so at the time, but she didn’t seem to think so. She wasn’t
as surprised as I thought she would be, though. I know
why, now. She acted as though she didn’t want me to tell
her about it either. But I knew I wasn’t wrong.” He stared at
Esta oddly, quite proud of his prescience in this case. He
paused though, not knowing quite what else to say and
wondering whether what he had just said was of any sense
or import. It didn’t seem to suggest any real aid for her.
And she, not quite knowing how to pass over the nature of
her condition, or to confess it, either, was puzzled what to
say. Something had to be done. For Clyde could see for
himself that her predicament was dreadful. She could
scarcely bear the look of his inquiring eyes. And more to
extricate herself than her mother, she finally observed,
“Poor Mamma. You mustn’t think it strange of her, Clyde.
She doesn’t know what to do, you see, really. It’s all my
fault, of course. If I hadn’t run away, I wouldn’t have caused
her all this trouble. She has so little to do with and she’s
always had such a hard time.” She turned her back to him
suddenly, and her shoulders began to tremble and her
sides to heave. She put her hands to her face and bent her
head low—and then he knew that she was silently crying.
“Oh, come now, sis,” exclaimed Clyde, drawing near to her
instantly and feeling intensely sorry for her at the moment.
“What’s the matter? What do you want to cry for? Didn’t
that man that you went away with marry you?”
She shook her head negatively and sobbed the more. And
in that instant there came to Clyde the real psychological as
well as sociological and biological import of his sister’s
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condition. She was in trouble, pregnant—and with no
money and no husband. That was why his mother had
been looking for a room. That was why she had tried to
borrow a hundred dollars from him. She was ashamed of
Esta and her condition. She was ashamed of not only what
people outside the family would think, but of what he and
Julia and Frank might think—the effect of Esta’s condition
upon them perhaps—because it was not right, unmoral, as
people saw it. And for that reason she had been trying to
conceal it, telling stories about it—a most amazing and
difficult thing for her, no doubt. And yet, because of poor
luck, she hadn’t succeeded very well.
And now he was again confused and puzzled, not only by
his sister’s condition and what it meant to him and the other
members of the family here in Kansas City, but also by his
mother’s disturbed and somewhat unmoral attitude in
regard to deception in this instance. She had evaded if not
actually deceived him in regard to all this, for she knew Esta
was here all the time. At the same time he was not inclined
to be too unsympathetic in that respect toward her—far
from it. For such deception in such an instance had to be,
no doubt, even where people were as religious and truthful
as his mother, or so he thought. You couldn’t just let people
know. He certainly wouldn’t want to let people know about
Esta, if he could help it. What would they think? What
would they say about her and him? Wasn’t the general
state of his family low enough, as it was? And so, now he
stood, staring and puzzled the while Esta cried. And she
realizing that he was puzzled and ashamed, because of
her, cried the more.
“Gee, that is tough,” said Clyde, troubled, and yet fairly
sympathetic after a time. “You wouldn’t have run away with
him unless you cared for him though—would you?” (He was
thinking of himself and Hortense Briggs.) “I’m sorry for you,
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146
Ess. Sure, I am, but it won’t do you any good to cry about it
now, will it? There’s lots of other fellows in the world beside
him. You’ll come out of it all right.”
“Oh, I know,” sobbed Esta, “but I’ve been so foolish. And
I’ve had such a hard time. And now I’ve brought all this
trouble on Mamma and all of you.” She choked and hushed
a moment. “He went off and left me in a hotel in Pittsburgh
without any money,” she added. “And if it hadn’t been for
Mamma, I don’t know what I would have done. She sent
me a hundred dollars when I wrote her. I worked for a while
in a restaurant—as long as I could. I didn’t want to write
home and say that he had left me. I was ashamed to. But I
didn’t know what else to do there toward the last, when I
began feeling so bad.”
She began to cry again; and Clyde, realizing all that his
mother had done and sought to do to assist her, felt almost
as sorry now for his mother as he did for Esta—more so, for
Esta had her mother to look after her and his mother had
almost no one to help her.
“I can’t work yet, because I won’t be able to for a while,” she
went on. “And Mamma doesn’t want me to come home now
because she doesn’t want Julia or Frank or you to know.
And that’s right, too, I know. Of course it is. And she hasn’t
got anything and I haven’t. And I get so lonely here,
sometimes.” Her eyes filled and she began to choke again.
“And I’ve been so foolish.”
And Clyde felt for the moment as though he could cry too.
For life was so strange, so hard at times. See how it had
treated him all these years. He had had nothing until
recently and always wanted to run away. But Esta had done
so, and see what had befallen her. And somehow he
recalled her between the tall walls of the big buildings here
in the business district, sitting at his father’s little street
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147
organ and singing and looking so innocent and good. Gee,
life was tough. What a rough world it was anyhow. How
queer things went!
He looked at her and the room, and finally, telling her that
she wouldn’t be left alone, and that he would come again,
only she mustn’t tell his mother he had been there, and that
if she needed anything she could call on him although he
wasn’t making so very much, either—and then went out.
And then, walking toward the hotel to go to work, he kept
dwelling on the thought of how miserable it all was—how
sorry he was that he had followed his mother, for then he
might not have known. But even so, it would have come
out. His mother could not have concealed it from him
indefinitely. She would have asked for more money
eventually maybe. But what a dog that man was to go off
and leave his sister in a big strange city without a dime. He
puzzled, thinking now of the girl who had been deserted in
the Green-Davidson some months before with a room and
board bill unpaid. And how comic it had seemed to him and
the other boys at the time-highly colored with a sensual
interest in it.
But this, well, this was his own sister. A man had thought so
little of his sister as that. And yet, try as he would, he could
no longer think that it was as terrible as when he heard her
crying in the room. Here was this brisk, bright city about him
running with people and effort, and this gay hotel in which
he worked. That was not so bad. Besides there was his
own love affair, Hortense, and pleasures. There must be
some way out for Esta. She would get well again and be all
right. But to think of his being part of a family that was
always so poor and so little thought of that things like this
could happen to it—one thing and another—like street
preaching, not being able to pay the rent at times, his father
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selling rugs and clocks for a living on the streets—Esta
running away and coming to an end like this. Gee!
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149
Chapter 14
THE result of all this on Clyde was to cause him to think
more specifically on the problem of the sexes than he ever
had before, and by no means in any orthodox way. For
while he condemned his sister’s lover for thus ruthlessly
deserting her, still he was not willing to hold her entirely
blameless by any means. She had gone off with him. As he
now learned from her, he had been in the city for a week