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

about how I feel, and have a good time. That’s all right for you to say, when you’re in Lycurgus and surrounded by your friends and invited everywhere. It’s hard for me to talk over there at Wilcox’s with somebody always in earshot and with you constantly reminding me that I mustn’t say this or that. But I had so much to ask and no chance there. And all that you would say was that everything was all right. But you didn’t say positively that you were coming on the 27th, that because of something I couldn’t quite make out⁠—there was so much buzzing on the wire⁠—you might not be able to start until later. But that can’t be, Clyde. My parents are leaving for Hamilton where my uncle lives on the third. And Tom and Emily are going to my sister’s on the same day. But I can’t and won’t go there again. I can’t stay here all alone. So you must, you really must come, as you agreed. I can’t wait any longer than that, Clyde, in the condition that I’m in, and so you just must come and take me away. Oh, please, please, I beg of you, not to torture me with any more delays now.”

And again:

“Clyde, I came home because I thought I could trust you. You told me so solemnly before I left that if I would, you would come and get me in three weeks at the most⁠—that it would not take you longer than that to get ready, have enough money for the time we would be together, or until you could get something to do somewhere else. But yesterday, although the third of July will be nearly a month since I left, you were not at all sure at first that you could come by then, and when as I told you my parents are surely leaving for Hamilton to be gone for ten days. Of course, afterwards, you said you would come, but you said it as though you were just trying to quiet me. It has been troubling me awfully ever since.

“For I tell you, Clyde, I am sick, very. I feel faint nearly all the time. And besides, I am so worried as to what I shall do if you don’t come that I am nearly out of my mind.”

“Clyde, I know that you don’t care for me any more like you did and that you are wishing things could be different. And yet, what am I to do? I know you’ll say that it has all been as much my fault as yours. And the world, if it knew, might think so, too. But how often did I beg you not to make me do what I did not want to do, and which I was afraid even then I would regret, although I loved you too much to let you go, if you still insisted on having your way.”

“Clyde, if I could only die. That would solve all this. And I have prayed and prayed that I would lately, yes I have. For life does not mean as much to me now as when I first met you and you loved me. Oh, those happy days! If only things were different. If only I were out of your way. It would all be so much better for me and for all of us. But I can’t now, Clyde, without a penny and no way to save the name of our child, except this. Yet if it weren’t for the terrible pain and disgrace it would bring to my mother and father and all my family, I would be willing to end it all in another way. I truly would.”

And again:

“Oh, Clyde, Clyde, life is so different today to what it was last year. Think⁠—then we were going to Crum and those other lakes over near Fonda and Gloversville and Little Falls, but now⁠—now. Only just now some boy and girl friends of Tom’s and Emily’s came by to get them to go after strawberries, and when I saw them go and knew I couldn’t, and that I couldn’t be like that any more ever, I cried and cried, ever so long.”

And finally:

“I have been bidding goodbye to some places today. There are so many nooks, dear, and all of them so dear to me. I have lived here all my life, you know. First, there was the springhouse with its great masses of green moss, and in passing it I said goodbye to it, for I won’t be coming to it soon again⁠—maybe never. And then the old apple tree where we had our playhouse years ago⁠—Emily and Tom and Gifford and I. Then the ‘Believe,’ a cute little house in the orchard where we sometimes played.

“Oh, Clyde, you can’t realize what all this means to me, I feel as though I shall never see my home again after I leave here this time. And mamma, poor dear mamma, how I do love her and how sorry I am to have deceived her so. She is never cross and she always helps me so much. Sometimes I think if I could tell her, but I can’t. She has had trouble enough, and I couldn’t break her heart like that. No, if I go away and come back some time, either married or dead⁠—it doesn’t make so much difference now⁠—she will never know, and I will not have caused her any pain, and that means so much more than life itself to me. So goodbye, Clyde, until I do meet you, as you telephoned. And forgive me all the trouble that I have caused you.

“Your sorrowful,

“Roberta.”

And at points in the reading, Mason himself crying, and at their conclusion turning, weary and yet triumphant, a most complete and indestructible case, as he saw it, having been presented, and exclaiming: “The People rest.” And at that moment, Mrs. Alden,