—it was Life’s supreme shout of triumph and exultation!
The nurse was holding the child up before Corydon; and she was gazing at it, she was feeding her eyes upon it. And oh, the smile that came upon her face—the ineffable smile! The pride, and the relief, and the beatific happiness! This thing she had done—it was her act of creation! Her battle that had been fought, her victory that had been won; and now they brought her the crown and the guerdon! To Thyrsis there came suddenly the words of Jesus: “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour hath come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” And he sunk down beside the bed, and caught the woman’s hand in his, and began to sob softly to himself.
Section 12. Later on he went into the street. Evening was come again—for twenty-two hours that siege had lasted! And the boy had eaten nothing since noon of the day before, and he was weak and dizzy.
But how strange the world seemed to him all at once! Peopled with phantom creatures, that came he knew not whence, and went he knew not whither! Creatures of awe and horror, who came out of chaos, and went back into annihilation! Who were flung here and there by cosmic forces, played with by tragic destinies! And all of them without any sense of the perpetual marvel of their own being! They ate and dressed and slept, they laughed and played and worked, they hated and loved and got and spent, with no thought of the wonder of their lightest breath, with no sense of the terrors that ringed them about—the storms that swept them hither and thither, the million miracles that were wrought for them every instant of their lives!