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

was he by this sudden, if tardy, social development that he could not now think of refusing Jill. What? Neglect to visit the Steeles in Gloversville and in company with the Trumbulls and without any help from the Griffiths, either? It might be disloyal, cruel, treacherous to Roberta, but was he not likely to meet Sondra?

In consequence he announced that he would go, but immediately afterwards decided that he must go round and explain to Roberta, make some suitable excuse⁠—that the Griffiths, for instance, had invited him for dinner. That would be sufficiently overawing and compelling to her. But upon arriving, and finding her out, he decided to explain the following morning at the factory⁠—by note, if necessary. To make up for it he decided he might promise to accompany her as far as Fonda on Saturday and give her her present then.

But on Friday morning at the factory, instead of explaining to her with the seriousness and even emotional dissatisfaction which would have governed him before, he now whispered: “I have to break that engagement tonight, honey. Been invited to my uncle’s, and I have to go. And I’m not sure that I can get around afterwards. I’ll try if I get through in time. But I’ll see you on the Fonda car tomorrow if I don’t. I’ve got something I want to give you, so don’t feel too bad. Just got word this morning or I’d have let you know. You’re not going to feel bad, are you?” He looked at her as gloomily as possible in order to express his own sorrow over this.

But Roberta, her presents and her happy last evening with him put aside in this casual way, and for the first time, too, in this fashion, shook her head negatively, as if to say “Oh, no,” but her spirits were heavily depressed and she fell to wondering what this sudden desertion of her at this time might portend. For, up to this time, Clyde had been attentiveness itself, concealing his recent contact with Sondra behind a veil of pretended, unmodified affection which had, as yet, been sufficient to deceive her. It might be true, as he said, that an unescapable invitation had come up which necessitated all this. But, oh, the happy evening she had planned! And now they would not be together again for three whole days. She grieved dubiously at the factory and in her room afterwards, thinking that Clyde might at least have suggested coming around to her room late, after his uncle’s dinner in order that she might give him the presents. But his eventual excuse made this day was that the dinner was likely to last too late. He could not be sure. They had talked of going somewhere else afterwards.

But meanwhile Clyde, having gone to the Trumbulls’, and later to the Steeles’, was flattered and reassured by a series of developments such as a month before he would not have dreamed of anticipating. For at the Steeles’ he was promptly introduced to a score of personalities there who, finding him chaperoned by the Trumbulls and learning that he was a Griffiths, as promptly invited him to affairs of their own⁠—or hinted at events that were to come to which he might be invited, so that at the close he found himself with cordial invitations to attend a New Year’s dance at the Vandams’ in Gloversville, as well as a dinner and dance that was to be given Christmas Eve by the Harriets in Lycurgus, an affair to which Gilbert and his sister Bella, as well as Sondra, Bertine and others were invited.

And lastly, there was Sondra herself appearing on the scene at about midnight in company with Scott Nicholson, Freddie Sells and Bertine, at first pretending to be wholly unaware of his presence, yet deigning at last to greet him with an, “Oh, hello, I didn’t expect to find you here.” She was draped most alluringly in a deep red Spanish shawl. But Clyde could sense from the first that she was quite aware of his presence, and at the first available opportunity he drew near to her and asked yearningly, “Aren’t you going to dance with me at all?”

“Why, of course, if you want me to. I thought maybe you had forgotten me by now,” she said mockingly.

“As though I’d be likely to forget you. The only reason I’m here tonight is because I thought I might see you again. I haven’t thought of anyone or anything else since I saw you last.”

Indeed so infatuated was he with her ways and airs, that instead of being irritated by her pretended indifference, he was all the more attracted. And he now achieved an intensity which to her was quite compelling. His eyelids narrowed and his eyes lit with a blazing desire which was quite disturbing to see.

“My, but you can say the nicest things in the nicest way when you want to.” She was toying with a large Spanish comb in her hair for the moment and smiling. “And you say them just as though you meant them.”

“Do you mean to say that you don’t believe me, Sondra,” he inquired almost feverishly, this second use of her name thrilling her now as much as it did him. Although inclined to frown on so marked a presumption in his case, she let it pass because it was pleasing to her.

“Oh, yes, I do. Of course,” she said a little dubiously, and for the first time nervously, where he was concerned. She was beginning to find it a little hard to decipher her proper line of conduct in connection with him, whether to repress him more or less. “But you must say now what dance you want. I see someone coming for me.” And she held her small program up to him archly and intriguingly. “You may have the eleventh. That’s the next after this.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, and the fourteenth, then, greedy,” she laughed into Clyde’s eyes, a laughing look