An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [179]
“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—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 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: