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 — well after that the implied, if not openly expressed, threat which lay at the bottom of this was, unless so extricated and speedily, that he would have to marry her, if not permanently, then at least temporarily, but legally just the same, until once again she was able to look after herself — a threat which was as crushing and humiliating to Roberta as it was torturing to him. ? Chapter 39
O pposing views such as these, especially where no real skill to meet such a situation existed, could only spell greater difficulty and even eventual disaster unless chance in some form should aid.
And chance did not aid.
And the presence of Roberta in the factory was something that would not permit him to dismiss it from his mind.
If only he could persuade her to leave and go somewhere else to live and work so that he should not always see her, he might then think more calmly.
For with her asking continuously, by her presence if no more, what he intended to do, it was impossible for him to think.
And the fact that he no longer cared for her as he had, tended to reduce his normal consideration of what was her due.
He was too infatuated with, and hence disarranged by his thoughts of Sondra.
For in the very teeth of this grave dilemma he continued to pursue the enticing dream in connection with Sondra — the dark situation in connection with Roberta seeming no more at moments than a dark cloud which shadowed this other.
And hence nightly, or as often as the exigencies of his still unbroken connection with Roberta would permit, he was availing himself of such opportunities as his flourishing connections now afforded.
Now, and to his great pride and satisfaction, it was a dinner at the Harriets’ or Taylors’ to which he was invited; or a party at the Finchleys’ or the Cranstons’, to which he would either escort Sondra or be animated by the hope of encountering her.
And now, also without so many of the former phases or attempts at subterfuge, which had previously characterized her curiosity in regard to him, she was at times openly seeking him out and making opportunities for social contact.
And, of course, these contacts being identical with this typical kind of group gathering, they seemed to have no special significance with the more conservative elders.
For although Mrs. Finchley, who was of an especially shrewd and discerning turn socially, had at first been dubious over the attentions being showered upon Clyde by her daughter and others, still observing that Clyde was more and more being entertained, not only in her own home by the group of which her daughter was a part, but elsewhere, everywhere, was at last inclined to imagine that he must be more solidly placed in this world than she had heard, and later to ask her son and even Sondra concerning him.
But receiving from Sondra only the equivocal information that, since he was Gil and Bella Griffiths’ cousin, and was being taken up by everybody because he was so charming — even if he didn’t have any money — she couldn’t see why she and Stuart should not be allowed to entertain him also, her mother rested on that for the time being — only cautioning her daughter under no circumstances to become too friendly.
And Sondra, realizing that in part her mother was right, yet being so drawn to Clyde was now determined to deceive her, at least to the extent of being as clandestinely free with Clyde as she could contrive.
And was, so much so that every one who was privy to the intimate contacts between Clyde and Sondra might have reported that the actual understanding between them was assuming an intensity which most certainly would have shocked the elder Finchleys, could they have known.
For apart from what Clyde had been, and still was dreaming in regard to her, Sondra was truly being taken with thoughts and moods in regard to him which were fast verging upon the most destroying aspects of the very profound chemistry of love.
Indeed, in addition to handclasps, kisses and looks of intense admiration always bestowed when presumably no one was looking, there were those nebulous and yet strengthening and lengthening fantasies concerning a future which in some way or other, not clear to either as yet, was still always to include each other.
Summer days perhaps, and that soon, in which he and she would be in a canoe at Twelfth Lake, the long shadows of the trees on the bank lengthening over the silvery water, the wind rippling the surface while he paddled and she idled and tortured him with hints of the future; a certain forest path, grass-sodden and sun-mottled to the south and west of the Cranston and Phant estates, near theirs, through which they might canter in June and July to a wonderful view known as Inspiration Point some seven miles west; the country fair at Sharon, at which, in a gypsy costume, the essence of romance itself, she would superintend a booth, or, in her smartest riding habit, give an exhibition of her horsemanship — teas, dances in the afternoon and in the moonlight at which, languishing in his arms, their eyes would speak.
None of the compulsion of the practical.
None of the inhibitions which the dominance and possible future opposition of her parents might imply.
Just love and summer, and idyllic and happy progress toward an eventual secure and unopposed union which should give him to her forever.
And in the meantime, in so far as Roberta was concerned, two more long, dreary, terrifying months going by without that meditated action on her part which must result once it was taken in Clyde’s undoing.
For, as convinced as she was that apart from meditating and thinking of some way to escape his responsibility, Clyde had no real intention of marrying her, still, like Clyde, she drifted, fearing to act really.
For in several conferences following that in which she had indicated that she expected him to marry her, he had reiterated, if vaguely, a veiled threat that in case she appealed to his uncle he would not be compelled to marry her, after all, for he could go elsewhere.
The way he put it was that unless left undisturbed in his present situation he would be in no position to marry her and furthermore could not possibly do anything to aid her at the coming time when most of all she would stand in need of aid — a hint which caused Roberta to reflect on a hitherto not fully developed vein of hardness in Clyde, although had she but sufficiently reflected, it had shown itself at the time that he compelled her to admit him to her room.
In addition and because she was doing nothing and yet he feared that at any moment she might, he shifted in part at least from the attitude of complete indifference, which had availed him up to the time that she had threatened him, to one of at least simulated interest and good-will and friendship.
For the very precarious condition in which he found himself was sufficiently terrifying to evoke more diplomacy than ever before had characterized him.