Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

“Then why don’t you get her to stay with you?” asked Thyrsis, quickly.

“Ah, but she wouldn’t think of it,” said Corydon. “She doesn’t really care about anything in the world but her Congo savages!”

“We might try,” said he. “When does she complete her course?”

“Not until the end of the year.”

“Well, we can do a lot of arguing in that time. And when the book is out, we’ll have money enough, so that we can offer to pay her. She might become a sort of ‘mother’s helper.’”

Section 3. So Thyrsis began a struggle with Jesus and the Congo savages, for the possession of Delia’s soul. He set to work to interest her in his work; he gave her his first novel, which contained no theology at all; and also “The Hearer of Truth”—the social radicalism of which he was pleased to see did not alarm her. And then he gave her the war-novel, and saw with joy how she was thrilled over that. He laid himself out to make his purpose and his vision clear to her; and then, one afternoon, when Corydon had a headache and was taking a nap, he led her off to a quiet place in the woods, and set before her all the bitter tragedy of their lives.

He pictured the work he had to do, and the loneliness to which this consigned Corydon; he told her of the horrors they had so far endured, and what effect these had had upon his wife. He showed her what her power was—how she could make life possible for both of them. For she had that magic key which Thyrsis himself did not possess, she could unlock the treasure-chambers of Corydon’s soul.

But alas, Thyrsis soon perceived that his efforts had been in vain. Delia was stirred by his eloquence, but the only effect was to move her to an equally eloquent account of the sufferings of the natives of the Congo basin. It was important that he should get his books written; but how much more important it was that some help should be carried to these unhappy wretches! They never saw any books, they were altogether beyond his reach; and who was to take the light to them? She told him harrowing tales of sick women, beaten and tortured and burned with fire to drive the devils out of them.

Thyrsis met this by attempting to broaden the girl’s social consciousness. He showed her how the waves of intelligence, beginning at the top, spread to the lowest strata of society—changing the character of all human activities, and affecting the humblest life. He showed her the capitalist system, and explained how it worked; how it reached to the savage in the remotest corner of the earth, and seized him and made him over according to its will. It was true, for instance—and not in any poetic sense, but literally and demonstrably true—that the fate of the Congo native was determined in Wall Street, and in the financial centres of London and Paris and Brussels and Berlin. The essential thing about the natives was that they represented rubber and ivory. And Delia might go there, and try to teach them and help them, but she would find that there were forces engaged in beating them down and destroying them—forces in comparison with which she was as helpless as a child. It was true of the Congo blacks, as it was true of the people of the slums, of the proletariat of the whole earth, that there was no way to help them save to overthrow the system which made of them, not human beings, but commodities, to be purchased and passed through the profit-mill, and then flung into the scrap-heap.

But Thyrsis found to his pain that it was impossible to make these considerations of any real import to Delia. She understood them, she assented to them; but that did not make them count. Her impulses came from another part of her being. Her savages were naked and hungry and ignorant and miserable; and they needed to be fed and clothed, and more important yet, to be baptized and saved. She was all the more impelled to her task by the fact that all the forces of civilization were arrayed against her. The fires of martyrdom were blazing in her soul. She meant to throw herself over a precipice—and the higher the precipice, and the more jagged the rocks beneath, the greater was the thrill which the prospect brought her.