The Greatest Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser
to those other girls who were always so interested in him and who always, as she had been constantly imagining, were but waiting for any slight overture on his part, to yield themselves to him in any way that he might dictate.
Now he was looking over the shoulder of Ruza Nikoforitch, her plump face with its snub nose and weak chin turned engagingly toward him, and he commenting on something not particularly connected with the work in hand apparently, for both were idly smiling. Again, in a little while, he was by the side of Martha Bordaloue, her plump French shoulders and arms bare to the pits next to his. And for all her fleshy solidity and decidedly foreign flavor, there was still enough about her which most men would like. And with her Clyde was attempting to jest, too.
And later it was Flora Brandt, the very sensuous and not unpleasing American girl whom Roberta had seen Clyde cultivating from time to time. Yet, even so, she had never been willing to believe that he might become interested in any of these. Not Clyde, surely.
And yet he could not see her at all now — could not find time to say a single word, although all these pleasant words and gay looks for all these others. Oh, how bitter! Oh, how cruel! And how utterly she despised those other girls with their oglings and their open attempts to take him from her. Oh, how terrible. Surely he must be very opposed to her now — otherwise he could not do this, and especially after all that had been between them — the love — the kisses.
The hours dragged for both, and with as much poignance for Clyde as for Roberta. For his was a feverish, urgent disposition where his dreams were concerned, and could ill brook the delay or disappointments that are the chief and outstanding characteristics of the ambitions of men, whatever their nature. He was tortured hourly by the thought that he was to lose Roberta or that to win her back he would have to succumb to her wishes.
And on her part she was torn, not so much by the question as to whether she would have to yield in this matter (for by now that was almost the least of her worries), but whether, once so yielding, Clyde would be satisfied with just some form of guarded social contact in the room — or not. And so continue on the strength of that to be friends with her. For more than this she would not grant — never. And yet — this suspense. The misery of his indifference. She could scarcely endure it from minute to minute, let alone from hour to hour, and finally in an agony of dissatisfaction with herself at having brought all this on herself, she retired to the rest room at about three in the afternoon and there with the aid of a piece of paper found on the floor and a small bit of pencil which she had, she composed a brief note:
“Please, Clyde, don’t be mad at me, will you? Please don’t. Please look at me and speak to me, won’t you? I’m so sorry about last night, really I am — terribly. And I must see you to-night at the end of Elm Street at 8:30 if you can, will you? I have something to tell you. Please do come. And please do look at me and tell me you will, even though you are angry. You won’t be sorry. I love you so. You know I do.
“Your sorrowful,
“ROBERTA.”
And in the spirit of one who is in agonized search for an opiate, she folded up the paper and returning to the room, drew close to Clyde’s desk. He was before it at the time, bent over some slips. And quickly as she passed she dropped the paper between his hands. He looked up instantly, his dark eyes still hard at the moment with the mingled pain and unrest and dissatisfaction and determination that had been upon him all day, and noting Roberta’s retreating figure as well as the note, he at once relaxed, a wave of puzzled satisfaction as well as delight instantly filled him. He opened it and read. And as instantly his body was suffused with a warm and yet very weakening ray.
And Roberta in turn, having reached her table and paused to note if by any chance any one had observed her, now looked cautiously about, a strained and nervous look in her eyes. But seeing Clyde looking directly at her, his eyes filled with a conquering and yet yielding light and a smile upon his lips, and his head nodding a happy assent, she as suddenly experienced a dizzying sensation, as though her hitherto constricted blood, detained by a constricted heart and constricted nerves, were as suddenly set free. And all the dry marshes and cracked and parched banks of her soul — the dry rivulets and streams and lakes of misery that seemed to dot her being — were as instantly flooded with this rich upwelling force of life and love.
He would meet her. They would meet to-night. He would put his arms around her and kiss her as before. She would be able to look in his eyes. They would not quarrel any more — oh, never if she could help it.
Chapter 22
The wonder and, delight of a new and more intimate form of contact, of protest gainsaid, of scruples overcome! Days, when both, having struggled in vain against the greater intimacy which each knew that the other was desirous of yielding to, and eventually so yielding, looked forward to the approaching night with an eagerness which was as a fever embodying a fear. For with what qualms — what protests on the part of Roberta; what determination, yet not without a sense of evil — seduction — betrayal, on the part of Clyde. Yet the thing once done, a wild convulsive pleasure motivating both. Yet, not without, before all this, an exaction on the part of Roberta to the effect that never — come what might (the natural consequences of so wild an intimacy strong in her thoughts) would he desert her, since without his aid she would be helpless. Yet, with no direct statement as to marriage. And he, so completely overcome and swayed by his desire, thoughtlessly protesting that he never would — never. She might depend on that, at least, although even then there was no thought in his mind of marriage. He would not do that. Yet nights and nights — all scruples for the time being abandoned, and however much by day Roberta might brood and condemn herself — when each yielded to the other completely. And dreamed thereafter, recklessly and wildly, of the joy of it — wishing from day to day for the time being that the long day might end — that the concealing, rewarding feverish night were at hand.
And Clyde feeling, and not unlike Roberta, who was firmly and even painfully convinced of it, that this was sin — deadly, mortal — since both his mother and father had so often emphasized that — the seducer — adulterer — who preys outside the sacred precincts of marriage. And Roberta, peering nervously into the blank future, wondering what — how, in any case, by any chance, Clyde should change, or fail her. Yet the night returning, her mood once more veering, and she as well as he hurrying to meet somewhere — only later, in the silence of the middle night, to slip into this unlighted room which was proving so much more of a Paradise than either might ever know again — so wild and unrecapturable is the fever of youth.
And — at times — and despite all his other doubts and fears, Clyde, because of this sudden abandonment by Roberta of herself to his desires, feeling for the first time, really, in all his feverish years, that at last he was a man of the world — one who was truly beginning to know women. And so taking to himself an air or manner that said as plainly as might have any words —“Behold I am no longer the inexperienced, neglected simpleton of but a few weeks ago, but an individual of import now — some one who knows something about life. What have any of these strutting young men, and gay, coaxing, flirting girls all about me, that I have not? And if I chose — were less loyal than I am — what might I not do?” And this was proving to him that the notion which Hortense Briggs, to say nothing of the more recent fiasco in connection with Rita had tended to build up in his mind, i.e. — that he was either unsuccessful or ill-fated where girls were concerned was false. He was after all and despite various failures and inhibitions a youth of the Don Juan or Lothario stripe.
And if now Roberta was obviously willing to sacrifice herself for him in this fashion, must there not be others?
And this, in spite of the present indifference of the Griffiths, caused him to walk with even more of an air than had hitherto characterized him. Even though neither they nor any of those connected with them recognized him, still he looked at himself in his mirror from time to time with an assurance and admiration which before this he had never possessed. For now Roberta, feeling that her future was really dependent on his will and whim, had set herself to flatter him almost