An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [314]
As he had entered, Sondra had poutingly whispered, so that Bertine might not hear: “Baddie! Staying down there a whole week when you might have been up here. And Sondra planning everything for you! You ought to have a good spanking. I was going to call up to-day to see where you were.” Yet at the same time her eyes conveying the infatuation that now dominated her.
And he, in spite of his troubled thoughts achieving a gay smile,— for once in her presence even the terror of Roberta’s death, his own present danger appeared to dwindle. If only all went well, now,—nothing were traced to him! A clear path! A marvelous future! Her beauty! Her love! Her wealth. And yet, after being ushered to his room, his bag having been carried in before him, at once becoming nervous as to the suit. It was damp and wrinkled. He must hide it on one of the upper shelves of a closet, maybe. And the moment he was alone and the door locked, taking it out, wet and wrinkled, the mud of the shores of Big Bittern still about the legs—yet deciding perhaps not—perhaps he had better keep it locked in his bag until night when he could better decide what to do. Yet tying up in a single bundle, in order to have them laundered, other odds and ends he had worn that day. And, as he did so, terribly, sickeningly conscious of the mystery and drama as well as the pathos of his life—all he had contacted since his arrival in the east, how little he had in his youth. How little he had now, really. The spaciousness and grandeur of this room as contrasted with the one he occupied in Lycurgus. The strangeness of his being here at all after yesterday. The blue waters of this bright lake without as contrasted with the darker ones of Big Bittern. And on the greensward that reached from this bright, strong, rambling house, with its wide veranda and striped awnings to the shore of the lake itself, Stuart Finchley and Violet Taylor, together with Frank Harriet and Wynette Phant, in the smartest of sport clothes, playing tennis, while Bertine and Harley Baggott tolled in the shade of a striped marquee swing.
And, he himself, after bathing and dressing, assuming a jocular air although his nerves remained tense and his mood apprehensive. And then descending to where Sondra and Burchard Taylor and Jill Trumbull were laughing over some amusing experiences in connection with motor-boating the day before. Jill Trumbull called to him as he came out: “Hello, Clyde! Been playing hookey or what? I haven’t seen you in I don’t know when.” And he, after smiling wistfully at Sondra, craving as never before her sympathy as well as her affection, drawing himself up on the railing of the veranda and replying, as smoothly as he could: “Been working over at Albany since Tuesday. Hot down there. It’s certainly fine to be up here to-day. Who’s all up?” And Jill Trumbull, smiling: “Oh, nearly every one, I guess. I saw Vanda over at the Randalls’ yesterday. And Scott wrote Bertine he was coming to the Point next Tuesday. It looks to me as though no one was going over to Greenwood much this year.” And then a long and intense discussion as to why Greenwood was no longer what it had been. And then Sondra exclaiming: “That reminds me! I have to phone Bella to-day. She promised to come up to that horse show over at Bristol week after next, sure.” And then more talk of horses and dogs. And Clyde, listening intently in his anxiety to seem an integral part of it all, yet brooding on all that so desperately concerned him. Those three men. Roberta. Maybe they had found her body by now—who could tell, yet saying to himself—why so fearsome? Was it likely that in that depth of water—fifty feet maybe, for all he knew—that they would find her? Or that they could ever identify him with Clifford Golden or Carl Graham? How could they? Hadn’t he really and truly covered