An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [242]
She brooded on this much, more especially on the return from this second attempt to induce Dr. Glenn to help her. In fact, at moments, her face took on a defiant, determined look which was seemingly new to her, but which only developed suddenly under such pressure. Her jaw became a trifle set. She had made a decision. He would have to marry her. She must make him if there were no other way out of this. She must—she must. Think of her home, her mother, Grace Marr, the Newtons, all who knew her in fact—the terror and pain and shame with which this would sear all those in any way identified with her—her father, brothers, sisters. Impossible! Impossible! It must not and could not be! Impossible. It might seem a little severe to her, even now, to have to insist on this, considering all the emphasis Clyde had hitherto laid upon his prospects here. But how, how else was she to do?
Accordingly the next day, and not a little to his surprise, since for so many hours the night before they had been together, Clyde received another note telling him that he must come again that night. She had something to say to him, and there was something in the tone of the note that seemed to indicate or suggest a kind of defiance of a refusal of any kind, hitherto absent in any of her communications to him. And at once the thought that this situation, unless cleared away, was certain to prove disastrous, so weighed upon him that he could not but put the best face possible on it and consent to go and hear what it was that she had to offer in the way of a solution—or—on the other hand, of what she had to complain.
Going to her room at a late hour, he found her in what seemed to him a more composed frame of mind than at any time since this difficulty had appeared, a state which surprised him a little, since he had expected to find her in tears. But now, if anything, she appeared more complacent, her nervous thoughts as to how to bring about a satisfactory conclusion for herself having called into play a native shrewdness which was now seeking to exercise itself.
And so directly before announcing what was in her mind, she began by asking: “You haven’t found out about another doctor, have you, Clyde, or thought of anything?”
“No, I haven’t, Bert,” he replied most dismally and wearisomely, his own mental tether-length having been strained to the breaking point. “I’ve been trying to, as you know, but it’s so darn hard to find any one who isn’t afraid to monkey with a case like this. Honest, to tell the truth, Bert, I’m about stumped. I don’t know what we are going to do unless you can think of something. You haven’t thought or heard of any one else you could go to, have you?” For, during the conversation that had immediately followed her first visit to the doctor, he had hinted to her that by striking up a fairly intimate relationship with one of the foreign family girls, she might by degrees extract some information there which would be of use to both. But Roberta was not of a temperament that permitted of any such facile friendships, and nothing had come of it.
However, his stating that he was “stumped” now gave her the opportunity she was really desiring, to present the proposition which she felt to be unavoidable and not longer to be delayed. Yet being fearful of how Clyde would react, she hesitated as to the form in which she would present it, and, after shaking her head and manifesting a nervousness which was real enough, she finally said: “Well, I’ll tell you, Clyde. I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t see any way out of it unless—unless you, well, marry me. It’s two months now, you know, and unless we get married right away,