An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Read Free Book Online

yet his mother had not let him see it. She had taken it away too quickly. If only he had looked first, silently and to himself!
    “Do you suppose she’s run away for good?” he asked Julia dubiously, the while his parents were out of the room, Julia herself looking so blank and strange.
    “How should I know?” she replied a little irritably, troubled by her parents’ distress and this secretiveness, as well as Esta’s action. “She never said anything to me. I should think she’d be ashamed of herself if she has.”
    Julia, being colder emotionally than either Esta or Clyde, was more considerate of her parents in a conventional way, and hence sorrier. True, she did not quite gather what it meant, but she suspected something, for she had talked occasionally with girls, but in a very guarded and conservative way. Now, however, it was more the way in which Esta had chosen to leave, deserting her parents and her brothers and herself, that caused her to be angry with her, for why should she go and do anything which would distress her parents in this dreadful fashion. It was dreadful. The air was thick with misery.
    And as his parents talked in their little room, Clyde brooded too, for he was intensely curious about life now. What was it Esta had really done? Was it, as he feared and thought, one of those dreadful runaway or sexually disagreeable affairs which the boys on the streets and at school were always slyly talking about? How shameful, if that were true! She might never come back. She had gone with some man. There was something wrong about that, no doubt, for a girl, anyhow, for all he had ever heard was that all decent contacts between boys and girls, men and women, led to but one thing—marriage. And now Esta, in addition to their other troubles, had gone and done this. Certainly this home life of theirs was pretty dark now, and it would be darker instead of brighter because of this.
    Presently the parents came out, and then Mrs. Griffiths’ face, if still set and constrained, was somehow a little different, less savage perhaps, more hopelessly resigned.
    “Esta’s seen fit to leave us, for a little while, anyhow,” was all she said at first, seeing the children waiting curiously. “Now, you’re not to worry about her at all, or think any more about it. She’ll come back after a while, I’m sure. She has chosen to go her own way, for a time, for some reason. The Lord’s will be done.” (“Blessed be the name of the Lord!” interpolated Asa.) “I thought she was happy here with us, but apparently she wasn’t. She must see something of the world for herself, I suppose.” (Here Asa put in another Tst! Tst! Tst!) “But we must-n’t harbor hard thoughts. That won’t do any good now—only thoughts of love and kindness.” Yet she said this with a kind of sternness that somehow belied it—a click of the voice, as it were. “We can only hope that she will soon see how foolish she has been, and unthinking, and come back. She can’t prosper on the course she’s going now. It isn’t the Lord’s way or will. She’s too young and she’s made a mistake. But we can forgive her. We must. Our hearts must be kept open, soft and tender.” She talked as though she were addressing a meeting, but with a hard, sad, frozen face and voice. “Now, all of you go to bed. We can only pray now, and hope, morning, noon and night, that no evil will befall her. I wish she hadn’t done that,” she added, quite out of keeping with the rest of her statement and really not thinking of the children as present at all—just Esta.
    But Asa!
    Such a father, as Clyde often thought, afterwards.
    Apart from his own misery, he seemed only to note and be impressed by the more significant misery of his wife. During all this, he had stood foolishly to one side—short, gray, frizzled, inadequate.
    “Well, blessed be the name of the Lord,” he interpolated from time to time. “We must keep our hearts open. Yes, we mustn’t