They sat still watching upon the hill-top, drinking in the scent of the clover.

“Ah, if only we might have come back here!” she sighed. “If only tee had never had to leave!”

“That way lies unhappiness” he said.

“Perhaps,” she answered; and then quoted—

“I wonder,” said he, “if the poet put as much into these stanzas as we find in them!”

Section 1. Through the summer Corydon had been living week by week upon the hope that her husband would be able to send for her; all through the fall she had been dreaming of the arrangements they would make for the winter. But by now it had become clear that they would have to be separated for a part of the winter as well. She had sent him long letters, full of hopes and yearnings, anxieties and rebellions; but in the end she had brought herself to face the inevitable. And then it transpired that even a greater sacrifice was required of her—she was to be forbidden to see Thyrsis at all! If a man did not support his wife, said the world, it was common-sense that he should not have any wife; that was the quickest way to bring him to his senses. And so the two had threshed out that problem, and chosen their course; they would live in the same city, and yet confine themselves to writing letters!

A curious feeling it gave Thyrsis, to know that she was so near to him, and yet not to be going to meet her! He could not endure any part of the city where he had been with her, and got himself a hall bedroom on the edge of a tenement-district far up town. Then he had his shoes shined, and purchased a clean collar, and wrote Miss Ethelynda Lewis that he was ready to call. While he was waiting to hear from her, there came to him a strange adventure; assuredly one of the strangest that ever befell a struggling poet, in a world where many strange adventures have befallen struggling poets.

For six months Thyrsis had not seen his baby; and there had come in the meantime so many letters, telling so many miraculous things about that baby! So many dreams he had dreamed about it, so many hopes and so many prayers were centered in it! Twenty-two hours had he sat by the bedside when it was born; and through all the trials that had come afterwards, how he had suffered and wept for it! Now his heart was wrung with longing to see it, to touch it—his child. He wrote Corydon that he could not stand it; and Corydon wrote back that he was right—he should surely see the baby. And so it was arranged between them that Thyrsis was to be at a certain place in the park, and she would send the nurse-girl there with little Cedric.

He went and sat upon a bench; and the hour came, and at last down the path strolled a nurse-girl, wheeling a baby-carriage. He looked at the girl—yes, she was Irish, as Cordon had said, and answered all specifications; and then he looked at the baby, and his heart sank into his boots. Oh, such a baby! With red hair and a pug-nose, plebeian and dull-looking—such a baby! Thyrsis stared at the maid again—and she smiled at him. Then she passed on, and he sank down upon a bench. Great God, could it be that that was his child? That he would have to go through life with something so ugly, so alien to him? A terror seized him. It was like a nightmare. He was hardly able to move.

But then he told himself it could not be! Corydon had written him all about the baby; it was beautiful, with a noble head; everyone loved it. But then, were not mothers notoriously blind? Had there ever been a mother dissatisfied with her child? Or a father either, for that matter? Was it not a kind of treason for him to be so disgusted with this one—since it so clearly must be his?

There was none other in sight; and though he waited half an hour, none came. At last he could stand it no more, but hurried away to the nearest telegraph-office. “Has baby red hair?” he wrote. “Did he come to the park?” And then he went to his room and waited, and soon after came the reply: “Baby has golden hair. Nurse was ill. Could not come.”

Thyrsis read this, and then shut the door upon the messenger-boy, and burst into wild, hilarious laughter. He stood there with his arms stretched out, invoking all posterity to witness—“What do you think of that? What do you think of that?”

And a full hour later he was sitting by his bedside, his chin supported on his hands, and still invoking posterity. “Will you ever know what I went through?” he was saying. “Will you ever realize what my books have cost?” Then he smiled grimly, thinking of Voltaire’s cruel epigram—that “letters addressed to posterity seldom reach their destination!”

Section 2. Thyrsis received a reply to his note, and went to call upon Miss Ethelynda Lewis. Miss Lewis dwelt in a luxurious apartment-house on Riverside Drive, where a colored maid showed him into a big parlor, full of spindle-legged gilt furniture upholstered in flowered silk. Also the room contained an ebony grand piano, and a bookcase, in which he had time to notice the works of Maupassant and Marie Corelli.

Then Miss Lewis entered, clad in a morning-gown of crimson “liberty”. She was petite and exquisite, full of alluring dimples—and apparently just out of a perfumed bath. Thyrsis sat on the edge of his chair and gazed at her, feeling quite out of his element.

She placed herself on the flowered silk sofa and talked. “I am immensely interested in that play,” she said. “It is quite unique. And you are so young, too—why, you seem just a boy. Really, you know I think you must be a genius yourself.”

Thyrsis murmured something, feeling uncomfortable.

“The only thing is,” Miss Lewis went on, “it will need a lot of revision to make it practical.”

“In what part?” he asked.

“The love-story, principally,” said the other. “You see, in that respect, you have simply thrown your chances away.”

“I don’t understand,” said he.

“You have made your hero act so queerly. Everyone feels that he is in love with Helena—you meant him to be, didn’t you? And yet he goes away from her and won’t see her! Everyone will be disappointed at that—it’s impossible, from every point of view. You’ll have to have them married in the last act.”

Thyrsis gasped for breath.

“You see,” continued Miss Lewis, “I am to play the part of Helena, and I am to be the star. And obviously, it would never do for me to be rejected, and left all up in the air like that. I must have some sort of a love-scene.”

“But”—protested the poet—“what you want me to change is what my play is about!”

“How do you mean?” asked the other.

“Why, it’s a new kind of love,” he stammered—“a different kind.”

“But, people don’t understand that kind of love.”

“But, Miss Lewis, that’s why I wrote my play! I want to make them understand.”

“But you can’t do anything like that on the stage,” said Miss Lewis. “The public won’t come to see your play.” And then she went on to explain to him the conditions of success in the business of the theatre.

Thyrsis listened, with a clutch as of ice about his heart. “I am very sorry, Miss Lewis,” he said, at last—“but I couldn’t possibly do what you ask.”

“Couldn’t do it!” cried the other, amazed.

“It would not fit into my idea at all.”

“But, don’t you want to get your play produced?”

“That’s just it, I want to get my play produced. If I did what you want me to, it wouldn’t be my play. It would be somebody else’s play.”

And there he stood. The actress argued with him and protested. She showed him what a great chance he had here—one that came to a new and unknown writer but once in a lifetime. Here was a manager ready to give him a good contract, and to put his play on at once in a Broadway theatre; and here was a public favorite anxious to have the leading role. It would be everything he could ask—it would be fame and fortune at one stroke. But Thyrsis only shook his head—he could not do it. He was almost sick with disappointment; but it was a situation in which there was no use trying to compromise—he simply could not make a “love-story” out of “The Genius”.

So at last there came a silence between them—there being nothing more for Miss Lewis to say.

“Then I suppose you won’t want the play,” said Thyrsis, faintly.

“I don’t know,” she answered, with vexation. “I’ll have to think about it again, and talk to my manager. I had not counted on such a possibility as this.”

And so they left it, and Thyrsis went away. The next morning he received a letter from “Robertson Jones, Inc.”, asking him to call at once.

Section 3. Robertson Jones, the great “theatrical producer”, was large and ponderous, florid of face and firm in manner—the steam-roller type of business-man. And it became evident at once that he had invited Thyrsis to come and be rolled.

“Miss Lewis tells me you can’t agree about the play,” said he.

“No,” said Thyrsis, faintly.

And then Mr. Jones began. He told Thyrsis what he meant to do with this play. Miss Lewis was one of the country’s future “stars”, and he was willing to back her without stint. He had permitted her to make her own choice of a role, and she should have her way in everything. There were famous playwrights bidding for a chance to write for her; but she had seen fit to choose “The Genius”.

“Personally,” said Mr. Jones, “I don’t believe in the play. I would never think of producing it—it’s not the sort of thing anybody is interested in. But Miss Lewis likes it; she’s been reading Ibsen, and she wants to do a ‘drama of ideas’, and all that sort of thing, you know. And that’s all right—she’s the sort to make a success of whatever she does. But you must do your share, and give her a part she can make something out of—some chance to show her charm. Otherwise, of course, the thing’s impossible.”

Mr. Jones paused. “I’m very sorry”—began Thyrsis, weakly.

“What’s your idea in refusing?” interrupted the other.

Thyrsis tried to explain—that he had written the play to set forth a certain thesis, and that he was asked to make changes that directly contradicted this thesis.

“Have you ever had a play produced?” demanded the manager abruptly.

“No,” said Thyrsis.

“Have you written any other plays?”

“No.”

“Your first trial! Well, don’t you think it a good deal to expect that your play should be perfect?”

“I don’t think”—began Thyrsis.

“Can’t you see,” persisted the other, “that people who have been in this business all their lives, and have watched thousands of plays succeed and fail, might be able to give you some points on the matter?”—And then Mr. Jones went on to set forth to Thyrsis the laws of the theatrical game—a game in which there was the keenest competition, and in which the “ante” was enormously high. To produce “The Genius” would cost ten thousand dollars at the least; and were those who staked this to have no say whatever in the shaping of the play? Manifestly this was absurd; and as the manager pressed home the argument, Thyrsis felt as if he wanted to get up and run! When Mr. Jones talked to you, he looked you squarely in the eye, and you had a feeling of presumption, even of guilt, in standing out against him. Thyrsis shrunk in terror from that type of personality—he would let it have anything in the world it wanted, so only it would not clash with him. But never before had it demanded one of the children of his dreams!

Mr. Jones went on to tell how many things he would do for the play. It would go into rehearsal at once, and would be seen on Broadway by the first of February. They would pay him four, six and eight per cent., and his profits could not be less than three hundred dollars a week. With Ethelynda Lewis in the leading role the play might well run until June—and there would be the road profits the next season, in addition.

Thyrsis’ brain reeled as he listened to this; it was in all respects identical with another famous temptation—“The devil taketh him upon a high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the earth!”

“And then there is England”—the man was saying.

“No, no!” cried Thyrsis, wildly. “No!”

“But why not?” demanded the other.

“It’s impossible! I couldn’t do it!”

“You mean you couldn’t do the writing?”

“I wouldn’t know how to!”

“Well then, that’s easily arranged. Let me get some one to collaborate with you. There’s Richard Haberton—you know who he is?”

“No,” said Thyrsis, faintly.

“He’s the author of ‘The Rajah’s Diamond’—it’s playing with five companions now, and its third season. And he dramatized ‘In Honor’s Cause’—you’ve seen that, no doubt. We have paid him some sixty thousand dollars in royalties so far. And he’ll take the play and fix it over—you wouldn’t have to stir a finger.”

Thyrsis sprang up in his agitation. “Please don’t ask me, Mr. Jones,” he cried. “I simply could not do it!”

It seemed strange to Thyrsis, when he thought it over afterwards, that the great Robertson Jones should have taken the trouble to argue so long with the unknown author of a play in which he did not believe. Was it that opposition incited him to persist? Or had he told Ethelynda Lewis he would get her what she wanted, and was now reluctant to confess defeat? At any rate, so it was—he went on to drive Thyrsis into a corner, to tear open his very soul. Also, he manifested anger; it was a deliberate affront that the boy should stand out like this. And Thyrsis, in great distress of soul, explained that he did not mean it that way—he apologized abjectly for his obstinacy. It was the ideas that he had tried to put into his play, and that he could not give up!

“But,” persisted the manager—“write other plays, and put your ideas into them. If you’ve once had a Broadway success, then you can write anything you please, and you can make your own terms for production.”

That thought had already occurred to Thyrsis; it was the one that nearly broke down his resistance. He would probably have surrendered, had the play not been so fresh from his mind, and so dear to him; if he had had time enough to become dissatisfied with it, as he had with his first novel—or discouraged about its prospects, as he had with “The Hearer of Truth”! But this child of his fancy was not yet weaned; and to tear it from his breast, and hand it to the butcher—no, it could not be thought of!

Section 4. So he parted from Mr. Jones, and went home, to pass two of the most miserable days of his life. He had pronounced his “Apage, Satanas!”—he had turned his back upon the kingdoms of the earth. And so presumably—virtue being its own reward—he should have been in a state of utter bliss. But Thyrsis had gone deeper into that problem, and asked himself a revolutionary question: Why should it always be that Satan had the kingdoms of the earth at his bestowal? Thyrsis did not want any kingdoms—he only wanted a chance to live in the country with his wife and child. And why, in order to get these things, must a poet submit himself to Satan?

Then came the third morning after his interview; and Thyrsis found in his mail another letter from Robertson Jones, Inc. It was a letter brief and to the point, and it struck him like a thunderbolt.

“Miss Ethelynda Lewis has decided that she wishes to accept your play as it stands. I enclose herewith a contract in duplicate, and if the terms are acceptable to you, will you kindly return one copy signed, and retain the other yourself.”

Thyrsis read, not long after that, of a young playwright who died of heart-failure; and he was not surprised—if all playwrights had to go through experiences such as that. He could hardly believe his eyes, and he read the letter over two or three times; he read the contract, with Mr. Jones’ impressive signature at the bottom. He did not know anything about theatrical contracts, but this one seemed fair to him. It provided for a royalty upon the gross receipts, to be paid after the play had earned the expenses of its production. Thyrsis had hoped that he might get some cash in advance, but that was not mentioned. In the flush of his delight he concluded that he would not take the risk of demanding anything additional, but signed the contract and mailed it, and sent a telegram to acquaint Corydon with the glorious tidings.

Section 5. One of the consequences of this triumph was that Thyrsis purchased a new necktie and half a dozen collars; and another was that an angry world was in some part appeased, and permitted the struggling poet to see his wife and child once more.

They met in the park; and strange it was to him to see Corydon after six months’ absence. She was beautiful as ever, somewhat paler, though still with the halo of motherhood about her. He could scarcely realize that she was his; she seemed like a dream to him—like some phantom of music, thrilling and wonderful, yet frail and unsubstantial. She clung to his arm, trembling with delight, and pouring out her longing and her grief. There came to them one of those golden hours, when the deeps of their souls welled up, and they pledged themselves anew to their faith.

Even stranger it was to see the child; to be able to look at him all he pleased, and to speak to him, and to hold him in his arms! He was as beautiful as Thyrsis could have wished, and the father had no trouble at all in being interested in him; his smiles were things to make the angels jealous. Thyrsis would push his carriage out into the park, and they would sit upon a bench and gaze at him—each making sure that the other had missed none of his fine points.

He was beginning to make sounds now, and had achieved the word “puss-Ée”. This originally had signified the woolly kitten he carried with him, but now by a metonymy it had come to include all kinds of living things; and great was the delight of the parents when a big red automobile flashed past, and the baby pointed his finger, exclaiming gleefully, “Puss-Ée!” It is an astonishing thing, how little it takes to make parents happy; regarded, purely as an abstract proposition, it would be difficult to explain why two people who possessed between them a total of sixty-four teeth, more or less, should have been so much excited by the discovery that the baby had four.

But parenthood, as Thyrsis found, meant more than charming baby-prattle and the counting of teeth. Little Cedric’s tiny fingers were twisted in his heart-strings—he loved him with a love the intensity of which frightened him when he realized it. And sometimes things went wrong, and then with a pang as from the stab of a knife would come the thought that he might some day lose this child. So much pain and toil a child cost, so much it took of one’s strength and power; and then, such a fragile thing it was—exposed to so many perils and uncertainties, to the ravages of so many diseases, that struck like a cruel enemy in the dark! Corydon and Thyrsis were so ignorant—they were like children themselves; and where should they turn for knowledge? There were doctors, of course; but this took so much money—and even with all the doctors, see how many babies died!

Thyrsis was learning the bitter truth of Bacon’s saying about “giving hostages to fortune.” And dearly as he loved the child, the artist in him cried out against these ties. Where now was that care-free outlook, that recklessness, that joy in life as a spectacle, which made up so much of the artist’s attitude? When one had a wife and child one no longer enjoyed tragedies—one lived, them; and one got from them, not katharsis, but exhaustion. One became timid and cautious and didactic, and other inartistic things. One learned that life was real, life was earnest, and the grave was not its goal!

Cedric had been weaned; but still he was not growing properly. Could it be that there was something wrong with what they fed him? Corydon would come upon advertisements telling of wonderful newly-discovered foods for infants, and giving pictures of the rosy and stalwart ones who were fed upon these foods. She would take to buying them—and they were not cheap foods either. Then, during the winter, the child caught cold; and they took that to mean that it had been in some way exposed—that was what everybody said, and what the name “cold” itself suggested. So Corydon would add more flannel dresses and blankets, until the unfortunate mite of life would be in a purple stew. And still, apparently, these mysterious “colds” were not to be thwarted. Thyrsis felt that in all this there must be something radically wrong, and yet he knew not what to do. Surely it should not have been such a task to keep life in one human infant.

Then, too, the training of the baby was going badly. He lived in close contact with nervous people who were disturbed if he cried; and so Corydon’s energies were given to a terrified effort to keep him from crying. He must be dandled and rocked to sleep, he must be played with and amused, and have everything he cried for; and it was amazing how early in life this little creature learned the hold which he had upon his mother. His chief want had come to be to sleep all day and lie awake half the night; and during these hours of wakefulness he pursued the delightful pastime of holding some one’s hand and playing with it. Corydon, nervous and sick and wrestling with melancholia, would have to lie awake for uncounted hours and submit to this torment. The infant had invented a name for the diversion; he called it “Hoodaloo mungie”—which being translated signified “Hold your finger”. To the mother this was like the pass-word of some secret order of demons, who preyed upon and racked her in the night; so that never after in her life could she hear the phrase, even in jest, without experiencing a nervous shock.

Section 6. This was a period of great hopefulness for Thyrsis, but also of desperate struggle. For until the production of his play in January, he had somehow to keep alive, and that meant more hack-work. Also he had to lay something by, for after the rehearsals the play would go on the road for a couple of weeks, to be “tried on the dog”; and during that period he must have money enough to travel, and stay at hotels, and also to take Corydon with him, if possible.

The rehearsals began an interesting experience for him; he was introduced into a new and strange world. Thyrsis himself was shy, and disposed to run away and hide his emotions; but here were people—the actor-folk—whose business it was to live them in sight of the world. And these emotions were their life; they were very intense, yet quick both to come and to go. Such people were intensely personal; they were like great children, vain and sensitive, their moods and excitements not to be taken too seriously. But it was long before Thyrsis came to realize this, and meanwhile he had some uncomfortable times. To each of the players, apparently, the interest of a play centered in those places in which he was engaged in speaking his lines; and to each the author of the play was a more or less benevolent despot, who had the happiness of the rest of the world in his keeping. Once at a rehearsal, when Thyrsis was engaged in cutting out one of the speeches attributed to “Mrs. Hartman”, he discovered that lady standing behind him in a flood of tears!

In the beginning Thyrsis paid many visits to the apartment on Riverside Drive; for Miss Lewis professed to be very anxious that he should consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to her ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis’ portrayal of Helena—it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going to make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some “charming” lines into her part. “You boy!” she would exclaim. “I believe you are as obstinate as your hero!” Miss Lewis was only two years older than the “boy”, but she saw fit to adopt this grandmotherly attitude toward him.

And then came Robertson Jones, suggesting a man who could play the part of Lloyd. But Miss Lewis declared indignantly that she would not have him, because he was not handsome enough. “If,” she vowed, “I’ve got to make love to a man and be rejected by him, at least I’m not going to have it an ugly man!” When an actor was finally agreed upon and engaged, Thyrsis had a talk with him, and it seemed as if Miss Lewis, in her preoccupation with his looks, had overlooked the matter of his brains. But Thyrsis was so new at this game that he did not feel capable of judging. He shrunk from the thought of having any actor play his part—that was so precious and so full of meaning to him.

But when the rehearsals began, Thyrsis speedily forgot this feeling. The most sensitive poet to the contrary notwithstanding, the purpose of a play is to be acted; and Thyrsis was like an inventor, who has dreamed a great machine, and now sees the parts of it appearing as solid steel and brass; sees them put together, and the great device getting actually under way.

The rehearsals were held in a little hall on the East Side, and thither came the company—six men and three women. There was no furniture or setting, they all wore their street clothing, and in the beginning they went through their parts with the manuscript in their hands. And yet—they had been selected because they resembled the characters in the play; and every time they went over the lines they gave them with more feeling and understanding. So—vaguely at first, and then more clearly—the poet began to see them as incarnations of his vision. These characters had been creatures of his fancy; they had lived in it, he had walked and talked and laughed and wept with them. Now to discover them outside him—to be able to hear them with his physical ears and see them with his physical eyes—was one of the strangest experiences of his life. It was so thrilling as to be almost uncanny. It was a new kind of inspiration, of that strange “subliminal uprush” which made the mystery of his life. And it was a kind that others could experience with him. Corydon would come every day to the rehearsals, and for four or five hours at a stretch they would sit and watch and listen in a state of perfect transport.

Section 7. Also, there were things not in the manuscript which were sources of interest and delight. There was Mr. Tapping, the stage director, for instance; Thyrsis could see himself writing another play, just to get Mr. Tapping in. He was a man well on in years, and wrecked by dissipation—almost bald and toothless, and with one foot crippled with gout. Yet he was a perfect geyser of activity—bounding about the stage, talking swiftly, gesticulating—like some strange gnome or cobold out of the bowels of the earth. Thyrsis was the creator of the play, so far as concerned the words; but this man was to be the creator of it on the stage. And that, too, required a kind of genius, Thyrsis perceived.

Mr. Tapping had talked the problems out with him at the beginning—talking until two o’clock in the morning, in a super-heated office filled with the smoke of ten thousand dead cigars. He talked swiftly, eagerly, setting forth his ideas; to Thyrsis it was a most curious experience—to hear the vision of his inmost soul translated into the language of the Tenderloin! “Your fiddler’s this kind of a guy,” Mr. Tapping would say—“he knows he’s got the goods, and he don’t care whether those old fogies think he’s dippy, or what the hell they think. Ain’t that the dope, Mr. Author?” And Thyrsis would answer faintly that he thought that was “the dope.”—This was a word that Mr. Tapping used every time he opened his mouth, apparently; it designated all things connected with the play—character, dialogue, action, scenery, music, costume. “That’s the way to dope it out to them!” he would cry to the actors.

Miss Lewis, and Mr. Tilford, the leading man, moved through their parts with dignity; the stage director showed them the “business” he had laid out, but they did not trouble to act at rehearsals, and he did not criticize what they did. But all the other people had to be taught their roles and drilled in them; and that meant that Mr. Tapping had to have in him five actors and two actresses, and play all their seven parts as they came. Marvellous it was to see him do this; springing from place to place, and changing his whole aspect in a flash—now scolding shrewishly in the words of Violet Hartman, now discoursing, with the accent and manner of Prof, von Arne, upon the psychopathia sexualis of Genius.

He did not know all the parts, of course; but that was never allowed to trouble him. He would take a sentence out of the actor’s lips, and then go on to elaborate it in his Tenderloin dialect; or, if the scene was highly emotional, and required swift speech, he would fall back upon the phrase “and so and so, and so and so.” He could run the whole gamut of human emotions with those words, “and so and so.”

“No, that’s no good!” he would cry to “Mrs. Hartman.” “What are those words?—‘Wretched, ungrateful son—do you care nothing at all for your parents’ feelings? Do you owe us nothing for what we have done? And so and so? And so and so? And so and so?’” Mr. Tapping’s voice would rise to a wail; and then in a flash he would turn to Moses Rosen (he called all the actors by their character-names). “That’s your cue, Rosen, you rush in left centre, and throw up your hands—right here—see? And what’s your dope?—oh yes—‘I have spent seven thousand dollars on this thing! You have ruined me! You have betrayed me! And so and so! And so and so! And so and so!’—And then you run over here to the professor—‘You have trapped me! And so and so!’”

Day by day as the work progressed, and the actors came to know their lines, Thyrsis’ excitement grew. The great machine was running, he was getting some sense of the power of it! And new aspects of it were revealed to him; there came the composer who was to do the incidental music, and the orchestra-leader who was to conduct it; there came the costume-designer and the scene-painter, and even the press-agent who was to “boost” the play, and wanted picturesque details about the author’s life. Corydon and Thyrsis were invited to go with Mr. Tilford to select a wig, and with Mr. Tapping to see the carpenters who were building the various “sets”, in a big loft over near the North River. As the two walked home each day after these adventures, it was all they could do to keep from hugging each other on the street.

It was a thing of especial moment to Thyrsis, because it was the first time in his life that his art had received any assistance from the outside world—the first time this world had done anything but scold at him and mock him. Here at last was recognition—here was success! Here were material things submitting themselves to his vision, coming to him humbly to be taught, and to co-operate in the creation of beauty! So Thyrsis caught sudden glimpses of what his life might have been. He was like a man who had been chained in a black dungeon, and who now gets sight of the green earth and the blue sky, and smells the perfume of the flowers and hears the singing of the birds. With forces such as this at his command, the power of his vision would be multiplied tenfold; and he was transported with the delight of the discovery, he and Corydon found their souls once more in this new hope.

So out of these moods there began the burgeoning of new plans in his mind. Even amid the rush of rehearsals, he was dreaming of other things to write; some time before “The Genius” had reached the public, he had finished the writing of “The Utopians”—that fragment of a vision which was perhaps the greatest thing he ever did, and certainly the most characteristic.

Section 8. As usual, the immediate occasion of the writing was trivial enough. It was his “leading lady” who was responsible for it. Miss Lewis had taken a curious fancy to Thyrsis—he was a new type to her, and it pleased her to explore him. “How in the world did you ever get him to marry you?” she would exclaim to Corydon. “I could as soon imagine a marble statue making love to me!” And she told others about this strange poet, who was obviously almost starving, and yet had refused to let Richard Haberton revise his play for him, and had all but refused to let Robertson Jones Inc., produce it. Before long she came to Thyrsis to say that one of her friends desired to meet him, and would he come to a supper-party.

Thyrsis heard this with perplexity.

“A supper-party!” he exclaimed. “But I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Why—I have no clothes.”

“Nobody expects a poet to have clothes,” laughed Miss Lewis. “Come in the garments of your fancy. And besides, Barry’s a true Bohemian.”

Barry Creston, the giver of this party, was one of the sons of “Dan” Creston, the mine-owner and “railroad-king”, who a short while before had been elected senator from a Western state under circumstances of great scandal. “The old man’s a hard character, I guess,” said Miss Lewis; “but you must not believe all you read in the papers about Barry.”

“I never read anything about him,” said the other; and so Miss Lewis went on to explain that Griswold, the Wall Street plunger, had got a divorce from his wife after throwing her into Barry’s arms; and that Barry’s sister had married an Austrian arch-duke who had maltreated her, and that Barry had kicked him out of a hotel-window in Paris.

This invitation was a cause of much discomfort to Thyrsis. He had not come to the point where he was even curious about the life of the Barry Crestons of the world; and yet he did not like to hurt Miss Lewis’ feelings. She made it evident to him that she was determined to exhibit her “lion”; and so he said “all right.”

The supper party was at the CafÉ de BohÊme, which was an Aladdin’s palace buried underground beneath a building in the “Tenderloin”. Fountains splashed in marble basins, and birds sang amid the branches of tropical flowering trees, while on a little stage a man in the costume and character of a Paris apache sang a song of ferocious cynicism. And after him came a Japanese juggler of prodigious swiftness, and then a fat German woman in peasant guise who sang folk-songs, and wound up with “O, du lieber Augustin!” After which the company joined in the chorus of “Funiculi, funicula” and “Gaudeamus igitur”—for the patrons of the “Boheme” were nothing if they were not cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan also was the company at Barry Creston’s table. On one side of Thyrsis was Miss Lewis, and on the other was Mlle. Armand, the dancer who had set New York in a furore. Opposite to her was Scarpi, the famous baritone; and then there was Massey, a sculptor from Paris, and Miss Rita Seton, of the “Red Hussars” Company, and a Miss Raymond, a gorgeous creature with a red flamingo feather in her hat, who had been Massey’s model for his sensational figure of “Aurora”.

Finally there was Barry Creston himself: a new type, and a disconcerting one. He was not at all the “gilded youth” whom Thyrsis had expected to find; he was a man of about thirty, widely cultured, urbane and gracious in his manner, and quite evidently a man of force. He was altogether free from that crude egotism which Thyrsis had found to be the most prominent characteristic of the American man of wealth. He spoke in French with Armand and in Italian with Scarpi and in German with the head-waiter who worshipped before him; and yet one did not feel that there was any ostentation about it—all this was his monde. And although he exhaled an atmosphere of vast wealth, this, too, seemed a matter of course; he assumed that you also were provided with unlimited funds—that all the world, in fact, was in the same fortunate case. Evidently he was well-known at the “BohÊme”, for the waiters gathered like flies around the honey-pot, and the august head-waiter himself took the order, and beamed his approval at Barry’s selections. So presently there flowed in a stream of costly viands, served in outrÉ and fantastic fashion—many of them things not known even by name to Thyrsis. There were costly wines as well, and at the end an ice in the shape of a great basket of fruit, wonderfully carved and colored like life, resting upon a slab of ice, which in turn was set in a silver tray with handles.

Thyrsis was dazed at all this waste, and at the uproar in the place, where dozens of other parties were squandering money in the same blind fashion, and all laughing, chatting, joining in the choruses with the performers on the stage. Now and then he would catch a little of his host’s conversation, which was of all the capitals of Europe, and of art-worlds, the very existence of which was unknown to him. And then, on his left hand, there was Mlle. Armand, deftly picking off the leaves of an artichoke and dipping them into mayonnaise, and saying in her little bird’s voice, “They tell me, Monsieur, that you have du gÉnie. Oh, you should go to Paree to live—it is not here that one appreciates du gÉnie!” And, then while Thyrsis was working out an explanation of his failure to visit Paris, some one in the cafÉ caught sight of Scarpi, and there was a general call for him; and according to the genial custom of the “BohÊme” he stood up, amid tumultuous applause, and sang one of his own rollicking songs.

So the revelry went forward, while Thyrsis marvelled, and tried to hide his pain. There could be no question of any enjoyment for him—when he knew that the cost of this affair would have paid all his expenses for a winter! Doubtless what Barry Creston spent for his cigars would have saved Thyrsis and his family from misery all their lives; and he wondered if the man would have cared had he known. Barry was one of the princes of the new dispensation; and sometimes princes were compassionate, Thyrsis reflected. Apparently this one was all urbanity and charm, having no thought in life save to play the perfect host to brilliant artists and demi-mondaimes, and to skim the cream off the top of civilization.

But then suddenly the conversation took a new turn, and Thyrsis got another view of the young prince. There had been trouble out in the Western mines; and some one mentioned it—when in a flash Thyrsis saw the set jaw and the clenched fist and the steel grey eye of old “Dan” Creston. (Thyrsis had read somewhere a sketch of this senator, whose fortune was estimated at fifty millions, and who ran the governments of three states.) Barry, it seemed, had had charge of the mines for three years—that was how he had won his spurs. In those days, he said, there had been no unions—he told with a quiet smile how he had broken them. Now again “agitators” had crept in, so that in some of the camps the men were being moved out bodily, and replaced by foreigners, who knew a good job when they had it. To make this change had taken the militia; but it would be done thoroughly, and afterwards there would be no more trouble.

The supper-party broke up about two o’clock, and Miss Raymond, the lady of the flamingo hat, was the only one who showed any effects from all the wine that had been consumed. Thyrsis, to his great surprise discovered that his host had taken a fancy to him, and had asked Miss Lewis to bring him out to luncheon at the Creston place in the country. And so came the wonderful experience which brought to him the vision of “The Utopians.”

Section 9. They went, one Saturday morning, in Miss Lewis’ automobile—out to Riverside Drive, and up the valley of the Hudson. This was in itself a Utopian experience for Thyrsis, who had never before taken a trip in one of these magic chariots. It leaped over the frozen roads like a thing of life, and he lay back in the cushioned seats and closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the machinery, imagining what life might be for him, if he could rest like this when he was worn from overwork. It was like some great adventure in music, like a minstrel’s chanting of heroic deeds; it was Nature with all her pageantry unrolled in a panorama before his eyes. And meantime Miss Lewis was chattering on about the play and its prospects; and about other plays and their prospects; and about the people at the supper-party and their various loves and hates.

So they came to the great stone castle of the Crestons, set upon a mountain-top overlooking the valley of this “American Rhine.” Thyrsis gasped when he saw it, and he gasped many times again while Barry was showing them about. For this place was a triumph of a hundred arts and sciences; into its perfections had gone all the skill of the architects and designers, the weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors of a score of centuries and climes. The very dairies, the stables, the dog-kennels were things to be wondered at and studied; and in the vast halls were single pictures over which Thyrsis would fain have lingered for hours. Then, best of all, the great portico, with its stone pillars, and its view of the noble river, and of the snow-clad hills, dazzling in the sunlight!

They had luncheon; after which Barry played upon the organ, and Miss Lewis sat beside him and left Thyrsis to wander at will. He made his way out to the portico, and paced back and forth there; and while the organ rolled and thundered to him, the majesty of the scene swept over him, and in towering splendors his soul arose. He thought of the wretched room in which he was pent, he thought of his starved and struggling life; and all the rage of his defeated genius awoke in him. In the name of that genius he uttered his defiance, and by the title of it he took possession of this castle, and of all things it contained. Yes—for he was the true lord and master of it—he was the prince disinherited! And the meaning of it, its excuse for being, was this brief hour! For this its glories had been assembled; for this the architects and designers, the weavers and carpenters, the painters and sculptors had labored in a score of centuries and climes; for this the great organ had been built, and for this the great musician had composed—that he might behold, in one hour of transfiguration, what the life of man would be in that glad time when all the arts of civilization were turned to the fostering of the soul! When he who carried in the womb of his spirit the new life of the ages, would be loved instead of being hated, would be cherished instead of being neglected, would be reverenced instead of being mocked! When palaces would be built for him and beauty and joy would be gathered for him, and the paths would be made clear before his feet! So out of boundless love and rapture would he speak to men, and bring to them those gifts that were beyond price, the treasures of his unfolding inspiration.

So it was that the Utopians came to Thyrsis; those men of the future, worshippers of joy! They came to him, alive and in the flesh, beautiful and noble, gracious and free-hearted—as some day they will come, if so the earth endure; as they will stand upon that portico, and listen to that music, and gaze upon the valley of that American Rhine! And will they remember the long-dead dreamer, and how they walked with him there and spoke with him; how they put their arms about him, and gave him of their love and understanding? Will they remember what shuddering rapture their touch conveyed to him; how the tears ran down his cheeks, and he pledged his soul to yet more years of torment, so only their glory might come to be upon earth? Will they read the blazing words in which he pictured them, the trumpet-blast he sounded to the dead souls of his time?

Thyrsis knew that this was the greatest hour of his life, and he fought like mad to hold it. But that might not be—the music ceased, and he heard the voices of his host and Miss Lewis. They came to the door; and then Thyrsis’ thoughts came back quickly to earth. For he saw that Barry Creston’s arm was about the woman, and she was leaning upon him; nor did they separate when they saw him, but stood there, smiling; so that at last Thyrsis had solved for him the problem of their relationship. It was not so that the Utopians loved, he thought, as he watched them; and found himself wondering if young Creston was as imperious with his women as he was with the slaves in his Western mines.

The car came to the door, and they parted from their host and sped back to the city. “What do you think of him?” asked Miss Lewis—and went on in a burst of confidence to tell him that it was to this prince of the new dispensation that he owed the great chance of his life. For it was Barry Creston who had given the Broadway “show-girl” the start that had made her a popular comÉdienne; it was Barry Creston who had awakened in her an interest in the “drama of ideas”, and had set her to fermenting with new ambitions; and finally it was Barry Creston who in a moment of indulgence had promised the money which had set the managers and actors and musicians, the stage-carpenters and scene-painters and press-agents to work at the task of embodying “The Genius”!

Section 10. It may have been a coincidence; but from that hour dated the process of Thyrsis’ disillusionment concerning the production of his play. Could it be, he asked himself, that such wealth as Barry Creston’s could buy true art? Could it be that forces set in motion by it could really express his vision? “Genius surrounded by Commercialism”, had been the formula of his play; and did not the formula describe his own position as well as Lloyd’s?

A strange thing was this theatrical business—the business of selling emotions! One had really to feel the emotions, in order to portray them with force; yet one had at the same time to appraise them with the eye of the business-man—one must not feel emotions that would not pay. Also, one boomed and boosted his own particular emotions, celebrating their merits in the language of the circus-poster. If you had taken up a certain play, you considered it the greatest play that had ever made its bow to Broadway; and you actually persuaded yourself to believe it—at least those who made the real successes were men who possessed that hypnotic power.

There was, for instance, Mr. Rosenberg, the press-agent and advertising-man. He was certain that “The Genius” was a play of genius, and its author a man of genius; and yet Thyrsis knew that if it had been Meyer and Levinson, across the street, who were producing it, Mr. Rosenberg would have called it “rot”. Mr. Rosenberg was to Thyrsis a living embodiment of Moses Rosen in the play—so much so that he felt the resemblance in the names to be perilous, and winced every time he heard Rosenberg speak of Rosen. But fortunately neither Rosenberg nor Rosen possessed a sense of irony, and so there were no feelings hurt. Thyrsis had written the play without having met either a press-agent or the head of a music-bureau; he had drawn the character of Moses after the fashion of the German, evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner consciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer who works out the orbit of a new planet, and afterwards discovers it with his telescope.

As the preparations neared completeness, Thyrsis found himself more and more disturbed about the production. He was able to judge of the actors now, and they seemed to him to be cheap actors—to be relying for their effects upon exaggeration, to be making the play into a farce. But when he pointed this out to Mr. Tapping, Mr. Tapping was offended; and when he spoke to Mr. Jones, he was referred to Miss Lewis. All he could accomplish with Miss Lewis, however, was to bring up the eternal question of the lack of “charm” in her part. Poor Ethelynda was also getting into an unhappy frame of mind; she had begun to doubt whether the “drama of ideas” was her forte after all—and whether the ideas in this particular drama were real ideas or sham. She got the habit of inviting friends in to judge it, and she was always of the opinion of the last friend; so the production was like a ship whose pilot has lost his bearings.

The time drew near for the opening-performance, which was to be given in a manufacturing city in New England. 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. But Thyrsis did not know the peculiar fact about dress-rehearsals, that everything always goes wrong; and so he suffered untellable agonies at the sight of the blundering and stupidity. Mr. Tapping stormed and fumed and hopped about the stage, and swore, first at his gouty foot, and then at some member of the company; and he sent them back, over and over again through the scenes—it was midnight before they finished the first act, and it was six o’clock in the morning before they finished the second, and it was nearly noon of Monday before the wretched men and women went home to sleep.

Thyrsis had left before that, partly because he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hardearned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-broken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel—cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went out to lunch, he would have to say that he was not hungry, and then go off and get something at a corner grocery.

The hour of the performance came; and Thyrsis, like a gambler who has staked all his possessions upon the turn of one card, sat in a box and watched the audience and the play. The house was crowded; and the play-wright saw with amazed relief that all his agonies of the night before had been needless—the performance went without a hitch from beginning to end. And also, to his unutterable delight, the play seemed to “score”. He had gazed at the rows of respectable burghers of this prosperous manufacturing town, and wondered what understanding they could have of his tragedy of “genius”. But they seemed to be understanding; at any rate they laughed and applauded; and when Lloyd smashed the violin over von Arne’s head and the curtain went down, there was quite a little uproar.

Thyrsis came out and made his timid speech, which was also applauded; and then came the last act, and the women got out their handkerchiefs on schedule time, and Mr. Rosenberg stood behind Thyrsis in the box, rubbing his hands together gleefully. So the play-wright sent a telegram to his wife, saying that the play was a certain success; and then he went to bed, assuredly the happiest man who had ever slept in that fifty-cent hotel!

But alas—the next morning, there were the local papers; and with one accord they all “roasted” the play! Their accounts of it sounded for all the world like the play itself—those extracts which the two professors had read from the criticisms of Lloyd’s concert! Thyrsis wondered if the critics must not have taken offence at the satire!

Then, going to the theatre, the first person he met was Rosenberg, who sent another chill to his heart. “First nights are always good,” said Mr. Rosenberg. “It was all ‘paper’, you know. To-night is the real test.”

And so the second performance came; and in the theatre were some two hundred people, and the occasion was the most awful “frost” that ever froze the heart of an unhappy partisan of the “drama of ideas”. After which, according to schedule, the play moved to another manufacturing town; and in the theatre were some two hundred and fifty people—and a frost some ten degrees lower yet!

Section 11. So at twelve o’clock that night there was a consultation in a room at the hotel, attended by Thyrsis and Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping and Mr. Jones.

“You see,” said the last named; “the play is a failure.”

“Absolutely!” said Mr. Tapping.

“I knew it would be!” cried Miss Lewis.

“And you?” asked Mr. Jones of Thyrsis.

“It has not succeeded in these towns,” said Thyrsis. “But then—how could it succeed, except where there are intellectual people? You promised to take it to New York.”

“It’s no use!” declared Jones. “New York would laugh it dead in one night.”

“It would,” said Mr. Tapping, decisively.

“I knew it all along,” cried Miss Lewis.

So they went on for ten minutes; and then, “What are you going to do?” asked Thyrsis, in terror.

“The play must be altered,” said Jones.

“How altered?”

“It must be altered as Miss Lewis asked you at first.”

Thyrsis sprang up. “What!” he cried.

“It must be done!” said Mr. Jones.

“It must,” said Mr. Tapping.

“I knew it all along!” cried Miss Lewis again.

“But I won’t stand for it!” exclaimed Thyrsis, wildly.

“It must be done!” said Mr. Jones, in his heaviest steam-roller tone.

“But I won’t have it!”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’ll go to law! I’ll get an injunction.”

“What is there in our contract to prevent our altering the play?” demanded the man.

“What!” gasped Thyrsis. “You know what our understanding was!”

“Humph!” said the other. “Can you prove it?”

“And do you mean that you would go back on that understanding?”

“And do you mean that you expect me to see this money wasted and the play sent to pot?”

Thyrsis, in his agony, turned to Miss Lewis. “Will you let him break our bargain?” he cried.

“But what else is there to be done?” she answered.

“Don’t you see that the play is a failure? And don’t you see the plight you’ve got me in?”

Thyrsis was dumb with dismay. He stared from one of these people to another, and his heart went down—down. He saw that his case was hopeless. He had no one to help him or to advise him, and he had less than eleven dollars in his pocket.

“What do you propose to do?” he asked, weakly.

“I have already telegraphed to Richard Haberton,” said Jones. “He will meet us and see the next two performances; and then we’ll lay the company off until we get some kind of a practical play.”

And so the steam-roller rolled and the matter was settled; and Thyrsis, broken-hearted, bid the trio farewell, and took an early train back to New York.

He never saw any member of the company again—and he never saw the “practical play” which Mr. Richard Haberton made out of “The Genius”. What was done he gathered from the press-clippings that came to him—the famous author of “The Rajah’s Diamond” caused Helena to fall into Lloyd’s arms at the end of the second act, and had them safely if not happily married at the beginning of the third. Also he wrote several “charming” scenes for Ethelynda Lewis, and two weeks later the play had a second opening in another manufacturing town of New England—where the critics, awed by the name of the distinguished dramatist upon the play-bills, were moved to faint praise. But perhaps it was that Mr. Richard Haberton required more than two weeks’ time for the evolving of real “charm”; at any rate the audience came in no larger numbers to see this new version, and the misbegotten production lived for another six performances, and died a peaceful death at the very gates of the metropolis.

And such was the end of Thyrsis’ career as a play-wright. In return for all his labors and his agonies he received some weeks later a note from Robertson Jones, Inc., to the effect that the books of “The Genius” showed a total deficit of six thousand seven hundred and forty-two dollars and seventeen cents; and accordingly, under the contract, there was nothing due to the author.