The Essential Works of Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser
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really sure. For even if anything were to be done, it wouldn’t be advisable for you to do anything before then.”
“But I’ve already taken some pills and they haven’t helped me,” pleaded Roberta.
“What were they?” asked Glenn interestedly, and, after he had learned, merely commented: “Oh, those. Well, they wouldn’t be likely to be of any real service to you, if you were pregnant. But I still suggest that you wait, and if you find you pass your second period, then it will be time enough to act, although I earnestly advise you, even then, to do nothing if you can help it, because I consider it wrong to interfere with nature in this way. It would be much better, if you would arrange to have the child and take care of it. Then you wouldn’t have the additional sin of destroying a life upon your conscience.”
He was very grave and felt very righteous as he said this. But Roberta, faced by terrors which he did not appear to be able to grasp, merely exclaimed, and as dramatically as before: “But I can’t do that, doctor, I tell you! I can’t. I can’t! You don’t understand. Oh, I don’t know what I shall do unless I find some way out of this. I don’t! I don’t! I don’t!”
She shook her head and clenched her fingers and rocked to and fro while Glenn, impressed by her own terrors, the pity of the folly which, as he saw it, had led her to this dreadful pass, yet professionally alienated by a type of case that spelled nothing but difficulty for him stood determinedly before her and added: “As I told you before, Miss —” (he paused) “Howard, if that is your name, I am seriously opposed to operations of this kind, just as I am to the folly that brings girls and young men to the point where they seem to think they are necessary. A physician may not interfere in a case of this kind unless he is willing to spend ten years in prison, and I think that law is fair enough. Not that I don’t realize how painful your present situation appears to you. But there are always those who are willing to help a girl in your state, providing she doesn’t wish to do something which is morally and legally wrong. And so the very best advice I can give you now is that you do nothing at all now or at any time. Better go home and see your parents and confess. It will be much better — much better, I assure you. Not nearly as hard as you think or as wicked as this other way. Don’t forget there is a life there — a human — if it is really as you think. A human life which you are seeking to end and that I cannot help you to do. I really cannot. There may be doctors — I know there are — men here and there who take their professional ethics a little less seriously than I do; but I cannot let myself become one of them. I am sorry — very.
“So now the best I can say is — go home to your parents and tell them. It may look hard now but you are going to feel better about it in the long run. If it will make you or them feel any better about it, let them come and talk to me. I will try and make them see that this is not the worst thing in the world, either. But as for doing what you want — I am very, very sorry, but I cannot. My conscience will not permit me.”
He paused and gazed at her sympathetically, yet with a determined and concluded look in his eye. And Roberta, dumbfounded by this sudden termination of all her hopes in connection with him and realizing at last that not only had she been misled by Clyde’s information in regard to this doctor, but that her technical as well as emotional plea had failed, now walked unsteadily to the door, the terrors of the future crowding thick upon her. And once outside in the dark, after the doctor had most courteously and ruefully closed the door behind her, she paused to lean against a tree that was there — her nervous and physical strength all but failing her. He had refused to help her. He had refused to help her. And now what?
Chapter 38
The first effect of the doctor’s decision was to shock and terrify them both — Roberta and Clyde — beyond measure. For apparently now here was illegitimacy and disgrace for Roberta. Exposure and destruction for Clyde. And this had been their one solution seemingly. Then, by degrees, for Clyde at least, there was a slight lifting of the heavy pall. Perhaps, after all, as the doctor had suggested — and once she had recovered her senses sufficiently to talk, she had told him — the end had not been reached. There was the bare possibility, as suggested by the druggist, Short and the doctor, that she might be mistaken. And this, while not producing a happy reaction in her, had the unsatisfactory result of inducing in Clyde a lethargy based more than anything else on the ever-haunting fear of inability to cope with this situation as well as the certainty of social exposure in case he did not which caused him, instead of struggling all the more desperately, to defer further immediate action. For, such was his nature that, although he realized clearly the probably tragic consequences if he did not act, still it was so hard to think to whom else to apply to without danger to himself. To think that the doctor had “turned her down,” as he phrased it, and that Short’s advice should have been worth as little as that!
But apart from nervous thoughts as to whom to turn to next, no particular individual occurred to him before the two weeks were gone, or after. It was so hard to just ask anywhere. One just couldn’t do it. Besides, of whom could he ask now? Of whom? These things took time, didn’t they? Yet in the meantime, the days going by, both he and Roberta had ample time to consider what, if any, steps they must take — the one in regard to the other — in case no medical or surgical solution was found. For Roberta, while urging and urging, if not so much by words as by expression and mood at her work, was determined that she must not be left to fight this out alone — she could not be. On the other hand, as she could see, Clyde did nothing. For apart from what he had already attempted to do, he was absolutely at a loss how to proceed. He had no intimates and in consequence he could only think of presenting the problem as an imaginary one to one individual and another here or there in the hope of extracting some helpful information. At the same time, and as impractical and evasive as it may seem, there was the call of that diverting world of which Sondra was a part, evenings and Sundays, when, in spite of Roberta’s wretched state and mood, he was called to go here and there, and did, because in so doing he was actually relieving his own mind of the dread specter of disaster that was almost constantly before it. If only he could get her out of this! If only he could. But how, without money, intimates, a more familiar understanding of the medical or if not that exactly, then the sub rosa world of sexual free-masonry which some at times — the bell- hops of the Green–Davidson, for instance, seemed to understand. He had written to Ratterer, of course, but there had been no answer, since Ratterer had removed to Florida and as yet Clyde’s letter had not reached him. And locally all those he knew best were either connected with the factory or society — individuals on the one hand too inexperienced or dangerous, or on the other hand, too remote and dangerous, since he was not sufficiently intimate with any of them as yet to command their true confidence and secrecy.
At the same time he must do something — he could not just rest and drift. Assuredly Roberta could not long permit him to do that — faced as she was by exposure. And so from time to time he actually racked himself — seized upon straws and what would have been looked upon by most as forlorn chances. Thus, for instance, an associate foreman, chancing to reminisce one day concerning a certain girl in his department who had “gotten in trouble” and had been compelled to leave, he had been given the opportunity to inquire what he thought such a girl did in case she could not afford or did not want to have a child. But this particular foreman, being as uninformed as himself, merely observed that she probably had to see a doctor if she knew one or “go through with it”— which left Clyde exactly where he was. On another occasion, in connection with a conversation in a barber shop, relating to a local case reported in The Star where a girl was suing a local ne’er-do-well for breach of promise, the remark was made that she would “never have sued that guy, you bet, unless she had to.” Whereupon Clyde seized the opportunity to remark hopefully, “But wouldn’t you think that she could find some way of getting out of trouble without marrying a fellow she didn’t like?”
“Well, that’s not so easy as you may think, particularly around here,” elucidated the wiseacre who was trimming his hair. “In the first place it’s agin’ the law. And next it takes a lotta money. An’ in case you ain’t got it,