She might even feel privileged to go to his uncle—his
cousin (he could see Gilbert’s cold eyes) and expose him!
And then destruction! Ruin! The end of all his dreams in
connection with Sondra and everything else here. But all he
could think of saying now was: “But I can’t do this, Bert, not
now, anyway,” a remark which at once caused Roberta to
assume that the idea of marriage, as she had interjected it
here, was not one which, under the circumstances, he had
the courage to oppose—his saying, “not now, anyway.” Yet
even as she was thinking this, he went swiftly on with:
“Besides I don’t want to get married so soon. It means too
much to me at this time. In the first place I’m not old
enough and I haven’t got anything to get married on. And I
can’t leave here. I couldn’t do half as well anywhere else.
You don’t realize what this chance means to me. My
father’s all right, but he couldn’t do what my uncle could and
he wouldn’t. You don’t know or you wouldn’t ask me to do
this.”
He paused, his face a picture of puzzled fear and
opposition. He was not unlike a harried animal, deftly
pursued by hunter and hound. But Roberta, imagining that
his total defection had been caused by the social side of
Lycurgus as opposed to her own low state and not because
of the superior lure of any particular girl, now retorted
resentfully, although she desired not to appear so: “Oh, yes,
I know well enough why you can’t leave. It isn’t your
An American Tragedy
615
position here, though, half as much as it is those society
people you are always running around with. I know. You
don’t care for me any more, Clyde, that’s it, and you don’t
want to give these other people up for me. I know that’s it
and nothing else. But just the same it wasn’t so very long
ago that you did, although you don’t seem to remember it
now.” Her cheeks burned and her eyes flamed as she said
this. She paused a moment while he gazed at her
wondering about the outcome of all this. “But you can’t
leave me to make out any way I can, just the same,
because I won’t be left this way, Clyde. I can’t! I can’t! I tell
you.” She grew tense and staccato, “It means too much to
me. I don’t know how to do alone and I, besides, have no
one to turn to but you and you must help me. I’ve got to get
out of this, that’s all, Clyde, I’ve got to. I’m not going to be
left to face my people and everybody without any help or
marriage or anything.” As she said this, her eyes turned
appealingly and yet savagely toward him and she
emphasized it all with her hands, which she clinched and
unclinched in a dramatic way. “And if you can’t help me out
in the way you thought,” she went on most agonizedly as
Clyde could see, “then you’ve got to help me out in this
other, that’s all. At least until I can do for myself I just won’t
be left. I don’t ask you to marry me forever,” she now
added, the thought that if by presenting this demand in
some modified form, she could induce Clyde to marry her, it
might be possible afterwards that his feeling toward her
would change to a much more kindly one. “You can leave
me after a while if you want to. After I’m out of this. I can’t
prevent you from doing that and I wouldn’t want to if I could.
But you can’t leave me now. You can’t. You can’t! Besides,”
she added, “I didn’t want to get myself in this position and I
wouldn’t have, but for you. But you made me and made me
let you come in here. And now you want to leave me to shift
An American Tragedy
616
for myself, just because you think you won’t be able to go in
society any more, if they find out about me.”
She paused, the strain of this contest proving almost too
much for her tired nerves. At the same time she began to
sob nervously and yet not violently—a marked effort at self-
restraint and recovery marking her every gesture. And after
a moment or two in which both stood there, he gazing
dumbly and wondering what else he was to say in answer
to all this, she struggling and finally managing to recover
her poise, she added: “Oh, what is it about me that’s so
different to what I was a couple of months ago, Clyde? Will
you tell me that? I’d like to know. What is it that has caused
you to change so? Up to Christmas, almost, you were as
nice to me as any human being could be. You were with me
nearly all the time you had, and since then I’ve scarcely had
an evening that I didn’t beg for. Who is it? What is it? Some
other girl, or what, I’d like to know—that Sondra Finchley or
Bertine Cranston, or who?”
Her eyes as she said this were a study. For even to this
hour, as Clyde could now see to his satisfaction, since he
feared the effect on Roberta of definite and absolute
knowledge concerning Sondra, she had no specific
suspicion, let alone positive knowledge concerning any girl.
And coward-wise, in the face of her present predicament
and her assumed and threatened claims on him, he was
afraid to say what or who the real cause of this change was.
Instead he merely replied and almost unmoved by her
sorrow, since he no longer really cared for her: “Oh, you’re
all wrong, Bert. You don’t see what the trouble is. It’s my
future here—if I leave here I certainly will never find such an
opportunity. And if I have to marry in this way or leave here
it will all go flooey. I want to wait and get some place first
before I marry, see—save some money and if I do this I
won’t have a chance and you won’t either,” he added
An American Tragedy
617
feebly, forgetting for the moment that up to this time he had
been indicating rather clearly that he did not want to have
anything more to do with her in any way.
“Besides,” he continued, “if you could only find some one,
or if you would go away by yourself somewhere for a while,
Bert, and go through with this alone, I could send you the
money to do it on, I know. I could have it between now and
the time you had to go.”
His face, as he said this, and as Roberta clearly saw,
mirrored the complete and resourceless collapse of all his
recent plans in regard to her. And she, realizing that his
indifference to her had reached the point where he could
thus dispose of her and their prospective baby in this casual
and really heartless manner, was not only angered in part,
but at the same time frightened by the meaning of it all.
“Oh, Clyde,” she now exclaimed boldly and with more
courage and defiance than at any time since she had
known him, “how you have changed! And how hard you
can be. To want me to go off all by myself and just to save
you—so you can stay here and get along and marry some
one here when I am out of the way and you don’t have to
bother about me any more. Well, I won’t do it. It’s not fair.
And I won’t, that’s all. I won’t. And that’s all there is to it.
You can get some one to get me out of this or you can
marry me and come away with me, at least long enough for
me to have the baby and place myself right before my
people and every one else that knows me. I don’t care if
you leave me afterwards, because I see now that you really
don’t care for me any more, and if that’s the way you feel, I
don’t want you any more than you want me. But just the
same, you must help me now—you must. But, oh, dear,”
she began whimpering again, and yet only slightly and
bitterly. “To think that all our love for each other should
An American Tragedy
618
have come to this—that I am asked to go away by myself—
all alone—with no one—while you stay here, oh, dear! oh,
dear! And with a baby on my hands afterwards. And no
husband.”
She clinched her hands and shook her head bleakly. Clyde,
realizing well enough that his proposition certainly was cold
and indifferent but, in the face of his intense desire for
Sondra, the best or at least safest that he could devise,