An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Read Free Book Online Page A

judge. We must only hope for the best. Yes, yes! Praise the Lord—we must praise the Lord! Amen! Oh yes! Tst! Tst! Tst!”
    “If any one asks where she is,” continued Mrs. Griffiths after a time, quite ignoring her spouse and addressing the children, who had drawn near her, “we will say that she has gone on a visit to some of my relatives back in Tonawanda. That won’t be the truth, exactly, but then we don’t know where she is or what the truth is—and she may come back. So we must not say or do anything that will injure her until we know.”
    “Yes, praise the Lord!” called Asa, feebly.
    “So if any one should inquire at any time, until we know, we will say that.”
    “Sure,” put in Clyde, helpfully, and Julia added, “All right.”
    Mrs. Griffiths paused and looked firmly and yet apologetically at her children. Asa, for his part, emitted another “Tst! Tst! Tst!” and then the children were waved to bed.
    At that, Clyde, who really wanted to know what Esta’s letter had said, but was convinced from long experience that his mother would not let him know unless she chose, returned to his room again, for he was tired. Why didn’t they search more if there was hope of finding her? Where was she now—at this minute? On some train somewhere? Evidently she didn’t want to be found. She was probably dissatisfied, just as he was. Here he was, thinking so recently of going away somewhere himself, wondering how the family would take it, and now she had gone before him. How would that affect his point of view and action in the future? Truly, in spite of his father’s and mother’s misery, he could not see that her going was such a calamity, not from the going point of view, at any rate. It was only another something which hinted that things were not right here. Mission work was nothing. All this religious emotion and talk was not so much either. It hadn’t saved Esta. Evidently, like himself, she didn’t believe so much in it, either.

Chapter 4
    THE effect of this particular conclusion was to cause Clyde to think harder than ever about himself. And the principal result of his thinking was that he must do something for himself and soon. Up to this time the best he had been able to do was to work at such odd jobs as befall all boys between their twelfth and fifteenth years: assisting a man who had a paper route during the summer months of one year, working in the basement of a five-and-ten-cent store all one summer long, and on Saturdays, for a period during the winter, opening boxes and unpacking goods, for which he received the munificent sum of five dollars a week, a sum which at the time seemed almost a fortune. He felt himself rich and, in the face of the opposition of his parents, who were opposed to the theater and motion pictures also, as being not only worldly, but sinful, he could occasionally go to one or another of those—in the gallery—a form of diversion which he had to conceal from his parents. Yet that did not deter him. He felt that he had a right to go with his own money; also to take his younger brother Frank, who was glad enough to go with him and say nothing.
    Later in the same year, wishing to get out of school because he already felt himself very much belated in the race, he secured a place as an assistant to a soda water clerk in one of the cheaper drug stores of the city, which adjoined a theater and enjoyed not a little patronage of this sort. A sign—“Boy Wanted”—since it was directly on his way to school, first interested him. Later, in conversation with the young man whose assistant he was to be, and from whom he was to learn the trade, assuming that he was sufficiently willing and facile, he gathered that if he mastered this art, he might make as much as fifteen and even eighteen dollars a week. It was rumored that Stroud’s at the corner of 14th and Baltimore streets paid that much to two of their clerks. The particular store to which he was applying paid only twelve,