Section 14. A couple of days after the Darrells sailed, Thyrsis set out himself to find a home. On account of the new book, he would have to be near a library, and so he had selected a college-town not far from New York. He went there now, and put up for a week at a students’ boarding-house, while prosecuting his search.
A strange experience it was to him, after the years of struggle and contact with the world, to come back to that academic atmosphere; to find men who were still peacefully counting up the “feminine endings” in Shakespeare’s verse, and writing elaborate theses upon the sources of the Spenserian legends. Upon his excursions into the country some of these young men would tramp with him—threshing out, student-fashion, the problems of the universe; and how staggering it was to meet a man who was about to receive a master’s degree in literature—and who regarded Arthur Hugh Clough as a “dangerous” poet, and Tennyson’s “Two Voices” as containing vital thought, and T. H. Green as the world’s leading philosopher! And this was the “education” that was dispensed at America’s most aristocratic university—for this many millions of dollars had been contributed, and scores of magnificent buildings erected!
Thyrsis saw that a partial explanation lay in the fact that in connection with the university there existed a great theological seminary. Some of these future ministers came also to the boarding-house, and Thyrsis listened to their shop-talk—about the difference between “transubstantiation” and “consubstantiation”, and the status of the controversy over the St. John Gospel. He heard one man cite arguments from Paley’s “Moral Philosophy”; and another making bold to state that he was uncertain about the verbal inspiration of the Pentateuch!
To Thyrsis, as he listened to these discussions, it was as if he felt a black shadow stealing across his soul. He wondered why he should hate these men with a personal hatred; he tried to argue with himself that they must be well-meaning and earnest. The truth was that they seemed to him just like the law-students, men moved by sordid and low ideals; the only difference was that their minds were not so keen as the lawyers’. Thyrsis was coming little by little to understand the economic causes of things, and he perceived that this theological world represented a stagnant place in the stream of national culture; it being a subsidized world, maintained half by charity, vital men turned from it; it drew to itself the feebler minds, or such as wished to live at ease, and not inquire too closely into the difference between truth and falsehood.
Section 15. A few miles out from the town Thyrsis found a farm with an abundance of wild woodland, where the farmer gave him permission to camp. And so he went back and got some lumber, and loaded his tent and supplies on a wagon, and wrote Corydon that he would meet her the next afternoon. With the help of the farmer’s boy he labored the rest of the day at building the platform, and putting up the tent, and getting their belongings in order. The next day he was up at dawn, constructing tables and stands; and later on he hired the farmer’s “jagger-wagon”, and drove in for Corydon and Cedric and the trunks.
It was a glorious spring day, of turquoise sky and glinting sunshine; and later, when the sun was low, the woods were flushed with a glow of scarlet and purple. It lent a glory to the scene, shedding a halo about the commonest tasks; the unpacking of blankets and dishes, the ranging of groceries upon shelves. They were free from all the world at last—they were setting out upon the journey of their lives together!
So it was with singing and laughter that they went at their work. The baby crawled about on the tent-floor and got into everybody’s way, and crowed with delight at the novel surroundings; and later on his mother gave him his supper and put him to bed; and then she spread a feast of bread and butter, and fresh milk and eggs and a can of fruit, and they sat down to the first meal they had eaten together in many a long, long month.
They were tired and ravenously hungry; but their happiness of soul was keener even than any physical sensation, and they sat leaning upon their elbows and gazing across the table, reading the wonder in each other’s eyes.
“It has been a year since we parted!” whispered Corydon.
“Just a year!” he said. “It seems like ten of them.”