Chapter CXLVIII: Section 18: It was two weeks before this siege was lifted, and Corydon

was able to take up her burdens once more. It was then March, and the snow had given place to cold sleety rains, and the fields and the ground about their home were miniature swamps full of mud. Thyrsis would tramp through this to the hill-tops where the storm-winds howled, and there vow defiance to his foes, and come home to pour new hope and courage and resolution into a bottomless pit.

He was finishing his vision of the field of Gettysburg--the three-days’ grapple between two titan armies, that meant to him three weeks of soul-terrifying toil. Men had said that Gettysburg meant the turning Of the tide, that victory was certain; and yet there had followed Sherman’s long campaign, and all the horror of the Wilderness fighting, and Mine Run and Cold Harbor and the ghastly siege of Petersburg. And now Thyrsis had to fight his way through this. He saw the figure that he had dreamed, and that possessed him; a soldier who was the rage of the War incarnate, the awakened frenzy of the nation. He was a man lifted above pain and cold and hunger; he was gaunt and wild of aspect, restless and impatient, driving, driving to the end. He went about the duties of the camp like one in a dream; he marched like an automaton--for hours, or for days, as need might be--his thoughts flying on to those moments that alone were real to him, to the charge and the fury of the conflict, the blows that were the only things that counted. He lived amid sights and sounds of horror, with groans and weeping in his ears, with a mist of blood and cannon-smoke before his eyes; he drove on, grim and implacable, the very ground about him rocking and quivering in a delirium of torment. He was the War!

Meantime Corydon was growing paler, and more wretched than ever. For her, too, this winter was symbolized as a battle-ground. To him it was a field in which armies clashed, and the issue was uncertain; but to her it was a field of inevitable defeat, strewn with the corpses of her hopes. For hours she would lie upon her couch in the night-watches, silent, alone, staring out of the window at the wide waste of snow in the pitiless moonlight.

Thyrsis would have preferred to sleep in his own study, as he worked so late at night; but Corydon begged him not to do this, she would rather be wakened, she said.

So, on one occasion, he came over at about two o’clock in the morning, and found her sleeping, as he thought, and crawled into his own cot. He was just dozing off to sleep, when he heard what he thought was a stifled sob.

He listened; he thought that she was crying in her sleep. But then, as the sound grew clearer, he sat up. The moonlight was shining in upon her, and Thyrsis caught a bright glint of steel. Swift as a flash the meaning of that swept over him. He had provided her with a revolver, that she might feel safe when she was left alone; and now he bounded out of bed and sprang across the room, and found her with the weapon pointed at her head.

He struck it away; and Corydon, with a terrified cry, clutched at him and collapsed in his arms.

“Oh Thyrsis!” she wailed. “Save me! Save me!”

“What is it?” he gasped.

“I couldn’t do it!” she cried, choking. “I couldn’t! I tried--I tried so hard!”

“Sweetheart”, he whispered, in terror.

“Don’t let me do it!” she sobbed. “Oh, Thyrsis, you must save me!”

He pressed her to his bosom, shuddering with dread, and trying to soothe her hysterical outburst. So, little by little, he dragged the story from her. For three days she had been making up her mind to shoot herself, and she had chosen that night for the time.

“I’ve been sitting here for an hour,” she whispered--“with the revolver in my hand. And I couldn’t get up the courage to pull the trigger.”

He clasped her, white with horror.

“I heard you coming,” she went on. “I lay and pretended to sleep. Then I tried again--but I can’t, I can’t! I’m a coward!”

“Corydon!” he cried.

“There was only one thing that stopped me. You would have got on without me--”

“Don’t say that, dearest!”

“You would--I know it! I’m only in your way. But oh, my baby! I loved him so, and I couldn’t bear to leave him!”

She clung to him convulsively. “Oh, Thyrsis,” she panted, “think what it meant to me to leave him. He’d have been without a mother all his life! And something might have happened to you, and he’d have had no one to love him at all!”

“Why did you want to do it?” he cried.

“Oh Thyrsis, I’ve suffered so! I’m weary--I’m worn out--I’m sick of the fight. I can’t stand it any more--and what can I do?”

“My poor, poor girl,” he whispered, and pressed her to his heart in a paroxysm of grief. “Oh, my Corydon! My Corydon!”

The horror of the thing overwhelmed him; he began to weep himself--his frame was shaken with tearless, agonizing sobs. What could he do for her, how could he help her?

But already he had helped her; it was not often that she saw him weeping, it was not often she found that she could do something for _him_. “Thyrsis, do you really _want_ me?” she whispered. “Do you truly love me that much?”

“I love you, I love you!” he sobbed.

And she replied, “Then I’ll stay. I’ll bear anything, if you need me--if I can be of any use at all.”