Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

In their bewilderment and dismay, the people turned to the Church. Surely the doctrines of Christianity would stand like a barricade against this monstrous cult. But already within the Church there had been rumors and disturbances; and now suddenly a bishop arose and voiced his protest against this attempt “to drag the Church into the mire of political controversy.” It must be made perfectly clear, said the bishop, that Christianity was a religion, and not a dietetic dogma. Its purpose was to save the souls of men, and not to concern itself with their bodies. It had been stated that we should have the poor always with us; which made clear the futility of attempting to change the facts of Nature. Also it was certain that the founder of Christianity had been a meat-eater; and though there might be more than one interpretation placed upon his command concerning little children—-

There we might leave Thyrsis with the established Church. He had it just where he wanted it, and he shook it until its smoothly-shaven pink and white cheeks turned purple, and the demi-tasse went flying out of its beautifully manicured fingers! And while he did it he laughed aloud in hideous glee, and in his soul was a cry like the hunting-call of the lone gray wolf, that he had heard at midnight in his wilderness camp. So far a journey had come the little boy who had been dressed up in scarlet and purple robes, and had carried the bishop’s train at the confirmation service! And so heavy a penalty did the church pay for its alliance with “good society”!

Section 8. Thyrsis paid a week’s living expenses to have this manuscript copied; and then he took it about to the publishers. First came his friend Mr. Ardsley, who had become his chief adviser. When Thyrsis went to see him, Mr. Ardsley drew out an envelope from his desk, and took from it the opinion of his reader. “‘What in the world is the matter with this boy?’” he read. “That’s the opening sentence.”

And then he fixed his eyes upon the boy. “What in the world is the matter?” he asked.

Thyrsis sat silent; there was no reply he could make. He was strongly tempted to say to the man, “The matter is that I am not getting enough to eat!”

But already Thyrsis himself had judged “The Higher Cannibalism” and repudiated it. It was born of his pain and weakness, and it was not the work he had come into the world to do. So at the end he had placed a poem, which told of a visit from his muse, after the fashion of Musset’s “Nuits”; the muse had been sad and silent, and in the end the poet had torn up the product of his hours of despair, and had renewed his faith with the gracious one.

Meantime the long winter months dragged by, and still there was no gleam of hope. For Corydon it was even harder than for her husband. He at least was expressing his feelings, while she could only pine and chafe, without any sort of vent. Her life was a matter of colorless routine, in which each day was like the last, except in increased monotony. She tried hard not to let him see how she suffered; but sometimes the tears would come. And her unhappiness was bad for the child, which in the beginning had been robust and magnificent, but now was not growing properly. Thyrsis would have ridiculed the idea that nervousness could affect her milk; but the time came when, in later life, he saw the poisons of fatigue and fear in test-tubes, and so he understood why the child had not been able to lift its head until it was a year old, and had then been well on the way to having “rickets.”

All their life was so different from the way they had dreamed it! The dream still lured them; but its voice grew fainter and more remote. How were they to keep it real to themselves, how were they to hold it? Their existence was made up of endless sordidness, of dreary commonplace, that opposed them with its passive inertia where it did not actively attack them. “Ah, Thyrsis!” Corydon would cry to him, “this will kill us if it lasts too long!”

For one thing, they no longer heard any music at all—She was not strong enough to practice the piano; and his violin was gone. Here in the great city an endless stream of concerts and operas and recitals flowed past; and here were they, like starving children who press their faces against a pastry-cook’s window and devour the sweets with their eyes. Thyrsis kept up with musical and dramatic progress by reading the accounts in the papers and magazines; but this was a good deal like slaking one’s thirst with a mirage. He used to wonder sometimes if he were to write to these great artists—would they invite him to hear them, or would they too despise him? He never had the courage to try.

Once in the course of the long winter some one presented Corydon with two tickets to the opera, and they went together, in a state of utter bliss. It was an unusual experience for Thyrsis, for their seats were in the orchestra, and hitherto he had always heard his operas from the upper rows in the fifth balcony, where the air was hot and stifling, and the singers appeared as a pair of tiny arms that waved, and a head (frequently a bald head) that emitted a thin, far-distant voice. This had become to him one of the conventions of the opera; and now to discover the singers as full-sized human beings, with faces and legs and loud voices, was very disturbing to his sense of illusion.