An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

commingled.

A tall, thin servant relieved him of his hat, coat and umbrella

and he found himself face to face with Jill Trumbull, who

apparently was on the look-out for him—a smooth, curly-

haired blonde girl, not too thrillingly pretty, but brisk and

smart, in white satin with arms and shoulders bare and

rhinestones banded around her forehead.

“No trouble to tell who you are,” she said gayly,

approaching and giving Clyde her hand. “I’m Jill Trumbull.

Miss Finchley hasn’t come yet. But I can do the honors just

as well, I guess. Come right in where the rest of us are.”

She led the way into a series of connecting rooms that

seemed to join each other at right angles, adding as she

went, “You do look an awful lot like Gil Griffiths, don’t you?”

“Do I?” smiled Clyde simply and courageously and very

much flattered by the comparison.

The ceilings were low. Pretty lamps behind painted shades

hugged dark walls. Open fires in two connecting rooms cast

a rosy glow upon cushioned and comfortable furniture.

There were pictures, books, objects of art.

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469

“Here, Tracy, you do the announcing, will you?” she called.

“My brother, Tracy Trumbull, Mr. Griffiths. Mr. Clyde

Griffiths, everybody,” she added, surveying the company in

general which in turn fixed varying eyes upon him, while

Tracy Trumbull took him by the hand. Clyde, suffering from

a sense of being studied, nevertheless achieved a warm

smile. At the same time he realized that for the moment at

least conversation had stopped. “Don’t all stop talking on

my account,” he ventured, with a smile, which caused most

of those present to conceive of him as at his ease and

resourceful. At the same time Tracy added: “I’m not going

to do any man-to-man introduction stuff. We’ll stand right

here and point ’em out. That’s my sister, Gertrude, over

there talking to Scott Nicholson.” Clyde noted that a small,

dark girl dressed in pink with a pretty and yet saucy and

piquant face, nodded to him. And beside her a very de

rigueur youth of fine physique and pink complexion nodded

jerkily. “Howja do.” And a few feet from them near a deep

window stood a tall and yet graceful girl of dark and by no

means ravishing features talking to a broad-shouldered and

deep-chested youth of less than her height, who were

proclaimed to be Arabella Stark and Frank Harriet. “They’re

arguing over a recent Cornell-Syracuse foot-ball game …

Burchard Taylor and Miss Phant of Utica,” he went on

almost too swiftly for Clyde to assemble any mental notes.

“Perley Haynes and Miss Vanda Steele … well, I guess

that’s all as yet. Oh, no, here come Grant and Nina

Temple.” Clyde paused and gazed as a tall and somewhat

dandified-looking youth, sharp of face and with murky-gray

eyes, steered a trim, young, plump girl in fawn gray and

with a light chestnut braid of hair laid carefully above her

forehead, into the middle of the room.

“Hello, Jill. Hello, Vanda. Hello, Wynette.” In the midst of

these greetings on his part, Clyde was presented to these

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470

two, neither of whom seemed to pay much attention to him.

“Didn’t think we’d make it,” went on young Cranston

speaking to all at once. “Nina didn’t want to come, but I

promised Bertine and Jill or I wouldn’t have, either. We

were up at the Bagleys’. Guess who’s up there, Scott. Van

Peterson and Rhoda Hull. They’re just over for the day.”

“You don’t say,” called Scott Nicholson, a determined and

self-centered looking individual. Clyde was arrested by the

very definite sense of social security and ease that seemed

to reside in everybody. “Why didn’t you bring ’em along? I’d

like to see Rhoda again and Van, too.”

“Couldn’t. They have to go back early, they say. They may

stop in later for a minute. Gee, isn’t dinner served yet? I

expected to sit right down.”

“These lawyers! Don’t you know they don’t eat often?”

commented Frank Harriet, who was a short, but broad-

chested and smiling youth, very agreeable, very good-

looking and with even, white teeth. Clyde liked him.

“Well, whether they do or not, we do, or out I go. Did you

hear who is being touted for stroke next year over at

Cornell?” This college chatter relating to Cornell and shared

by Harriet, Cranston and others, Clyde could not

understand. He had scarcely heard of the various colleges

with which this group was all too familiar. At the same time

he was wise enough to sense the defect and steer clear of

any questions or conversations which might relate to them.

However, because of this, he at once felt out of it. These

people were better informed than he was—had been to

colleges. Perhaps he had better claim that he had been to

some school. In Kansas City he had heard of the State

University of Kansas—not so very far from there. Also the

University of Missouri. And in Chicago of the University of

Chicago. Could he say that he had been to one of those—

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471

that Kansas one, for a little while, anyway? On the instant

he proposed to claim it, if asked, and then look up

afterwards what, if anything, he was supposed to know

about it—what, for instance, he might have studied. He had

heard of mathematics somewhere. Why not that?

But these people, as he could see, were too much

interested in themselves to pay much attention to him now.

He might be a Griffiths and important to some outside, but

here not so much—a matter of course, as it were. And

because Tracy Trumbull for the moment had turned to say

something to Wynette Phant, he felt quite alone, beached

and helpless and with no one to talk to. But just then the

small, dark girl, Gertrude, came over to him.

“The crowd’s a little late in getting together. It always is. If

we said eight, they’d come at eight-thirty or nine. Isn’t that

always the way?”

“It certainly is,” replied Clyde gratefully, endeavoring to

appear as brisk and as much at ease as possible.

“I’m Gertrude Trumbull,” she repeated. “The sister of the

good-looking Jill,” a cynical and yet amused smile played

about her mouth and eyes. “You nodded to me, but you

don’t know me. Just the same we’ve been hearing a lot

about you.” She teased in an attempt to trouble Clyde a

little, if possible. “A mysterious Griffiths here in Lycurgus

whom no one seems to have met. I saw you once in

Central Avenue, though. You were going into Rich’s candy

store. You didn’t know that, though. Do you like candy?”

“Oh, yes, I like candy. Why?” asked Clyde on the instant

feeling teased and disturbed, since the girl for whom he

was buying the candy was Roberta. At the same time he

could not help feeling slightly more at ease with this girl

than with some others, for although cynical and not so

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472

attractive, her manner was genial and she now spelled

escape from isolation and hence diffidence.

“You’re probably just saying that,” she laughed, a bantering

look in her eyes. “More likely you were buying it for some

girl. You have a girl, haven’t you?”

“Why—” Clyde paused for the fraction of a second because

as she asked this Roberta came into his mind and the

query, “Had any one ever seen him with Roberta?” flitted

through his brain. Also thinking at the same time, what a

bold, teasing, intelligent girl this was, different from any that

thus far he had known. Yet quite without more pause he

added: “No, I haven’t. What makes you ask that?”

As he said this there came to him the thought of what

Roberta would think if she could hear him. “But what a

question,” he continued a little nervously now. “You like to

tease, don’t you?”

“Who, me? Oh, no. I wouldn’t do anything like that. But I’m

sure you have just the same. I like to ask questions

sometimes, just to see what people will say when they don’t

want you to know what they really think.” She beamed into

Clyde’s eyes amusedly and defiantly. “But I know you have

a girl just the same. All good-looking fellows have.”

“Oh, am I good-looking?” he beamed nervously, amused

and yet pleased. “Who said so?”

“As though you didn’t know. Well, different people. I for one.

And Sondra Finchley thinks you’re good-looking, too. She’s

only interested in men who are. So does my sister Jill, for

that matter. And she only likes men who are good-looking.

I’m different because I’m not so good-looking myself.” She

blinked cynically and teasingly into his eyes, which caused

him to feel oddly out of place, not able to cope with such a

girl at all, at the same time very much flattered and

An American Tragedy