The boy was not disturbed by all this, for he had long ago made up his mind that every man had to work out his own sex-problems; in fact, his first impulse was to admire a man who had had the courage to face the world upon such an issue. But he was sorry he had mentioned it to his mother, for she wept bitterly when she found that he meant to accept the invitation. That was the culmination of her life’s defeat—that her son, who had been designed for a bishop, should be going to sit at table with Henry Darrell and his paramour!
Section 9. Thyrsis went to the apartment-hotel where Darrell lived, and was introduced to the beautiful lady as Mrs. Darrell, and they went down to the dining-room—where he noticed that everyone turned to stare at them as they entered. It made him feel that he must be doing something quite desperate; and yet it was not easy to imagine any wickedness of the man opposite to him—his voice was so kind, and his smile so gentle, and his whole aspect so appealing. He was dressed in black, and wore a soft black bow at his throat, which made still more conspicuous the pallor of his face; Thyrsis had never met a man he took to more quickly—there was something about him that was like a little child, calling for affection and sympathy.
Yet, also, there was the mind of a thinker. He was a man of culture, in the most vital sense of the word; he had swept the heavens of thought with a powerful telescope—had travelled, and knew many languages, and their literatures and arts. He had tested them all by a strong acid of his own; so that to talk with him was to discover the feet of clay of one’s idols.
He spoke of Dante and Angelo, who were two of his heroes; he told of great experiences among the latter’s titan frescos. He spoke of Mazzini, whose greatness as a writer the world had yet to appreciate; he spoke also of Wagner, whose music he valued less than his critical and polemical work. He told of modern artists both in Germany and Italy—revolutionary forces of whom Thyrsis had never heard at all. The day must come, said Darrell, when Americans would discover the great movements of contemporary thought, and realize their own provincialness. America thought of itself as “the land of the free”, and that made it hard to teach. It was obvious enough that there had never been any real freedom in America—only government by propertied classes. The Revolution had been a rebellion of country gentlemen and city merchants; as one might know from the “constitution” they had adopted—one of the greatest barriers to human progress ever devised. And so with the Civil War, which to Darrell was one of the deeds of the newly-risen monster of Capitalism.
They went upstairs again, and Thyrsis found another man seated in the drawing-room. He was introduced by the name of Paret, and Thyrsis recognized him as the editor of “The Beacon”, a magazine of which he had chanced upon a copy some time before. It was the first Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it had repelled him because its editor had printed his own picture in a conspicuous place, and also because in his leading editorial he had dealt flippantly with an eminent reformer and philanthropist for whom Thyrsis had a profound respect.
But here was the editor himself—not merely his photograph: a little man, clad in evening dress, very neat and dapper. He had a black beard, trimmed to a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he impressed Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles. He lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to talk; save that every now and then he would punctuate the discussion with some droll reflection that stuck in one’s mind like a burr.
Some one spoke of certain evangelists who were conducting a temperance campaign among the workers in the steel-mills. Said Paret: “If I had to live in hell, I’m sure I’d rather be drunk than sober!” And a little later Thyrsis spoke of a novel he had been reading, which set out to solve the problem of “capital and labor”. Its solution seemed to be for the handsome young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, “No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch.” Again, Darrell was telling about the ten years’ struggle he had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given up in despair. Paret remarked, “For my part, I never try to talk economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-man, he understands a business proposition, and you can get somewhere; but when you talk with a preacher, and you think he’s been understanding you, you find that all the time he’s been thinking what Moses would have said about it.”
There came other guests: a German, hard-fisted, bullet-headed—editor of an East Side labor-paper. Some one spoke of working-men losing their votes through being unemployed and cast adrift; and Thyrsis remembered this man’s grim comment, “They lose their votes, but they don’t lose their voices!” There came a young man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal battering-ram shook the institutions of society so as to frighten even the author of “The Higher Cannibalism”. There came also a poetess, whose work he had seen in the magazines, and with her a Russian youth who had come to study the thought of America, and was now going home, because America had no thought. Thyrsis had a good deal of patriotism left in him, and might have been angered by this stripling’s contempt; but the stripling spoke with such quiet assurance, and his contempt was so boundless as to frighten one. “These people,” he said—“they simply do not know what the intellectual life means!”
When Thyrsis went home that evening, he carried with him new ideas to ponder; also some of Darrell’s pamphlets and speeches—the product of his ten years’ struggle to make the teachings of Christ of some authority in the Christian Church. Thyrsis sat up late, and read one of these pamphlets, an indictment of Capitalism from the point of view of the artist and spiritual creator. It was a magnificent piece of writing; it came to Thyrsis like an echo out of his own life. So, before he slept that night he had written a letter to Darrell, telling of his struggles and his defeats. “I do not ask you to help me” he wrote. “I ask you to read my work, and decide if that be worth saving. For ashamed as I am to say it, I am at the end of my resources, and if some help does not come, I do not know what will become of me.”
Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and successful of the earth—the publishers and editors and authors, the college professors and clergymen, the statesmen and capitalists and philanthropists. And now, for the first time, he tried the Socialists. He trembled when he opened Darrell’s reply. Could it be that this man would be like all the rest?