and they tell me if this one won’t work that none will. That leaves me sorta stumped now, unless you’re willing to go and see a doctor. But the trouble with that is they’re hard to find — the ones who’ll do anything and keep their mouths shut. I’ve talked with several fellows without saying who it’s for, of course, but it ain’t so easy to get one around here, because they are all too much afraid. It’s against the law, you see. But what I want to know now is, supposing I find a doctor who would do it, will you have the nerve to go and see him and tell him what the trouble is? That’s what I want to know.”
She looked at him dazedly, not quite grasping that he was hinting that she was to go entirely alone, but rather assuming that of course he meant to go with her. Then, her mind concentrating nervously upon the necessity of facing a doctor in his company, she first exclaimed: “Oh, dear, isn’t it terrible to think of us having to go to a doctor in this way? Then he’ll know all about us, won’t he? And besides it’s dangerous, isn’t it, although I don’t suppose it could be much worse than those old pills.” She went off into more intimate inquiries as to what was done and how, but Clyde could not enlighten her.
“Oh, don’t be getting nervous over that now,” he said. “It isn’t anything that’s going to hurt you, I know. Besides we’ll be lucky if we find some one to do it. What I want to know is if I do find a doctor, will you be willing to go to him alone?” She started as if struck, but unabashed now he went on, “As things stand with me here, I can’t go with you, that’s sure. I’m too well known around here, and besides I look too much like Gilbert and he’s known to everybody. If I should be mistaken for him, or be taken for his cousin or relative, well, then the jig’s up.”
His eyes were not only an epitome of how wretched he would feel were he exposed to all Lycurgus for what he was, but also in them lurked a shadow of the shabby role he was attempting to play in connection with her — in hiding thus completely behind her necessity. And yet so tortured was he by the fear of what was about to befall him in case he did not succeed in so doing, that he was now prepared, whatever Roberta might think or say, to stand his ground. But Roberta, sensing only the fact that he was thinking of sending her alone, now exclaimed incredulously: “Not alone, Clyde! Oh, no, I couldn’t do that! Oh, dear, no! Why, I’d be frightened to death. Oh, dear, no. Why, I’d be so frightened I wouldn’t know what to do. Just think how I’d feel, trying to explain to him alone. I just couldn’t do that. Besides, how would I know what to say — how to begin? You’ll just have to go with me at first, that’s all, and explain, or I never can go — I don’t care what happens.” Her eyes were round and excited and her face, while registering all the depression and fear that had recently been there, was transfigured by definite opposition.
But Clyde was not to be shaken either.
“You know how it is with me here, Bert. I can’t go, and that’s all there is to it. Why, supposing I were seen — supposing some one should recognize me? What then? You know how much I’ve been going around here since I’ve been here. Why, it’s crazy to think that I could go. Besides, it will be a lot easier for you than for me. No doctor’s going to think anything much of your coming to him, especially if you’re alone. He’ll just think you’re some one who’s got in trouble and with no one to help you. But if I go, and it should be any one who knows anything about the Griffiths, there’d be the deuce to pay. Right off he’d think I was stuffed with money. Besides, if I didn’t do just what he wanted me to do afterwards, he could go to my uncle, or my cousin, and then, good night! That would be the end of me. And if I lost my place here now, and with no money and that kind of scandal connected with me, where do you suppose I would be after that, or you either? I certainly couldn’t look after you then. And then what would you do? I should think you’d wake up and see what a tough proposition this is. My name can’t be pulled into this without trouble for both of us. It’s got to be kept out, that’s all, and the only way for me to keep it out is for me to stay away from any doctor. Besides, he’d feel a lot sorrier for you than he would for me. You can’t tell me!”
His eyes were distressed and determined, and, as Roberta could gather from his manner, a certain hardness, or at least defiance, the result of fright, showed in every gesture. He was determined to protect his own name, come what might — a fact which, because of her own acquiescence up to this time, still carried great weight with her.
“Oh, dear! dear!” she exclaimed, nervously and sadly now, the growing and drastic terror of the situation dawning upon her, “I don’t see how we are to do then. I really don’t. For I can’t do that and that’s all there is to it. It’s all so hard — so terrible. I’d feel too much ashamed and frightened to ever go alone.”
But even as she said this she began to feel that she might, and even would, go alone, if must be. For what else was there to do? And how was she to compel him, in the face of his own fears and dangers, to jeopardize his position here? He began once more, in self-defense more than from any other motive:
“Besides, unless this thing isn’t going to cost very much, I don’t see how I’m going to get by with it anyhow, Bert. I really don’t. I don’t make so very much, you know — only twenty-five dollars up to now.” (Necessity was at last compelling him to speak frankly with Roberta.) “And I haven’t saved anything — not a cent. And you know why as well as I do. We spent the most of it together. Besides if I go and he thought I had money, he might want to charge me more than I could possibly dig up. But if you go and just tell him how things are — and that you haven’t got anything — if you’d only say I’d run away or something, see —”
He paused because, as he said it, he saw a flicker of shame, contempt, despair at being connected with anything so cheap and shabby, pass over Roberta’s face. And yet in spite of this sly and yet muddy tergiversation on his part — so great is the compelling and enlightening power of necessity — she could still see that there was some point to his argument. He might be trying to use her as a foil, a mask, behind which he, and she too for that matter, was attempting to hide. But just the same, shameful as it was, here were the stark, bald headlands of fact, and at their base the thrashing, destroying waves of necessity. She heard him say: “You wouldn’t have to give your right name, you know, or where you came from. I don’t intend to pick out any doctor right around here, see. Then, if you’d tell him you didn’t have much money — just your weekly salary —”
She sat down weakly to think, the while this persuasive trickery proceeded from him — the import of most of his argument going straight home. For as false and morally meretricious as this whole plan was, still, as she could see for herself, her own as well as Clyde’s situation was desperate. And as honest and punctilious as she might ordinarily be in the matter of truth-telling and honest- dealing, plainly this was one of those whirling tempests of fact and reality in which the ordinary charts and compasses of moral measurement were for the time being of small use.
And so, insisting then that they go to some doctor far away, Utica or Albany, maybe — but still admitting by this that she would go — the conversation was dropped. And he having triumphed in the matter of excepting his own personality from this, took heart to the extent, at least, of thinking that at once now, by some hook or crook, he must find a doctor to whom he could send her. Then his terrible troubles in connection with all this would be over. And after that she could go her way, as surely she must; then, seeing that he would have done all that he could for her he would go his way to the glorious denouement that lay directly before him in case only this were adjusted.
Chapter 36
Nevertheless hours and even days, and finally a week and then ten days, passed without any word from him as to the whereabouts of a doctor to whom she could go. For although having said
