Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

Two or three times each week the farmer would bring their mail; and once a week they would hire an old scare-crow of a horse, and a buggy which might have passed for the one-horse shay in its ninety-ninth year, and drive to a town for provisions. It was amazing what loads of provisions a family of three could consume in the course of a week—especially when one of them was following the “stuffing regime”. There had to be a lot of figuring done to get it for the sum of thirty dollars a month; and this put another grievous burden upon Thyrsis. Corydon, alas, had no talents for figuring, and was cursed with a weakness for such superfluities as clean laundry and coffee with cream. This was one more aspect of the difference between the Hebrew and the Greek temperament; and sometimes the Hebrew temperament would lose its temper, and the Greek temperament would take to tears. The situation was all the more complicated because of their pitiful ignorance. They really did not know what was necessity and what was luxury. For instance, Thyrsis had read somewhere that people could live without meat; but Corydon had never heard of such an idea, and insisted with vehemence that it was an absurdity.

However, there was no evading the issue of poverty; for the thirty dollars was all they had. “The Hearer of Truth” had been out several months now, and had not sold a thousand copies; and so it was to be doubted if Thyrsis would ever get another dollar from that. Also, he had heard from the translator of “The Genius”, and had agreed to accept twenty-five dollars as an “honorarium” for the production of his play in Germany—this princely sum to be paid when the play came out during the following winter.

Meantime, of course, he was driving away at his new work. Domestic duties took up most of his morning; but he would get away into the woods in the afternoons, and in the evenings, when the family was asleep, he would work until far after midnight. He was bringing out basketfuls of books from the library of the university; and he lived another life in these—sharing, in a hundred different forms, the agony of the War. He was not writing yet; he was filling up his soul with the thing, making it a reservoir of impressions. Some times it would seem that the reservoir was nearly full, and he would be seized with a hunger to be at work; he would go about possessed by it—absent-minded, restless, nervous when he was spoken to. It was hard for a man who listened all night to the death-groans of the thousands piled up before “Bloody Angle”, to get up in the morning and be satisfactory in the rôle of “mother’s assistant”.

Here, again was the torment of this matrimonial bond to a man who wished to be an artist. He had to live two lives, when one was more than he could attend to; he had to be always aware of another soul yearning for him, reaching out to him and craving his attention. To be sure, Corydon was interested in what he was doing; she even made heroic efforts to read the books that he was reading. But she had so many duties, and so many headaches; and when night came she was so tired! She would ask him to tell her about his vision; and was not the thing untellable? Why else did he have to labor day and night, like a man possessed? He would explain this to her, and she would bid him go on and do his work and not mind her. But when he would take her at her word, and there would follow a week or two of indifference and preoccupation—then he would discover that she was again unhappy.

Section 4. This never ceased to be the case between them; but perhaps it was intensified at this time by the fact that their sex-life had to be suppressed. This was a problem which they had talked out between them before they came away. Thyrsis, who was groping for the truth about these matters, had come to the conclusion that the factor which gave dignity and meaning to intercourse between a man and woman was the desire, or at any rate the willingness, to create a child. Corydon was not sure that she agreed with him in this; but so far as their own case was concerned, it was quite clear that they could take no remotest chance of any accident—another child would mean certain destruction for all three of them. And so they had gone back to the “brother and sister” arrangement with which they had begun life. This was a simple matter for Thyrsis, who was utterly wrapped up in his book; it was not so simple for Corydon, though neither of them realized it, nor could have been brought to admit it. As usual, Corydon desired to be what he was, and to feel what he felt; and so Thyrsis did not realize how another side of her was being blighted. Hers was predominantly a love-nature; it was intolerable to her that any one she loved should not love her in return, and love her in the same way, and to the same extent; and now, when her entire being went out to him, she found herself obliged to suppress her emotions.

Sometimes the thing would break out in spite of her.

“Thyrsis,” she would cry, “aren’t you going to kiss me good-night?”

“Didn’t I kiss you, dearest?” he would answer.

“Oh, but such a cold and perfunctory kiss!”

And so he would come and put his arms about her; but even while she held him thus, she would feel the life go out of his caresses, and see his eyes with a far-off expression. She would know that his thoughts were away upon some battle-field.