Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

“No, of course not. And you have to give up your violin!”

“Much time I have to practice it in our present plight!”

“I know—I know! But don’t you see, we lose our last hope of growing together? I’ve a vision that haunts me all the time—you going away to do your work, and staying for longer and longer periods—and I sitting at home to mind the baby!”

Day after day he would come back, and she would ask him how the book was going; and he would have to answer that it was not going at all. Then, in his desperation, he would make up his mind to write what he could—to be content with this glimpse of one scene, and with that feeble echo of what he knew the next scene ought to be; and he would bring the result to Corydon, and would discover with a secret pang that she did not know the difference. But then he would ask himself—how could she know the difference? The difference did not exist! His vision of the thing had existed in himself, and in himself alone; if he never uttered it, the world would never know what it might have been—and would never care. Ah, what a future was that to look forward to—to filling the ears of the world with lamentations concerning the books that he might have written! And all the time knowing that the ears of the world were deaf to every sound he made!

Section 12. He thought that he realized the bitterness of this tragedy all at once; but the real bitterness was that he had to realize more and more of it every day. It was a tragedy he had to live in the house with. He had to watch it working itself out in all the little affairs of life; he had to see it manifesting itself in his own soul, and in the soul of Corydon, and even in the soul of the child. Worst of all to him, the artist, he had to see it working itself out in what he wrote—in book after book that went out to represent him to the world, and that did not represent him at all, but only represented the Snare in which he had been caught! It was one of the facts about this Snare, that there was no merciful Keeper to come and put the victim out of his misery with a blow upon the head; that he was left alone, to writhe and twist and tear himself to pieces, and to perish of slow exhaustion. It was not a murder—it was a crucifixion!

He could not have told for whom his heart bled most, for himself, or for Corydon. Here she was, with her grim problems and her bitter necessities; needing advice and comfort, needing companionship—needing a husband! And she had married an artist—a reed that would grow “nevermore again as a reed with the reeds by the river!” That could not grow, even if it had wanted to! For it was quite in vain that the world cried out to him to settle down and become as other men; he could not. The thing that was tearing at his vitals would continue to tear; the only choice he had was between self-expression and madness.

So, wrung as his heart was, he had to go away and as he could. If he yielded to his desire and stayed by her, then the book would not be written in time; and so all their hopes would be gone—they would never win their freedom then! And he would explain this to her; with their relentless devotion to the truth, they would talk it all out between them. They would trace every cord and knot of the Snare. And Corydon would grant that he was right, and that she must submit. He must stay away all day—and all night, if need be—till the book was done.

Not that they were always able to settle their problems in the cold light of reason. Sometimes Thyrsis, with his artist’s ups and downs, would be nervous and irritable; he would manifest impatience over trifles, and this would give rise to tragedies. There was a vast amount of fetching and emptying of water to be done for their little establishment; and sometimes a man who was carrying the destinies of the human race in his consciousness was not as prompt as he might have been in attending to these humble tasks. And moreover, the water all had to be dipped up from the lake; and sometimes, when it was stormy, it was a difficult matter to get it as free from specks as was needed for the ablutions of a fastidious young lady like Corydon.

“If you’d only take a little trouble!” she would say.

“Trouble!” he would exclaim. “Do you think I enjoy hearing you complain about it?”