An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Rubenstein. “If you can bring me seventy-five next week or

to-morrow, and forty more in another week or ten days, why

not wait a week and bring the whole hundred and fifteen?

Then the coat is yours and no bother. Leave the coat.

Come back to-morrow and pay me twenty-five or thirty

dollars on account and I take the coat out of the window

and lock it up for you. No one can even see it then. In

another week bring me the balance or in two weeks. Then it

is yours.” Mr. Rubenstein explained the process as though it

were a difficult matter to grasp.

But the argument once made was sound enough. It really

left Hortense little to argue about. At the same time it

reduced her spirit not a little. To think of not being able to

take it now. And yet, once out of the place, her vigor

revived. For, after all, the time fixed would soon pass and if

Clyde performed his part of the agreement promptly, the

coat would be hers. The important thing now was to make

him give her twenty-five or thirty dollars wherewith to bind

this wonderful agreement. Only now, because of the fact

that she felt that she needed a new hat to go with the coat,

she decided to say that it cost one hundred and twenty-five

instead of one hundred and fifteen.

And once this conclusion was put before Clyde, he saw it

as a very reasonable arrangement—all things considered—

quite a respite from the feeling of strain that had settled

upon him after his last conversation with Hortense. For,

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after all, he had not seen how he was to raise more than

thirty-five dollars this first week anyhow. The following week

would be somewhat easier, for then, as he told himself, he

proposed to borrow twenty or twenty-five from Ratterer if he

could, which, joined with the twenty or twenty-five which his

tips would bring him, would be quite sufficient to meet the

second payment. The week following he proposed to

borrow at least ten or fifteen from Hegglund—maybe more

—and if that did not make up the required amount to pawn

his watch for fifteen dollars, the watch he had bought for

himself a few months before. It ought to bring that at least;

it cost fifty.

But, he now thought, there was Esta in her wretched room

awaiting the most unhappy result of her one romance. How

was she to make out, he asked himself, even in the face of

the fact that he feared to be included in the financial

problem which Esta as well as the family presented. His

father was not now, and never had been, of any real

financial service to his mother. And yet, if the problem were

on this account to be shifted to him, how would he make

out? Why need his father always peddle clocks and rugs

and preach on the streets? Why couldn’t his mother and

father give up the mission idea, anyhow?

But, as he knew, the situation was not to be solved without

his aid. And the proof of it came toward the end of the

second week of his arrangement with Hortense, when, with

fifty dollars in his pocket, which he was planning to turn

over to her on the following Sunday, his mother, looking

into his bedroom where he was dressing, said: “I’d like to

see you for a minute, Clyde, before you go out.” He noted

she was very grave as she said this. As a matter of fact, for

several days past, he had been sensing that she was

undergoing a strain of some kind. At the same time he had

been thinking all this while that with his own resources

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175

hypothecated as they were, he could do nothing. Or, if he

did it meant the loss of Hortense. He dared not.

And yet what reasonable excuse could he give his mother

for not helping her a little, considering especially the clothes

he wore, and the manner in which he had been running

here and there, always giving the excuse of working, but

probably not deceiving her as much as he thought. To be

sure, only two months before, he had obligated himself to

pay her ten dollars a week more for five weeks, and had.

But that only proved to her very likely that he had so much

extra to give, even though he had tried to make it clear at

the time that he was pinching himself to do it. And yet,

however much he chose to waver in her favor, he could

not, with his desire for Hortense directly confronting him.

He went out into the living-room after a time, and as usual

his mother at once led the way to one of the benches in the

mission—a cheerless, cold room these days.

“I didn’t think I’d have to speak to you about this, Clyde, but

I don’t see any other way out of it. I haven’t anyone but you

to depend upon now that you’re getting to be a man. But

you must promise not to tell any of the others—Frank or

Julia or your father. I don’t want them to know. But Esta’s

back here in Kansas City and in trouble, and I don’t know

quite what to do about her. I have so very little money to do

with, and your father’s not very much of a help to me any

more.”

She passed a weary, reflective hand across her forehead

and Clyde knew what was coming. His first thought was to

pretend that he did not know that Esta was in the city, since

he had been pretending this way for so long. But now,

suddenly, in the face of his mother’s confession, and the

need of pretended surprise on his part, if he were to keep

up the fiction, he said, “Yes, I know.”

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176

“You know?” queried his mother, surprised.

“Yes, I know,” Clyde repeated. “I saw you going in that

house in Beaudry Street one morning as I was going along

there,” he announced calmly enough now. “And I saw Esta

looking out of the window afterwards, too. So I went in after

you left.”

“How long ago was that?” she asked, more to gain time

than anything else.

“Oh, about five or six weeks ago, I think. I been around to

see her a coupla times since then, only Esta didn’t want me

to say anything about that either.”

“Tst! Tst! Tst!” clicked Mrs. Griffiths, with her tongue. “Then

you know what the trouble is.”

“Yes,” replied Clyde.

“Well, what is to be will be,” she said resignedly. “You

haven’t mentioned it to Frank or Julia, have you?”

“No,” replied Clyde, thoughtfully, thinking of what a failure

his mother had made of her attempt to be secretive. She

was no one to deceive any one, or his father, either. He

thought himself far, far shrewder.

“Well, you mustn’t,” cautioned his mother solemnly. “It isn’t

best for them to know, I think. It’s bad enough as it is this

way,” she added with a kind of wry twist to her mouth, the

while Clyde thought of himself and Hortense.

“And to think,” she added, after a moment, her eyes filling

with a sad, all-enveloping gray mist, “she should have

brought all this on herself and on us. And when we have so

little to do with, as it is. And after all the instruction she has

had—the training. ‘The way of the transgressor——’”

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She shook her head and put her two large hands together

and gripped them firmly, while Clyde stared, thinking of the

situation and all that it might mean to him.

She sat there, quite reduced and bewildered by her own

peculiar part in all this. She had been as deceiving as any

one, really. And here was Clyde, now, fully informed as to

her falsehoods and strategy, and herself looking foolish and

untrue. But had she not been trying to save him from all this

—him and the others? And he was old enough to

understand that now. Yet she now proceeded to explain

why, and to say how dreadful she felt it all to be. At the

same time, as she also explained, now she was compelled

to come to him for aid in connection with it.

“Esta’s about to be very sick,” she went on suddenly and

stiffly, not being able, or at least willing, apparently, to look

at Clyde as she said it, and yet determined to be as frank

as possible. “She’ll need a doctor very shortly and some

one to be with her all the time when I’m not there. I must

get money somewhere—at least fifty dollars. You couldn’t

get me that much in some way, from some of your young

men friends, could you, just a loan for a few weeks? You