An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [237]
Her eyes as she said this were a study. For even to this hour, as Clyde could now see to his satisfaction, since he feared the effect on Roberta of definite and absolute knowledge concerning Sondra, she had no specific suspicion, let alone positive knowledge concerning any girl. And coward-wise, in the face of her present predicament and her assumed and threatened claims on him, he was afraid to say what or who the real cause of this change was. Instead he merely replied and almost unmoved by her sorrow, since he no longer really cared for her: “Oh, you’re all wrong, Bert. You don’t see what the trouble is. It’s my future here—if I leave here I certainly will never find such an opportunity. And if I have to marry in this way or leave here it will all go flooey. I want to wait and get some place first before I marry, see—save some money and if I do this I won’t have a chance and you won’t either,” he added feebly, forgetting for the moment that up to this time he had been indicating rather clearly that he did not want to have anything more to do with her in any way.
“Besides,” he continued, “if you could only find some one, or if you would go away by yourself somewhere for a while, Bert, and go through with this alone, I could send you the money to do it on, I know. I could have it between now and the time you had to go.”
His face, as he said this, and as Roberta clearly saw, mirrored the complete and resourceless collapse of all his recent plans in regard to her. And she, realizing that his indifference to her had reached the point where he could thus dispose of her and their prospective baby in this casual and really heartless manner, was not only angered in part, but at the same time frightened by the meaning of it all.
“Oh, Clyde,” she now exclaimed boldly and with more courage and defiance than at any time since she had known him, “how you have changed! And how hard you can be. To want me to go off all by myself and just to save you—so you can stay here and get along and marry some one here when I am out of the way and you don’t have to bother about me any more. Well, I won’t do it. It’s not fair. And I won’t, that’s all. I won’t. And that’s all there is to it. You can get some one to get me out of this or you can marry me and come away with me, at least long enough for me to have the baby and place myself right before my people and every one else that knows me. I don’t care if you leave me afterwards, because I see now that you really don’t care for me any more, and if that’s the way you feel, I don’t want you any more than you want me. But just the same, you must help me now—you must. But, oh, dear,” she began whimpering again, and yet only slightly and bitterly. “To think that all our love for each other should have come to this—that I am asked to go away by myself—all alone—with no one—while you stay here, oh, dear! oh, dear! And with a baby on my hands afterwards. And no husband.”
She clinched her hands and shook her head bleakly. Clyde, realizing well enough that his proposition certainly was cold and indifferent but, in the face of his intense desire for Sondra, the best or at least safest that he could devise, now stood there unable for the moment to think of anything more to say.
And although there was some other discussion to the same effect, the conclusion of this very difficult hour was that Clyde had another week or two at best in which to see if he could find a physician or any one who would assist him. After that