From
The Jungle.
Jurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit,
and grown used to the sights in them. Yet when he had thought of all
humanity as vile and hideous, he had somehow always excepted his
own family. that he had loved; and now this sudden horrible
discovery--Marija a whore, and Elzbieta and the children living
off her shame! Jurgis might argue with himself all he chose,
that he had done worse, and was a fool for caring--but still he
could not get over the shock of that sudden unveiling, he could
not help being sunk in grief because of it. The depths of him
were troubled and shaken, memories were stirred in him that had
been sleeping so long he had counted them dead. Memories of the
old life--his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old dreams of
decency and independence! He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle
voice pleading with him. He saw little Antanas, whom he had
meant to make a man. He saw his trembling old father, who had
blessed them all with his wonderful love. He lived again through
that day of horror when he had discovered Ona's shame--God, how
he had suffered, what a madman he had been! How dreadful it had
all seemed to him; and now, today, he had sat and listened, and
half agreed when Marija told him he had been a fool! Yes--told
him that he ought to have sold his wife's honor and lived by
it!--And then there was Stanislovas and his awful fate--that
brief story which Marija had narrated so calmly, with such dull
indifference! The poor little fellow, with his frostbitten
fingers and his terror of the snow--his wailing voice rang in
Jurgis's ears, as he lay there in the darkness, until the sweat
started on his forehead. Now and then he would quiver with a
sudden spasm of horror, at the picture of little Stanislovas shut
up in the deserted building and fighting for his life with the
rats!
All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis;
it was so long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to
think they might ever trouble him again. Helpless, trapped,
as he was, what good did they do him--why should he ever have
allowed them to torment him? It had been the task of his recent
life to fight them down, to crush them out of him, never in his
life would he have suffered from them again, save that they had
caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he could protect
himself. He heard the old voices of his soul, he saw its old
ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him! But
they were far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was
black and bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the
past once more. Their voices would die, and never again would he
hear them--and so the last faint spark of manhood in his soul
would flicker out.
The Jungle Chapter 28