The wonder and delight of a new and more intimate form of contact,
of protest gainsaid, of scruples overcome! Days, when both, having
struggled in vain against the greater intimacy which each knew that
the other was desirous of yielding to, and eventually so yielding,
looked forward to the approaching night with an eagerness which was
as a fever embodying a fear. For with what qualms--what protests on
the part of Roberta; what determination, yet not without a sense of
evil--seduction--betrayal, on the part of Clyde. Yet the thing once
done, a wild convulsive pleasure motivating both. Yet, not without,
before all this, an exaction on the part of Roberta to the effect that
never--come what might (the natural consequences of so wild an intimacy
strong in her thoughts) would he desert her, since without his aid she
would be helpless. Yet, with no direct statement as to marriage. And
he, so completely overcome and swayed by his desire, thoughtlessly
protesting that he never would--never. She might depend on that, at
least, although even then there was no thought in his mind of marriage.
He would not do that. Yet nights and nights--all scruples for the
time being abandoned, and however much by day Roberta might brood and
condemn herself--when each yielded to the other completely. And dreamed
thereafter, recklessly and wildly, of the joy of it--wishing from
day to day for the time being that the long day might end--that the
concealing, rewarding feverish night were at hand.
And Clyde feeling, and not unlike Roberta, who was firmly and even
painfully convinced of it, that this was sin--deadly, mortal--since
both his mother and father had so often emphasized that--the
seducer--adulterer--who preys outside the sacred precincts of marriage.
And Roberta, peering nervously into the blank future, wondering
what--how, in any case, by any chance, Clyde should change, or fail
her. Yet the night returning, her mood once more veering, and she as
well as he hurrying to meet somewhere--only later, in the silence of
the middle night, to slip into this unlighted room which was proving so
much more of a Paradise than either might ever know again--so wild and
unrecapturable is the fever of youth.
And--at times--and despite all his other doubts and fears, Clyde,
because of this sudden abandonment by Roberta of herself to his
desires, feeling for the first time, really, in all his feverish
years, that at last he was a man of the world--one who was truly
beginning to know women. And so taking to himself an air or manner
that said as plainly as might have any words--"Behold I am no longer
the inexperienced, neglected simpleton of but a few weeks ago, but an
individual of import now--some one who knows something about life.
What have any of these strutting young men, and gay, coaxing, flirting
girls all about me, that I have not? And if I chose--were less loyal
than I am--what might I not do?" And this was proving to him that the
notion which Hortense Briggs, to say nothing of the more recent fiasco
in connection with Rita had tended to build up in his mind, i.e.,--that
he was either unsuccessful or ill-fated where girls were concerned was
false. He was after all and despite various failures and inhibitions a
youth of the Don Juan or Lothario stripe.
And if now Roberta was obviously willing to sacrifice herself for him
in this fashion, must there not be others?
And this, in spite of the present indifference of the Griffiths, caused
him to walk with even more of an air than had hitherto characterized
him. Even though neither they nor any of those connected with them
recognized him, still he looked at himself in his mirror from time
to time with an assurance and admiration which before this he had
never possessed. For now Roberta, feeling that her future was really
dependent on his will and whim, had set herself to flatter him almost
constantly, to be as obliging and convenient to him as possible.
Indeed, according to her notion of the proper order of life, she was
now his and his only, as much as any wife is ever to a husband, to do
with as he wished.
And for a time therefore, Clyde forgot his rather neglected state here
and was content to devote himself to her without thinking much of the
future. The one thing that did trouble him at times was the thought
that possibly, in connection with the original fear she had expressed
to him, something might go wrong, which, considering her exclusive
devotion to him, might prove embarrassing. At the same time he did not
trouble to speculate too deeply as to that. He had Roberta now. These
relations, in so far as either of them could see, or guess, were a dark
secret. The pleasures of this left-handed honeymoon, were at full tide.
And the remaining brisk and often sunshiny and warm November and first
December days passed--as in a dream, really--an ecstatic paradise
of sorts in the very center of a humdrum conventional and petty and
underpaid work-a-day world.
In the meantime the Griffiths had been away from the city since the
middle of June and ever since their departure Clyde had been meditating
upon them and all they represented in his life and that of the city.
Their great house closed and silent, except for gardeners and an
occasional chauffeur or servant visible as he walked from time to time
past the place, was the same as a shrine to him, nearly--the symbol
of that height to which by some turn of fate he might still hope
to attain. For he had never quite been able to expel from his mind
the thought that his future must in some way be identified with the
grandeur that was here laid out before him.
Yet so far as the movements of the Griffiths family and their social
peers outside Lycurgus were concerned, he knew little other than that
which from time to time he had read in the society columns of the two
local papers which almost obsequiously pictured the comings and goings
of all those who were connected with the more important families of
the city. At times, after reading these accounts he had pictured to
himself, even when he was off somewhere with Roberta at some unheralded
resort, Gilbert Griffiths racing in his big car, Bella, Bertine and
Sondra dancing, canoeing in the moonlight, playing tennis, riding at
some of the smart resorts where they were reported to be. The thing had
had a bite and ache for him that was almost unendurable and had lit up
for him at times and with overwhelming clarity this connection of his
with Roberta. For after all, who was she? A factory girl! The daughter
of parents who lived and worked on a farm and one who was compelled to
work for her own living. Whereas he--he--if fortune would but favor him
a little--! Was this to be the end of all his dreams in connection with
his perspective superior life here?
So it was that at moments and in his darker moods, and especially after
she had abandoned herself to him, his thoughts ran. She was not of
his station, really--at least not of that of the Griffiths to which
still he most eagerly aspired. Yet at the same time, whatever the mood
generated by such items as he read in _The Star_, he would still return
to Roberta, picturing her, since the other mood which had drawn him to
her had by no means palled as yet, as delightful, precious, exceedingly
worth-while from the point of view of beauty, pleasure, sweetness--the
attributes and charms which best identify any object of delight.
But the Griffiths and their friends having returned to the city, and
Lycurgus once more taken on that brisk, industrial and social mood
which invariably characterized it for at least seven months in the
year, he was again, and even more vigorously than before, intrigued
by it. The beauty of the various houses along Wykeagy Avenue and its
immediate tributaries! The unusual and intriguing sense of movement and
life there so much in evidence. Oh, if he were but of it!