An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

every few days anyhow. Why won’t you, Clyde? You

haven’t even written me one since I’ve been here. I can’t

tell you what a state I’m in and how hard it is to keep calm

now.”

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Plainly Roberta was very nervous and fearsome as she

talked. As a matter of fact, except that the home in which

she was telephoning was deserted at the moment she was

talking very indiscreetly, it seemed to Clyde. And it aided

but little in his judgment for her to explain that she was all

alone and that no one could hear her. He did not want her

to use his name or refer to letters written to him.

Without talking too plainly, he now tried to make it clear that

he was very busy and that it was hard for him to write as

much as she might think necessary. Had he not said that

he was coming on the 28th or thereabouts if he could?

Well, he would if he could, only it looked now as though it

might be necessary for him to postpone it for another week

or so, until the seventh or eighth of July—long enough for

him to get together an extra fifty for which he had a plan,

and which would be necessary for him to have. But really,

which was the thought behind this other, long enough for

him to pay one more visit to Sondra as he was yearning to

do, over the next week-end. But this demand of hers, now!

Couldn’t she go with her parents for a week or so and then

let him come for her there or she come to him? It would

give him more needed time, and——

But at this Roberta, bursting forth in a storm of nervous

disapproval—saying that most certainly if that were the

case she was going back to her room at the Gilpins’, if she

could get it, and not waste her time up there getting ready

and waiting for him when he was not coming—he suddenly

decided that he might as well say that he was coming on

the third, or that if he did not, that at least by then he would

have arranged with her where to meet him. For even by

now, he had not made up his mind as to how he was to do.

He must have a little more time to think—more time to think.

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And so now he altered his tone greatly and said: “But listen,

Bert. Please don’t be angry with me. You talk as though I

didn’t have any troubles in connection with all this, either.

You don’t know what this may be going to cost me before

I’m through with it, and you don’t seem to care much. I

know you’re worried and all that, but what about me? I’m

doing the very best I can now, Bert, with all I have to think

about. And won’t you just be patient now until the third,

anyhow? Please do. I promise to write you and if I don’t, I’ll

call you up every other day. Will that be all right? But I

certainly don’t want you to be using my name like you did a

while ago. That will lead to trouble, sure. Please don’t. And

when I call again, I’ll just say it’s Mr. Baker asking, see, and

you can say it’s any one you like afterwards. And then, if by

any chance anything should come up that would stop our

starting exactly on the third, why you can come back here if

you want to, see, or somewhere near here, and then we

can start as soon as possible after that.”

His tone was so pleading and soothing, infused as it was—

but because of his present necessity only with a trace of

that old tenderness and seeming helplessness which, at

times, had quite captivated Roberta, that even now it

served to win her to a bizarre and groundless gratitude. So

much so that at once she had replied, warmly and

emotionally, even: “Oh, no, dear. I don’t want to do anything

like that. You know I don’t. It’s just because things are so

bad as they are with me and I can’t help myself now. You

know that, Clyde, don’t you? I can’t help loving you. I

always will, I suppose. And I don’t want to do anything to

hurt you, dear, really I don’t if I can help it.”

And Clyde, hearing the ring of genuine affection, and

sensing anew his old-time power over her, was disposed to

reënact the rôle of lover again, if only in order to dissuade

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Roberta from being too harsh and driving with him now. For

while he could not like her now, he told himself, and could

not think of marrying her, still in view of this other dream he

could at least be gracious to her—could he not?—Pretend!

And so this conversation ended with a new peace based on

this agreement.

The preceding day—a day of somewhat reduced activities

on the lakes from which he had just returned—he and

Sondra and Stuart and Bertine, together with Nina Temple

and a youth named Harley Baggott, then visiting the

Thurstons, had motored first from Twelfth Lake to Three

Mile Bay, a small lakeside resort some twenty-five miles

north, and from thence, between towering walls of pines, to

Big Bittern and some other smaller lakes lost in the

recesses of the tall pines of the region to the north of Trine

Lake. And en route, Clyde, as he now recalled, had been

most strangely impressed at moments and in spots by the

desolate and for the most part lonely character of the

region. The narrow and rain washed and even rutted nature

of the dirt roads that wound between tall, silent and

darksome trees—forests in the largest sense of the word—

that extended for miles and miles apparently on either

hand. The decadent and weird nature of some of the bogs

and tarns on either side of the only comparatively passable

dirt roads which here and there were festooned with

funereal or viperous vines, and strewn like deserted

battlefields with soggy and decayed piles of fallen and

crisscrossed logs—in places as many as four deep—one

above the other—in the green slime that an undrained

depression in the earth had accumulated. The eyes and

backs of occasional frogs that, upon lichen or vine or moss-

covered stumps and rotting logs in this warm June weather,

there sunned themselves apparently undisturbed; the

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spirals of gnats, the solitary flick of a snake’s tail as

disturbed by the sudden approach of the machine, one

made off into the muck and the poisonous grasses and

water-plants which were thickly imbedded in it.

And in seeing one of these Clyde, for some reason, had

thought of the accident at Pass Lake. He did not realize it,

but at the moment his own subconscious need was

contemplating the loneliness and the usefulness at times of

such a lone spot as this. And at one point it was that a wier-

wier, one of the solitary water-birds of this region, uttered its

ouphe and barghest cry, flying from somewhere near into

some darker recess within the woods. And at this sound it

was that Clyde had stirred nervously and then sat up in the

car. It was so very different to any bird-cry he had ever

heard anywhere.

“What was that?” he asked of Harley Baggott, who sat next

him.

“What?”

“Why, that bird or something that just flew away back there

just now?”

“I didn’t hear any bird.”

“Gee! That was a queer sound. It makes me feel creepy.”

As interesting and impressive as anything else to him in this

almost tenantless region had been the fact that there were

so many lonesome lakes, not one of which he had ever

heard of before. The territory through which they were

speeding as fast as the dirt roads would permit, was dotted

with them in these deep forests of pine. And only

occasionally in passing near one, were there any signs

indicating a camp or lodge, and those to be reached only by

some half-blazed trail or rutty or sandy road disappearing

through darker trees. In the main, the shores of the more

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remote lakes passed, were all but untenanted, or so

sparsely that a cabin or a distant lodge to be seen across

the smooth waters of some pine-encircled gem was an

object of interest to all.

Why must he think of that other lake in Massachusetts!

That boat! The body of that girl found—but not that of the

man who accompanied her! How terrible, really!

He recalled afterwards,—here in his room, after the last

conversation with Roberta—that the car, after a few more

miles, had finally swung into an open space at the north

end of a long narrow lake—the south prospect of which