And so Thyrsis, in a sudden burst of rage, gave the water-bucket a kick
which sent it rolling down the bank, and then strode away to his work.
But unfortunately his work was not of a sort which he could do with
angry emotions in his soul. And so very soon remorse overcame him. He
returned, to find that Corydon had rushed out to the end of the point,
and flung herself down upon the rocks in hysterics. And this, of course,
was not a good thing for a pregnant woman, and so he had to set to work
to soothe her.
But alas, to soothe her was never an easy task, because of her
sensitiveness, and her exalted ideals of him. However humbly he might
apologize and beg forgiveness, there would remain her grief that it had
been possible for a quarrel to occur between them. She would drive him
nearly wild by debating the event, and rehearsing it again and again,
trying to justify herself to him, and him to himself. Thyrsis was
robust, he wanted to let the past take care of itself; he would tell her
of all the worries that were harassing him, and would plead with her
to grant him the privilege of any ordinary human creature, to manifest
annoyance now and then. And Corydon would promise it--she would promise
him anything he asked for; but this was a boon it did not lie within the
possibility of her temperament to grant. He could be angry at fate and
at the world, and could rage and storm at them all he pleased; but he
could never be harsh with Corydon without inflicting upon her pain that
wrecked her, and wrecked him into the bargain.
Perhaps, he thought, it was her condition that accounted for this
morbidness. She was liable to fits of depression, and to mysterious
illness--nausea and faintness and what not. Also, she had been told
weird tales about prenatal influences; and he, not having been educated
in such matters, could not be sure what were the facts. So, whenever
she had been unhappy, there was the possibility that she had done
some irreparable harm to the child! And that made more problems for an
over-worked and sensitive artist.
He soon saw that he had to suppress forever the side of him that was
stern and exacting. Such things had a place in his own life, but no
longer in Corydon’s. Instead, he would see how she suffered, and his
heart would be wrung, and he would come back again and again to comfort
her, and to tell her how he loved her, how he longed to do what was
right. He would set before her the logic of the situation, so that if
things went wrong she might realize that it was neither his fault nor
hers--that it was the world, which kept them in this misery, and shut
them up to suffer together. So it was, all through their lives, that
their remorseless reason saved them; they would find in the analysis
and exposition of the causes of their own unhappiness the one common
satisfaction they had in life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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