They met in the park; and strange it was to him to see Corydon after six months’ absence. She was beautiful as ever, somewhat paler, though still with the halo of motherhood about her. He could scarcely realize that she was his; she seemed like a dream to him—like some phantom of music, thrilling and wonderful, yet frail and unsubstantial. She clung to his arm, trembling with delight, and pouring out her longing and her grief. There came to them one of those golden hours, when the deeps of their souls welled up, and they pledged themselves anew to their faith.
Even stranger it was to see the child; to be able to look at him all he pleased, and to speak to him, and to hold him in his arms! He was as beautiful as Thyrsis could have wished, and the father had no trouble at all in being interested in him; his smiles were things to make the angels jealous. Thyrsis would push his carriage out into the park, and they would sit upon a bench and gaze at him—each making sure that the other had missed none of his fine points.
He was beginning to make sounds now, and had achieved the word “puss-ée”. This originally had signified the woolly kitten he carried with him, but now by a metonymy it had come to include all kinds of living things; and great was the delight of the parents when a big red automobile flashed past, and the baby pointed his finger, exclaiming gleefully, “Puss-ée!” It is an astonishing thing, how little it takes to make parents happy; regarded, purely as an abstract proposition, it would be difficult to explain why two people who possessed between them a total of sixty-four teeth, more or less, should have been so much excited by the discovery that the baby had four.
But parenthood, as Thyrsis found, meant more than charming baby-prattle and the counting of teeth. Little Cedric’s tiny fingers were twisted in his heart-strings—he loved him with a love the intensity of which frightened him when he realized it. And sometimes things went wrong, and then with a pang as from the stab of a knife would come the thought that he might some day lose this child. So much pain and toil a child cost, so much it took of one’s strength and power; and then, such a fragile thing it was—exposed to so many perils and uncertainties, to the ravages of so many diseases, that struck like a cruel enemy in the dark! Corydon and Thyrsis were so ignorant—they were like children themselves; and where should they turn for knowledge? There were doctors, of course; but this took so much money—and even with all the doctors, see how many babies died!
Thyrsis was learning the bitter truth of Bacon’s saying about “giving hostages to fortune.” And dearly as he loved the child, the artist in him cried out against these ties. Where now was that care-free outlook, that recklessness, that joy in life as a spectacle, which made up so much of the artist’s attitude? When one had a wife and child one no longer enjoyed tragedies—one lived, them; and one got from them, not katharsis, but exhaustion. One became timid and cautious and didactic, and other inartistic things. One learned that life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not its goal!
Cedric had been weaned; but still he was not growing properly. Could it be that there was something wrong with what they fed him? Corydon would come upon advertisements telling of wonderful newly-discovered foods for infants, and giving pictures of the rosy and stalwart ones who were fed upon these foods. She would take to buying them—and they were not cheap foods either. Then, during the winter, the child caught cold; and they took that to mean that it had been in some way exposed—that was what everybody said, and what the name “cold” itself suggested. So Corydon would add more flannel dresses and blankets, until the unfortunate mite of life would be in a purple stew. And still, apparently, these mysterious “colds” were not to be thwarted. Thyrsis felt that in all this there must be something radically wrong, and yet he knew not what to do. Surely it should not have been such a task to keep life in one human infant.
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.