An American Tragedy. Theodore DreiserЧитать онлайн книгу.
I was just coming up here to ask you if you didn’t want to go for an automobile ride next Sunday afternoon, maybe. A friend of Hegglund’s got a car—a Packard—and Sunday we’re all off. And he wanted me to get a bunch to run out to Excelsior Springs. He’s a nice fellow” (this because Hortense showed signs of not being so very much interested). “You don’t know him very well, but he is. But say, I can talk to you about that later. How about to-morrow night? I’m off then.”
Hortense, who, because of the hovering floor-walker, was pretending to show Clyde some handkerchiefs, was now thinking how unfortunate that a whole twenty-four hours must intervene before she could bring him to view the coat with her—and so have an opportunity to begin her machinations. At the same time she pretended that the proposed meeting for the next night was a very difficult thing to bring about—more difficult than he could possibly appreciate. She even pretended to be somewhat uncertain as to whether she wanted to do it.
“Just pretend you’re examining these handkerchiefs here,” she continued, fearing the floor-walker might interrupt. “I gotta nother date for then,” she continued thoughtfully, “and I don’t know whether I can break it or not. Let me see.” She feigned deep thought. “Well, I guess I can,” she said finally. “I’ll try, anyhow. Just for this once. You be here at Fifteenth and Main at 6.15—no, 6.30’s the best you can do, ain’t it?—and I’ll see if I can’t get there. I won’t promise, but I’ll see and I think I can make it. Is that all right?” She gave him one of her sweetest smiles and Clyde was quite beside himself with satisfaction. To think that she would break a date for him, at last. Her eyes were warm with favor and her mouth wreathed with a smile.
“Surest thing you know,” he exclaimed, voicing the slang of the hotel boys. “You bet I’ll be there. Will you do me a favor?”
“What is it?” she asked cautiously.
“Wear that little black hat with the red ribbon under your chin, will you? You look so cute in that.”
“Oh, you,” she laughed. It was so easy to kid Clyde. “Yes, I’ll wear it,” she added. “But you gotta go now. Here comes that old fish. I know he’s going to kick. But I don’t care. Six-thirty, eh? So long.” She turned to give her attention to a new customer, an old lady who had been patiently waiting to inquire if she could tell her where the muslins were sold. And Clyde, tingling with pleasure because of this unexpected delight vouchsafed him, made his way most elatedly to the nearest exit.
He was not made unduly curious because of this sudden favor, and the next evening, promptly at six-thirty, and in the glow of the overhanging arc-lights showering their glistening radiance like rain, she appeared. As he noted, at once, she had worn the hat he liked. Also she was enticingly ebullient and friendly, more so than at any time he had known her. Before he had time to say that she looked pretty, or how pleased he was because she wore that hat, she began:
“Some favorite you’re gettin’ to be, I’ll say, when I’ll break an engagement and then wear an old hat I don’t like just to please you. How do I get that way is what I’d like to know.”
He beamed as though he had won a great victory. Could it be that at last he might be becoming a favorite with her?
“If you only knew how cute you look in that hat, Hortense, you wouldn’t knock it,” he urged admiringly. “You don’t know how sweet you do look.”
“Oh, ho. In this old thing?” she scoffed. “You certainly are easily pleased, I’ll say.”
“An’ your eyes are just like soft, black velvet,” he persisted eagerly. “They’re wonderful.” He was thinking of an alcove in the Green-Davidson hung with black velvet.
“Gee, you certainly have got ’em to-night,” she laughed, teasingly. “I’ll have to do something about you.” Then, before he could make any reply to this, she went off into an entirely fictional account of how, having had a previous engagement with a certain alleged young society man—Tom Keary by name—who was dogging her steps these days in order to get her to dine and dance, she had only this evening decided to “ditch” him, preferring Clyde, of course, for this occasion, anyhow. And she had called Keary up and told him that she could not see him to-night—called it all off, as it were. But just the same, on coming out of the employee’s entrance, who should she see there waiting for her but this same Tom Keary, dressed to perfection in a bright gray raglan and spats, and with his closed sedan, too. And he would have taken her to the Green-Davidson, if she had wanted to go. He was a real sport. But she didn’t. Not to-night, anyhow. Yet, if she had not contrived to avoid him, he would have delayed her. But she espied him first and ran the other way.
“And you should have just seen my little feet twinkle up Sargent and around the corner into Bailey Place,” was the way she narcissistically painted her flight. And so infatuated was Clyde by this picture of herself and the wonderful Keary that he accepted all of her petty fabrications as truth.
And then, as they were walking in the direction of Gaspie’s, a restaurant in Wyandotte near Tenth which quite lately he had learned was much better than Frissell’s, Hortense took occasion to pause and look in a number of windows, saying as she did so that she certainly did wish that she could find a little coat that was becoming to her—that the one she had on was getting worn and that she must have another soon—a predicament which caused Clyde to wonder at the time whether she was suggesting to him that he get her one. Also whether it might not advance his cause with her if he were to buy her a little jacket, since she needed it.
But Rubenstein’s coming into view on this same side of the street, its display window properly illuminated and the coat in full view, Hortense paused as she had planned.
“Oh, do look at that darling little coat there,” she began, ecstatically, as though freshly arrested by the beauty of it, her whole manner suggesting a first and unspoiled impression. “Oh, isn’t that the dearest, sweetest, cutest little thing you ever did see?” she went on, her histrionic powers growing with her desire for it. “Oh, just look at the collar, and those sleeves and those pockets. Aren’t they the snappiest things you ever saw? Couldn’t I just warm my little hands in those?” She glanced at Clyde out of the tail of her eye to see if he was being properly impressed.
And he, aroused by her intense interest, surveyed the coat with not a little curiosity. Unquestionably it was a pretty coat—very. But, gee, what would a coat like that cost, anyhow? Could it be that she was trying to interest him in the merits of a coat like that in order that he might get it for her? Why, it must be a two-hundred-dollar coat at least. He had no idea as to the value of such things, anyhow. He certainly couldn’t afford a coat like that. And especially at this time when his mother was taking a good portion of his extra cash for Esta. And yet something in her manner seemed to bring it to him that that was exactly what she was thinking. It chilled and almost numbed him at first.
And yet, as he now told himself sadly, if Hortense wanted it, she could most certainly find some one who would get it for her—that young Tom Keary, for instance, whom she had just been describing. And, worse luck, she was just that kind of a girl. And if he could not get it for her, some one else could and she would despise him for not being able to do such things for her.
To his intense dismay and dissatisfaction she exclaimed: “Oh, what wouldn’t I give for a coat like that!” She had not intended at the moment to put the matter so bluntly, for she wanted to convey the thought that was deepest in her mind to Clyde tactfully.
And Clyde, inexperienced as he was, and not subtle by any means, was nevertheless quite able to gather the meaning of that. It meant—it meant—for the moment he was not quite willing to formulate to himself what it did mean. And now—now—if only he had the price of that coat. He could feel that she was thinking of some one certain way to get the coat. And yet how was he to manage it? How? If he could only arrange to get this coat for her—if he only could promise her that he would get it for her by a certain date, say, if it didn’t cost too much, then what? Did he have the courage to suggest to her to-night, or to-morrow, say, after he had learned the price of the coat, that if she would—why then—why then, well, he would get her the coat