Page:Poor White.djvu/181

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

achieved an evil reputation. A servant in his father's house had given birth to a child by him, and it had cost a good deal of money to get her to take the child and go away without making an open scandal. During the year before he had been expelled from the University for throwing another young man down a flight of stairs, and it was whispered about among the girl students that he often got violently drunk. For a year he had been trying to ingratiate himself with Clara, had writ- ten her letters, sent flowers to her house, and when he met her on the street had stopped to urge that she ac- cept his friendship. On the day in May she had met him on the street and he had begged that she give him one chance to talk things out with her. They had met at a street crossing where cars went past into the suburban villages that lay about the city. " Come on," he had urged, " let's take a street car ride, let's get out of the crowds, I want to talk to you." He had taken hold of her arm and fairly dragged her to a car. " Come and hear what I have to say," he had urged, " then if you don't want to have anything to do with me, all right. You can say so and I'll let you alone." After she had accompanied him to the suburb of workingmen's houses, in the vicinity of which they had spent the afternoon in the fields, Clara had found he had nothing to urge upon her except the needs of his body. Still she felt there was something he wanted to say that had not been said. He was restless and dis- satisfied with his life, and at bottom she felt that way about her own life. During the last three years she had often wondered why she had come to the school and what she was to gain by learning things out of books. The days and months went past and she knew

[167]