Upton Sinclair - Love's pilgrimage

So, out of the dead past, were voices calling to Thyrsis; he heard them in the night-time as one mighty symphony of grief. They had died for nothing, unless the Republic should be saved, unless their dream of freedom and justice could be made real. And for what was the poet but that? So that the new generations might know what their fathers had done—that the youth of America might be roused and thrilled once more! Surely it could not be that the land was all sunk in selfishness and unfaith—that there were no longer any generous souls who could be stirred by a trumpet-call, and led forth to strike a new blow for the great hope of Humanity!

§ 17. THE long winter dragged by, and the fury of it seemed to increase; they were as if besieged by

demons of cold and storm. There came another blizzard, and the snows drifted down to their hollow by the edge of the woods, so that it was two days before they could get out, even to the farm-house. And there was no place for them to walk —a path from their house to Thyrsis' study was a labor of half a day to dig. Also Corydon caught a cold, which ran in due course through the little family, and added to their misery and discomfort.

The snow seemed to be symbolical, walling them in from all the world. "There is no help", it seemed to say to them; whatever strength they got they must wring out of their own hearts. Here in this place, it seemed to Thyrsis, he learned the real meaning of Winter; he saw it as primitive man had seen it, a cruel and merciless assailant, a fiend that came ravening, dealing destruction and death. He thought of the ode by Thomas Campbell—

"Archangel! Power of desolation!

Fast descending as thou art, Say, hath mortal invocation

Spells to touch thy stony heart?"

Surely no Runic Odin, who "howled his war-song to the gale", no Lapland savage who cowered in his hut, ever panted for the respite of the spring-time more than these two lovers in their tiny cottage.

It was evident that Corydon was going down-hill under the strain. She became more and more nervous and wretched, her headaches and her fits of exhaustion were more frequent. Then, too, her old mental trouble, the habit of "thinking things", was plaguing her again. She would come to Thyrsis with long accounts of her

psychological entanglements, and he would patiently unravel the skein. Or sometimes, if he was very tired, he might give some signs of a desire to escape the ordeal ; and then he would see a look of terror stealing into Corydon's eyes. So these things were real after all—they were real even to Thyrsis!

One morning he opened his eyes, and looked from his study-window, to find that another heavy snow had fallen; and when he had dressed and gone over to the house, he found Corydon in bed. She complained of a headache, and had had chills during the night, and was now quite evidently feverish. He was alarmed, and after he had made her as comfortable as he could, he dressed the baby and took him upon his shoulder, and made his way with difficulty to the farm-house. He left the baby there, and with a horse and sleigh set out for town. The horse had to walk all the way, and several times the sleigh was upset in the drifts, so that it was two hours before he reached his destination. As the doctor was out upon his rounds, he had to wait a couple of hours more—and then only to learn that the man could not possibly attempt the trip. He had several patients who were dangerously ill, and he had to be on hand.

He sent Thyrsis to another doctor, but this one said exactly the same; and so the boy spent the day wandering about the town. The thought of Corydon's lying there alone, helpless and suffering, made him wild; but everywhere he met with the same response—the cold weather had apparently brought an epidemic of disease, and there was no doctor in the place who could spare three or four hours to make the long journey in the snow.

So there was nothing for him to do but go back.

The farmer's wife offered to take care of the baby over night, and he went down to the cottage alone-where he found Corydon much worse. He sat and held her hand, a terror clutching at his heart; and all night long he sat and tended her—he filled hot water bottles when she was chilled, and got ice when she was hot, and made cool lemonade, and prepared tidbits and tempted her to eat. He would whisper to her and soothe her; and later, when she fell into a doze, he sat nodding in his chair and shivering with cold, but afraid to touch the fire for fear of disturbing her.

Then, towards dawn, she wakened; and Thyrsis was almost beside himself with anguish and fear—for she was delirious, and did not know where she was, or what she was doing. She kept talking as if to the baby— in their baby-talk. Thyrsis would listen, until he would choke up with tears.

He left her, and went up to the farm, and got the horse and sleigh again, and drove to another town. It made no difference what doctor he got—to Thyrsis all doctors were alike, the keepers of the keys of health. After several hours' pursuit he found that this man also was busy. All he could say was that he would try to get out that night.

So Thyrsis went back again, to find his wife with flushed face, and beads of perspiration upon her forehead; now sitting up and babbling aimlessly, now sinking back exhausted. He sat once more through a night of torment, holding her hot hands in his, and praying in vain for the coming of the doctor.

It was afternoon of the next day before the man finally came, and brought some relief to Thyrsis' soul, and perhaps also to Corydon's body. He took her ^°rpperature and listened to her breathing, and pro-

nounced it a severe attack of grippe, with a touch of bronchitis; and he laid out an assortment of capsules and liquids, and promised to come again if Thyrsis sent for him.

And so the boy set out in the double role of trained nurse and mother's assistant. He gave Corydon her medicines, and brought fresh water for her, and smoothed her pillows and talked to her, and prepared some delicacies for her when she wished to eat; also he dressed and bathed the baby, and cooked his complex meals and fed them to him; he put on his rubbers and his leggings and his mittens, and the overcoat and peaked hood (which Corydon had devised for him out of eighty cents' worth of woolly red cloth), and turned him out to "bongie cowtoos" in the snow. Likewise he got his own meals and washed the dishes, and tended the fires and emptied the ashes and filled the lamps and swept the floors ; and in the interim between these various duties he fought new battles within himself, and got new side-lights upon Chickamauga and "Bloody Angle".

§ 18. IT was two weeks before this siege was lifted, and Corydon was able to take up her burdens once more. It was then March, and the snow had given place to cold sleety rains, and the fields and the ground about their home were miniature swamps full of mud. Thyrsis would tramp through this to the hill-tops where the storm-winds howled, and there vow defiance to his foes, and come home to pour new hope and courage and resolution into a bottomless pit.

He was finishing his vision of the field of Gettysburg—the three-days' grapple between two titan armies, that meant to him three weeks of soul-terrifying toil.

Men had said that Gettysburg meant the turning of the tide, that victory was certain; and yet there had followed Sherman's long campaign, and all the horror of the Wilderness fighting, and Mine Run and Cold Harbor and the ghastly siege of Petersburg. And now Thyrsis had to fight his way through this. He saw the figure that he had dreamed, and that possessed him; a soldier who was the rage of the War incarnate, the awakened frenzy of the nation. He was a man lifted above pain and cold and hunger; he was gaunt and wild of aspect, restless and impatient, driving, driving to the end. He went about the duties of the camp like one in a dream; he marched like an automaton—for hours, or for days, as need might be—his thoughts flying on to those moments that alone were real to him, to the charge and the fury of the conflict, the blows that were the only things that counted. He lived amid sights and sounds of horror, with groans and weeping in his ears, with a mist of blood and cannon-smoke before his eyes; he drove on, grim and implacable, the very ground about him rocking and quivering in a delirium of torment. He was the War!