An American Tragedy (1925) Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
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1dreiser theodore an american tragedy
coaxingly into her eyes, "I've been just nearly crazy over you ever since you came in here and Sunday made it worse. And now I'm not going to let any old rule come between me and you, if I can help it. Will you?"
"Oh, I don't know whether I can do that or not," replied Roberta, who, now that she had succeeded in accomplishing what she had wished, was becoming terrorized by her own daring. She began looking around nervously and feeling that every eye in the room must be upon her. "I live with Mr. and Mrs. Newton, my friend's sister and brother-in-law, you know, and they're very strict. It isn't the same as if--" She was going to add "I was home," but Clyde interrupted her.
"Oh, now please don't say no, will you? Please don't. I want to see you. I don't want to cause you any trouble, that's all. Otherwise I'd be glad to come round to your house. You know how it is."
"Oh, no, you mustn't do that," cautioned Roberta. "Not yet anyhow." She was so confused that quite unconsciously she was giving Clyde to understand that she was expecting him to come around some time later.
"Well," smiled Clyde, who could see that she was yielding in part. "We could just walk out near the end of some street here--that street you live in, if you wish. There are no houses out there. Or there's a little park--Mohawk--just west of Dreamland on the Mohawk Street line. It's right on the river. You might come out there. I could meet you where the car stops. Will you do that?"
"Oh, I'd be afraid to do that I think--go so far, I mean. I never did anything like that before." She looked so innocent and frank as she said this that Clyde was quite carried away by the sweetness of her. And to think he was making a clandestine appointment with her. "I'm almost afraid to go anywhere here alone, you know. People talk so here, they say, and some one would be sure to see me. But--"
"Yes, but what?" "I'm afraid I'm staying too long at your desk here, don't you think?" She actually gasped as she said it. And Clyde realizing the openness of it, although there was really nothing very unusual about it, now spoke quickly and forcefully.
"Well, then, how about the end of that street you live in? Couldn't you come down there for just a little while to-night--a half hour or so, maybe?"
"Oh, I couldn't make it to-night, I think--not so soon. I'll have to see first, you know. Arrange, that is. But another day." She was so excited and troubled by this great adventure of hers that her face, like Clyde's at times, changed from a half smile to a half frown without her realizing that it was registering these changes.
"Well, then, how about Wednesday night at eight-thirty or nine? Couldn't you do that? Please, now."
Roberta considered most sweetly, nervously. Clyde was enormously fascinated by her manner at the moment, for she looked around, conscious, or so she seemed, that she was being observed and that her stay here for a first visit was very long.
"I suppose I'd better be going back to my work now," she replied without really answering him.
"Wait a minute," pled Clyde. "We haven't fixed on the time for Wednesday. Aren't you going to meet me? Make it nine or eight- thirty, or any time you want to. I'll be there waiting for you after eight if you wish. Will you?"
"All right, then, say eight-thirty or between eight-thirty and nine, if I can. Is that all right? I'll come if I can, you know, and if anything does happen I'll tell you the next morning, you see." She flushed and then looked around once more, a foolish, flustered look, then hurried back to her bench, fairly tingling from head to toe, and looking as guilty as though she had been caught red-handed in some dreadful crime. And Clyde at his desk was almost choking with excitement. The wonder of her agreeing, of his talking to her like that, of her venturing to make a date with him at all here in Lycurgus, where he was so well-known! Thrilling!
For her part, she was thinking how wonderful it would be just to walk and talk with him in the moonlight, to feel the pressure of his arm and hear his soft appealing voice.
Chapter 17 It was quite dark when Roberta stole out on Wednesday night to meet Clyde. But before that what qualms and meditations in the face of her willingness and her agreement to do so. For not only was it difficult for her to overcome her own mental scruples within, but in addition there was all the trouble in connection with the commonplace and religious and narrow atmosphere in which she found herself imbedded at the Newtons'. For since coming here she had scarcely gone anywhere without Grace Marr. Besides on this occasion--a thing she had forgotten in talking to Clyde--she had agreed to go with the Newtons and Grace to the Gideon Baptist Church, where a Wednesday prayer meeting was to be followed by a social with games, cake, tea and ice cream.
In consequence she was troubled severely as to how to manage, until it came back to her that a day or two before Mr. Liggett, in noting how rapid and efficient she was, had observed that at any time she wanted to learn one phase of the stitching operations going on in the next room, he would have her taken in hand by Mrs. Braley, who would teach her. And now that Clyde's invitation and this church affair fell on the same night, she decided to say that she had an appointment with Mrs. Braley at her home. Only, as she also decided, she would wait until just before dinner Wednesday and then say that Mrs. Braley had invited her to come to her house. Then she could see Clyde. And by the time the Newtons and Grace returned she could be back. Oh, how it would feel to have him talk to her--say again as he did in the boat that he never had seen any one look so pretty as she did standing on the bank and looking for water lilies. Many, many thoughts--vague, dreadful, colorful, came to her--how and where they might go--be--do--from now on, if only she could arrange to be friends with him without harm to her or him. If need be, she now decided, she could resign from the factory and get a place somewhere else--a change which would absolve Clyde from any responsibility in regard to her.
There was, however, another mental as well as emotional phase in regard to all this and that related to her clothes. For since coming to Lycurgus she had learned that the more intelligent girls here dressed better than did those about Biltz and Trippetts Mills. At the same time she had been sending a fair portion of her money to her mother--sufficient to have equipped her exceptionally well, as she now realized, had she retained it. But now that Clyde was swaying her so greatly she was troubled about her looks, and on the evening after her conversation with him at the mill, she had gone through her small wardrobe, fixing upon a soft blue hat which Clyde had not yet seen, together with a checkered blue and white flannel skirt and a pair of white canvas shoes purchased the previous summer at Biltz. Her plan was to wait until the Newtons and Grace had departed for church and then swiftly dress and leave.
At eight-thirty, when night had finally fallen, she went east along Taylor to Central Avenue, then by a circuitous route made her way west again to the trysting place. And Clyde was already there. Against an old wooden fence that enclosed a five-acre cornfield, he was leaning and looking back toward the interesting little city, the lights in so many of the homes of which were aglow through the trees. The air was laden with spices--the mingled fragrance of many grasses and flowers. There was a light wind stirring in the long swords of the corn at his back--in the leaves of the trees overhead. And there were stars--the big dipper and the little dipper and the milky way-- sidereal phenomena which his mother had pointed out to him long ago.
And he was thinking how different was his position here to what it had been in Kansas City. There he had been so nervous in regard to Hortense Briggs or any girl, really--afraid almost to say a word to any of them. Whereas here, and especially since he had had charge of this stamping room, he had seemed to become aware of the fact that he was more attractive than he had ever thought he was before. Also that the girls were attracted to him and that he was not so much afraid of them. The eyes of Roberta herself showed him this day how much she was drawn to him. She was his girl. And when she came, he would put his arms around her and kiss her. And she would not be able to resist him.
He stood listening, dreaming and watching, the rustling corn behind him stirring an old recollection in him, when suddenly he saw her coming. She looked trim and brisk and yet nervous, and paused at the street end and looked about like a frightened and cautious animal. At once Clyde hurried forward toward her and called softly: "Hello. Gee, it's nice to have you meet me. Did you have any trouble?" He was thinking how much more pleasing she was than either Hortense Briggs or Rita Dickerman, the one so calculating, the other so sensually free and indiscriminate.
"Did I have any trouble? Oh, didn't I though?" And at once she plunged into a full and picturesque account, not only of the mistake in regard to the Newtons' church night and her engagement with them, but of a determination on the part of Grace Marr not to go to the church social without her, and how she had to fib, oh, so terribly, about going over to Mrs. Braley's to learn to stitch--a Liggett-Roberta development of which Clyde had heard nothing so far and concerning which he was intensely curious, because at once it raised the thought that already Liggett might be intending to remove her from under his care. He proceeded to question her about that before he would let her go on with her story, an interest which Roberta noticed and because of which she was very pleased.
"But I can't stay very long, you know," she explained briskly and warmly at the first opportunity, the while Clyde laid hold of her arm and turned toward the river, which was to the north and untenanted this far out. "The Baptist Church socials never last much beyond ten-thirty or eleven, and they'll be back soon. So I'll have to manage to be back before they are."
Then she gave many reasons why it would be unwise for her to be out after ten, reasons which annoyed yet convinced Clyde by their wisdom. He had been hoping to keep her out longer. But seeing that the time was to be brief, he was all the keener for a closer contact with her now, and fell to complimenting her on her pretty hat and cape and how becoming they were. At once he tried putting his arm about her waist, but feeling this to be a too swift advance she removed his arm, or tried to, saying in the softest and most coaxing voice "Now, now--that's not nice, is it? Can't you just hold my arm or let me hold yours?" But he noted, once she persuaded him to disengage her waist, she took his arm in a clinging, snuggling embrace and measured her stride to his. On the instant he was thinking how natural and unaffected her manner was now that the ice between them had been broken.
And how she went on babbling! She liked Lycurgus, only she thought it was the most religious town she had ever been in--worse than Biltz or Trippetts Mills that way. And then she had to explain to Clyde what Biltz and Trippetts Mills were like--and her home--a very little, for she did not care to talk about that. And then back to the Newtons and Grace Marr and how they watched her every move. Clyde was thinking as she talked how different she was from Hortense Briggs or Rita, or any other girl he had ever known--so much more simple and confiding--not in any way mushy as was Rita, or brash or vain or pretentious, as was Hortense, and yet really as pretty and so much sweeter. He could not help thinking if she were smartly dressed how sweet she would be. And again he was wondering what she would think of him and his attitude toward Hortense in contrast to his attitude toward her now, if she knew.
"You know," he said at the very first opportunity, "I've been trying to talk to you ever since you came to work at the factory but you see how very watchful every one is. They're the limit. They told me when I came up there that I mustn't interest myself in any girl working there and so I tried not to. But I just couldn't help this, could I?" He squeezed her arm affectionately, then stopped suddenly and, disengaging his arm from hers, put both his about her. "You know, Roberta, I'm crazy about you. I really am. I think you're the dearest, sweetest thing. Oh, say! Do you mind my telling you? Ever since you showed up there, I haven't been able to sleep, nearly. You've got such nice eyes and hair. To- night you look just too cute--lovely, I think. Oh, Roberta," suddenly he caught her face between his two hands and kissed her, before really she could evade him. Then having done this he held her while she resisted him, although it was almost impossible for her to do so. Instead she felt as though she wanted to put her arms around him or have him hold her tight, and this mood in regard to him and herself puzzled and troubled her. It was awful. What would people think--say--if they knew? She was a bad girl, really, and yet she wanted to be this way--near him--now as never before.
one might see us. I think I hear some one coming. Please, now." She looked about quite frightened, apparently, while Clyde laughed ecstatically. Life had presented him a delicious sweet at last. "You know I never did anything like this before," she went on. "Honest, I didn't. Please. It's only because you said--"
Clyde was pressing her close, not saying anything in reply--his pale face and dark hungry eyes held very close to hers. He kissed her again and again despite her protests, her little mouth and chin and cheeks seeming too beautiful--too irresistible--then murmured pleadingly, for he was too overcome to speak vigorously.
"Oh, Roberta, dearest, please, please, say that you love me. Please do! I know that you do, Roberta. I can tell. Please, tell me now. I'm crazy about you. We have so little time."
He kissed her again upon the cheek and mouth, and suddenly he felt her relax. She stood quite still and unresisting in his arms. He felt a wonder of something--he could not tell what. All of a sudden he felt tears upon her face, her head sunk to his shoulder, and then he heard her say: "Yes, yes, yes. I do love you. Yes, yes. I do. I do."
There was a sob--half of misery, half of delight--in her voice and Clyde caught that. He was so touched by her honesty and simplicity that tears sprang to his own eyes. "It's all right, Roberta. It's all right. Please don't cry. Oh, I think you're so sweet. I do. I do, Roberta." He looked up and before him in the east over the low roofs of the city was the thinnest, yellowest topmost arc of the rising July moon. It seemed at the moment as though life had given him all-- all--that he could possibly ask of it.
Chapter 18 The culmination of this meeting was but the prelude, as both Clyde and Roberta realized, to a series of contacts and rejoicings which were to extend over an indefinite period. They had found love. They were deliciously happy, whatever the problems attending its present realization might be. But the ways and means of continuing with it were a different matter. For not only was her connection with the Newtons a bar to any normal procedure in so far as Clyde was concerned, but Grace Marr herself offered a distinct and separate problem. Far more than Roberta she was chained, not only by the defect of poor looks, but by the narrow teachings and domestic training of her early social and religious life. Yet she wanted to be gay and free, too. And in Roberta, who, while gay and boastful at times, was still well within the conventions that chained Grace, she imagined that she saw one who was not so bound. And so it was that she clung to her closely and as Roberta saw it a little wearisomely. She imagined that they could exchange ideas and jests and confidences in regard to the love life and their respective dreams without injury to each other. And to date this was her one solace in an otherwise gray world.
But Roberta, even before the arrival of Clyde in her life, did not want to be so clung to. It was a bore. And afterwards she developed an inhibition in regard to him where Grace was concerned. For she not only knew that Grace would resent this sudden desertion, but also that she had no desire to face out within herself the sudden and revolutionary moods which now possessed her. Having at once met and loved him, she was afraid to think what, if anything, she proposed to permit herself to do in regard to him. Were not such contacts between the classes banned here? She knew they were. Hence she did not care to talk about him at all.
In consequence on Monday evening following the Sunday on the lake when Grace had inquired most gayly and familiarly after Clyde, Roberta had as instantly decided not to appear nearly as interested in him as Grace might already be imagining. Accordingly, she said little other than that he was very pleasant to her and had inquired after Grace, a remark which caused the latter to eye her slyly and to wonder if she were really telling what had happened since. "He was so very friendly I was beginning to think he was struck on you."
"Oh, what nonsense!" Roberta replied shrewdly, and a bit alarmed. "Why, he wouldn't look at me. Besides, there's a rule of the company that doesn't permit him to, as long as I work there."
This last, more than anything else, served to allay Grace's notions in regard to Clyde and Roberta, for she was of that conventional turn of mind which would scarcely permit her to think of any one infringing upon a company rule. Nevertheless Roberta was nervous lest Grace should be associating her and Clyde in her mind in some clandestine way, and she decided to be doubly cautious in regard to Clyde--to feign a distance she did not feel.
But all this was preliminary to troubles and strains and fears which had nothing to do with what had gone before, but took their rise from difficulties which sprang up immediately afterwards. For once she had come to this complete emotional understanding with Clyde, she saw no way of meeting him except in this very clandestine way and that so very rarely and uncertainly that she could not say when there was likely to be another meeting.
"You see, it's this way," she explained to Clyde when, a few evenings later, she had managed to steal out for an hour and they walked from the region at the end of Taylor Street down to the Mohawk, where were some open fields and a low bank rising above the pleasant river. "The Newtons never go any place much without inviting me. And even if they didn't, Grace'd never go unless I went along. It's just because we were together so much in Trippetts Mills that she feels that way, as though I were a part of the family. But now it's different, and yet I don't see how I am going to get out of it so soon. I don't know where to say I'm going or whom I am going with."
"I know that, honey," he replied softly and sweetly. "That's all true enough. But how is that going to help us now? You can't expect me to get along with just looking at you in the factory, either, can you?" He gazed at her so solemnly and yearningly that she was moved by her sympathy for him, and in order to assuage his depression added: "No, I don't want you to do that, dear. You know I don't. But what am I to do?" She laid a soft and pleading hand on the back of one of Clyde's thin, long and nervous ones.
"I'll tell you what, though," she went on after a period of reflection, "I have a sister living in Homer, New York. That's about thirty-five miles north of here. I might say I was going up there some Saturday afternoon or Sunday. She's been writing me to come up, but I hadn't thought of it before. But I might go--that is--I might--"
"Oh, why not do that?" exclaimed Clyde eagerly. "That's fine! A good idea!" "Let me see," she added, ignoring his exclamation. "If I remember right you have to go to Fonda first, then change cars there. But I could leave here any time on the trolley and there are only two trains a day from Fonda, one at two, and one at seven on Saturday. So I might leave here any time before two, you see, and then if I didn't make the two o'clock train, it would be all right, wouldn't it? I could go on the seven. And you could be over there, or meet me on the way, just so no one here saw us. Then I could go on and you could come back. I could arrange that with Agnes, I'm sure. I would have to write her."
"How about all the time between then and now, though?" he queried peevishly. "It's a long time till then, you know."
"Well, I'll have to see what I can think of, but I'm not sure, dear. I'll have to see. And you think too. But I ought to be going back now," she added nervously. She at once arose, causing Clyde to rise, too, and consult his watch, thereby discovering that it was already near ten.
"But what about us!" he continued persistently. "Why couldn't you pretend next Sunday that you're going to some other church than yours and meet me somewhere instead? Would they have to know?"
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