An American Tragedy (76 page)

But the day this letter arrived in Lycurgus Clyde was not there to answer it at once. And because of that, Roberta being in the darkest and most hysterical mood and thought, sat down on Saturday afternoon and, half-convinced as she was that he might already have departed for some distant point without any word to her, almost shrieked or screamed, if one were to properly characterize the mood that animated the following:

 

Biltz, Saturday, June 14th.

This letter, coupled as it was with the threat to come to Lycurgus, was sufficient to induce in Clyde a state not unlike Roberta’s. To think that he had no additional, let alone plausible, excuse to offer Roberta whereby she could be induced to delay her final and imperative demand. He racked his brains. He must not write her any long and self-incriminating letters. That would be foolish in the face of his determination not to marry her. Besides his mood at the moment, so fresh from the arms and kisses of Sondra, was not for anything like that. He could not, even if he would.

At the same time, something must be done at once, as he could see, in order to allay her apparently desperate mood. And ten minutes after he had finished reading the last of these two letters, he was attempting to reach Roberta over the telephone. And finally getting her after a troublesome and impatient half-hour, he heard her voice, thin and rather querulous as it seemed to him at first, but really only because of a poor connection, saying: “Hello, Clyde, hello. Oh, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been terribly nervous. Did you get my two letters? I was just about to leave here in the morning if I didn’t hear from you by then. I just couldn’t stand not to hear anything. Where have you been, dear? Did you read what I said about my parents going away? That’s true. Why don’t you write, Clyde, or call me up anyhow? What about what I said in my letter about the third? Will you be sure and come then? Or shall I meet you somewhere? I’ve been so nervous the last three or four days, but now that I hear you again, maybe I’ll be able to quiet down some. But I do wish you would write me a note every few days anyhow. Why won’t you, Clyde? You haven’t even written me one since I’ve been here. I can’t tell you what a state I’m in and how hard it is to keep calm now.”

Plainly Robert was very nervous and fearsome as she talked. As a matter of fact, except that the home in which she was telephoning was deserted at the moment she was talking very indiscreetly, it seemed to Clyde. And it aided but little in his judgment for her to explain that she was all alone and that no one could hear her. He did not want her to use his name or refer to letters written to him.

Without talking too plainly, he now tried to make it clear that he was very busy and that it was hard for him to write as much as she might think necessary. Had he not said that he was coming on the 28th or thereabouts if he could? Well, he would if he could, only it looked now as though it might be necessary for him to postpone it for another week or so, until the seventh or eighth of July—long enough for him to get together an extra fifty for which he had a plan, and which would be necessary for him to have. But really, which was the thought behind this other, long enough for him to pay one more visit to Sondra as he was yearning to do, over the next week-end. But this demand of hers, now! Couldn’t she go with her parents for a week or so and then let him come for her there or she come to him? It would give him more needed time, and—

But at this Roberta, bursting forth in a storm of nervous disapproval—saying that most certainly if that were the case she was going back to her room at the Gilpins’, if she could get it, and not waste her time up there getting ready and waiting for him when he was not coming—he suddenly decided that he might as well say that he was coming on the third, or that if he did not, that at least by then he would have arranged with her where to meet him. For even by now, he had not made up his mind as to how he was to do. He must have a little more time to think—more time to think.

And so now he altered his tone greatly and said: “But listen, Bert. Please don’t be angry with me. You talk as though I didn’t have any troubles in connection with all this, either. You don’t know what this may be going to cost me before I’m through with it, and you don’t seem to care much. I know you’re worried and all that, but what about me? I’m doing the very best I can now, Bert, with all I have to think about. And won’t you just be patient now until the third, anyhow? Please do. I promise to write you and if I don’t, I’ll call you up every other day. Will that be all right? But I certainly don’t want you to be using my name like you did a while ago. That will lead to trouble, sure. Please don’t. And when I call again, I’ll just say it’s Mr. Baker asking, see, and you can say it’s any one you like afterwards. And then, if by any chance anything should come up that would stop our starting exactly on the third, why you can come back here if you want to, see, or somewhere near here, and then we can start as soon as possible after that.”

His tone was so pleading and soothing, infused as it was—but because of his present necessity only with a trace of that old tenderness and seeming helplessness which, at times, had quite captivated Roberta, that even now it served to win her to a bizarre and groundless gratitude. So much so that at once she had replied, warmly and emotionally, even: “Oh, no, dear. I don’t want to do anything like that. You know I don’t. It’s just because things are so bad as they are with me and I can’t help myself now. You know that, Clyde, don’t you? I can’t help loving you. I always will, I suppose. And I don’t want to do anything to hurt you, dear, really I don’t if I can help it.”

And Clyde, hearing the ring of genuine affection, and sensing anew his old-time power over her, was disposed to reënact the role of lover again, if only in order to dissuade Roberta from being too harsh and driving with him now. For while he could not like her now, he told himself, and could not think of marrying her, still in view of his other dream he could at least be gracious to her—could he not?—Pretend! And so this conversation ended with a new peace based on this agreement.

 

The preceding day—a day of somewhat reduced activities on the lake from which he had just returned—he and Sondra and Stuart and Bertine, together with Nina Temple and a youth named Harley Baggott, then visiting the Thurstons, had motored first from Twelfth Lake to Three Mile Bay, a small lakeside resort some twenty-five miles north, and from thence, between towering walls of pines, to Big Bittern and some other smaller lakes lost in the recesses of the tall pines of the region to the north of Trine Lake. And en route, Clyde, as he now recalled, had been most strangely impressed at moments and in spots by the desolate and for the most part lonely character of the region. The narrow and rain-washed and even rutted nature of the dirt roads that wound between tall, silent and darksome trees—forests in the largest sense of the word—that extended for miles and miles apparently on either hand. The decadent and weird nature of some of the bogs and tarns on either side of the only comparatively passable dirt roads which here and there were festooned with funereal or viperous vines, and strewn like deserted battlefields with soggy and decayed piles of fallen and criss-crossed logs—in places as many as four deep—one above the other—in the green slime that an undrained depression in the earth had accumulated. The eyes and backs of occasional frogs that, upon lichen or vine or moss-covered stumps and rotting logs in this warm June weather, there sunned themselves apparently undisturbed; the spirals of gnats, the solitary flick of a snake’s tail as disturbed by the sudden approach of the machine, one made off into the muck and the poisonous grasses and water-plants which were thickly imbedded in it.

And in seeing one of these Clyde, for some reason, had thought of the accident at Pass Lake. He did not realize it, but at the moment his own subconscious need was contemplating the loneliness and the usefulness at times of such a lone spot as this. And at one point it was that a wier-wier, one of the solitary water-birds of this region, uttered its ouphe and barghest cry, flying from somewhere near into some darker recess within the woods. And at this sound it was that Clyde had stirred nervously and then sat up in the car. It was so very different to any bird-cry he had ever heard anywhere.

“What was that?” he asked of Harley Baggott, who sat next him.

“What?”

“Why, that bird or something that just flew away back there just now?”

“I didn’t hear any bird.”

“Gee! That was a queer sound. It makes me feel creepy.”

As interesting and impressive as anything else to him in this almost tenantless region had been the fact that there were so many lonesome lakes, not one of which he had ever heard of before. The territory through which they were speeding as fast as the dirt roads would permit, was dotted with them in these deep forests of pine. And only occasionally in passing near one, were there any signs indicating a camp or lodge, and those to be reached only by some half-blazed trail or rutty or sandy road disappearing through darker trees. In the main, the shores of the more remote lakes passed, were all but untenanted, or so sparsely that a cabin or a distant lodge to be seen across the smooth waters of some pine-encircled gem was an object of interest to all.

Why must he think of that other lake in Massachusetts! That boat! The body of that girl found—but not that of the man who accompanied her! How terrible, really!

He recalled afterwards,—here in his room, after the last conversation with Roberta—that the car, after a few more miles, had finally swung into an open space at the north end of a long narrow lake—the south prospect of which appeared to be divided by a point or an island suggesting a greater length and further windings or curves than were visible from where the car had stopped. And except for the small lodge and boathouse at this upper end it had appeared so very lonesome—not a launch or canoe on it at the time their party arrived. And as in the case of all the other lakes seen this day, the banks to the very shore line were sentineled with those same green pines—tall, spear-shaped—their arms widespread like one outside his window here in Lycurgus. And beyond them in the distance, to the south and west, rose the humped and still smooth and green backs of the nearer Adirondacks. And the water before them, now ruffled by a light wind and glowing in the afternoon sun, was of an intense Prussian blue, almost black, which suggested, as was afterwards confirmed by a guide who was lounging upon the low veranda of the small inn—that it was very deep—“all of seventy feet not more than a hundred feet out from that boathouse.”

And at this point Harley Baggott, who was interested to learn more about the fishing possibilities of this lake in behalf of his father, who contemplated coming to this region in a few days, had inquired of the guide who appeared not to look at the others in the car: “How long is this lake, anyhow?”

“Oh, about seven miles.” “Any fish in it?” “Throw a line in and see. The best place for black bass and the like of that almost anywhere around here. Off the island down yonder, or just to the south of it round on the other side there, there’s a little bay that’s said to be one of the best fishin’ holes in any of the lakes up this way. I’ve seen a coupla men bring back as many as seventy-five fish in two hours. That oughta satisfy anybody that ain’t tryin’ to ruin the place for the rest of us.”

The guide, a thinnish, tall and wizened type, with a long, narrow head and small, keen, bright blue eyes laughed a yokelish laugh as he studied the group. “Not thinkin’ of tryin’ your luck to-day?”

“No, just inquiring for my dad. He’s coming up here next week, maybe. I want to see about accommodations.”

“Well, they ain’t what they are down to Racquette, of course, but then the fish down there ain’t what they are up here, either.” He visited all with a sly and wry and knowing smile.

Clyde had never seen the type before. He was interested by all the anomalies and contrarities of this lonesome world as contrasted with cities he had known almost exclusively, as well as the decidedly exotic and material life and equipment with which, at the Cranstons’ and elsewhere, he was then surrounded. The strange and comparatively deserted nature of this region as contrasted with the brisk and vigorous life of Lycurgus, less than a hundred miles to the south.