Part I. Loves Entanglement

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

A NOVEL

By Upton Sinclair

New York And London

CONTENTS

PART I. Loves Entanglement

BOOK I. THE VICTIM

BOOK II. THE SNARE

BOOK III. THE VICTIM HESITATES

BOOK IV. THE VICTIM APPROACHES

BOOK V. THE BAIT IS SEIZED

BOOK VI. THE CORDS ARE TIGHTENED

BOOK VII. THE CAPTURE IS COMPLETED

PART II. Love's Captivity

BOOK VIII. THE CAPTIVE BOUND

BOOK IX. THE CAPTIVE IN LEASH

BOOK X. THE END OF THE TETHER

BOOK XI. THE TORTURE-HOUSE

BOOK XII. THE TREADMILL

BOOK XIII. THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE

BOOK XIV. THE PRICE OF RANSOM

BOOK XV. THE CAPTIVE FAINTS

BOOK XVI. THE BREAK FOR FREEDOM

LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE

PART I. Loves Entanglement

BOOK I. THE VICTIM

It was in a little woodland glen, with a streamlet tumbling through it. She sat with her back to a snowy birch-tree, gazing into the eddies of a pool below; and he lay beside her, upon the soft, mossy ground, reading out of a book of poems. Images of joy were passing before them; and there came four lines with a picture—

"Hard by, a cottage-chimney smokes,

From betwixt two aged oaks,

Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,

Are at their savory dinner set."

"Ah!"said she."I always loved that. Let us be Corydon and Thyrsis!"

He smiled."They were both of them men,"he said.

"Let us change it,"she responded—"just between ourselves!"

"Very well—Corydon!"said he.

Then, after a moment's thought, she added,"But we didn't have the cottage."

"No,"said he—"nor even the dinner!"

Section 1. It was the Highway of Lost Men. They shivered, and drew their shoulders together as they walked, for it was night, and a cold, sleety rain was falling. The lights from saloons and pawn-shops fell upon their faces—faces haggard and gaunt with misery, or bloated with disease and sin. Some stared before them fixedly; some gazed about with furtive and hungry eyes as they shuffled on. Here and there a policeman stood in the shelter, swinging his club and watching them as they passed. Music called to them from dives and dance-halls, and lighted signs and flaring-colored pictures tempted them in the entrances of cheap museums and theatres; they lingered before these, glad of even a moment's shelter. Overhead the elevated trains pounded by; and from the windows one could see men crowded about the stoves in the rooms of lodging-houses, where the steam from their garments made a blur in the air.

Down this highway walked a lad, about fifteen years of age, pale of face, and with delicate and sensitive features. His overcoat was buttoned tightly about his neck, and his hands thrust into his pockets; he gazed around him swiftly as he walked. He came to this place every now and then, but he never grew used to what he saw.

He eyed the men who passed him; and when he came to a saloon he would push open the door and gaze about. Sometimes he would enter, and hurry through, to peer into the compartments in the back; and then go out again, giving a wide berth to the drinkers, and shrinking from their glances. Once a girl appeared in a doorway, and smiled and nodded to him; he started and hurried out, shuddering. Her wanton black eyes haunted him, hinting unimaginable things.

Then, on a corner, he stopped and spoke to a policeman."Hello!"said the man, and shook his head—"No, not this time."So the boy went on; there were several miles of this Highway, and each block of it the same.

At last, in a dingy bar-room, with saw-dust strewn upon the floor, and the odor of stale beer and tobacco-smoke in the air—here suddenly the boy sprang forward, with a cry:"Father!"And a man who sat with bowed head in a corner gave a start, and lifted a white face and stared at him. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and staggered to the other, and fell upon his shoulder, sobbing,"My son! My son!"

How many times had Thyrsis heard those words—in how many hours of anguish! They sank into the deeps of him, waking echoes like the clang of a bell: they voiced all the terror and grief of defeated life—"My son! My son!"

The man clung to him, weeping, and pouring out the flood of his shame."I have fallen again—I am lost—I am lost!"

The occupants of the place were watching the scene with dull curiosity; and the boy was trembling like a wild deer trapped.

"Yes, father, yes! Let us go home."

"Home—home, my son? Will you take me home? Oh, I couldn't bear to go!"

"But you must come home."

"Do you mean that you still love me, son?"

"Yes, father, I still love you. I want to try to help you. Come with me."

Then the boy would gaze about and ask,"Where is your hat?"

"Hat, my son? I don't know. I have lost it."The boy would see his torn and mud-stained clothing, and the poor old pitiful face, with the eyes blood-shot and swollen, and the skin, that had been rosy, and was now a ghastly, ashen gray. He would choke back his feelings, and grip his hands to keep himself together.

"Come, father, take my hat, and let us go."

"No, my son. I don't need any hat. Nothing can hurt me—I am lost! Lost!"

So they would go out, arm in arm; and while they made their progress up the Highway, the man would pour out his remorse, and tell the story of his weeks of horror.

Then, after a mile or so, he would halt.

"My son!"

"What is it, father?"

"I must stop here, son."

"Why, father?"

"I must have something to drink."

"No, father!"

"But, my boy, I can't go on! I can't walk! You don't know what I'm suffering!"

"No, father!"

"I've got the money left—I'm not asking you. I'll come right with you—on my word of honor I will!"

And so they would fight it out—all the way back to the lodging-house where they lived, and where the mother sat and wept. And here they would put him to bed, and lock up his clothing to keep him in; and here, with drugs and mineral-waters, and perhaps a doctor to help, they would struggle with him, and tend him until he was on his feet again. Then, with clothing newly-brushed and face newly-shaven he would go back to the world of men; and the boy would go back to his dreams.

Section 2. Such was the life of Thyrsis, from earliest childhood to maturity. His father's was a heritage of gentle breeding and high traditions—his forefathers were cavaliers, and had served the State. And now it had come to this—to hall bedrooms in lodging-houses, and a life-and-death grapple with destruction! And when Thyrsis came to study the problem, he found that it was a struggle without hope; his father was a man in a trap.

He was what people called a"drummer". He was dependent for his living upon the favor of certain merchants—men for the most part of low ideals, who came to the city in search of their low pleasures. One met them by waiting about in the lobbies of hotels, and in the bar-rooms which they frequented; and always the first sign of fellowship with them was to have a drink. And this was the field on which the battle had to be fought!

He would hold out for months—half a year, perhaps—drinking lemonade and putting up with their raillery. And then he would begin with ginger-ale; and then it would come to beer; and then to whiskey. He was always devising new plans to control himself; always persuading himself that he had solved the problem. He would not drink in the morning; he would not drink until after dinner; he would not drink alone—and so on without end. His whole life was drink, and all his thoughts were of drink—the odor of it always in his nostrils, the image of it always before his eyes.

And the grimness of his fate lay here—that it was by his best qualities that he was betrayed. If he had been hard and mercenary, like some of those who preyed upon him, there might have been hope. But he was generous and free-hearted, a slave to his impulses of friendship. And this was what made the struggle such a cruel one to Thyrsis; it was like the sight of some noble animal basely snared.

From his earliest days the boy had watched these forces working themselves out. The gentleman and the"drummer"fought for supremacy, and step by step the soul of the man was fashioned to the work he did. To succeed with his customers he must share their ideas and their tastes; and so he was bitter against reformers, who interfered with the gaieties of the city, with no consideration for the tastes of"buyers."But then, on the other hand, would come a time of renunciation, when he would be all enthusiasm for temperance.

He was full of old-fashioned ideas, which would take the quaintest turns of reactionism; his politics were summed up in the phrase that he"would rather vote for a nigger than a Republican"; but then, in the same breath, he would announce some fine and noble sentiment, out of the traditions of a forgotten past. He was the soul of courtesy to women, and of loyalty to friends. He worshipped General Lee and the old time"Virginia gentleman"; and those with whom he lived, and for whose unclean profits he sold himself, never guessed the depths of his contempt for all they stood for. They had the dollars, they were on top; but some day the nemesis of Good-breeding would smite them—the army of the ghosts of Gentility would rise, and with"Marse Robert"and"Jeb"Stuart at their head, would sweep away the hordes of commercialdom.

Thyrsis saw a great deal of this forgotten chivalry. His nursery had been haunted by such musty phantoms; and when he first came to the Northern city, he stayed at a hotel which was frequented by people who lived in this past—old ladies who were proud and prim, and old gentlemen who were quixotic and humorous, young ladies who were"belles,"and young gentlemen who aspired to be"blades". It was a world that would have made happy the soul of any writer of romances; but to Thyrsis in earliest childhood the fates had given the gift of seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. The re was an incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound; there were jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a breath of suspicion and scandal hanging like a poisonous cloud over everything. The se people came and went, an endless procession of them; they laughed and danced and gossiped and drank their way through the boy's life, and unconsciously he judged them, and hated them and feared them. It was not by such that his destiny was to be shaped.

Most of them were poor; not an honest poverty, but a sham and artificial poverty—the inability to dress as others did, and to lose money at"bridge"and"poker", and to pay the costs of their self-indulgences. As for Thyrsis and his parents, they always paid what they owed; but they were not always able to pay it when they owed it, and they suffered all the agonies and humiliations of those who did not pay at all. The re was scarcely ever a week when this canker of want did not gnaw at them; their life was one endless and sordid struggle to make last year's clothing look like new, and to find some boarding-house that was cheaper and yet respectable. The re was endless wrangling and strife and worry over money; and every year the task was harder, the standards lower, the case more hopeless.

The re were rich relatives, a world of real luxury up above—the thing that called itself"Society". And Thyrsis was a student and a bright lad, and he was welcome there; he might have spread his wings and flown away from this sordidness. But duty held him, and love and memory held him still tighter. For his father worshipped him, and craved his help; to the last hour of his dreadful battle, he fought to keep his son's regard—he prayed for it, with tears in his eyes and anguish in his voice. And so the boy had to stand by. And that meant that he grew up in a torture-house, he drank a cup of poison to its bitter dregs. To others his father was merely a gross little man, with sordid ideas and low tastes; but to Thyrsis he was a man with the terror of the hunted creatures in his soul, and the furies of madness cracking their whips about his ears.

The re was only one ending possible—it worked itself out with the remorseless precision of a machine. The soul that fought was smothered and stifled, its voice grew fainter and feebler; the agony and the shame grew hotter, the suffering more cruel, the despair more black. Until at last they found him in a delirium, and took him to a private hospital; and thither went Thyrsis, now grown to be a man, and sat in a dingy reception-room, and a dingy doctor came to him and said,"Do you wish to see the body?"And Thyrsis answered, in a low voice,"No."

Section 3. So it was that the soul of this lad had grown sombre, and taken to brooding upon the mysteries of fate. Life was no jest and no holiday, it was no place for shams and self-deceptions. It was a place where cruel enemies set traps for the unwary; a field where blind and merciless forces ranged, unhindered by man or God.

Thyrsis could not have told how soon in life this sense had come to him. In his earliest childhood he had known that his father was preyed upon, just as certainly as any wild thing in the forest. At first the enemies had been saloon-keepers, and wicked men who tempted him to drink with them. The names of these men were household words to him, portents of terror; they peopled his imagination as epic figures, such as Black Douglas must have been to the children of the Northern Border.

But then, with widening intelligence, it became certain social forces, at first dimly apprehended. It was the god of"business"—before which all things fair and noble went down. It was"business"that kept vice triumphant in the city; it was because of"business"that the saloons could not be closed even on Sunday, so that the father might be at home one day in seven. And was it not in search of"business"that he was driven forth to loaf in hotel-lobbies and bar-rooms?

Who was to blame for this, Thyrsis did not know; but certain men made profit of it—and these, too, were ignoble men. He knew this; for now and then his father's employers would honor the little family with some kind of an invitation, and they would have to swallow their pride and go. So Thyrsis grew up, with the sense of a great evil loose in the world; a wrong, of which the world did not know. And within him grew a passionate longing to cry aloud to others, to open their eyes to this truth!

Outwardly he was like other boys, eager and cheerful, even boisterous; but within was this hidden thing, which brooded and questioned. Life had made him into an Ascetic. He must be stern, even merciless, with himself—because of the fear that was in him, and in his mother as well. The fear that self-indulgence might lay its grisly paws upon him! The fear that he, too, might fall into the trap!

It was not merely that he never touched stimulants; he had an instinct against all things that were softening and enervating, all things that tempted and enslaved. For him was the morning-air, and the shock of cold water, and the hardness of the wild things of the open. Other people did not feel this way; other people pampered themselves and defiled themselves—and so Thyrsis went apart. He lived quite alone with his thoughts, he had never a chum, scarcely even any friends. Where in the long procession of lodging and boarding-houses and summer-resorts should he meet people who knew what he knew about life? Where in all the world should he meet them, save in the books of great men in times past?