An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [201]
She hesitated a moment, wishing that she could quickly and clearly present to her mother the problem that was weighing upon her and receive her sympathy, if not help. But instead she merely said: “Oh, I wish you could have been with me all the time in Lycurgus, Mamma. Maybe—” She paused, realizing that she had been on the verge of speaking without due caution. Her thought was that with her mother near at hand she might have been able to have resisted Clyde’s insistent desires.
“Yes, I suppose you do miss me,” her mother went on, “but it’s better for you, don’t you think? You know how it is over here, and you like your work. You do like your work, don’t you?”
“Oh, the work is nice enough. I like that part of it. It’s been so nice to be able to help here a little, but it’s not so nice living all alone.”
“Why did you leave the Newtons, Bob? Was Grace so disagreeable? I should have thought she would have been company for you.”
“Oh, she was at first,” replied Roberta. “Only she didn’t have any men friends of her own, and she was awfully jealous of anybody that paid the least attention to me. I couldn’t go anywhere but she had to go along, or if it wasn’t that then she always wanted me to be with her, so I couldn’t go anywhere by myself. You know how it is, Mamma. Two girls can’t go with one young man.”
“Yes, I know how it is, Bob.” Her mother laughed a little, then added: “Who is he?”
“It’s Mr. Griffiths, Mother,” she added, after a moment’s hesitation, a sense of the exceptional nature of her contact as contrasted with this very plain world here passing like a light across her eyes. For all her fears, even the bare possibility of joining her life with Clyde’s was marvelous. “But I don’t want you to mention his name to anybody yet,” she added. “He doesn’t want me to. His relatives are so very rich, you know. They own the company—that is, his uncle does. But there’s a rule there about any one who works for the company—any one in charge of a department. I mean not having anything to do with any of the girls. And he wouldn’t with any of the others. But he likes me— and I like him, and it’s different with us. Besides I’m going to resign pretty soon and get a place somewhere else, I think, and then it won’t make any difference. I can tell anybody, and so can he.”
Roberta was thinking now that, in the face of her recent treatment at the hands of Clyde, as well as because of the way in which she had given herself to him without due precaution as to her ultimate rehabilitation via marriage, that perhaps this was not exactly true. He might not—a vague, almost formless, fear this, as yet— want her to tell anybody now—ever. And unless he were going to continue to love her and marry her, she might not want any one to know of it, either. The wretched, shameful, difficult position in which she had placed herself by all this.
On the other hand, Mrs. Alden, learning thus casually of the odd and seemingly clandestine nature of this relationship, was not only troubled but puzzled, so concerned was she for Roberta’s happiness. For, although, as she now said to herself, Roberta was such a good, pure and careful girl—the best and most unselfish and wisest of all her children—still might it not be possible—? But, no, no one was likely to either easily or safely compromise or betray Roberta. She was too conservative and good, and so now she added: “A relative of the owner, you say—the Mr. Samuel Griffiths you wrote about?”
“Yes, Mamma. He’s his nephew.”
“The young man at the factory?” her mother asked, at the same time wondering just how Roberta had come to attract a man of Clyde