He had decided upon the title of the book—“Art and Money: an Essay in the Economic Interpretation of Literature”. And then, late one night, as he was pondering it, there had flashed over him the form into which he should cast the work; he would make it, not only an exposition of his philosophy, but the story of his life, the cry of his soul. There had come to him an introductory statement; it was a smashing thing—a thing that would arrest and stun! Disraeli had said that a critic was a man who had failed as a creative writer; and Thyrsis would take that taunt and make it into his battle-cry. “I who write this,” he would say—“I am a failure; I am a murdered artist! I sit by the corpse of my dead dreams, I dip my pen into the heart’s blood of my strangled vision!” So he would indict the forces that had murdered him, and through the rest of the book he would pursue them—he would track them to their lair and corner them, and slay them with a sharp sword.
Meantime Delia Gordon had gone back to her studies, and Corydon had settled down to her lonely task. She washed and dressed and fed the baby, and satisfied what she could of his insatiable demands for play. Thyrsis would come and help to get the meals and wash the dishes; but even then he was poor company—he was either tired out, or lost in thought, and his nerves were in such a state that he could not bear to be criticized. It was getting to be harder for him to endure the strain of hearing complaints; and so Corydon shrunk more and more into herself, and took to pouring out her soul in long letters and journals.
“Is it possible,” she wrote to Delia, “that to some people life is a continuous expiation—an expiation of submerged hereditary sins, as well as of conscious ones? A great deal of the time life seems to me a hopeless puzzle; I am so utterly unfitted for the roles I labor to play. Is it that I am too low for my environment? Or can it be that I am too high? Surely there must some day be other things that women can do in the world besides training children. I try to love my task, but I have no talent for it, and it is a frightful strain upon me. After one hour of blocks and choo-choo cars, I am perfectly prostrated. I have been cheated out of the joys of motherhood, that is the truth—the spring was poisoned for me at the very beginning.
“You must not mind my lamentations, dear Delia,” she wrote in another letter. “You can’t imagine how lonely my life is—no, for it is different when you are here. Oh, I am so weary! so weary! It didn’t use to be like this. Every moment of leisure I had I would run and try to study; I would read something—I was always eager and hungry. But now I am dull—I do not follow my inspirations. If only Thyrsis and I might sometimes read together! I love to be read to, but he cannot bear it—he reads three times as fast to himself, he says. He will do it if I am sick; but even then it makes him nervous, and I cannot help but know that, however he tries to hide it. It is one of our troubles, but we know each other’s states of mind intuitively.
“Oh, Delia, was there ever a tragedy in the world like that of our love? (Almost everything in our lives is pain, and so we are coming to stand for pain to each other!) I ask myself sometimes if any two people who love could stand what we have to stand. Sometimes I think they could, if their love was different; but then that thought breaks my heart! Why cannot our love be different, I ask!
“I had one of my frightful fits of unhappiness to-day. It was nothing—it was my fault, I guess. I am very sensitive. But I think it is a tendency of Thyrsis’ temperament to try instinctively to overcome mine. Apparently the only thing that will conquer him is seeing me suffer; then he will give way—he will promise anything I want, blame himself for his rigidity, scourge himself for his blindness, do anything at all I ask. So I tell myself, everything will be different now; the last problem is solved! I see how good and kind he is, how noble his impulses are; he has never failed me in the big things of life.
“I suppose Mr. Harding writes you about us. He was up here this afternoon. He was very gentle and kind to me; he talked about his religion. Did you tell him much about me? It is a singular thing, how he seems to understand without being told. I realized to-day that whenever we talk about my life, we take everything for granted. Also, it seems strange that he does not blame me; generally people who are conventional think that I am selfish, that I ought to be loving my baby, instead of struggling with my pitiful soul.
“I wrote a little stanza the other night, dear Delia. Doesn’t it seem strange, that when I am at the last gasp with agony, I should find myself thinking of lines of poetry? I called it ‘Life’; you will say that it is too sombre—
“‘A lonely journey in a night of storm, Lighted by flashes of inconstant faith, Goaded by multitudes of vague desires, And mocked by phantoms of remote delight!’”
Section 5. Just at this time Corydon found herself the victim of backaches and fits of exhaustion, for which there was no cause to be discovered. Each attack meant that Thyrsis would have to drop his work, and come and be housekeeper and nurse; he would have to repress every slightest sign of the impatience, which, was burning him up—knowing that if he gave vent to it, he would drive Corydon half-wild with suffering. After two or three such crises, he made up his mind that it was impossible for him to go on, until there was some one to help her in these emergencies.