The Essential Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

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СКАЧАТЬ let her go on with her story, an interest which Roberta noticed and because of which she was very pleased.

      “But I can’t stay very long, you know,” she explained briskly and warmly at the first opportunity, the while Clyde laid hold of her arm and turned toward the river, which was to the north and untenanted this far out. “The Baptist Church socials never last much beyond ten-thirty or eleven, and they’ll be back soon. So I’ll have to manage to be back before they are.”

      Then she gave many reasons why it would be unwise for her to be out after ten, reasons which annoyed yet convinced Clyde by their wisdom. He had been hoping to keep her out longer. But seeing that the time was to be brief, he was all the keener for a closer contact with her now, and fell to complimenting her on her pretty hat and cape and how becoming they were. At once he tried putting his arm about her waist, but feeling this to be a too swift advance she removed his arm, or tried to, saying in the softest and most coaxing voice “Now, now — that’s not nice, is it? Can’t you just hold my arm or let me hold yours?” But he noted, once she persuaded him to disengage her waist, she took his arm in a clinging, snuggling embrace and measured her stride to his. On the instant he was thinking how natural and unaffected her manner was now that the ice between them had been broken.

      And how she went on babbling! She liked Lycurgus, only she thought it was the most religious town she had ever been in — worse than Biltz or Trippetts Mills that way. And then she had to explain to Clyde what Biltz and Trippetts Mills were like — and her home — a very little, for she did not care to talk about that. And then back to the Newtons and Grace Marr and how they watched her every move. Clyde was thinking as she talked how different she was from Hortense Briggs or Rita, or any other girl he had ever known — so much more simple and confiding — not in any way mushy as was Rita, or brash or vain or pretentious, as was Hortense, and yet really as pretty and so much sweeter. He could not help thinking if she were smartly dressed how sweet she would be. And again he was wondering what she would think of him and his attitude toward Hortense in contrast to his attitude toward her now, if she knew.

      “You know,” he said at the very first opportunity, “I’ve been trying to talk to you ever since you came to work at the factory but you see how very watchful every one is. They’re the limit. They told me when I came up there that I mustn’t interest myself in any girl working there and so I tried not to. But I just couldn’t help this, could I?” He squeezed her arm affectionately, then stopped suddenly and, disengaging his arm from hers, put both his about her. “You know, Roberta, I’m crazy about you. I really am. I think you’re the dearest, sweetest thing. Oh, say! Do you mind my telling you? Ever since you showed up there, I haven’t been able to sleep, nearly. You’ve got such nice eyes and hair. To- night you look just too cute — lovely, I think. Oh, Roberta,” suddenly he caught her face between his two hands and kissed her, before really she could evade him. Then having done this he held her while she resisted him, although it was almost impossible for her to do so. Instead she felt as though she wanted to put her arms around him or have him hold her tight, and this mood in regard to him and herself puzzled and troubled her. It was awful. What would people think — say — if they knew? She was a bad girl, really, and yet she wanted to be this way — near him — now as never before.

      “Oh, you mustn’t, Mr. Griffiths,” she pleaded. “You really mustn’t, you know. Please. Some one might see us. I think I hear some one coming. Please, now.” She looked about quite frightened, apparently, while Clyde laughed ecstatically. Life had presented him a delicious sweet at last. “You know I never did anything like this before,” she went on. “Honest, I didn’t. Please. It’s only because you said —”

      Clyde was pressing her close, not saying anything in reply — his pale face and dark hungry eyes held very close to hers. He kissed her again and again despite her protests, her little mouth and chin and cheeks seeming too beautiful — too irresistible — then murmured pleadingly, for he was too overcome to speak vigorously.

      “Oh, Roberta, dearest, please, please, say that you love me. Please do! I know that you do, Roberta. I can tell. Please, tell me now. I’m crazy about you. We have so little time.”

      He kissed her again upon the cheek and mouth, and suddenly he felt her relax. She stood quite still and unresisting in his arms. He felt a wonder of something — he could not tell what. All of a sudden he felt tears upon her face, her head sunk to his shoulder, and then he heard her say: “Yes, yes, yes. I do love you. Yes, yes. I do. I do.”

      There was a sob — half of misery, half of delight — in her voice and Clyde caught that. He was so touched by her honesty and simplicity that tears sprang to his own eyes. “It’s all right, Roberta. It’s all right. Please don’t cry. Oh, I think you’re so sweet. I do. I do, Roberta.”

      He looked up and before him in the east over the low roofs of the city was the thinnest, yellowest topmost arc of the rising July moon. It seemed at the moment as though life had given him all — all — that he could possibly ask of it.

      Chapter 18

       Table of Contents

      The culmination of this meeting was but the prelude, as both Clyde and Roberta realized, to a series of contacts and rejoicings which were to extend over an indefinite period. They had found love. They were deliciously happy, whatever the problems attending its present realization might be. But the ways and means of continuing with it were a different matter. For not only was her connection with the Newtons a bar to any normal procedure in so far as Clyde was concerned, but Grace Marr herself offered a distinct and separate problem. Far more than Roberta she was chained, not only by the defect of poor looks, but by the narrow teachings and domestic training of her early social and religious life. Yet she wanted to be gay and free, too. And in Roberta, who, while gay and boastful at times, was still well within the conventions that chained Grace, she imagined that she saw one who was not so bound. And so it was that she clung to her closely and as Roberta saw it a little wearisomely. She imagined that they could exchange ideas and jests and confidences in regard to the love life and their respective dreams without injury to each other. And to date this was her one solace in an otherwise gray world.

      But Roberta, even before the arrival of Clyde in her life, did not want to be so clung to. It was a bore. And afterwards she developed an inhibition in regard to him where Grace was concerned. For she not only knew that Grace would resent this sudden desertion, but also that she had no desire to face out within herself the sudden and revolutionary moods which now possessed her. Having at once met and loved him, she was afraid to think what, if anything, she proposed to permit herself to do in regard to him. Were not such contacts between the classes banned here? She knew they were. Hence she did not care to talk about him at all.

      In consequence on Monday evening following the Sunday on the lake when Grace had inquired most gayly and familiarly after Clyde, Roberta had as instantly decided not to appear nearly as interested in him as Grace might already be imagining. Accordingly, she said little other than that he was very pleasant to her and had inquired after Grace, a remark which caused the latter to eye her slyly and to wonder if she were really telling what had happened since. “He was so very friendly I was beginning to think he was struck on you.”

      “Oh, what nonsense!” Roberta replied shrewdly, and a bit alarmed. “Why, he wouldn’t look at me. Besides, there’s a rule of the company that doesn’t permit him to, as long as I work there.”

      This last, more than anything else, served to allay Grace’s notions in regard to Clyde and Roberta, for she was of that conventional turn of mind which would scarcely permit her to think of any one infringing upon a company rule. Nevertheless Roberta was nervous lest Grace should be associating her and Clyde in her mind in some clandestine way, СКАЧАТЬ