An American Tragedy (52 page)

“Oh, good evening,” he exclaimed, removing his cap and bowing. “How are you?” while his mind was registering that this truly was the beautiful, the exquisite Sondra whom months before he had met at his uncle’s, and concerning whose social activities during the preceding summer he had been reading in the papers. And now here she was as lovely as ever, seated in this beautiful car and addressing him, apparently. However, Sondra on the instant realizing that she had made a mistake and that it was not Gilbert, was quite embarrassed and uncertain for the moment just how to extricate herself from a situation which was a bit ticklish, to say the least.

“Oh, pardon me, you’re Mr. Clyde Griffiths, I see now. It’s my mistake. I thought you were Gilbert. I couldn’t quite make you out in the light.” She had for the moment an embarrassed and fidgety and halting manner, which Clyde noticed and which he saw implied that she had made a mistake that was not entirely flattering to him nor satisfactory to her. And this in turn caused him to become confused and anxious to retire.

“Oh, pardon me. But that’s all right. I didn’t mean to intrude. I thought . . .” He flushed and stepped back really troubled.

But now Sondra, seeing at once that Clyde was if anything much more attractive than his cousin and far more diffident, and obviously greatly impressed by her charms as well as her social state, unbent sufficiently to say with a charming smile: “But that’s all right. Won’t you get in, please, and let me take you where you are going. Oh, I wish you would. I will be so glad to take you.”

For there was that in Clyde’s manner the instant he learned that it was due to a mistake that he had been recognized which caused even her to understand that he was hurt, abashed and disappointed. His eyes took on a hurt look and there was a wavering, apologetic, sorrowful smile playing about his lips.

“Why, yes, of course,” he said jerkily, “that is, if you want me to. I understand how it was. That’s all right. But you needn’t mind, if you don’t wish to. I thought . . .” He had half turned to go, but was so drawn by her that he could scarcely tear himself away before she repeated: “Oh, do come, get in, Mr. Griffiths. I’ll be so glad if you will. It won’t take David a moment to take you wherever you are going, I’m sure. And I am sorry about the other, really I am. I didn’t mean, you know, that just because you weren’t Gilbert Griffiths—”

He paused and in a bewildered manner stepped forward and entering the car, slipped into the seat beside her. And she, interested in his personality, at once began to look at him, feeling glad that it was he now instead of Gilbert. In order the better to see and again reveal her devastating charms, as she saw them, to Clyde, she now switched on the roof light. And the chauffeur returning, she asked Clyde where he wished to go—an address which he gave reluctantly enough, since it was so different from the street in which she resided. As the car sped on, he was animated by a feverish desire to make some use of this brief occasion which might cause her to think favorably of him—perhaps, who knows—lead to some faint desire on her part to contact him again at some time or other. He was so truly eager to be of her world.

“It’s certainly nice of you to take me up this way,” he now turned to her and observed, smiling. “I didn’t think it was my cousin you meant or I wouldn’t have come up as I did.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Don’t mention it,” replied Sondra archly with a kind of sticky sweetness in her voice. Her original impression of him as she now felt, had been by no means so vivid. “It’s my mistake, not yours. But I’m glad I made it now, anyhow,” she added most definitely and with an engaging smile. “I think I’d rather pick you up than I would Gil, anyhow. We don’t get along any too well, he and I. We quarrel a lot whenever we do meet anywhere.” She smiled, having completely recovered from her momentary embarrassment, and now leaned back after the best princess fashion, her glance examining Clyde’s very regular features with interest. He had such soft smiling eyes she thought. And after all, as she now reasoned, he was Bella’s and Gilbert’s cousin, and looked prosperous.

“Well, that’s too bad,” he said stiffly, and with a very awkward and weak attempt at being self-confident and even high-spirited in her presence.

“Oh, it doesn’t amount to anything, really. We just quarrel, that’s all, once in a while.”

She saw that he was nervous and bashful and decidedly un-resourceful in her presence and it pleased her to think that she could thus befuddle and embarrass him so much. “Are you still working for your uncle?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Clyde quickly, as though it would make an enormous difference to her if he were not. “I have charge of a department over there now.”

“Oh, really, I didn’t know. I haven’t seen you at all, since that one time, you know. You don’t get time to go about much, I suppose.” She looked at him wisely, as much as to say, “Your relatives aren’t so very much interested in you,” but really liking him now, she said instead, “You have been in the city all summer, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Clyde quite simply and winningly. “I have to be, you know. It’s the work that keeps me here. But I’ve seen your name in the papers often, and read about your riding and tennis contests and I saw you in that flower parade last June, too. I certainly thought you looked beautiful, like an angel almost.”

There was an admiring, pleading light in his eyes which now quite charmed her. What a pleasing young man—so different to Gilbert. And to think he should be so plainly and hopelessly smitten, and when she could take no more than a passing interest in him. It made her feel sorry, a little, and hence kindly toward him. Besides what would Gilbert think if only he knew that his cousin was so completely reduced by her—how angry he would be—he, who so plainly thought her a snip? It would serve him just right if Clyde were taken up by some one and made more of than he (Gilbert) ever could hope to be. The thought had a most pleasing tang for her.

However, at this point, unfortunately, the car turned in before Mrs. Peyton’s door and stopped. The adventure for Clyde and for her was seemingly over.

“That’s awfully nice of you to say that. I won’t forget that.” She smiled archly as, the chauffeur opening the door, Clyde stepped down, his own nerves taut because of the grandeur and import of this encounter. “So this is where you live. Do you expect to be in Lycurgus all winter?”

“Oh, yes. I’m quite sure of it. I hope to be anyhow,” he added, quite yearningly, his eyes expressing his meaning completely.

“Well, perhaps, then I’ll see you again somewhere, some time. I hope so, anyhow.”

She nodded and gave him her fingers and the most fetching and wreathy of smiles, and he, eager to the point of folly, added:

“Oh, so do I.”

“Good night! Good night!” she called as the car sprang away, and Clyde, looking after it, wondered if he would ever see her again so closely and intimately as here. To think that he should have met her again in this way! And she had proved so very different from that first time when, as he distinctly recalled, she took no interest in him at all.

He turned hopefully and a little wistfully toward his own door.

And Sondra, . . . why was it, she pondered, as the motor car sped on its way, that the Griffiths were apparently not much interested in him?

THE effect of this so casual contact was really disrupting in more senses than one. For now in spite of his comfort in and satisfaction with Roberta, once more and in this positive and to him entrancing way, was posed the whole question of his social possibilities here. And that strangely enough by the one girl of this upper level who had most materialized and magnified for him the meaning of that upper level itself. The beautiful Sondra Finchley! Her lovely face, smart clothes, gay and superior demeanor! If only at the time he had first encountered her he had managed to interest her. Or could now.

The fact that his relations with Roberta were what they were now was not of sufficient import or weight to offset the temperamental or imaginative pull of such a girl as Sondra and all that she represented. Just to think the Wimblinger Finchley Electric Sweeper Company was one of the largest manufacturing concerns here. Its tall walls and stacks made a part of the striking sky line across the Mohawk. And the Finchley residence in Wykeagy Avenue, near that of the Griffiths, was one of the most impressive among that distinguished row of houses which had come with the latest and most discriminating architectural taste here—Italian Renaissance—cream hued marble and Dutchess County sandstone combined. And the Finchleys were among the most discussed of families here.

Ah, to know this perfect girl more intimately! To be looked upon by her with favor,—made, by reason of that favor, a part of that fine world to which she belonged. Was he not a Griffiths—as good looking as Gilbert Griffiths any day? And as attractive if he only had as much money—or a part of it even. To be able to dress in the Gilbert Griffiths’ fashion; to ride around in one of the handsome cars he sported! Then, you bet, a girl like this would be delighted to notice him,—mayhap, who knows, even fall in love with him. Analschar and the tray of glasses. But now, as he gloomily thought, he could only hope, hope, hope.

The devil! He would not go around to Roberta’s this evening. He would trump up some excuse—tell her in the morning that he had been called upon by his uncle or cousin to do some work. He could not and would not go, feeling as he did just now.

So much for the effect of wealth, beauty, the peculiar social state to which he most aspired, on a temperament that was as fluid and unstable as water.

On the other hand, later, thinking over her contact with Clyde, Sondra was definitely taken with what may only be described as his charm for her, all the more definite in this case since it represented a direct opposite to all that his cousin offered by way of offense. His clothes and his manner, as well as a remark he had dropped, to the effect that he was connected with the company in some official capacity, seemed to indicate that he might be better placed than she had imagined. Yet she also recalled that although she had been about with Bella all summer and had encountered Gilbert, Myra and their parents from time to time, there had never been a word about Clyde. Indeed all the information she had gathered concerning him was that originally furnished by Mrs. Griffiths, who had said that he was a poor nephew whom her husband had brought on from the west in order to help in some way. Yet now, as she viewed Clyde on this occasion, he did not seem so utterly unimportant or poverty-stricken by any means—quite interesting and rather smart and very attractive, and obviously anxious to be taken seriously by a girl like herself, as she could see. And this coming from Gilbert’s cousin—a Griffiths—was flattering.

Arriving at the Trumbull’s, a family which centered about one Douglas Trumbull, a prosperous lawyer and widower and speculator of this region, who, by reason of his children as well as his own good manners and legal subtlety, had managed to ingratiate himself into the best circles of Lycurgus society, she suddenly confided to Jill Trumbull, the elder of the lawyer’s two daughters: “You know I had a funny experience to-day.” And she proceeded to relate all that had occurred in detail. Afterward at dinner, Jill having appeared to find it most fascinating, she again repeated it to Gertrude and Tracy, the younger daughter and only son of the Trumbull family.

“Oh, yes,” observed Tracy Trumbull, a law student in his father’s office. “I’ve seen that fellow, I bet, three or four times on Central Avenue. He looks a lot like Gil, doesn’t he? Only not so swagger. I’ve nodded to him two or three times this summer because I thought he was Gil for the moment.”

“Oh, I’ve seen him, too,” commented Gertrude Trumbull. “He wears a cap and a belted coat like Gilbert Griffiths, sometimes, doesn’t he? Arabella Stark pointed him out to me once and then Jill and I saw him passing Stark’s once on a Saturday afternoon. He is better looking than Gil, any day, I think.”

This confirmed Sondra in her own thoughts in regard to Clyde and now she added: “Bertine Cranston and I met him one evening last spring at the Griffiths’. We thought he was too bashful, then. But I wish you could see him now—he’s positively handsome, with the softest eyes and the nicest smile.”

“Oh, now, Sondra,” commented Jill Trumbull, who, apart from Bertine and Bella, was as close to Sondra as any girl here, having been one of her classmates at the Snedeker School, “I know some one who would be jealous if he could hear you say that.”

“And wouldn’t Gil Griffiths like to hear that his cousin’s better looking than he is?” chimed in Tracy Trumbull. “Oh, say—”

“Oh, he,” sniffed Sondra irritably. “He thinks he’s so much. I’ll bet anything it’s because of him that the Griffiths won’t have anything to do with their cousin. I’m sure of it, now that I think of it. Bella would, of course, because I heard her say last spring that she thought he was good-looking. And Myra wouldn’t do anything to hurt anybody. What a lark if some of us were to take him up some time and begin inviting him here and there—once in a while, you know—just for fun, to see how he would do. And how the Griffiths would take it. I know well enough it would be all right with Mr. Griffiths and Myra and Bella, but Gil I’ll bet would be as peeved as anything. I couldn’t do it myself very well, because I’m so close to Bella, but I know who could and they couldn’t say a thing.” She paused, thinking of Bertine Cranston and how she disliked Gil and Mrs. Griffiths. “I wonder if he dances or rides or plays tennis or anything like that?” She stopped and meditated amusedly, the while the others studied her. And Jill Trumbull, a restless, eager girl like herself, without so much of her looks or flair, however, observed: “It would be a prank, wouldn’t it? Do you suppose the Griffiths really would dislike it very much?”

“What’s the difference if they did?” went on Sondra. “They couldn’t do anything more than ignore him, could they? And who would care about that, I’d like to know. Not the people who invited him.”