if it’s anything I can help you with, Mr. Griffiths, I’ll be only too glad to. Go ahead, what is it?”
“Well, it’s this way,” began Clyde, not a little revived by the other’s hearty response, yet lowering his voice in order to give the dreadful subject its proper medium of obscurity, as it were. “His wife’s already two months gone and he can’t afford a kid yet and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it. I told him last month when he first came to me to try a certain medicine that usually works”— this to impress Short with his own personal wisdom and resourcefulness in such situations and hence by implication to clear his own skirts, as it were —“But I guess he didn’t handle it right. Anyhow he’s all worked up about it now and wants to see some doctor who could do something for her, you see. Only I don’t know anybody here myself. Haven’t been here long enough. If it were Kansas City or Chicago now,” he interpolated securely, “I’d know what to do. I know three or four doctors out there.” (To impress Short he attempted a wise smile.) “But down here it’s different. And if I started asking around in my crowd and it ever got back to my relatives, they wouldn’t understand. But I thought if you knew of any one you wouldn’t mind telling me. I wouldn’t really bother myself, only I’m sorry for this fellow.”
He paused, his face, largely because of the helpful and interested expression on Short’s, expressing more confidence than when he had begun. And although Short was still surprised he was more than pleased to be as helpful as he could.
“You say it’s been two months now.”
“Yes.”
“And the stuff you suggested didn’t work, eh?”
“No.”
“She’s tried it again this month, has she?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that is bad, sure enough. I guess she’s in bad all right. The trouble with this place is that I haven’t been here so very long either, Mr. Griffiths. I only bought this place about a year and a half ago. Now, if I were over in Gloversville —” He paused for a moment, as though, like Clyde, he too were dubious of the wisdom of entering upon details of this kind, but after a few seconds continued: “You see a thing like that’s not so easy, wherever you are. Doctors are always afraid of getting in trouble. I did hear once of a case over there, though, where a girl went to a doctor — a fellow who lived a couple miles out. But she was of pretty good family too, and the fellow who took her to him was pretty well-known about there. So I don’t know whether this doctor would do anything for a stranger, although he might at that. But I know that sort of thing is going on all the time, so you might try. If you wanta send this fellow to him, tell him not to mention me or let on who sent him, ‘cause I’m pretty well-known around there and I wouldn’t want to be mixed up in it in case anything went wrong, you see. You know how it is.”
And Clyde, in turn, replied gratefully: “Oh, sure, he’ll understand all right. I’ll tell him not to mention any names.” And getting the doctor’s name, he extracted a pencil and notebook from his pocket in order to be sure that the important information should not escape him.
Short, sensing his relief, was inclined to wonder whether there was a working-man, or whether it was not Clyde himself who was in this scrape. Why should he be speaking for a young working-man at the factory? Just the same, he was glad to be of service, though at the same time he was thinking what a bit of local news this would be, assuming that any time in the future he should choose to retail it. Also that Clyde, unless he was truly playing about with some girl here who was in trouble, was foolish to be helping anybody else in this way — particularly a working-man. You bet he wouldn’t.
Nevertheless he repeated the name, with the initials, and the exact neighborhood, as near as he could remember, giving the car stop and a description of the house. Clyde, having obtained what he desired, now thanked him, and then went out while the haberdasher looked after him genially and a little suspiciously. These rich young bloods, he thought. That’s a funny request for a fellow like that to make of me. You’d think with all the people he knows and runs with here he’d know some one who would tip him off quicker than I could. Still, maybe, it’s just because of them that he is afraid to ask around here. You don’t know who he might have got in trouble — that young Finchley girl herself, even. You never can tell. I see him around with her occasionally, and she’s gay enough. But, gee, wouldn’t that be the . . .
Chapter 37
The information thus gained was a relief, but only partially so. For both Clyde and Roberta there was no real relief now until this problem should be definitely solved. And although within a few moments after he had obtained it, he appeared and explained that at last he had secured the name of some one who might help her, still there was yet the serious business of heartening her for the task of seeing the doctor alone, also for the story that was to exculpate him and at the same time win for her sufficient sympathy to cause the doctor to make the charge for his service merely nominal.
But now, instead of protesting as at first he feared that she might, Roberta was moved to acquiesce. So many things in Clyde’s attitude since Christmas had so shocked her that she was bewildered and without a plan other than to extricate herself as best she might without any scandal attaching to her or him and then going her own way — pathetic and abrasive though it might be. For since he did not appear to care for her any more and plainly desired to be rid of her, she was in no mood to compel him to do other than he wished. Let him go. She could make her own way. She had, and she could too, without him, if only she could get out of this. Yet, as she said this to herself, however, and a sense of the full significance of it all came to her, the happy days that would never be again, she put her hands to her eyes and brushed away uncontrollable tears. To think that all that was should come to this.
Yet when he called the same evening after visiting Short, his manner redolent of a fairly worth-while achievement, she merely said, after listening to his explanation in as receptive a manner as she could: “Do you know just where this is, Clyde? Can we get there on the car without much trouble, or will we have to walk a long way?” And after he had explained that it was but a little way out of Gloversville, in the suburbs really, an interurban stop being but a quarter of a mile from the house, she had added: “Is he home at night, or will we have to go in the daytime? It would be so much better if we could go at night. There’d be so much less danger of any one seeing us.” And being assured that he was, as Clyde had learned from Short, she went on: “But do you know is he old or young? I’d feel so much easier and safer if he were old. I don’t like young doctors. We’ve always had an old doctor up home and I feel so much easier talking to some one like him.”
Clyde did not know. He had not thought to inquire, but to reassure her he ventured that he was middle-aged — which chanced to be the fact.
The following evening the two of them departed, but separately as usual, for Fonda, where it was necessary to change cars. And once within the approximate precincts of the physician’s residence, they stepped down and made their way along a road, which in this mid- state winter weather was still covered with old and dry-packed snow. It offered a comparatively smooth floor for their quick steps. For in these days, there was no longer that lingering intimacy which formerly would have characterized both. In those other and so recent days, as Roberta was constantly thinking, he would have been only too glad in such a place as this, if not on such an occasion, to drag his steps, put an arm about her waist, and talk about nothing at all — the night, the work at the factory, Mr. Liggett, his uncle, the current movies, some place they were planning to go, something they would love to do together if they could. But now . . . And
