Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

These images came to Thyrsis, until he burst into wild, sardonic laughter. He saw himself in new and grotesque lights; he was the peacock, spreading his gorgeousness before a dazzled and wondering world; he was the young rooster, strutting before his mate, and thrilling with the knowledge of his own importance! He was each of the barnyard creatures by turn, and Corydon was each of the fascinated females. And somewhere, perhaps, stood the farmer, smiling complacently—for should there not be somewhere a farmer in this universal barnyard?

But then, the laughter died; for he thought of Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee”, and shuddered at the fate of the male-creature. He was a mere accident in the scheme of Nature—she wasted all his splendors to accomplish the purpose of an hour. And now it had been accomplished. He had had his moment of ecstasy, his dizzy flight into the empyrean; and now behold him falling, disembowelled and torn, an empty shell!

But no—it was not quite that way, Thyrsis told himself, after further reflection. In the human hive the male creature was not only the bearer of the seed he was also the worker. And so there was one more function he had to perform. All those fine frenzies of his, his ideals and his enthusiasms—they had served their purpose, and would fade; but before him there was still a future—a drab and dreary future of perpetual pot-boiling!

He recalled their bridal-night. All that had puzzled him in it and startled him—how clear it was now! Corydon had shrunk from him, just enough to lure him; and then, suddenly, her whole being had seemed to change—she had caught him, and held him fast. For he had accomplished her purpose; he had gotten her with child! And so he must stand by her—he must bring her food, that she might give the child life! And for that purpose she would hold him; for that she would use every art of which she was mistress—the whole force of her being would go into it!

She would not know this, of course; she would do it blindly and instinctively, as she had done everything so far. She would do it by those same generous and beautiful qualities that had made him hers! Therein lay the humor of his whole adventure—there lay the deadly nature of this Snare. The cords of it were woven out of love and tenderness, out of ecstasy and aspiration; and they were wound about his very heart-strings, so that it would kill him to pull them loose. And he would never pull them loose—he saw that in a sudden vision of ruin! She would be noble to the uttermost limit of nobleness. She would threaten to destroy herself—and so he would save her! She would bid him cast her away—and so he would stand by her to the end! And the end would be simply the withering and shrivelling of those radiant qualities which he called his genius—qualities which were so precious to him, but about which Nature knew nothing!

So grim an aspect had life come to wear to this boy of twenty-one! He stripped all the flesh of illusion from its fair face, and saw the grinning skull beneath. And he mocked at himself, because of all those virtues by which he had been caught—and which yet he knew were stronger than his will. Through faith and love he had been made a captive; and through faith and love would he waste away and perish!

Section 5. 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.

Being in an “interesting condition,” Corydon was entitled to the confidences of the married women acquaintances of the family. They were eager to know all about her, and what she was going to do; and they told her their own experiences. She brought these to Thyrsis, who was thus admitted to a view of the inner workings of the “race-suicide” mill.

It was as the doctor had said; each one of these middle-class ladies considered herself a special case, but their stories all seemed to fit together. Nature’s boundless and irrational fecundity was an exceedingly trying feature of the life of middle-class ladies. In the first place, the having of babies was a tedious and painful matter. One became grotesquely disfigured, and had to hide away and sever all social relationships. One lost one’s grace and attractiveness, and hence the power to hold one’s husband. And then, there were all the cares and the inconveniences of children. What was one to do with them, in a city where the best hotels and apartment-houses barred them out?

Then, too, even supposing the best of intentions—there was the cost of living. At present prices it was impossible for a man who had only a salary to support more than one or two children; and with prices increasing as they were, one could not be sure of educating even these. And meanwhile, the Nature of Things had apparently planned it that a woman should bear a child once a year for half her life-time!