Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

So Thyrsis came back to his “world”; and he found this world up in arms against him. All the opposition that he had ever had to face was nothing to what he faced now. Society seemed to have made up its collective mind that he should give in; and every force it could use was brought to bear upon him—every person he knew joined in the assault upon him.

He was bound to admit that they had all the arguments on their side. He had gone his own obstinate way, in defiance of all advice and of all precedent; and now he saw what had come of it—exactly what every common-sense person had foreseen. He and Corydon had tried their “living as brother and sister”—and here she was with child! And that was all right, no one proposed to blame him for it; it was what people had predicted, and they were rather pleased to have their predictions come true—to see the bubble of his pretenses burst, and to be able to point out to him that he was like all other men. What they wanted now was simply that he should recognize his responsibility, and look out for Corydon’s welfare. Living in tenement-rooms and in tents, like gypsies and savages, was all right by way of a lark; it was all very picturesque and romantic in a novel; but it would not do for a woman who was about to become a mother. Corydon had been delicately reared. She was used to the comforts and decencies of life; and to get her in her present plight and then not provide these things for her would be the act of a scoundrel.

All through his life the world had had but one message for Thyrsis: “Go to work!” From the world’s point of view his languages and literatures, his music and writing were all play; to “work” was to get a “position”. And now this word was dinned into his ears day and night, the very stones in the street seemed to cry it at him—“Get a position! Get a position!”

As chance would have it, the position was all ready. In the higher regions they were preparing to open a branch of a great family establishment abroad, and Thyrsis was invited to take charge of it. He would be paid three thousand dollars a year at the start, and two or three times as much ultimately; and what more could he want? He knew nothing about the work, but they knew his abilities—that if he would undertake it, and give his attention to it, he would succeed. He would meet people of culture, they argued, and be broadened by contact with men; as for Corydon, it would make her whole life over. Surely, for her sake, he could not refuse!

Thyrsis had foreseen just such things. He had braced himself to meet the shock, and the world found him with his hands clenched and his jaws set. There was no use in arguing with him, he had but one answer—“No! No! No!” He would not take that position, and he would not take any other position—neither now, nor at any future time. He was not a business-man, he was an artist; and an artist he would remain to the end. It might as well be understood at the outset; there was nothing that the world could do or say to him that would move him one inch. They might starve him, they might kill him, they might do what they could or would—but never would he give in.

“But—what are you going to do?” they cried.

He answered, “I am going to write my books.”

“But you have already written two books, and nothing has come of them!”

“Something may come of them yet,” he said. “And if it doesn’t, I shall simply go on and write another, and another, and another. I shall continue to write so long as I have the strength left in me; I shall be trying to write when I die.”

And so, while they argued and pleaded and scolded and wept, he stood in silence. They could not understand him—he smiled bitterly as he realized how impossible it was for them to understand even the simplest thing about him. There was the dapper corporation lawyer and his exquisite young wife, who came to argue about it; and Thyrsis asked them not to tell Corydon why they had come. He saw them look at each other significantly, and he could read their thought—that he was afraid of his wife’s importunities. And how could he explain to them what he had really meant—that if they had told Corydon they had come to persuade him to give up his art, Corydon would probably have found it impossible to be even decently polite to them!