Upton Sinclair

“ Throughout all this long pilgrimage of love, Thyrsis had been struck by the part which blind chance had played. It was blind chance that had brought Corydon to the country where he had gone. It was blind chance that he had read his book to her. And then—the chance that he had gone to see a doctor about diet! And that dark accident in the night, that had opened the gates of life to a new human soul! And now, strangest of all—the chance by which this last issue was to be decided! By a walk in the park, and a casual meeting with a nurse-maid! ”

“ And in it he had set forth the view of life that had come to him—
“The quest of the spirit’s gain— Lured by the graces of pleasure, And lashed by the furies of pain. Thy weakness shall sigh for an Eden, But the sword shall flame at the gate; For far is the home of thy vision And strong is the hand of thy fate!”
Section 13. Though Thyrsis had no time to realize it, it was in this long and bitter struggle that he won whatever power he had in his future life. It was here that he learned “to hold his will above him as his law”, and to defy the world for the sake of his ideal. ”

“ To do one deed that the world remembers, to utter one word that lives forever—that is worth all the failure and the agony that can come to one woman in her lifetime!’”
Corydon sat with her hands clasped. “Yes,” she said, “that is the way she would feel!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” remarked the other. “I must make it real; and I’ve been afraid about it. Would she really go with him?”
“She would go if she loved him,” said Corydon.
“If she loved him. But she must love his art still more.”
“She must love him,” said Corydon.
Thyrsis shook his head. ”

“ It was the duty of every soul to seek the highest potentiality of which it had vision; and as one did that for himself, so he did it for the person he loved. There could be no higher love than this—to treat the thing beloved as one’s self, to be perpetually dissatisfied with it, to scourge it to new endeavor, to hold it in immortal discontent.
This was a point about which they argued with eager excitement. To Thyrsis, love itself was a prize to be held before the loved one; whereas Corydon argued that love must exist before such a union could be thought of. ”

“ This was a golden hour in Thyrsis’ life. The gates of wonder were flung open, and all things were touched with a new and mystic glow. He scarcely realized it at the time; for once he was too much moved to think about his own emotions, the artist was altogether lost in the man. Even the room in which he lodged was relieved of its sordidness; it was a thing that men had made, and so a part of the mystery of becoming. He yearned for some one to whom he could impart his great emotion; but because of the loneliness of his life he could find no one but the keeper of his lodging-house. ”

“ And down below are the poor, who slave to make civilization possible. Such lives as they have to live—I can’t ever get the thought out of my mind, not in any happiest moment! I feel as if I were a man who had escaped from a beleaguered city, and it all depended upon me to carry the tidings and bring relief. I’m their one hope, and if I fail them I’m a traitor, an accursed being! They are ignorant and helpless, and their cry comes to me like some great storm-wind of grief and despair. Oh, some day I mean to utter words that will reach them—I can’t fail! I can’t fail!”
“No!” whispered Corydon. ”

“ All the problems with which they had ever wrestled were as child’s play to this problem; they could sit and read the deadly terror in each other’s eyes. Corydon’s lip was trembling, and her face was white and drawn and old. So swiftly had fled her young dream of joy!
“Thyrsis,” she said, in a low voice, “it means ruin!”
“Yes,” he answered.
And she clenched her hands tightly. “I will kill myself first!” she whispered. “I will not drag you down!”
He made no reply.
“Listen, Thyrsis,” she went on. “There is only one thing to be thought of. I must get rid of it.” ”

“ Meantime Thyrsis was over at his own place, wrestling with the book again. He had told himself that it would be easy, now that he was free from the money-terror. But alas, it was not easy, and nothing could make it easy. If he had more energy, it only meant that his vision reached farther, and set him a harder task. Never in his life did he write a book, the last quarter of which was not to him a nightmare labor. He would be staggering, half blind with exhaustion—like a runner at the end of a long race, with a rival close at his heels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dear Corydon, it comes to me that you are miserable to be in love with me—that I had no right to put this burden on your shoulders. I would say better things if I could, but I think that our marriage will be a setting out across a wild ocean in the dark! It is for you to be the heroine, to dare the voyage if you choose. These sound like wild words, but they are the truth of my life, and I dare not say any others. Can a girl who has been brought up in gentleness and sweetness, in innocence of life and of pain—can she say things, feel things like these? ”

“ Now Corydon, as you understand, I dream love absolute, and would scorn any other kind. I can master my passion, if it be that upon earth there is no woman willing or able to go with me to the last inch of my journey. I dream a life-companion to follow wherever my duty drives me; to feel all the desperateness of desire that I feel, to be stern and remorseless as I must be, wild and savage as I must be; to race through knowledge with me and to share my passion for truth with me; a woman with whom I need have no shame in the duty of my genius! ”

“ It was a world that would have made happy the soul of any writer of romances; but to Thyrsis in earliest childhood the fates had given the gift of seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. There was an incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound; there were jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a breath of suspicion and scandal hanging like a poisonous cloud over everything. ”

“ But these were children’s tasks, and her pilgrimage was one of despair. Above were the heights where Thyrsis dwelt, inaccessible, almost invisible; and how many years must she toil to reach them! She would come to him with tears in her eyes—tears of shame for her ignorance and her stupidity. And then Thyrsis would kiss the tears away, and tell her how many brilliant and clever women he had met, who had the souls of dolls behind all their display of culture.
So Corydon would escape that unhappiness—but alas, only to fall into another kind. ”

“ I can’t bear it! No, Thyrsis—no!”
But he answered her, “Be still! I love you! You are mine.” And for every sob and every shudder and every moan of fear he had but one response—“I love you! You are mine!”
He knew that he loved her now—and he knew what his love meant. Before this they had been strangers; but now he would penetrate to the secret places, to the holy of holies of her being.
Never in all his life had Thyrsis known woman. To him woman had been the supreme mystery of life, a creature of awe and sacredness—not to be handled, scarcely even to be thought about. ”

“ And seeing her grief, his heart breaking with pity, a strange impulse came to Thyrsis. He took her hands in his, and knelt down before her, and began to pray. It had been years since he had thought of prayer, and Corydon had never thought of it in her life. It came from the deeps of him—a few stammering words, simple, almost childish, yet exquisite as music. He prayed that they might have courage to keep up the fight, that they might be able to hold their love before them, that nothing might ever dim their vision of each other. ”

“ To Thyrsis he seemed like some general commanding an army in battle, with the hopes of future ages hanging upon his skill. But this was a general who fought, not with sword and fire, but with ideas; a conqueror in the cause of “right reason and the will of God”. He wrote simply, as a scientist; and yet one could feel the passion behind the quiet words—the hourly shock of the incessant conflict, the grim persistence which pressed on in the face of obloquy and persecution, the courage which had been tested through generations of anguish and toil. ”

“ And neither must he love his own too dearly; there had been women who had suffered and died in that War, and babes who had perished by tens of thousands; and they, too, had been born with agony, had been loved and yearned for, and wept and prayed for.
So, out of the dead past, were voices calling to Thyrsis; he heard them in the night—time as one mighty symphony of grief. They had died for nothing, unless the Republic should be saved, unless their dream of freedom and justice could be made real. And for what was the poet but that? ”

“ A great deal of the time life seems to me a hopeless puzzle; I am so utterly unfitted for the roles I labor to play. Is it that I am too low for my environment? Or can it be that I am too high? Surely there must some day be other things that women can do in the world besides training children. I try to love my task, but I have no talent for it, and it is a frightful strain upon me. After one hour of blocks and choo-choo cars, I am perfectly prostrated. I have been cheated out of the joys of motherhood, that is the truth—the spring was poisoned for me at the very beginning. ”

“ The child had to be kept in a dark place, under pain of losing its eyesight; and when it was very hot in the tent, some one had to sit and fan it. It could not sleep, but writhed and moaned, now screaming in torment, now whimpering like a frightened cur—a sound that wrung Thyrsis’ very heart. And oh, the sight of the little body—purple, a mass of eruptions, and with beads of perspiration upon it! Corydon’s mother came to help her through this ordeal, and would sit for hours upon hours, rocking the wailing infant in her arms. ”