Love's Pilgrimage Part 35

After a while he rose up. He paced the hall, talking to himself. He could not go on acting in this way--he must be a man. Others had borne this--he would bear it too; he would get himself together. It would all be over before long, and then how he would be ashamed of himself!

He went back. "It is the chloroform that makes her do that," said the young nurse, soothingly. "She is out of pain when she cries out so."

Corydon was coming back from her stupor; the strife began again. She cried out for its end, she could bear no more. "Help me! Help me!" she moaned.

The head was the size of a saucer now--but each time that she screamed it would go back. Thyrsis stood up to get the strength to grip her hand; her face stared up into the air, looking like the face of a wolf. And still there was no end--no end!

There was an hour more of that--the room seemed to Thyrsis to reel.

Corydon was crying, moaning that she wished to die. There was now in sight a huge, bulging object--black, monstrous--rimmed with a band of bleeding, straining flesh, tight like the top of a drum. The doctor was bent over, toiling, breathless.

"No more! No more!" screamed the girl. "Oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d!"

And the doctor answered her, panting: "Once more! once more! Now! now!"

And so on, for minute after minute; luring her on, pleading with her, promising her, lying to her--"Once more! Once more! This will be the last!" He called to her, he rallied her; he signalled to Thyrsis to help him--to inspire her, to goad her to new endurance.

And then another t.i.tan effort, and suddenly--incredibly--there burst upon Thyrsis' sight an apparition. Sick at heart, numb with horror, dazed--he scarcely knew what it was. It happened so swiftly that he had hardly time to see; but something leaped forth something enormous, supernatural! It came--it came--there seemed never to be an end to it!

He started to his feet, staring, crying out; and at the same moment the doctor lifted the thing aloft, with a cry of exultation. He held it dangling by one leg. Great G.o.d! It was a man!

A man! A thing with the head of a man, the body of a man, the legs and arms, the face of a man! A thing hideous--impish--demoniac! A thing purple and dripping with blood--ghastly--unthinkable--monstrous--a spectre of nightmare dreams!

And suddenly the doctor lifted his hand and smote it; and the mouth of the thing opened, and there came forth a purplish froth--and then a cry!

It was a sound like a tin-pan beaten--a sound that was itself a living presence, an apparition; a thing superhuman, out of another world--like the wailing of a lost spirit, terrifying to every sense! With Thyrsis it was like the falling down of towers within him--his whole being collapsed, and he sunk down upon the bed, sobbing, choking, convulsed.

Section 11. When he looked up again the elder nurse had the baby in her arms; and there was a wan smile on Corydon's face.

The doctor's hand was in the ghastly wound, and he was talking to the young nurse, giving her instruction, in a strange, monotonous tone. "The placenta," he was saying, "often has to be removed; we do it by twisting it round and round--very gently, of course. Then it comes--so!"

There came a rush of blood, and Thyrsis turned away his head.

"Give me the basin," said the doctor. "There!--And now the next thing is to see that the uterus contracts immediately. We a.s.sist it by compressing the walls, thus. It must be tightly bandaged."

Thyrsis had turned to see the child. He looked at it, and clenched his hands to control his emotions. Yes, it was a man! it was a man! Not a monster, not a demon--a baby!

His boy! himself! G.o.d, what a ghastly thing to realize! It had his forehead, it had his nose! It was a caricature of himself! A caricature grotesque and impish, and yet one that no human being could mistake--a caricature by the hand of a master!

And it was a living thing! It had power of motion--it twisted and writhed, it bent its arms and legs! It winked its eyelids, it opened and shut its mouth, it breathed and made sounds! And it had feeling, too! It had cried out when it was struck!

Gently, with one finger, he touched it; and the contact with its flesh sent a shudder through every nerve of him. His child! His child! And a living child! A creature that would go on; that would eat and sleep and grow, that would learn to make sounds, and to understand things! That would come to think and to will! That would be a man!

"Is it--is it all right?" he asked the nurse, in a trembling whisper.

"It's a magnificent boy," she said. And then she struck a match, and held the light in front of its eyes; and the eyes turned to follow the light. "He sees!" she said.

Yes, he could see! And Thyrsis had already heard that he could speak!

What could it not do--this marvellous object! It was Nature's supreme miracle--it was the answer to all the riddles, the solution of all the mysteries! It was a vindication of the subterfuges, a reward for the sacrifices, a balm for the pain! It was the thing for which all the rest had been, it was the crown and consummation of their love--it was Life's supreme shout of triumph and exultation!

The nurse was holding the child up before Corydon; and she was gazing at it, she was feeding her eyes upon it. And oh, the smile that came upon her face--the ineffable smile! The pride, and the relief, and the beatific happiness! This thing she had done--it was her act of creation!

Her battle that had been fought, her victory that had been won; and now they brought her the crown and the guerdon! To Thyrsis there came suddenly the words of Jesus: "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour hath come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." And he sunk down beside the bed, and caught the woman's hand in his, and began to sob softly to himself.

Section 12. Later on he went into the street. Evening was come again--for twenty-two hours that siege had lasted! And the boy had eaten nothing since noon of the day before, and he was weak and dizzy.

But how strange the world seemed to him all at once! Peopled with phantom creatures, that came he knew not whence, and went he knew not whither! Creatures of awe and horror, who came out of chaos, and went back into annihilation! Who were flung here and there by cosmic forces, played with by tragic destinies! And all of them without any sense of the perpetual marvel of their own being! They ate and dressed and slept, they laughed and played and worked, they hated and loved and got and spent, with no thought of the wonder of their lightest breath, with no sense of the terrors that ringed them about--the storms that swept them hither and thither, the million miracles that were wrought for them every instant of their lives!

He went into a restaurant, and sat down; and in the seat beside him, close at his elbow, was a man. He was a fat man--eating roast pork, and apple-sauce, and mashed potatoes, and bread. And Thyrsis looked at him with wondering eyes. "Man," he imagined himself saying, "do you know how you came into this world? A thing impish, demoniac--purple and dripping with blood--a spectre of nightmare dreams?"

"W-what?" the man gasped.

"And you know nothing of the pain that it cost! You have no sense of the strangeness of it! You never think what your coming meant to some woman!"

And then--in the seat opposite was a woman; and Thyrsis watched her.

"You!" he thought, "a woman! Can it be that you know what you are? The fate that you play with--the power that dwells in you! To create new life, that may be handed down through endless ages!"

Thyrsis did not say these things; they were what he wanted to say--what he thought that he ought to say. But then he reminded himself that these things were forbidden; these mighty facts of child-birth, of life-creation--they might not be spoken about! They must be kept hidden, veiled with mystery--if one wished to refer to them, he must employ metaphors and polite evasions.

And as Thyrsis sat and thought about this, he clenched his hands. Some day the world would hear about it--some day the world would think about it! Some day people would behold life--would realize what it was and what it meant. They did not realize it now--else how could it be that women, who bore the race with so much pain and sorrow, should be drudges and slaves, or the ornaments and playthings of men? Else how could it be that life, which cost such a fearful price, should be so cheap upon the earth? For every man that lived and walked alive, some woman had had to bear this agony; and yet men were pent up in mines and sweatshops, they were ground up in accidents in factories and mills--nay, worse than that, were dressed up in gaudy uniforms, and armed with rifles and machine-guns, and marched out to slaughter each other by tens and hundreds of thousands!

So, as he walked the streets that night, Thyrsis made a vow. Some day he would put before the world this vision that had come to him, some day he would blast men's souls with it. He would shake them with this horror, he would thrill them with this sense of the infinite preciousness and holiness of life! He would drive it into them like a barbed arrow--that never afterwards in all their lives would they be rid of. Never afterwards would they dare to mock, never afterwards would they be able to rest until these things had been done away with, until these horrors had been driven from the earth.

PART II

Love's Captivity

BOOK VIII

THE CAPTIVE BOUND

_They sat with the twilight shadows about them. Memories too poignant a.s.sailed them, and her hand trembled as it lay upon his arm.

"How strange it was!" she whispered. "Have we kept the faith?"

"Who knows?" he answered; and in a low voice he read--

"And long the way appears, which seem'd so short To the less practised eye of sanguine youth; And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air, The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth, Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!"_

Section 1. This was a golden hour in Thyrsis' life. The gates of wonder were flung open, and all things were touched with a new and mystic glow.

He scarcely realized it at the time; for once he was too much moved to think about his own emotions, the artist was altogether lost in the man.

Even the room in which he lodged was relieved of its sordidness; it was a thing that men had made, and so a part of the mystery of becoming.

He yearned for some one to whom he could impart his great emotion; but because of the loneliness of his life he could find no one but the keeper of his lodging-house. Even she became a human thing to him, because of her interest in the great tidings. If all the world loved a lover, it loved yet more one through whom the supreme purpose of love had been accomplished.