Upton Sinclair - Love's pilgrimage

So, as he walked the streets that night, Thyrsis made a vow. Some day he would put before the world this vision that had come to him, some day he would blast men's souls with it. He would shake them with this horror, he would thrill them with this sense of the infinite preciousness and holiness of life! He would drive it into them like a barbed arrow—that never afterwards in all their lives would they be rid of. Never afterwards would they dare to mock, never afterwards would they be able to rest until these things had been done away with, until these horrors had been driven from the earth.

PART II

Loves Captivity

BOOK VIII THE CAPTIVE BOUND

They sat with the twilight shadows about them. Memories too poignant assailed them, and her hand trembled as it lay upon his arm.

"How strange it was!" she whispered. "Have we kept the faith?"

"Who knows?" he answered; and m a low voice he read —•

"And long the way appears., which seemed so short To the less practised eye of sanguine youth; And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air, The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth, Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!"

§ 1. THIS was a golden hour in Thyrsis' life. The gates of wonder were flung open, and all things were touched with a new and mystic glow. He scarcely realized it at the time; for once he was too much moved to think about his own emotions, the artist was altogether lost in the man. Even the room in which he lodged was relieved of its sordidness; it was a thing that men had made, and so .a part of the mystery of becoming. He yearned for some one to whom he could impart his great emotion; but because of the loneliness of his life he could find no one but the keeper of his lodging-house. Even she became a human thing to him, because of her interest in the great tidings. If all the world loved a lover, it loved yet more one through whom the supreme purpose of love had been accomplished.

Thyrsis went each day to the hospital, to watch the new miracle unfolding itself; to see the Child asserting its existence as a being with a life of its own. He could never tire of watching it; he watched it asleep, with the faint heaving of its body, and the soft, warm odor that clung to it; he watched its awakenings—the opening of its eyes, and the sucking movements that it made perpetually with its lips. They had dressed it up now, and hid some of its strangeness; but each morning the nurse would undress it, and give it a bath; and then he marvelled at the short crooked legs, and the tiny red hands that clutched incessantly at the air, and the strange prehensile feet, that carried one back to distant

ages, hinting at the secrets of Nature's workshop. Sometimes they would permit him to hold this mystic creature in his arms—after much exhortation, and assurance that his left arm was properly placed at the back of its head. One found out in this way what a serious business life really was.

Cory don lay back among her pillows and smiled at these things. Most wonderful it was to him to see how swiftly she recovered from her ordeal, how hourly the flush of health seemed to steal back into her cheeks. He became ashamed of the memory of his convulsive anguish and his blind rebellions. He saw now that her pain had not been as other pain; it was a constructive pain, a part of the task of her life. It was a battle in which she had fought and conquered; and now she sat, throned in her triumphal chariot, acclaimed by the plaudits of a multitude of hopes and joys unseen.

There came the miracle of the milk. Incessantly the Child's lips moved, and its hands groped out; it was an embodied demand for new experience—for life, it knew not what. But Nature knew, and had timed the event to this hour. And Thyrsis watched the phenomenon, marvelling—as one marvels at the feat of engineers, who tunnel from opposite sides of a mountain, and meet in the centre without the error of an inch.

It was in accordance with the impression which Corydon made upon him, as a dispenser of abundance, a goddess of fruitfulness, that there should have been more milk than the Child needed. The balance had to be drawn off with a little vacuum-pump; and Thyrsis would watch the tiny jets as they sprayed upon the glass bulb. The inilk was rich and golden-hued; he tasted it, with mingled wonder and shuddering.

These procedures filled the room with a warm, luscious

odor, as of a dairy; they were eminently domestic procedures, such as in fancy he had been wont to tease her about. But he had few jests at present—he was in the inner chambers of the temple of life, and hushed and stilled with awe. The things that he had witnessed in that room were never to be forgotten; each hour he pledged himself anew, to the uttermost limits of his life. The voice of skeptic reason was altogether silent in him now. And also he was interested to observe that all protest was ended in Corydon; the impulses of motherhood had now undisputed sway in her.

§ 2. BUT even in such an hour of consecration, the sordid world outside would not leave him unmolested. It was as if the black clouds had parted for a moment, while the sunlight poured through; and now again they rolled together. The great surgeon, who had told Thyrsis that he would wait for his money, professed now to have forgotten his agreement. Perhaps he had really forgotten it—who could tell, with the many things he had upon his mind? At any rate, Corydon found herself suddenly confronted with a bill, which she was powerless to pay; with white cheeks and trembling lips she told Thyrsis about it—and so came more worry and humiliation. The very food that she ate became tasteless to her, because she felt she had no right to it; and in a few days she was begging Thyrsis to take her away.

So he helped to carry her downstairs, and back to her parents' home; and then he returned to his own lonely room, and sat for hours in the bitter cold, with his teeth set tightly, and the nails dug into the palms of his hands. It so happened that just then the editor was beginning to change his mind about "The Hearer

of Truth"; and so he had new agonies of anxiety and disappointment.

Again he might not come to see Corydon; and this led to a great misfortune. For she could not do without him now, her craving for him was an obsession; and so she left her bed too soon, and climbed the stairs to his room. Again and again she did this, in spite of his protests; and when, a little later, the doctors found that she had what they called "womb-trouble", they attributed it to this. Perhaps it was not really so, but Corydon believed it, and through all the years she laid upon it the blame for innumerable headaches and backaches. Thus an episode that might have been soon forgotten, stayed with her, as the symbol of all the agonies of which her life was made.

She would come, bringing the baby with her; and they would lay it upon the bed, and then sit and talk, for hours upon hours, wrestling with their problems. Later on, when Corydon was able, they would go to the park, craving the fresh air. But in midwinter there were few days when they could sit upon a bench for long; and so they would walk and walk, until Corydon was exhausted, and he would have to help her back to the room.

Thyrsis in these days was like a wild animal in a cage; pacing back and forth and testing every corner of his prison. But they never thought of giving up; never in all their lives did that possibility come into their discourse. And doggedly, blindly, they kept on with their studies. Corydon mastered new lists of German words, and they read Freitag's "Verlorene Handscrift" together, and von Scheffel's "Ekkehard", and even attempted "Iphigenie auf Tauris"—though in truth they found it difficult to detach themselves to quite that ex-

tent from the world of every-day. It is not an easy matter to experience the pure katJiarsis of tragedy, with a baby in the room who has to be nursed every hour or two, and who is liable to awaken at any moment and make some demand.