An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

should think you’d wake up and see what a tough

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proposition this is. My name can’t be pulled into this without

trouble for both of us. It’s got to be kept out, that’s all, and

the only way for me to keep it out is for me to stay away

from any doctor. Besides, he’d feel a lot sorrier for you than

he would for me. You can’t tell me!”

His eyes were distressed and determined, and, as Roberta

could gather from his manner, a certain hardness, or at

least defiance, the result of fright, showed in every gesture.

He was determined to protect his own name, come what

might—a fact which, because of her own acquiescence up

to this time, still carried great weight with her.

“Oh, dear! dear!” she exclaimed, nervously and sadly now,

the growing and drastic terror of the situation dawning upon

her, “I don’t see how we are to do then. I really don’t. For I

can’t do that and that’s all there is to it. It’s all so hard—so

terrible. I’d feel too much ashamed and frightened to ever

go alone.”

But even as she said this she began to feel that she might,

and even would, go alone, if must be. For what else was

there to do? And how was she to compel him, in the face of

his own fears and dangers, to jeopardize his position here?

He began once more, in self-defense more than from any

other motive:

“Besides, unless this thing isn’t going to cost very much, I

don’t see how I’m going to get by with it anyhow, Bert. I

really don’t. I don’t make so very much, you know—only

twenty-five dollars up to now.” (Necessity was at last

compelling him to speak frankly with Roberta.) “And I

haven’t saved anything—not a cent. And you know why as

well as I do. We spent the most of it together. Besides if I

go and he thought I had money, he might want to charge

me more than I could possibly dig up. But if you go and just

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tell him how things are—and that you haven’t got anything—

if you’d only say I’d run away or something, see—”

He paused because, as he said it, he saw a flicker of

shame, contempt, despair at being connected with anything

so cheap and shabby, pass over Roberta’s face. And yet in

spite of this sly and yet muddy tergiversation on his part—

so great is the compelling and enlightening power of

necessity—she could still see that there was some point to

his argument. He might be trying to use her as a foil, a

mask, behind which he, and she too for that matter, was

attempting to hide. But just the same, shameful as it was,

here were the stark, bald headlands of fact, and at their

base the thrashing, destroying waves of necessity. She

heard him say: “You wouldn’t have to give your right name,

you know, or where you came from. I don’t intend to pick

out any doctor right around here, see. Then, if you’d tell him

you didn’t have much money—just your weekly salary—”

She sat down weakly to think, the while this persuasive

trickery proceeded from him—the import of most of his

argument going straight home. For as false and morally

meretricious as this whole plan was, still, as she could see

for herself, her own as well as Clyde’s situation was

desperate. And as honest and punctilious as she might

ordinarily be in the matter of truth-telling and honest-

dealing, plainly this was one of those whirling tempests of

fact and reality in which the ordinary charts and compasses

of moral measurement were for the time being of small use.

And so, insisting then that they go to some doctor far away,

Utica or Albany, maybe—but still admitting by this that she

would go—the conversation was dropped. And he having

triumphed in the matter of excepting his own personality

from this, took heart to the extent, at least, of thinking that

at once now, by some hook or crook, he must find a doctor

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to whom he could send her. Then his terrible troubles in

connection with all this would be over. And after that she

could go her way, as surely she must; then, seeing that he

would have done all that he could for her he would go his

way to the glorious denouement that lay directly before him

in case only this were adjusted.

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Chapter 36

NEVERTHELESS hours and even days, and finally a week

and then ten days, passed without any word from him as to

the whereabouts of a doctor to whom she could go. For

although having said so much to her he still did not know to

whom to apply. And each hour and day as great a menace

to him as to her. And her looks as well as her inquiries

registering how intense and vital and even clamorous at

moments was her own distress. Also he was harried almost

to the point of nervous collapse by his own inability to think

of any speedy and sure way by which she might be aided.

Where did a physician live to whom he might send her with

some assurance of relief for her, and how was he to find

out about him?

After a time, however, in running over all the names of

those he knew, he finally struck upon a forlorn hope in the

guise of Orrin Short, the young man conducting the one

small “gents’ furnishing store” in Lycurgus which catered

more or less exclusively to the rich youths of the city—a

youth of about his own years and proclivities, as Clyde had

guessed, who ever since he had been here had been

useful to him in the matter of tips as to dress and style in

general. Indeed, as Clyde had for some time noted, Short

was a brisk, inquiring and tactful person, who, in addition to

being quite attractive personally to girls, was also always

most courteous to his patrons, particularly to those whom

he considered above him in the social scale, and among

these was Clyde. For having discovered that Clyde was

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related to the Griffiths, this same Short had sought, as a

means for his own general advancement in other directions,

to scrape as much of a genial and intimate relationship with

him as possible, only, as Clyde saw it, and in view of the

general attitude of his very high relatives, it had not, up to

this time at least, been possible for him to consider any

such intimacy seriously. And yet, finding Short so very

affable and helpful in general, he was not above reaching at

least an easy and genial surface relationship with him,

which Short appeared to accept in good part. Indeed, as at

first, his manner remained seeking and not a little

sycophantic at times. And so it was that among all those

with whom he could be said to be in either intimate or

casual contact, Short was about the only one who offered

even a chance for an inquiry which might prove productive

of some helpful information.

In consequence, in passing Short’s place each evening and

morning, once he thought of him in this light, he made it a

point to nod and smile in a most friendly manner, until at

least three days had gone by. And then, feeling that he had

paved the way as much as his present predicament would

permit, he stopped in, not at all sure that on this first

occasion he would be able to broach the dangerous

subject. The tale he had fixed upon to tell Short was that he

had been approached by a young working-man in the

factory, newly-married, who, threatened with an heir and

not being able to afford one as yet, had appealed to him for

information as to where he might now find a doctor to help

him. The only interesting additions which Clyde proposed to

make to this were that the young man, being very poor and

timid and not so very intelligent, was not able to speak or

do much for himself. Also that he, Clyde, being better

informed, although so new locally as not to be able to direct

him to any physician (an after-thought intended to put the

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idea into Short’s mind that he himself was never helpless

and so not likely ever to want such advice himself), had

already advised the young man of a temporary remedy. But

unfortunately, so his story was to run, this had already failed

to work. Hence something more certain—a physician, no

less—was necessary. And Short, having been here longer,

and, as he had heard him explain, hailing previously from

Gloversville, it was quite certain, as Clyde now argued with