Chapter LIX: Section 8: In many ways this decision, once arrived at, was a relief

to them. It lifted the weight of a great fear from their lives; it gave them six months more of respite--and in six months, what might not Thyrsis be able to do? He had been toiling incessantly at his hack-work, and had saved nearly ninety dollars, which would be enough to keep them going until his new book was written.

This book was now fairly seething in him. A wonderful thing it was to be, far beyond his first; in the beauty of it and the glow of it he was forgetting all his disappointments, all the mockeries of fate and the hardness of the world. If only he could get _this_ book done, then surely he would be saved, then surely men would be forced to give him a chance!

So he waited not a moment after the decision was made; he even blamed himself for having waited so long. From the “higher regions” there had come a windfall in the shape of two railroad-passes; and a couple of days later they stepped out upon the depot-platform of a little town upon the shore of Lake Ontario.

Oh, the joy of being in the country again! The smell of the newly-plowed earth, the sight of the spring-time verdure; and then the first glimpse of the lake, with its marvellous clear-green water, and the fresh cold breeze that blew from off it! There was challenge and adventure in that air--Thyrsis thought of argonauts and old sea-rovers, and his soul was stirred to high resolves. He took deep breaths of delight, and clenched his hands, and imagined that he was at his book already.

They found a second-hand tent which could be bought for eight dollars; four dollars more would pay for the lumber, and so they would live rent-free for the next five months! They went far down the shore of the lake, looking for a place to camp, and picked out a rocky headland, a mile from the nearest farmhouse, and completely out of sight of all the world. The rich woman who owned it was in Europe, but the agent gave permission; and then Thyrsis looked at his watch and made a wild suggestion--“Let’s get settled this afternoon!”

“Why, it’s nearly three o’clock!” cried Corydon. “It’ll be dark!”

“There’ll be a moon,” he replied, “and we can work all night if want to.”

“But suppose it should rain!”

“I don’t see any signs of it. And what’s the use of spending a night in the town, and wasting all that money?”

And so it was decided. They went to the store and purchased their housekeeping equipment. What a sense of power and prosperity it gave them as they made their selection--two canvas-cots and two pairs of blankets, a lamp and an oil-can and a tiny oil-stove, two water-buckets and an axe and a wash-basin, a camp-stool and a hammock and a box full of groceries! They got a team to carry all this, in addition to their lumber and their trunks. They stopped at a farm-house, and arranged to get their milk and eggs and bread and vegetables, and also to borrow a hammer and saw; and then till after sundown Thyrsis toiled at the building of the platform and the cutting of stakes and poles for the tent.

Corydon fried some bacon and heated a can of corn, and they had a marvellous and incredible supper. Afterwards they raised the tent, and she held the poles erect while Thyrsis tied the guy-ropes. They had been advised to choose a sheltered place, back in the woods; but they were all for adventure and a view of the water, and so they were out on the open point. There were pine-trees, however, and Thyrsis had strong ropes with which to anchor the tent fast. When he finished, about ten o’clock at night, he stood off and admired the job by the light of the moon, and declared that a storm might tear the tent to pieces, but could never blow it over.

They hauled in their trunks and the rest of their belongings, and set up the cots and spread the blankets. Then by the light of the oil-lamp they gazed about.

“Oh, Thyrsis,” she cried, “isn’t it glorious!”

“It’s our home,” he said. “A home we made all for ourselves!”

“And a home without a landlady!” she added.

“And with no saloon underneath!” said he. “And no street-cars and no screaming children in front of it!”

Instead there was the night with its thousand eyes, and the lake, with the moon-fire flung wide across it, and the pine-trees singing in the wind.

“Brr! it’s cold!” exclaimed Corydon.

“We’ll have to sleep with our clothes on for a while,” said he. And yet they laughed aloud in glee. “It’s all we want!”

“It’s all we ever could want!” declared Corydon. “Oh, let’s work hard and earn money enough, so that we can stay here beneath the open sky, and not have to go back into slavery!”

Then, in the morning, the joy of a plunge in the icy lake, and of a run in the woods, and of breakfast eaten in the warm sunlight! There was much work still to be done; Thyrsis had to build a stand of shelves and a table for the tent, and a table and a bench outside; and then all their belongings had to be unpacked and set in order. Such fun as they had laying out the imaginary partitions in their house; two bedrooms and a library, a kitchen and a pantry--and all outdoors for a living-room!

They would count this the beginning of their love; at last they were free to love, and to be happy as they chose. There was no longer anyone to criticize them scarcely anyone to know about them; their only contact with the world was when they went for the mail and for provisions. 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. But although Thyrsis had often declared that he would rob a bank to secure his freedom to work, he had not yet done it, and so these experiences only added piquancy to their adventure.

It was a life such as might have been lived in the Garden of Eden. They cooked and ate and studied out doors, in a sunny glade when it was cool, and in the shade of a great oak-tree when it was warm. They wandered about in the forest, they bathed naked in the crystal lake--diving from the rocky headland, and afterwards standing upon it and drying themselves in the sun. Corydon was now free to fling away the conventionalities which had hampered her in the city; by way of signalizing her enfranchisement she cut short her hair--that untamed, rebellious hair which had taken so long to dry and to braid and to keep in order!

So they lived, in daily touch with the great heart of Nature. They saw the sun rise on one side of the rocky headland, and set upon the other; they watched the great storms sweep across the lake, and the lightnings stab into the water. Sometimes, at night, the gale would shake their tent until they could not be sure if it was wind or thunder; but the stays held fast, and they slept untroubled. And then the storm would pass, and in the morning there would be the lake, sparkling in the sunlight; and the sky, clear as crystal, with the white gulls wheeling about, and grey-blue herons standing near the shore.

There were bass to be caught from the rocky point. “So we must have at least one meal of fish every day,” declared Thyrsis.

“I’m willing,” said Corydon--“if you’ll catch them.”

“And then, there are lots of squirrels about.”

“Squirrels!” cried she.

“Yes. I can knock one over with a stone now and then--you’ll see.”

“But, Thyrsis! To eat them!”

“Did you ever taste one?” he laughed.

“But it’s cruel!” she exclaimed; and he thought to himself, How like the little Corydon of old!

“Wait till I’ve skinned him and fried him in bacon grease,” he answered.

And even so it proved. Corydon was troubled by the crisp little toes turned up in the air, but when these had been cut off, she yielded to the allurements of odor and taste. “I’m nothing but a digesting machine nowadays!” she lamented.

To which Thyrsis replied in the words of the village-girl in “Faust,” “‘She feeds two when she eats!’”

They had been obliged to give up their attempt to live on prunes and turnips. For the doctor had warned them that Corydon must have plenty of “good nourishing food”; and this warning was backed up by all her women acquaintances--and also by Corydon’s own inner voices. The appetite that she developed was appalling to them--not only as to quantity but as to quality. She would find herself unable to eat anything they had in their pantry, and with a craving for the wildest and most impossible things; or she would not know what she wanted--and would travel to the store and gaze about at the provisions, until a sudden illumination came. Sometimes she would be so hungry for it that she could not wait to get home, but would sit down by the road-side and devour the contents of the market-basket. To these cravings she yielded religiously, because she had been told that they represented vital needs of her system. Some one had told her an appalling tale about a pregnant woman who had been possessed by a desire for bananas; and because she had not gratified it, the baby when born had cried for five weeks--until they had fed it a banana!

These strange experiences lent new interest to their intimacy. They went through all the journey of maternity together. Pretty soon the changes in her body began to be noticeable; and day by day they would watch these. How wonderful it all was, how incredible! Thyrsis would sink upon his knees before her, and clasp his arms about her and laugh “She’s going to have a little baby!” And Corydon would blush and protest; she did not like to be teased about it--she was still only half reconciled to it. “I’m only a child myself!” she would cry. “I’ve no education--nothing! And I’m not fit for it!” Then he would have to comfort her, telling her that life was long, and that the child would be something to study.

They discussed the weighty question of the name which they should give the child. In this, as in other matters, they were without precedents and limitations, and they found that excess of freedom is sometimes an embarrassment. They were impelled towards literary reminiscence; and Thyrsis soon realized that this was a matter in which the sensuous temperament would have to have its way. “After all,” argued Corydon, “to you a name is a name. If you can call the baby and have it answer, isn’t that all you care about?”

“Yes,” he assented, “I suppose so; if the name’s too unhandy for calling, I can have a nickname.”

To Corydon, on the other hand, a name was a vital thing; a child that was lovely under one name might be unendurable under another. She had been reading Ossian, and the poems of the neo-Celtic enthusiasts; so after much pondering and consultation she announced that Cedric and Eileen were the two names from which they would choose.