The Essential Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

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      “Oh, here you are. You decided to come after all. I wasn’t sure whether you would think it worth while. You’ve been introduced to everybody, of course?” She looked around as much as to say, that if he had not been she would proceed to serve him in this way. The others, not so very much impressed by Clyde, were still not a little interested by the fact that she seemed so interested in him.

      “Yes, I met nearly everybody, I think.”

      “Except Freddie Sells. He came in with me just now. Here you are, Freddie,” she called to a tall and slender youth, smooth of cheek and obviously becurled as to hair, who now came over and in his closely-fitting dress coat looked down on Clyde about as a spring rooster might look down on a sparrow.

      “This is Clyde Griffiths, I was telling you about, Fred,” she began briskly. “Doesn’t he look a lot like Gilbert?”

      “Why, you do at that,” exclaimed this amiable person, who seemed to be slightly troubled with weak eyes since he bent close. “I hear you’re a cousin of Gil’s. I know him well. We went through Princeton together. I used to be over here before I joined the General Electric over at Schenectady. But I’m around a good bit yet. You’re connected with the factory, I suppose.”

      “Yes, I am,” said Clyde, who, before a youth of obviously so much more training and schooling than he possessed, felt not a little reduced. He began to fear that this individual would try to talk to him about things which he could not understand, things concerning which, having had no consecutive training of any kind, he had never been technically informed.

      “In charge of some department, I suppose?”

      “Yes, I am,” said Clyde, cautiously and nervously.

      “You know,” went on Mr. Sells, briskly and interestingly, being of a commercial as well as technical turn, “I’ve always wondered just what, outside of money, there is to the collar business. Gil and I used to argue about that when we were down at college. He used to try to tell me that there was some social importance to making and distributing collars, giving polish and manner to people who wouldn’t otherwise have them, if it weren’t for cheap collars. I think he musta read that in a book somewhere. I always laughed at him.”

      Clyde was about to attempt an answer, although already beyond his depth in regard to this. “Social importance.” Just what did he mean by that — some deep, scientific information that he had acquired at college. He was saved a non-committal or totally uninformed answer by Sondra who, without thought or knowledge of the difficulty which was then and there before him, exclaimed: “Oh, no arguments, Freddie. That’s not interesting. Besides I want him to meet my brother and Bertine. You remember Miss Cranston. She was with me at your uncle’s last spring.”

      Clyde turned, while Fred made the best of the rebuff by merely looking at Sondra, whom he admired so very much.

      “Yes, of course,” Clyde began, for he had been studying these two along with others. To him, apart from Sondra, Bertine seemed exceedingly attractive, though quite beyond his understanding also. Being involved, insincere and sly, she merely evoked in him a troubled sense of ineffectiveness, and hence uncertainty, in so far as her particular world was concerned — no more.

      “Oh, how do you do? It’s nice to see you again,” she drawled, the while her greenish-gray eyes went over him in a smiling and yet indifferent and quizzical way. She thought him attractive, but not nearly as shrewd and hard as she would have preferred him to be. “You’ve been terribly busy with your work, I suppose. But now that you’ve come out once, I suppose we’ll see more of you here and there.”

      “Well, I hope so,” he replied, showing his even teeth.

      Her eyes seemed to be saying that she did not believe what she was saying and that he did not either, but that it was necessary, possibly amusing, to say something of the sort.

      And a related, though somewhat modified, version of this same type of treatment was accorded him by Stuart, Sondra’s brother.

      “Oh, how do you do. Glad to know you. My sister has just been telling me about you. Going to stay in Lycurgus long? Hope you do. We’ll run into one another once in a while then, I suppose.”

      Clyde was by no means so sure, but he admired the easy, shallow way in which Stuart laughed and showed his even white teeth — a quick, genial, indifferent laugh. Also the way in which he turned and laid hold of Wynette Phant’s white arm as she passed. “Wait a minute, Wyn. I want to ask you something.” He was gone — into another room — bending close to her and talking fast. And Clyde had noticed that his clothes were perfectly cut.

      What a gay world, he thought. What a brisk world. And just then Jill Trumbull began calling, “Come on, people. It’s not my fault. The cook’s mad about something and you’re all late anyhow. We’ll get it over with and then dance, eh?”

      “You can sit between me and Miss Trumbull when she gets the rest of us seated,” assured Sondra. “Won’t that be nice? And now you may take me in.”

      She slipped a white arm under Clyde’s and he felt as though he were slowly but surely being transported to paradise.

      Chapter 26

       Table of Contents

      The dinner itself was chatter about a jumble of places, personalities, plans, most of which had nothing to do with anything that Clyde had personally contacted here. However, by reason of his own charm, he soon managed to overcome the sense of strangeness and hence indifference in some quarters, more particularly the young women of the group who were interested by the fact that Sondra Finchley liked him. And Jill Trumbull, sitting beside him, wanted to know where he came from, what his own home life and connections were like, why he had decided to come to Lycurgus, questions which, interjected as they were between silly banter concerning different girls and their beaus, gave Clyde pause. He did not feel that he could admit the truth in connection with his family at all. So he announced that his father conducted a hotel in Denver — not so very large, but still a hotel. Also that he had come to Lycurgus because his uncle had suggested to him in Chicago that he come to learn the collar business. He was not sure that he was wholly interested in it or that he would continue indefinitely unless it proved worth while; rather he was trying to find out what it might mean to his future, a remark which caused Sondra, who was also listening, as well as Jill, to whom it was addressed, to consider that in spite of all rumors attributed to Gilbert, Clyde must possess some means and position to which, in case he did not do so well here, he could return.

      This in itself was important, not only to Sondra and Jill, but to all the others. For, despite his looks and charm and family connections here, the thought that he was a mere nobody, seeking, as Constance Wynant had reported, to attach himself to his cousin’s family, was disquieting. One couldn’t ever be anything much more than friendly with a moneyless clerk or pensioner, whatever his family connections, whereas if he had a little money and some local station elsewhere, the situation was entirely different.

      And now Sondra, relieved by this and the fact that he was proving more acceptable than she had imagined he would, was inclined to make more of him than she otherwise would have done.

      “Are you going to let me dance with you after dinner?” was one of the first things he said to her, infringing on a genial smile given him in the midst of clatter concerning an approaching dance somewhere.

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