Corydon

“ There was no fighting in Victoria Street; it was simply riding through life on rubber tyres. Books, art, comfort, philosophy, all these things are well enough; but the Corydon, the rusty, leaking, treacherous old Corydon, with her starting rivets and banging old engines, she was the real thing, the thing to mark a man and teach him what he's made of. ”

“ So Corydon, the lover, dreams, and dreams—and if you approach him in the forest-glade, he sighs and talks to you, till evening reddens in the west, about Phillis, only Phillis. And as the old Arcady lives still, and did at the time of our history, so Corydons were ready to illustrate it, and our young friend Verty felt the old pastoral desire to talk about his shepherdess, and embrace Miss Sallianna's invitation to confide his sorrows to her respective bosom. ”

“ Corydon and Thyrsis had wanted nothing but to be together; and now they had what they wanted—almost too much of it. Now and then they met the farmer and his wife, a gentle old couple; when they drove to Princeton, they met the clerks in the stores and in the college library; they met no one else. Possibly some women could have stood this long ordeal, but Corydon was not of that tough fiber. While her husband went apart to wrestle with his angel, she stayed in the tent to wrestle with demons. ”

“ Can you not realize how all your deficiencies are as nothing to me, in the sight of that one unapproachable perfection? For my Corydon is all devotion and love, and pure, pure, maiden goodness! And there is quite a whole heart full of feeling for you in that, and I wish I had you here to tell you.
XXII. MY CORYDON:
I am coming more and more to realize myself, and what is the single faculty I have been given. I think of a dear clergyman friend I used to have, and I realize what a loving heart is—what it is to delight in a human soul for its own sake, and to be kind to it, fond of it. ”

“ In the boarding-house with Corydon lived some elderly ladies, who had a remarkable faculty for divining the evil deeds of other people. They had divined the evil deeds of Corydon and Thyrsis, and one of them was moved to come to Corydon’s mother one day, and warn her lest others should divine them too. And so there was more agony; the discovery was made that Corydon had become a social outcast to all the maids and matrons of the summer population—a girl who went to visit a poet in his lonely cabin, and stayed until unknown hours of the night. ”

“ This had to be the final one; for the month of respite had passed, and the time for action was come!
Through their long arguments, Thyrsis had gradually come to realize that the decision rested with him. Corydon was in his hands; she had become a burden upon him, and she would rather she were dead; and so he had to take the responsibility and issue the command. So through many an hour while Corydon slept he had marshalled the facts and tested them, hungering with all his soul for knowledge of the right.
To bring a child into the world would shatter every plan they had formed. ”

“ Bethink thee, gentle Corydon! A rose lasts all night
long,
A kiss but slips from off your lips like a thrush's
evening song.
A kiss that goes, where no one knows! A rose, a
crimson rose!
Corydon made his choice and took—Well, which do
you suppose?
MAYING Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed!—Herrick.
And Phillida with garlands gaye
Was made the lady of the Maye.—Nicholas Breton.
Come, Phillida, come! for the hours are fleet,
And sweet are the soft meadow murmurs, and sweet
Are the merry May flowers that long for thy feet. ”

“ For a while Sir Calidore was wholly mastered by his grief. Yet coming to himself, he considered that Corydon had not seen with his own eyes all that he had told, because he had fled away before the strife had so much as begun; and so hope, which is ever hard to kill in the hearts of men, sprang up within him, and he made a great resolve that he would find her if she yet lived, or avenge her if she had died. He therefore said to Corydon: “Come now, and show me the place where these brigands dwell,” which thing Corydon was at the first unwilling to do ”

“ They utilized their spare time by getting the old horse and buggy, and inspecting and discussing all the farms within five miles of them; an occupation which put a great strain upon their diverse temperaments. Thyrsis would be thinking of such matters as roads and fruit-trees and barns—and above all of prices; while Corydon would be concerned with—alas, Corydon never dared to formulate her vision, even to herself. She had vague memories of dilettante country-places with great open fire-places, and exposed beams, and a broad staircase, and a deep piazza, and above all, a view of the sunset. ”

“ Corydon is served by the Louisville, New Albany & Corydon railway, which connects at Corydon Junction, 8 m. N., with the Southern railway. There are sulphur springs here, and the town is a summer and health resort. Wyandotte Cave is several miles W. of Corydon. Corydon is in an agricultural region, and there are valuable quarries in the neighbourhood; among the town’s manufactures are waggons, and building and lithographic stone. Corydon was settled about 1805, and was the capital of Indiana Territory from 1813 to 1816, and of the state until 1824. ”

“ Meantime, Corydon was prosecuting an inquiry into these matters upon her own account, and getting at quite other points of view. There were some, it seemed, who took this game less seriously than she and Thyrsis; and these managed to go free—they broke the cords of the Snare, they slipped between the fingers of the hand of Fate. Corydon had heard a certain scientist refer to man as “Nature’s insurgent son”; and now came the discovery that Nature had insurgent daughters also. ”

“ The magic hour would strike, and the door of hope open, and there upon the threshold he would appear, in all his superb manhood. Corydon thought she had never before met a man who gave her such an impression of vitality. ”

“ Thus far I bear in mind th' alternate strain.
Young Corydon acquir'd unrivall'd fame,
And still we pay a deference to his name.
[1] The scene of this pastoral is as follows. Four shepherds, Daphnis in the most distinguished place, Corydon, Thyrsis, and Melibœus, are seen reclining beneath an holm. Sheep and goats intermixed are feeding hard by. At a little distance Mincius, fringed with reeds, appears winding along. Fields and trees compose the surrounding scene. A venerable oak, with bees swarming around it, is particularly distinguished. The time seems to be the forenoon of a summerday. ”

“ The marriage of Corydon and Thyrsis was dominated by the most pitiful ignorance. Both parties had been taught very little, and most of that was wrong. Corydon had lived the solitary life of a child of the city nomads; her father had been a newspaper reporter, then deputy clerk of a court, and she had been moved about from boardinghouses to apartments; and in the course of twenty years of life she had picked up one intimate girl friend, a poor stenographer dying of tuberculosis, and no men friends whatever. As for Thyrsis, he had, besides Corydon, one girl friend. ”

“ Thyrsis seldom took human relationships seriously enough to get excited in such arguments; but Corydon, with her intense and personal temperament, made an eager and uncomfortable propagandist. How could anyone fail to see what was so plain to her? And so she would bring books and pamphlets, and lend them about. There was a young man named Harry Stuart, a fine, handsome fellow, who taught drawing at the High School. ”

“ Therefore you must keep my secrets as religiously as the court of Mars at Athens."
"Oh! Corydon, [532] poor simple Corydon! Do you think aught that a rich man does can be secret? Even though his slaves should hold their tongues, his cattle will tell the tale; and his dogs, and door-posts, and marble statues! Close the shutters, cover all the chinks with tapestry, fasten the doors, [Pg 100] remove every light from the chamber, [533] let each one keep his counsel, let not a soul lie near. ”

“ Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and filled his head. He went; his piping took a troubled sound Of storms that rage outside our happy ground.”
Section 1. In the course of that summer there befell Corydon an adventure; Thyrsis had gone off one day for a walk, and when he came back she told him about it—how a young lady had stopped at the house to ask for a drink of water, and had sat upon the piazza to rest, and had talked with her. Now Corydon was in a state of excitement over a discovery. ”

“ Corydon, besides his pipe, had adopted nuts and beer to solace the tedium of the quarter of an hour that yet intervened before the Bermondsey bird and its Walworth antagonist were to be "on the nail;" and ever and anon fresh Corydons kept dropping in, until some fifty or sixty had assembled. They were all of one type. There was a [87] "birdiness" discernible on the outer man of each; for birdiness, as well as horseyness, writes its mark on the countenance and the attire. ”

“ 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 when the cicerone proceeded to point out a small hillock near the centre of the enclosure as the Praetorium, Corydon’s patience could hold no longer, and, like Edie Ochiltree, he forgot all reverence, and broke in with nearly the same words—“Praetorium here, Praetorium there, I made the bourock mysell with a flaughter-spade.” The effect of this undeniable evidence on the two lettered sages may be left to the reader’s imagination. ”

“ He turned, laughing to his daughter.
"Coryston has settled in—with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He has all sorts of ructions on his hands already."
"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas emerging from the woods.
"My dear—she began it. And he is quite right—he has a public duty to these estates."
"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly."
"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, are over." ”

“ And they won't play the game!"
"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any game—together—Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply.
Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly.
"One might argue till doomsday—I agree—as to which of us said 'won't play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur—having made a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's we who have the youth—we who have the power—we who know more than our elders simply because we were born thirty years later! ”

“ His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes glittering.
"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his restless walk.
"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play the game of a generation—old and young. However, the situation is too acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an old friend?" ”

“ Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking and pondering. ”

“ There's already an announcement of your meeting in the Martover paper yesterday—"
"No!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing.
"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she has already written your speech."
"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair.
"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell mother you won't be treated so—that you're a man, not a school-boy—that you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches—et cetera. Play the independence card for all you're worth. ”

“ As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands on them. ”

“ Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with such a problem—be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old house—for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns—Marcia and Newbury. ”