An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

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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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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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