An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

But reaching home, and after writing and mailing the letter to Ratterer, Clyde passed a troubled night. Next morning he paid a visit to the druggist at Schenectady, the curtains of Roberta’s windows having been lowered to the center when he passed. But on this occasion the latter had no additional aid to offer other than the advisability of a hot and hence weakening bath, which he had failed to mention in the first instance. Also some wearying form of physical exercise. But noting Clyde’s troubled expression and judging that the situation was causing him great worry, he observed: “Of course, the fact that your wife has skipped a month doesn’t mean that there is anything seriously wrong, you know. Women do that sometimes. Anyhow, you can’t ever be sure until the second month has passed. Any doctor will tell you that. If she’s nervous, let her try something like this. But even if it fails to work, you can’t be positive. She might be all right next month just the same.”

Thinly cheered by this information, Clyde was about to depart, for Roberta might be wrong. He and she might be worrying needlessly. Still⁠—he was brought up with a round turn as he thought of it⁠—there might be real danger, and waiting until the end of the second period would only mean that a whole month had elapsed and nothing helpful accomplished⁠—a freezing thought. In consequence he now observed: “In case things don’t come right, you don’t happen to know of a doctor she could go to, do you? This is rather a serious business for both of us, and I’d like to get her out of it if I could.”

Something about the way in which Clyde said this⁠—his extreme nervousness as well as his willingness to indulge in a form of malpractice which the pharmacist by some logic all his own considered very different from just swallowing a preparation intended to achieve the same result⁠—caused him to look suspiciously at Clyde, the thought stirring in his brain that very likely after all Clyde was not married, also that this was one of those youthful affairs which spelled license and future difficulty for some unsophisticated girl. Hence his mood now changed, and instead of being willing to assist, he now said coolly: “Well, there may be a doctor around here, but if so I don’t know. And I wouldn’t undertake to send anyone to a doctor like that. It’s against the law. It would certainly go hard with any doctor around here who was caught doing that sort of thing. That’s not to say, though, that you aren’t at liberty to look around for yourself, if you want to,” he added gravely, giving Clyde a suspicious and examining glance, and deciding it were best if he had nothing further to do with such a person.

Clyde therefore returned to Roberta with the same prescription renewed, although she had most decidedly protested that, since the first box had not worked, it was useless to get more. But since he insisted, she was willing to try the drug the new way, although the argument that a cold or nerves was the possible cause was only sufficient to convince her that Clyde was at the end of his resources in so far as she was concerned, or if not that, he was far from being alive to the import of this both to herself and to him. And supposing this new treatment did not work, then what? Was he going to stop now and let the thing rest there?

Yet so peculiar was Clyde’s nature that in the face of his fears in regard to his future, and because it was far from pleasant to be harried in this way and an infringement on his other interests, the assurance that the delay of a month might not prove fatal was sufficient to cause him to be willing to wait, and that rather indifferently, for that length of time. Roberta might be wrong. She might be making all this trouble for nothing. He must see how she felt after she had tried this new way.

But the treatment failed. Despite the fact that in her distress Roberta returned to the factory in order to weary herself, until all the girls in the department assured her that she must be ill⁠—that she should not be working when she looked and plainly felt so bad⁠—still nothing came of it. And the fact that Clyde could dream of falling back on the assurance of the druggist that a first month’s lapse was of no import only aggravated and frightened her the more.

The truth was that in this crisis he was as interesting an illustration of the enormous handicaps imposed by ignorance, youth, poverty and fear as one could have found. Technically he did not even know the meaning of the word “midwife,” or the nature of the services performed by her. (And there were three here in Lycurgus at this time in the foreign family section.) Again, he had been in Lycurgus so short a time, and apart from the young society men and Dillard whom he had cut, and the various department heads at the factory, he knew no one⁠—an occasional barber, haberdasher, cigar dealer and the like, the majority of whom, as he saw them, were either too dull or too ignorant for his purpose.

One thing, however, which caused him to pause before ever he decided to look up a physician was the problem of who was to approach him and how. To go himself was simply out of the question. In the first place, he looked too much like Gilbert Griffiths, who was decidedly too well-known here and for whom he might be mistaken. Next, it was unquestionable that, being as well-dressed as he was, the physician would want to charge him more, maybe, than he could afford and ask him all sorts of embarrassing questions, whereas if it could be arranged through someone