Love's Pilgrimage

BOOK II. THE SNARE-2

“That is the way,” he said.

“And that is why you live like a hermit!”

“Yes, that is why.”

“And you think that you would lose your vision if you went among people?”

“I know that I should.”

“But how do you know?”

“I know because I have tried. You don’t realize how hard I have to work over a thing like this. I have carried it in my mind for a year; I have lived for nothing else—I have literally had no other interest in the world. Every sentence I have read to you has been the product of work added to work—of one impulse piled upon another—of thinking and criticizing and revising. Just the little bit I have done has taken me a whole month, and I have hardly stopped to eat; it’s been my first thought in the morning and my last at night. And when the mood of it comes to me, then I work in a kind of frenzy that lasts for hours and even days; and if I give up in the middle and fall back, then I have to do it all over again. It’s like toiling up a mountain-side.”

“I see,” whispered Corydon. “And then, do you expect to have no human relationships as long as you live?”

Thyrsis pondered for a moment. “Did you ever read Mrs. Browning’s poem, ‘A Musical Instrument’?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

“It’s a most beautiful poem,” he said; “and it’s hardly ever quoted or read, that I can find. It tells how the great god Pan came down by the river-bank, and cut one of the reeds to make himself a pipe. He sat there and played his music upon it—

‘Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies reviv’d, and the dragon-fly

Came back to dream on the river.

‘Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man.

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.’”

Thyrsis paused. “Do you see what it means?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Corydon, “I see.”

“’Making a poet out of a man!’ That is one of the finest lines I know. And that’s the way I feel about it—I have given up all other duties in the world. If I can write one book, or even one poem, that will be an inspiration to men in the future—why, then I have done far more than I could do by a lifetime given to helping people around me.”

“I never understood before,” said Corydon.

“That is the idea the minstrel tries to voice to the princess. At first he pours out his soul to her; but then, when he finds that she loves him, he is afraid, and tries to persuade her not to come with him. He tells her how lonely and stern his life is; and she has been born to a gentle life—she has her station and her duty in the world. But the more he pleads the hardness of his life, the more she sees she must go with him. Even if the end be death to her, still she will be an inspiration to him, and give wings to his music. ‘Be silent,’ she tells him—’let me fling myself away for a song! To do one deed that the world remembers, to utter one word that lives forever—that is worth all the failure and the agony that can come to one woman in her lifetime!’”

Corydon sat with her hands clasped. “Yes,” she said, “that is the way she would feel!”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” remarked the other. “I must make it real; and I’ve been afraid about it. Would she really go with him?”

“She would go if she loved him,” said Corydon.

“If she loved him. But she must love his art still more.”

“She must love him,” said Corydon.

Thyrsis shook his head. “It would not do for her to go with him for that,” he said.

“Why not? Doesn’t he love her?”

“Yes; but he is afraid to tell her so. They dare not let that sway them.”

“I don’t understand. Why not?”

“Because personal love is a limited thing, and comparatively an ignoble thing.”

“I don’t see how there can be anything more noble than true love between a man and a woman,” declared Corydon.

“It depends on what you mean by ‘true’ love,” replied Thyrsis. “If two people love each other for their own sakes, and go together, they soon come to know each other, and then they are satisfied—and their growth is at an end. What I conceive is that two people must lose themselves, and all thought of themselves, in their common love for something higher—for some great ideal, some purpose, some vision of perfection. And they seek this together, and they rejoice in finding it, each for the other; and so they have always progress and growth—they stand for something new to each other every day of their lives. To such love there is no end, and no chance of weariness or satiety.”

“I had never thought of it just so,” said the girl. “But surely there must be a personal love in the beginning.”

“I don’t know,” he responded. “I hadn’t thought about that. I’m afraid I’m impersonal by nature.”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what has puzzled me. Don’t you love human beings?”

“Not as a rule,” he confessed.

“But then—what is it you are interested in? Yourself?”

“People tell me that’s the case. And there’s a sense in which it’s true—I’m wrapped up in the thought of myself as an art-work. I’ve a certain vision of the possibilities of my own being, and I’m trying to realize it. And if I do, then I can write books and communicate it to other people, so that they can judge it, and see if it’s any better than the vision they have. It is a higher kind of unselfishness, I think.”

“I see,” said Corydon. “It’s not easy to understand.”

“No one understands it,” he replied. “People are taught that they must sacrifice themselves for others; and they do it, blindly and stupidly, and never ask if the other person is worthy of the sacrifice—and still less if they themselves have anything worth sacrificing.”

Corydon had clenched her hands suddenly. “How I hate the religion of self-sacrifice!” she cried.

“Mine is a religion of self-development,” said Thyrsis. “I am sacrificing myself for what other people ought to be.”

Section 4. They came back after a time, to the subject of love; and to the ideal of it which Thyrsis meant to set forth in the book. It was the duty of every soul to seek the highest potentiality of which it had vision; and as one did that for himself, so he did it for the person he loved. There could be no higher love than this—to treat the thing beloved as one’s self, to be perpetually dissatisfied with it, to scourge it to new endeavor, to hold it in immortal discontent.

This was a point about which they argued with eager excitement. To Thyrsis, love itself was a prize to be held before the loved one; whereas Corydon argued that love must exist before such a union could be thought of. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone as she maintained the thesis that the princess could not go with the minstrel unless his love was given to her irrevocably.

“If you mean by love a sense of oneness in the pursuit of an ideal, then I agree with you,” said Thyrsis. “But if you mean what love generally means—a mutual admiration, the worshipping of another personality—then I don’t.”

“And are lovers not even to be interesting to each other?” cried Corydon.

But the poet did not shrink even from that. “I don’t think a woman could be interesting to me—except in so far as she was growing. And she must always know that if she stopped growing, she would cease to be interesting. That is not a matter of anybody’s will, it seems to me—it is a fact of soul-chemistry.”

“I don’t think you will find many women to love you on that basis,” said Corydon.

“I never expected to find but one,” was Thyrsis’ reply; “and I may not find even one.”

She sat watching him for a moment. “I had never realized the sublimity of your egotism,” she said. “It would never occur to you to judge anyone else by your own standards, would it?”

“That is very well put,” laughed Thyrsis. “As a matter of fact, I have a maxim that I count all things lost in the world but my own soul.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I can depend on my own soul; and I have not yet met anything else in life of which I can say that.”

Again there was a pause. “You are as hard as iron!” exclaimed the girl.

“I am harder than anything you can find for your simile,” he answered. “I know simply that there is no force existing that can turn me from my task.”

“You might meet some woman who would fascinate you.”

“Perhaps,” he replied. “I have done things I’m ashamed of, and I’ve a wholesome fear of doing more of them. But I know that that woman, whoever she might be, would wake up some morning and find me missing.”

Then for a while he sat staring at the eddies in the pool below. “I have a vision of another kind of woman,” he said—”a woman to whom my ideal would be the same compelling force that it is to me—a living thing that would drive her, that she was both master of, and slave to, as I am. So that she would feel no fears, and ask no favors! So that she would not want mercy, nor ask pledges—but just give herself, as I give myself, and take the chances of the game. Don’t you think there may be just one such woman in the world?”

“Perhaps,” was the reply. “But then—mightn’t a woman be sure of your ideal, but not of you?”

“As to that,” said Thyrsis, “she would have to know me.

“As to that,” said Corydon, “she would have to love you.”

And Thyrsis smiled. “As in most arguments,” he said, “it’s mainly a matter of definitions.”

Section 5. At this point there came a call from the distance, and Corydon started. “There is mother,” she exclaimed. “How the afternoon has flown!”

“And must you go home now?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” she replied. “We have a long row.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to advise you about books to read. You must let me help you to find what you are seeking.”

“Ah,” said Corydon, “if you only will!”

“I will do anything I can,” he said. “I am ashamed of not having helped you before.”

They had risen and started towards the house. “Can’t you come to-morrow, and we can talk it over,” he said.

“But I thought you were going to work,” she objected.

“I can spare another day,” he replied. “A rest won’t hurt me, I know. And it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you this afternoon.”

So they settled it; and Thyrsis saw them off in the boat, and then he went back to the little cabin.

On the steps he stood still. “Corydon!” he muttered. “Little Corydon!”

That was always the way he thought of her; not only because he had known her when she was a child, but because this expressed his conception of her—she was so gentle and peaceable and meek. She was now eighteen, and he was only twenty, but he felt towards her as a grandfather might. But now had come this new revelation, that astonished him. She had been deeply stirred by his work—she had loved it; and this was no affectation, it was out of her inmost heart. And she was not really contented at all—she had quite a hunger for life in her!