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

so? Up to Christmas, almost, you were as nice to me as any human being could be. You were with me nearly all the time you had, and since then I’ve scarcely had an evening that I didn’t beg for. Who is it? What is it? Some other girl, or what, I’d like to know⁠—that Sondra Finchley or Bertine Cranston, or who?”

Her eyes as she said this were a study. For even to this hour, as Clyde could now see to his satisfaction, since he feared the effect on Roberta of definite and absolute knowledge concerning Sondra, she had no specific suspicion, let alone positive knowledge concerning any girl. And coward-wise, in the face of her present predicament and her assumed and threatened claims on him, he was afraid to say what or who the real cause of this change was. Instead he merely replied and almost unmoved by her sorrow, since he no longer really cared for her: “Oh, you’re all wrong, Bert. You don’t see what the trouble is. It’s my future here⁠—if I leave here I certainly will never find such an opportunity. And if I have to marry in this way or leave here it will all go flooey. I want to wait and get some place first before I marry, see⁠—save some money and if I do this I won’t have a chance and you won’t either,” he added feebly, forgetting for the moment that up to this time he had been indicating rather clearly that he did not want to have anything more to do with her in any way.

“Besides,” he continued, “if you could only find someone, or if you would go away by yourself somewhere for a while, Bert, and go through with this alone, I could send you the money to do it on, I know. I could have it between now and the time you had to go.”

His face, as he said this, and as Roberta clearly saw, mirrored the complete and resourceless collapse of all his recent plans in regard to her. And she, realizing that his indifference to her had reached the point where he could thus dispose of her and their prospective baby in this casual and really heartless manner, was not only angered in part, but at the same time frightened by the meaning of it all.

“Oh, Clyde,” she now exclaimed boldly and with more courage and defiance than at any time since she had known him, “how you have changed! And how hard you can be. To want me to go off all by myself and just to save you⁠—so you can stay here and get along and marry someone here when I am out of the way and you don’t have to bother about me any more. Well, I won’t do it. It’s not fair. And I won’t, that’s all. I won’t. And that’s all there is to it. You can get someone to get me out of this or you can marry me and come away with me, at least long enough for me to have the baby and place myself right before my people and everyone else that knows me. I don’t care if you leave me afterwards, because I see now that you really don’t care for me any more, and if that’s the way you feel, I don’t want you any more than you want me. But just the same, you must help me now⁠—you must. But, oh, dear,” she began whimpering again, and yet only slightly and bitterly. “To think that all our love for each other should have come to this⁠—that I am asked to go away by myself⁠—all alone⁠—with no one⁠—while you stay here, oh, dear! oh, dear! And with a baby on my hands afterwards. And no husband.”

She clinched her hands and shook her head bleakly. Clyde, realizing well enough that his proposition certainly was cold and indifferent but, in the face of his intense desire for Sondra, the best or at least safest that he could devise, now stood there unable for the moment to think of anything more to say.

And although there was some other discussion to the same effect, the conclusion of this very difficult hour was that Clyde had another week or two at best in which to see if he could find a physician or anyone who would assist him. After that⁠—well after that the implied, if not openly expressed, threat which lay at the bottom of this was, unless so extricated and speedily, that he would have to marry her, if not permanently, then at least temporarily, but legally just the same, until once again she was able to look after herself⁠—a threat which was as crushing and humiliating to Roberta as it was torturing to him.

XXXIX

Opposing views such as these, especially where no real skill to meet such a situation existed, could only spell greater difficulty and even eventual disaster unless chance in some form should aid. And chance did not aid. And the presence of Roberta in the factory was something that would not permit him to dismiss it from his mind. If only he could persuade her to leave and go somewhere else to live and work so that he should not always see her, he might then think more calmly. For with her asking continuously, by her presence if no more, what he intended to do, it was impossible for him to think. And the fact that he no longer cared for her as he had, tended to reduce his normal consideration of what was her due. He was too infatuated with, and hence disarranged by his thoughts of Sondra.

For in the very teeth of this grave dilemma he continued to pursue the enticing dream in connection with Sondra⁠—the dark situation in connection with Roberta seeming no more at moments than a dark cloud which shadowed this other. And hence nightly, or as often as the exigencies of his still unbroken connection