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

back, you know, soon, if you would. You wouldn’t need to pay me anything for your room until you had.”

She looked at Clyde so tensely, so urgently, that he felt quite shaken by the force of the cogency of the request. And before he could add anything to the nervous gloom which shadowed her face, she added: “That other money was for her, you know, to bring her back here after her⁠—her”⁠—she hesitated over the appropriate word but finally added⁠—“husband left her there in Pittsburgh. I suppose she told you that.”

“Yes, she did,” replied Clyde, heavily and sadly. For after all, Esta’s condition was plainly critical, which was something that he had not stopped to meditate on before.

“Gee, Ma,” he exclaimed, the thought of the fifty dollars in his pocket and its intended destination troubling him considerably⁠—the very sum his mother was seeking. “I don’t know whether I can do that or not. I don’t know any of the boys down there well enough for that. And they don’t make any more than I do, either. I might borrow a little something, but it won’t look very good.” He choked and swallowed a little, for lying to his mother in this way was not easy. In fact, he had never had occasion to lie in connection with anything so trying⁠—and so despicably. For here was fifty dollars in his pocket at the moment, with Hortense on the one hand and his mother and sister on the other, and the money would solve his mother’s problem as fully as it would Hortense’s, and more respectably. How terrible it was not to help her. How could he refuse her, really? Nervously he licked his lips and passed a hand over his brow, for a nervous moisture had broken out upon his face. He felt strained and mean and incompetent under the circumstances.

“And you haven’t any money of your own right now that you could let me have, have you?” his mother half pleaded. For there were a number of things in connection with Esta’s condition which required immediate cash and she had so little.

“No, I haven’t, Ma,” he said, looking at his mother shamefacedly, for a moment, then away, and if it had not been that she herself was so distrait, she might have seen the falsehood on his face. As it was, he suffered a pang of commingled self-commiseration and self-contempt, based on the distress he felt for his mother. He could not bring himself to think of losing Hortense. He must have her. And yet his mother looked so lone and so resourceless. It was shameful. He was low, really mean. Might he not, later, be punished for a thing like this?

He tried to think of some other way⁠—some way of getting a little money over and above the fifty that might help. If only he had a little more time⁠—a few weeks longer. If only Hortense had not brought up this coat idea just now.

“I’ll tell you what I might do,” he went on, quite foolishly and dully the while his mother gave vent to a helpless “Tst! Tst! Tst!” “Will five dollars do you any good?”

“Well, it will be something, anyhow,” she replied. “I can use it.”

“Well, I can let you have that much,” he said, thinking to replace it out of his next week’s tips and trust to better luck throughout the week. “And I’ll see what I can do next week. I might let you have ten then. I can’t say for sure. I had to borrow some of that other money I gave you, and I haven’t got through paying for that yet, and if I come around trying to get more, they’ll think⁠—well, you know how it is.”

His mother sighed, thinking of the misery of having to fall back on her one son thus far. And just when he was trying to get a start, too. What would he think of all this in after years? What would he think of her⁠—of Esta⁠—the family? For, for all his ambition and courage and desire to be out and doing, Clyde always struck her as one who was not any too powerful physically or rock-ribbed morally or mentally. So far as his nerves and emotions were concerned, at times he seemed to take after his father more than he did after her. And for the most part it was so easy to excite him⁠—to cause him to show tenseness and strain⁠—as though he were not so very well fitted for either. And it was she, because of Esta and her husband and their joint and unfortunate lives, that was and had been heaping the greater part of this strain on him.

“Well, if you can’t, you can’t,” she said. “I must try and think of some other way.” But she saw no clear way at the moment.

XVII

In connection with the automobile ride suggested and arranged for the following Sunday by Hegglund through his chauffeur friend, a change of plan was announced. The car⁠—an expensive Packard, no less⁠—could not be had for that day, but must be used by this Thursday or Friday, or not at all. For, as had been previously explained to all, but not with the strictest adherence to the truth, the car belonged to a certain Mr. Kimbark, an elderly and very wealthy man who at the time was traveling in Asia. Also, what was not true was that this particular youth was not Mr. Kimbark’s chauffeur at all, but rather the rakish, ne’er-do-well son of Sparser, the superintendent of one of Mr. Kimbark’s stock farms. This son being anxious to pose as something more than the son of a superintendent of a farm, and as an occasional watchman, having access to the cars, had decided to take the very finest of them and ride in it.

It was Hegglund who proposed that he and his hotel friends be included on some interesting trip. But since the general invitation had been given, word had