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He had known also what it was to sacrifice for the sake of the future, and to see others, who thought of no one but themselves, preying upon him, and upon the community, and living in luxury and enjoying power. Little by little, as he studied this War, Thyrsis had come upon a strange and sinister fact about it.
The nerves of all the company were stretched to the breaking point; and overwrought as he was himself, Thyrsis could not but pity the unhappy "leading lady", who could hardly keep herself together, even with the drugs he saw her taking. The "dress-rehearsal" began at six o'clock on Sunday evening; and from the very start everything went wrong.
They learned that the washer-woman who came for their clothes was ashamed for the poverty in which they lived, and that some of the neighbors suspected them of being oil-smugglers; on two occasions came sheriffs from distant counties to compare Thyrsis with the photographs and descriptions of long-sought bank-burglars and murderers.
Each day, as he went for the mail, Thyrsis' heart would beat high with expectation; and each day he would be chilled with bitter disappointment. He was still hoping for a real review, or for some signs of the book's "catching on". Nor did he finally give up until he chanced to have a talk about it with his friend, Mr. Ardsley; who explained to him that here, too, he had fallen into a trap.
Believe me, trust me. Would I deceive you? You, for whom I am filled with the tenderest sentiments the heart can feel!" "And what, my Thyrsis, is the name you give this pleasing pain?" "It is called love," said Thyrsis. "Ah!" responded the maiden, "that is a beautiful name. Tell me by what signs I may know it, if it come to me. What are the feelings it gives one?"
The balance had to be drawn off with a little vacuum-pump; and Thyrsis would watch the tiny jets as they sprayed upon the glass bulb. The milk was rich and golden-hued; he tasted it, with mingled wonder and shuddering. These procedures filled the room with a warm, luscious odor, as of a dairy; they were eminently domestic procedures, such as in fancy he had been wont to tease her about.
As for what may be called unacademic literature, there were not many essays in that art. There have been very literary generations, as when Corydon and Thyrsis "lived in Oxford as if it had been a great country house;" so Corydon confessed. Probably many of the poems by Mr. Matthew Arnold and many of Mr. Swinburne's early works were undergraduate poems.
And when Thyrsis came to study the problem, he found that it was a struggle without hope; his father was a man in a trap. He was what people called a "drummer". He was dependent for his living upon the favor of certain merchants men for the most part of low ideals, who came to the city in search of their low pleasures.
Poor as he was, Thyrsis still found time to figure over the things he meant to do when he got money: the publishing-house that was to bring out his books at cost, and the free reading-rooms and the circulating libraries. Also, he wanted to edit a magazine; for there was a great truth which he wished to teach the world.
On the train Corydon was writing a letter to a friend, to say where she was going, and that Thyrsis was there. "I don't expect to see anything of him," she wrote. "He grows more egotistical and more contemptuous every day, and I cordially dislike him."
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