An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [227]
“And your husband’s first name?” he went on.
As simple as the question was, and as easy as it should have been to answer, Roberta nevertheless hesitated before she could bring herself to say: “Gifford,” her older brother’s name.
“You live around her, I presume?”
“In Fonda.”
“Yes. And how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“How long have you been married?”
This inquiry being so intimately connected with the problem before her, she again hesitated before saying, “Let me see—three months.”
At once Dr. Glenn became dubious again, though he gave her no sign. Her hesitancy arrested him. Why the uncertainty? He was wondering now again whether he was dealing with a truthful girl or whether his first suspicions were being substantiated. In consequence he now asked: “Well, now what seems to be the trouble, Mrs. Howard? You need have no hesitancy in telling me—none whatsoever. I am used to such things year in and out, whatever they are. That is my business, listening to the troubles of people.”
“Well,” began Roberta, nervously once more, this terrible confession drying her throat and thickening her tongue almost, while once more she turned the same button of her coat and gazed at the floor. “It’s like this … You see … my husband hasn’t much money … and I have to work to help out with expenses and neither of us make so very much.” (She was astonishing herself with her own shameful power to lie in this instance—she, who had always hated to lie.) “So … of course … we can’t afford to … to have … well, any … children, you see, so soon, anyhow, and …”
She paused, her breath catching, and really unable to proceed further with this wholesale lying.
The doctor realizing from this, as he thought, what the true problem was—that she was a newly-married girl who was probably faced by just such a problem as she was attempting to outline—yet not wishing to enter upon any form of malpractice and at the same time not wishing to appear too discouraging to a young couple just starting out in life, gazed at her somewhat more sympathetically, the decidedly unfortunate predicament of these young people, as well as her appropriate modesty in the face of such a conventionally delicate situation, appealing to him. It was too bad. Young people these days did have a rather hard time of it, getting started in some cases, anyhow. And they were no doubt faced by some pressing financial situations. Nearly all young people were. Nevertheless, this business of a contraceptal operation or interference with the normal or God-arranged life processes, well, that was a ticklish and unnatural business at best which he wanted as little as possible to do with. Besides, young, healthy people, even though poor, when they undertook marriage, knew what they were about. And it was not impossible for them to work, the husband anyhow, and hence manage in some way.
And now straightening himself around in his chair very soberly and authoritatively, he began: “I think I understand what you want to say to me, Mrs. Howard. But I’m also wondering if you have considered what a very serious and dangerous thing it is you have in mind. But,” he added, suddenly, another thought as to whether his own reputation in this community was in any way being tarnished by rumor of anything he had done in the past coming to him, “just how did you happen to come to me, anyhow?”
Something about the tone of his voice, the manner in which he asked the question—the caution of it as well as the possibly impending resentment in case it should turn out that any one suspected him of a practice of this sort—caused Roberta to hesitate and to feel that any statement to the effect that she had heard of or been sent by any one else—Clyde to the contrary notwithstanding—might be dangerous. Perhaps she had better not say that she had been sent by any one. He might resent it as an insult to his character as a reputable physician. A budding instinct for diplomacy helped her in this instance, and she replied: