Love's Pilgrimage Part 7

"It was all so dull and dreary," she went on--"everything they would have had me learn. I wanted things that had life in them, things that were beautiful and worth while--like this book of yours, for instance."

"I am really delighted that you like it," said Thyrsis, touched by that.

"Tell me the rest of it," she said.

Section 3. Thyrsis told his story at some length; in the ardor of her sympathy his imagination took fire, and he told it eloquently, he discovered new beauties in it that he had not seen before. And Corydon listened with growing delight and amazement.

"So that is the way you spend your time!" she exclaimed.

"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 relations.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man.

The true G.o.ds 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 ign.o.ble thing."

"I don't see how there can be anything more n.o.ble 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.