Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

The surgeons made their examination, and they discovered more diseased tissue, and a slowly spreading infection. So there was nothing for it but to operate again—they held a quick consultation, and then went ahead. And afterwards they labored and sweated, and by dint of persistent effort, and every device at their command, they fanned into life once more the faint spark in the ashen-grey form that lay before them. But it was a feeble flame they got; as Corydon’s eyelids fluttered, the only sign of recognition that came from her lips was a moan, and from her eyes a look of dazed stupidity. But there was hope for her life, the doctors said; and they sent a telegram which Thyrsis got three days later, when he had fought his way to the town through five miles of heavy snow-drifts.

Meantime the grim fight for life was going on. In the morning Corydon opened her eyes to a burning torture, the racked and twisted nerves quivering in rebellion. It did not come in twinges of pain, it was a slow, deadening, persistent agony, that pervaded every inch of her body. She wondered how she could bear it, how she could live. And yet, strangely, inexplicably, she wanted to live. She did not know why—she had been outraged, she had been deserted by all, she was but a feeble atom of determination in the centre of a hostile universe. And yet she would pit her will against them all, God, man, and devil; they should not conquer her, she would win out.

So she would clench her teeth together and fight. For hours she would stare at the wall, the blank, unresponsive, formless wall before her; and then, when the shadows of the evening fell, and they saw she was fainting from exhaustion, they would come with the needle of oblivion, and the dauntless soul would die for the night, and return in the morning to its pitiless task.

Section 8. Thyrsis received a couple of letters at the same time as the telegram, and he took the next train for the city. It is said that a drowning man sees before him in a few moments the panorama of his whole life; but to Thyrsis were given three hours in which to recall the events of his love for Corydon. He had every reason to believe that he would find her dying; and such pangs of suffering as came to him he had never known before. He was in a crowded car, and he would not shed a tear; but he sat, crouched in a heap and staring before him, fairly quivering with pent-up and concentrated grief. God, how he loved her! What a spirit of pure flame she was—what a creature from another sky! What martyrdom she had dared for him, and how cruelly she had been punished for her daring! And now, this was the end; she was dying—perhaps dead! How was he to live without her—in the bare and barren future that he saw stretching out before him?

Flashes of memory would come to him, waves of torment roll over him. He would recall her gestures, the curves of her face, the tones of her voice, the songs that she had sung; and then would come a choking in his throat, and he would clench his hands, as a runner in the last moments of a desperate race. He thought of her as he had seen her last. He had gone away, careless and unthinking—how blind he had been! The things that he had not said to her, and that he might have said so easily! The love he had not uttered, the pardons he had not procured! The yearnings and consecrations that had remained unspoken all through their lives—ah God, what a tragedy of impotence and failure their lives had been!

Then before his soul came troops of memories, each one a fiend with a whip of fire; the words of anger that he had spoken, the acts of cruelty that he had done! The times when he had made her weep, and had not comforted her! Oh, what a fool he had been—what a blind and wanton fool! And now—if he were to find her dead, and never be able to tell her of his shame and sorrow—he knew that he would carry the memories with him all his days, they would be like blazing scars upon his soul.

She was still alive, however; and so he took a deep breath, and went at his task. There was no question now of what he could bear to do, but of what he must do; she must be saved, and who could do it but himself? Who else could take her hands and whisper to her, and fill her with new courage and hope; who else could bid her to live—to live; could rouse the fainting spirit, and bid it rise up and set forth upon the agonizing journey?

So out of the very abyss they came together. But when at last the fight was won, when the doctors an-nounced that she was out of danger, Thyrsis was fairly reeling with exhaustion. When he left her in the afternoon, he would go to his hotel-room and lie down, utterly prostrated; he would lie awake the whole night through, wrestling with the demons of horror that he had brought with him from her bedside.

So he realized that he was on the verge of collapse, and that cost what it would, he must get away. Corydon’s mother was with her, and when she was strong enough to be moved, she would be taken back to the farm. He mentioned this to Corydon, and she replied that she would be satisfied. There would be Mr. Harding also, she said; Mr. Harding wrote that he would come up to the city, and do what he could to help her in her dire distress.

Section 9. There came from the higher regions a pass upon a steamer to Florida; and so Thyrsis sailed away. With a determined effort he took all his cares, and locked them back in a far chamber of his mind. He would not think about Corydon, nor about what he would do for money when he came home; more important yet, he would clear the book out of his thoughts—he would not permit it to gnaw at him all day and all night.