An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

the year before she ran away with him, and it was then that

he had introduced himself to her. The following year when

he returned for two weeks, it was she who looked him up,

or so Clyde suspected, at any rate. And in view of his own

interest in and mood regarding Hortense Briggs, it was not

for him to say that there was anything wrong with the sex

relation in itself.

Rather, as he saw it now, the difficulty lay, not in the deed

itself, but in the consequences which followed upon not

thinking or not knowing. For had Esta known more of the

man in whom she was interested, more of what such a

relationship with him meant, she would not be in her

present pathetic plight. Certainly such girls as Hortense

Briggs, Greta and Louise, would never have allowed

themselves to be put in any such position as Esta. Or would

they? They were too shrewd. And by contrast with them in

his mind, at least at this time, she suffered. She ought, as

he saw it, to have been able to manage better. And so, by

degrees, his attitude toward her hardened in some

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measure, though his feeling was not one of indifference

either.

But the one influence that was affecting and troubling and

changing him now was his infatuation for Hortense Briggs—

than which no more agitating influence could have come to

a youth of his years and temperament. She seemed, after

his few contacts with her, to be really the perfect realization

of all that he had previously wished for in a girl. She was so

bright, vain, engaging, and so truly pretty. Her eyes, as they

seemed to him, had a kind of dancing fire in them. She had

a most entrancing way of pursing and parting her lips and at

the same time looking straightly and indifferently before her,

as though she were not thinking of him, which to him was

both flame and fever. It caused him, actually, to feel weak

and dizzy, at times, cruelly seared in his veins with minute

and wriggling threads of fire, and this could only be

described as conscious lust, a torturesome and yet

unescapable thing which yet in her case he was unable to

prosecute beyond embracing and kissing, a form of reserve

and respect in regard to her which she really resented in

the very youths in whom she sought to inspire it. The type

of boy for whom she really cared and was always seeking

was one who could sweep away all such psuedo-

ingenuousness and superiorities in her and force her, even

against herself, to yield to him.

In fact she was constantly wavering between actual like and

dislike of him. And in consequence, he was in constant

doubt as to where he stood, a state which was very much

relished by her and yet which was never permitted to

become so fixed in his mind as to cause him to give her up

entirely. After some party or dinner or theater to which she

had permitted him to take her, and throughout which he

had been particularly tactful—not too assertive—she could

be as yielding and enticing in her mood as the most

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ambitious lover would have liked. And this might last until

the evening was nearly over, when suddenly, and at her

own door or the room or house of some girl with whom she

was spending the night, she would turn, and without rhyme

or reason, endeavor to dismiss him with a mere handclasp

or a thinly flavored embrace or kiss. At such times, if Clyde

was foolish enough to endeavor to force her to yield the

favors he craved, she would turn on him with the fury of a

spiteful cat, would tear herself away, developing for the

moment, seemingly, an intense mood of opposition which

she could scarcely have explained to herself. Its chief

mental content appeared to be one of opposition to being

compelled by him to do anything. And, because of his

infatuation and his weak overtures due to his inordinate fear

of losing her, he would be forced to depart, usually in a dark

and despondent mood.

But so keen was her attraction for him that he could not

long remain away, but must be going about to where most

likely he would encounter her. Indeed, for the most part

these days, and in spite of the peculiar climax which had

eventuated in connection with Esta, he lived in a keen,

sweet and sensual dream in regard to her. If only she would

really come to care for him. At night, in his bed at home, he

would lie and think of her—her face—the expressions of her

mouth and eyes, the lines of her figure, the motions of her

body in walking or dancing—and she would flicker before

him as upon a screen. In his dreams, he found her

deliciously near him, pressing against him—her delightful

body all his—and then in the moment of crisis, when

seemingly she was about to yield herself to him completely,

he would awake to find her vanished—an illusion only.

Yet there were several things in connection with her which

seemed to bode success for him. In the first place, like

himself, she was part of a poor family—the daughter of a

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machinist and his wife, who up to this very time had

achieved little more than a bare living. From her childhood

she had had nothing, only such gew-gaws and fripperies as

she could secure for herself by her wits. And so low had

been her social state until very recently that she had not

been able to come in contact with anything better than

butcher and baker boys—the rather commonplace urchins

and small job aspirants of her vicinity. Yet even here she

had early realized that she could and should capitalize her

looks and charm—and had. Not a few of these had even

gone so far as to steal in order to get money to entertain

her.

After reaching the age where she was old enough to go to

work, and thus coming in contact with the type of boy and

man in whom she was now interested, she was beginning

to see that without yielding herself too much, but in acting

discreetly, she could win a more interesting equipment than

she had before. Only, so truly sensual and pleasure-loving

was she that she was by no means always willing to divorce

her self-advantages from her pleasures. On the contrary,

she was often troubled by a desire to like those whom she

sought to use, and per contra, not to obligate herself to

those whom she could not like.

In Clyde’s case, liking him but a little, she still could not

resist the desire to use him. She liked his willingness to buy

her any little thing in which she appeared interested—a

bag, a scarf, a purse, a pair of gloves—anything that she

could reasonably ask or take without obligating herself too

much. And yet from the first, in her smart, tricky way, she

realized that unless she could bring herself to yield to him—

at some time or other offer him the definite reward which

she knew he craved—she could not hold him indefinitely.

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One thought that stirred her more than anything else was

that the way Clyde appeared to be willing to spend his

money on her she might easily get some quite expensive

things from him—a pretty and rather expensive dress,

perhaps, or a hat, or even a fur coat such as was then

being shown and worn in the city, to say nothing of gold

earrings, or a wrist watch, all of which she was constantly

and enviously eyeing in the different shop windows.

One day not so long after Clyde’s discovery of his sister

Esta, Hortense, walking along Baltimore Street near its

junction with Fifteenth—the smartest portion of the

shopping section of the city—at the noon hour—with Doris

Trine, another shop girl in her department store, saw in the

window of one of the smaller and less exclusive fur stores

of the city, a fur jacket of beaver that to her, viewed from

the eye-point of her own particular build, coloring and

temperament, was exactly what she needed to strengthen

mightily her very limited personal wardrobe. It was not such

an expensive coat, worth possibly a hundred dollars—but

fashioned in such an individual way as to cause her to

imagine that, once invested with it, her own physical charm

would register more than it ever had.

Moved by this thought, she paused and exclaimed: “Oh,

isn’t that just the classiest, darlingest little coat you ever

saw! Oh, do look at those sleeves, Doris.” She clutched her

companion violently by the arm. “Lookit the collar. And the

lining! And those pockets! Oh, dear!” She fairly vibrated

with the intensity of her approval and delight. “Oh, isn’t that