An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser (whitelam books .TXT) 📖

shared by Harriet, Cranston and others, Clyde could not understand. He had scarcely heard of the various colleges with which this group was all too familiar. At the same time he was wise enough to sense the defect and steer clear of any questions or conversations which might relate to them. However, because of this, he at once felt out of it. These people were better informed than he was⁠—had been to colleges. Perhaps he had better claim that he had been to some school. In Kansas City he had heard of the State University of Kansas⁠—not so very far from there. Also the University of Missouri. And in Chicago of the University of Chicago. Could he say that he had been to one of those⁠—that Kansas one, for a little while, anyway? On the instant he proposed to claim it, if asked, and then look up afterwards what, if anything, he was supposed to know about it⁠—what, for instance, he might have studied. He had heard of mathematics somewhere. Why not that?

But these people, as he could see, were too much interested in themselves to pay much attention to him now. He might be a Griffiths and important to some outside, but here not so much⁠—a matter of course, as it were. And because Tracy Trumbull for the moment had turned to say something to Wynette Phant, he felt quite alone, beached and helpless and with no one to talk to. But just then the small, dark girl, Gertrude, came over to him.

“The crowd’s a little late in getting together. It always is. If we said eight, they’d come at eight-thirty or nine. Isn’t that always the way?”

“It certainly is,” replied Clyde gratefully, endeavoring to appear as brisk and as much at ease as possible.

“I’m Gertrude Trumbull,” she repeated. “The sister of the good-looking Jill,” a cynical and yet amused smile played about her mouth and eyes. “You nodded to me, but you don’t know me. Just the same we’ve been hearing a lot about you.” She teased in an attempt to trouble Clyde a little, if possible. “A mysterious Griffiths here in Lycurgus whom no one seems to have met. I saw you once in Central Avenue, though. You were going into Rich’s candy store. You didn’t know that, though. Do you like candy?”

“Oh, yes, I like candy. Why?” asked Clyde on the instant feeling teased and disturbed, since the girl for whom he was buying the candy was Roberta. At the same time he could not help feeling slightly more at ease with this girl than with some others, for although cynical and not so attractive, her manner was genial and she now spelled escape from isolation and hence diffidence.

“You’re probably just saying that,” she laughed, a bantering look in her eyes. “More likely you were buying it for some girl. You have a girl, haven’t you?”

“Why⁠—” Clyde paused for the fraction of a second because as she asked this Roberta came into his mind and the query, “Had anyone ever seen him with Roberta?” flitted through his brain. Also thinking at the same time, what a bold, teasing, intelligent girl this was, different from any that thus far he had known. Yet quite without more pause he added: “No, I haven’t. What makes you ask that?”

As he said this there came to him the thought of what Roberta would think if she could hear him. “But what a question,” he continued a little nervously now. “You like to tease, don’t you?”

“Who, me? Oh, no. I wouldn’t do anything like that. But I’m sure you have just the same. I like to ask questions sometimes, just to see what people will say when they don’t want you to know what they really think.” She beamed into Clyde’s eyes amusedly and defiantly. “But I know you have a girl just the same. All good-looking fellows have.”

“Oh, am I good-looking?” he beamed nervously, amused and yet pleased. “Who said so?”

“As though you didn’t know. Well, different people. I for one. And Sondra Finchley thinks you’re good-looking, too. She’s only interested in men who are. So does my sister Jill, for that matter. And she only likes men who are good-looking. I’m different because I’m not so good-looking myself.” She blinked cynically and teasingly into his eyes, which caused him to feel oddly out of place, not able to cope with such a girl at all, at the same time very much flattered and amused. “But don’t you think you’re better looking than your cousin,” she went on sharply and even commandingly. “Some people think you are.”

Although a little staggered and yet flattered by this question which propounded what he might have liked to believe, and although intrigued by this girl’s interest in him, still Clyde would not have dreamed of venturing any such assertion even though he had believed it. Too vividly it brought the aggressive and determined and even at times revengeful-looking features of Gilbert before him, who, stirred by such a report as this, would not hesitate to pay him out.

“Why, I don’t think anything of the kind,” he laughed. “Honest, I don’t. Of course I don’t.”

“Oh, well, then maybe you don’t, but you are just the same. But that won’t help you much either, unless you have money⁠—that is, if you want to run with people who have.” She looked up at him and added quite blandly. “People like money even more than they do looks.”

What a sharp girl this was, he thought, and what a hard, cold statement. It cut him not a little, even though she had not intended that it should.

But just then Sondra herself entered with some youth whom Clyde did not know⁠—a tall, gangling, but very smartly-dressed individual. And after them, along with others, Bertine and Stuart Finchley.

“Here she is now,” added Gertrude a little spitefully, for she resented the fact that Sondra was so much better-looking than either she or her sister, and that she had expressed an interest in