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

there’s a little time yet, isn’t there? Sure there is. It’s all right up to three months anyway.” (He had since had a letter from Ratterer who had commented on this fact.) “And I did hear something the other day of a doctor over in Albany who might do it. Anyway, I thought I’d go over and see before I said anything about him.”

His manner, when he said this, was so equivocal that Roberta could tell he was merely lying to gain time. There was no doctor in Albany. Besides it was so plain that he resented her suggestion and was only thinking of some way of escaping it. And she knew well enough that at no time had he said directly that he would marry her. And while she might urge, in the last analysis she could not force him to do anything. He might just go away alone, as he had once said in connection with inadvertently losing his job because of her. And how much greater might not his impulse in that direction now be, if this world here in which he was so much interested were taken away from him, and he were to face the necessity of taking her and a child, too. It made her more cautious and caused her to modify her first impulse to speak out definitely and forcefully, however great her necessity might be. And so disturbed was he by the panorama of the bright world of which Sondra was the center and which was now at stake, that he could scarcely think clearly. Should he lose all this for such a world as he and Roberta could provide for themselves⁠—a small home⁠—a baby, such a routine work-a-day life as taking care of her and a baby on such a salary as he could earn, and from which most likely he would never again be freed! God! A sense of nausea seized him. He could not and would not do this. And yet, as he now saw, all his dreams could be so easily tumbled about his ears by her and because of one false step on his part. It made him cautious and for the first time in his life caused tact and cunning to visualize itself as a profound necessity.

And at the same time, Clyde was sensing inwardly and somewhat shamefacedly all of this profound change in himself.

But Roberta was saying: “Oh, I know, Clyde, but you yourself said just now that you were stumped, didn’t you? And every day that goes by just makes it so much the worse for me, if we’re not going to be able to get a doctor. You can’t get married and have a child born within a few months⁠—you know that. Everyone in the world would know. Besides I have myself to consider as well as you, you know. And the baby, too.” (At the mere mention of a coming child Clyde winced and recoiled as though he had been slapped. She noted it.) “I just must do one of two things right away, Clyde⁠—get married or get out of this and you don’t seem to be able to get me out of it, do you? If you’re so afraid of what your uncle might think or do in case we get married,” she added nervously and yet suavely, “why couldn’t we get married right away and then keep it a secret for a while⁠—as long as we could, or as long as you thought we ought to,” she added shrewdly. “Meanwhile I could go home and tell my parents about it⁠—that I am married, but that it must be kept a secret for a while. Then when the time came, when things got so bad that we couldn’t stay here any longer without telling, why we could either go away somewhere, if we wanted to⁠—that is, if you didn’t want your uncle to know, or we could just announce that we were married some time ago. Lots of young couples do that nowadays. And as for getting along,” she went on, noting a sudden dour shadow that passed over Clyde’s face like a cloud, “why we could always find something to do⁠—I know I could, anyhow, once the baby is born.”

When first she began to speak, Clyde had seated himself on the edge of the bed, listening nervously and dubiously to all she had to offer. However, when she came to that part which related to marriage and going away, he got up⁠—an irresistible impulse to move overcoming him. And when she concluded with the commonplace suggestion of going to work as soon as the baby was born, he looked at her with little less than panic in his eyes. To think of marrying and being in a position where it would be necessary to do that, when with a little luck and without interference from her, he might marry Sondra.

“Oh, yes, that’s all right for you, Bert. That fixes everything up for you, but how about me? Why, gee whiz, I’ve only got started here now as it is, and if I have to pack up and get out, and I would have to, if ever they found out about this, why I don’t know what I’d do. I haven’t any business or trade that I could turn my hand to. It might go hard with both of us. Besides my uncle gave me this chance because I begged him to, and if I walked off now he never would do anything for me.”

In his excitement he was forgetting that at one time and another in the past he had indicated to Roberta that the state of his own parents was not wholly unprosperous and that if things did not go just to his liking here, he could return west and perhaps find something to do out there. And it was some general recollection of this that now caused her to ask: “Couldn’t we go out to Denver or something