The Essential Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser
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evil to be like this? His mother would say so! And his father too — and perhaps everybody who thought right about life — Sondra Finchley, maybe — the Griffiths — all.
And yet! And yet! It was snowing the first light snow of the year as Clyde, arrayed in a new collapsible silk hat and white silk muffler, both suggested by a friendly haberdasher — Orrin Short, with whom recently he had come in contact here — and a new silk umbrella wherewith to protect himself from the snow, made his way toward the very interesting, if not so very imposing residence of the Trumbulls on Wykeagy Avenue. It was quaint, low and rambling, and the lights beaming from within upon the many drawn blinds gave it a Christmas-card effect. And before it, even at the prompt hour at which he arrived, were ranged a half dozen handsome cars of various builds and colors. The sight of them, sprinkled on tops, running boards and fenders with the fresh, flaky snow, gave him a keen sense of a deficiency that was not likely soon to be remedied in his case — the want of ample means wherewith to equip himself with such a necessity as that. And inside as he approached the door he could hear voices, laughter and conversation commingled.
A tall, thin servant relieved him of his hat, coat and umbrella and he found himself face to face with Jill Trumbull, who apparently was on the look-out for him — a smooth, curly-haired blonde girl, not too thrillingly pretty, but brisk and smart, in white satin with arms and shoulders bare and rhinestones banded around her forehead.
“No trouble to tell who you are,” she said gayly, approaching and giving Clyde her hand. “I’m Jill Trumbull. Miss Finchley hasn’t come yet. But I can do the honors just as well, I guess. Come right in where the rest of us are.”
She led the way into a series of connecting rooms that seemed to join each other at right angles, adding as she went, “You do look an awful lot like Gil Griffiths, don’t you?”
“Do I?” smiled Clyde simply and courageously and very much flattered by the comparison.
The ceilings were low. Pretty lamps behind painted shades hugged dark walls. Open fires in two connecting rooms cast a rosy glow upon cushioned and comfortable furniture. There were pictures, books, objects of art.
“Here, Tracy, you do the announcing, will you?” she called. “My brother, Tracy Trumbull, Mr. Griffiths. Mr. Clyde Griffiths, everybody,” she added, surveying the company in general which in turn fixed varying eyes upon him, while Tracy Trumbull took him by the hand. Clyde, suffering from a sense of being studied, nevertheless achieved a warm smile. At the same time he realized that for the moment at least conversation had stopped. “Don’t all stop talking on my account,” he ventured, with a smile, which caused most of those present to conceive of him as at his ease and resourceful. At the same time Tracy added: “I’m not going to do any man-to-man introduction stuff. We’ll stand right here and point ’em out. That’s my sister, Gertrude, over there talking to Scott Nicholson.” Clyde noted that a small, dark girl dressed in pink with a pretty and yet saucy and piquant face, nodded to him. And beside her a very de rigueur youth of fine physique and pink complexion nodded jerkily. “Howja do.” And a few feet from them near a deep window stood a tall and yet graceful girl of dark and by no means ravishing features talking to a broad-shouldered and deep-chested youth of less than her height, who were proclaimed to be Arabella Stark and Frank Harriet. “They’re arguing over a recent Cornell–Syracuse foot-ball game . . . Burchard Taylor and Miss Phant of Utica,” he went on almost too swiftly for Clyde to assemble any mental notes. “Perley Haynes and Miss Vanda Steele . . . well, I guess that’s all as yet. Oh, no, here come Grant and Nina Temple.” Clyde paused and gazed as a tall and somewhat dandified-looking youth, sharp of face and with murky-gray eyes, steered a trim, young, plump girl in fawn gray and with a light chestnut braid of hair laid carefully above her forehead, into the middle of the room.
“Hello, Jill. Hello, Vanda. Hello, Wynette.” In the midst of these greetings on his part, Clyde was presented to these two, neither of whom seemed to pay much attention to him. “Didn’t think we’d make it,” went on young Cranston speaking to all at once. “Nina didn’t want to come, but I promised Bertine and Jill or I wouldn’t have, either. We were up at the Bagleys’. Guess who’s up there, Scott. Van Peterson and Rhoda Hull. They’re just over for the day.”
“You don’t say,” called Scott Nicholson, a determined and self- centered looking individual. Clyde was arrested by the very definite sense of social security and ease that seemed to reside in everybody. “Why didn’t you bring ’em along? I’d like to see Rhoda again and Van, too.”
“Couldn’t. They have to go back early, they say. They may stop in later for a minute. Gee, isn’t dinner served yet? I expected to sit right down.”
“These lawyers! Don’t you know they don’t eat often?” commented Frank Harriet, who was a short, but broad-chested and smiling youth, very agreeable, very good-looking and with even, white teeth. Clyde liked him.
“Well, whether they do or not, we do, or out I go. Did you hear who is being touted for stroke next year over at Cornell?” This college chatter relating to Cornell and shared by Harriet, Cranston and others, Clyde could not understand. He had scarcely heard of the various colleges with which this group was all too familiar. At the same time he was wise enough to sense the defect and steer clear of any questions or conversations which might relate to them. However, because of this, he at once felt out of it. These people were better informed than he was — had been to colleges. Perhaps he had better claim that he had been to some school. In Kansas City he had heard of the State University of Kansas — not so very far from there. Also the University of Missouri. And in Chicago of the University of Chicago. Could he say that he had been to one of those — that Kansas one, for a little while, anyway? On the instant he proposed to claim it, if asked, and then look up afterwards what, if anything, he was supposed to know about it — what, for instance, he might have studied. He had heard of mathematics somewhere. Why not that?
But these people, as he could see, were too much interested in themselves to pay much attention to him now. He might be a Griffiths and important to some outside, but here not so much — a matter of course, as it were. And because Tracy Trumbull for the moment had turned to say something to Wynette Phant, he felt quite alone, beached and helpless and with no one to talk to. But just then the small, dark girl, Gertrude, came over to him.
“The crowd’s a little late in getting together. It always is. If we said eight, they’d come at eight-thirty or nine. Isn’t that always the way?”
“It certainly is,” replied Clyde gratefully, endeavoring to appear as brisk and as much at ease as possible.
“I’m Gertrude Trumbull,” she repeated. “The sister of the good- looking Jill,” a cynical and yet amused smile played about her mouth and eyes. “You nodded to me, but you don’t know me. Just the same we’ve been hearing a lot about you.” She teased in an attempt to trouble Clyde a little, if possible. “A mysterious Griffiths here in Lycurgus whom no one seems to have met. I saw you once in Central Avenue, though. You were going into Rich’s candy store. You didn’t know that, though. Do you like candy?”
“Oh, yes, I like candy. Why?” asked Clyde on the instant feeling teased and disturbed, since the girl for whom he was buying the candy was Roberta. At the same time he could not help feeling slightly more at ease with this girl than with some others, for although cynical and not so attractive, her manner was genial and she now spelled escape from isolation and hence diffidence.
“You’re probably just saying that,” she laughed, a bantering look in her eyes. “More likely you were buying it for some girl. You have a girl, haven’t you?”
“Why —” Clyde paused for the fraction of a second because as she asked this Roberta came into his mind and the query, “Had any one ever seen him with Roberta?” flitted through his brain. Also thinking at the same time, what a bold, teasing, intelligent girl this was, different from any that thus far he had known. Yet quite without more pause he added: “No, I haven’t. What makes you ask that?”
As he said this there came to him the thought of what Roberta would think if she could hear him. “But what a question,” he continued a little nervously now.