An American Tragedy. Theodore Dreiser
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straight up in the air; on purpose he thought. She was too coarse and bold for him. And there followed, of course, squeals and guffaws of delight—so loud that they could be heard for half a mile. Hegglund, intensely susceptible to humor at all times, doubled to the knees, slapped his thighs and bawled. And Sparser opened his big mouth and chortled and grimaced until he was scarlet. So infectious was the result that for the time being Clyde forgot his jealousy. He too looked and laughed. But Clyde’s mood had not changed really. He still felt that she wasn’t playing fair.
At the end of all this playing Lucille Nickolas and Tina Kogel being tired, dropped out. And Hortense, also. Clyde at once left the group to join her. Ratterer then followed Lucille. Then the others separating, Hegglund pushed Maida Axelrod before him down stream out of sight around a bend. Higby, seemingly taking his cue from this, pulled Tina Kogel up stream, and Ratterer and Lucille, seeming to see something of interest, struck into a thicket, laughing and talking as they went. Even Sparser and Laura, left to themselves, now wandered off, leaving Clyde and Hortense alone.
And then, as these two wandered toward a fallen log which here paralleled the stream, she sat down. But Clyde, smarting from his fancied wounds, stood silent for the time being, while she, sensing as much, took him by the belt of his coat and began to pull at him.
“Giddap, horsey,” she played. “Giddap. My horsey has to skate me now on the ice.”
Clyde looked at her glumly, glowering mentally, and not to be diverted so easily from the ills which he felt to be his.
“Whadd’ye wanta let that fellow Sparser always hang around you for?” he demanded. “I saw you going up the creek there with him a while ago. What did he say to you up there?”
“He didn’t say anything.”
“Oh, no, of course not,” he replied cynically and bitterly. “And maybe he didn’t kiss you, either.”
“I should say not,” she replied definitely and spitefully, “I’d like to know what you think I am, anyhow. I don’t let people kiss me the first time they see me, smarty, and I want you to know it. I didn’t let you, did I?”
“Oh, that’s all right, too,” answered Clyde; “but you didn’t like me as well as you do him, either.”
“Oh, didn’t I? Well, maybe I didn’t, but what right have you to say I like him, anyhow. I’d like to know if I can’t have a little fun without you watching me all the time. You make me tired, that’s what you do.” She was quite angry now because of the proprietary air he appeared to be assuming.
And now Clyde, repulsed and somewhat shaken by this sudden counter on her part, decided on the instant that perhaps it might be best for him to modify his tone. After all, she had never said that she had really cared for him, even in the face of the implied promise she had made him.
“Oh, well,” he observed glumly after a moment, and not without a little of sadness in his tone, “I know one thing. If I let on that I cared for any one as much as you say you do for me at times, I wouldn’t want to flirt around with others like you are doing out here.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well, who’s flirting anyhow, I’d like to know?”
“You are.”
“I’m not either, and I wish you’d just go away and let me alone if you can’t do anything but quarrel with me. Just because I danced with him up there in the restaurant, is no reason for you to think I’m flirting. Oh, you make me tired, that’s what you do.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Well, maybe I better go off and not bother you any more at all then,” he returned, a trace of his mother’s courage welling up in him.
“Well, maybe you had, if that’s the way you’re going to feel about me all the time,” she answered, and kicked viciously with her toes at the ice. But Clyde was beginning to feel that he could not possibly go through with this—that after all he was too eager about her—too much at her feet. He began to weaken and gaze nervously at her. And she, thinking of her coat again, decided to be civil.
“You didn’t look in his eyes, did you?” he asked weakly, his thoughts going back to her dancing with Sparser.
“When?”
“When you were dancing with him?”
“No, I didn’t, not that I know of, anyhow. But supposing I did. What of it? I didn’t mean anything by it. Gee, criminy, can’t a person look in anybody’s eyes if they want to?”
“In the way you looked in his? Not if you claim to like anybody else, I say.” And the skin of Clyde’s forehead lifted and sank, and his eyelids narrowed. Hortense merely clicked impatiently and indignantly with her tongue.
“Tst! Tst! Tst! If you ain’t the limit!”
“And a while ago back there on the ice,” went on Clyde determinedly and yet pathetically. “When you came back from up there, instead of coming up to where I was you went to the foot of the line with him. I saw you. And you held his hand, too, all the way back. And then when you fell down, you had to sit there with him holding your hand. I’d like to know what you call that if it ain’t flirting. What else is it? I’ll bet he thinks it is, all right.”
“Well, I wasn’t flirting with him just the same and I don’t care what you say. But if you want to have it that way, have it that way. I can’t stop you. You’re so darn jealous you don’t want to let anybody else do anything, that’s all the matter with you. How else can you play on the ice if you don’t hold hands, I’d like to know? Gee, criminy! What about you and that Lucille Nickolas? I saw her laying across your lap and you laughing. And I didn’t think anything of that. What do you want me to do—come out here and sit around like a bump on a log?—follow you around like a tail? Or you follow me? What-a-yuh think I am anyhow? A nut?”
She was being ragged by Clyde, as she thought, and she didn’t like it. She was thinking of Sparser who was really more appealing to her at the time than Clyde. He was more materialistic, less romantic, more direct.
He turned and, taking off his cap, rubbed his head gloomily while Hortense, looking at him, thought first of him and then of Sparser. Sparser was more manly, not so much of a crybaby. He wouldn’t stand around and complain this way, you bet. He’d probably leave her for good, have nothing more to do with her. Yet Clyde, after his fashion, was interesting and useful. Who else would do for her what he had? And at any rate, he was not trying to force her to go off with him now as these others had gone and as she had feared he might try to do—ahead of her plan and wish. This quarrel was obviating that.
“Now, see here,” she said after a time, having decided that it was best to assuage him and that it was not so hard to manage him after all. “Are we goin’ t’ fight all the time, Clyde? What’s the use, anyhow? Whatja want me to come out here for if you just want to fight with me all the time? I wouldn’t have come if I’d ’a’ thought you were going to do that all day.”
She turned and kicked at the ice with the minute toe of her shoes, and Clyde, always taken by her charm again, put his arms about her, and crushed her to him, at the same time fumbling at her breasts and putting his lips to hers and endeavoring to hold and fondle her. But now, because of her suddenly developed liking for Sparser, and partially because of her present mood towards Clyde, she broke away, a dissatisfaction with herself and him troubling her. Why should she let him force her to do anything she did not feel like doing, just now, anyhow, she now asked herself. She hadn’t agreed to be as nice to him to-day as he might wish. Not yet. At any rate just now she did not want to be handled in this way by him, and she would not, regardless of what he might do. And Clyde, sensing by now what the true state of her mind in regard to him must be, stepped back and yet continued to gaze gloomily and hungrily at her. And she in turn merely stared at him.
“I thought you said you liked