Chains

by Theodore Dreiser

Still, during these last few years she had had a chance to read and think, two things which up to that time she had never seemed to have time for. Before that it had always been beaux and other girls. But most of the girls were married now and so there was an end to them. But reading and thinking had gradually taken up all of her spare time, and that had brought about such a change in her. She really wasn’t the same girl now that Gil had married at all. She was wiser. And she knew so much more about life now than he did. And she thought so much more, and so differently. He was still at about the place mentally that he had been when she married him, interested in making a better place for himself in the Tri-State office and in playing golf or tennis out at the country club whenever he could afford the time to go out there. And he expected her to curry favor with Dr. and Mrs. Realk, and Mr. and Mrs. Stofft, because they had a car and because Mr. Stofft and Gil liked to play cards together. But beyond that he thought of nothing, not a thing.

But during all of this time she had more and more realized that Gil would never make anything much of himself. Alice had cautioned her against him before ever they had married. He was not a business man in any true sense. He couldn’t think of a single thing at which he could make any money except in the paper business, and that required more capital than ever he would have. Everybody else they knew was prospering. And perhaps it was that realization that had thrown her back upon books and pictures and that sort of thing. People who did things in those days were so much more interesting than people who just made money, anyhow.

Yet she would never have entered upon that dangerous affair with Mr. Barclay if it hadn’t been for the awful mental doldrums she found herself in about the time Tickles was two years old and Gil was so worried as to whether he would be able to keep his place at the Tri-State any longer. He had put all the money they had been able to save into that building and loan scheme, and when that had failed they were certainly up against it for a time. There was just nothing to do with, and there was no prospect of relief. To this day she had no clothes to speak of. And there wasn’t much promise of getting them now. And she wasn’t getting any younger. Still, there was Tickles, and she was brushing up on her shorthand again. If the worst came—

But she wouldn’t have entered upon that adventure that had come so near to ending disastrously for herself and Tickles—for certainly if Gil had ever found out he could have taken Tickles away from her—if it hadn’t been for that book Heyday which Mr. Barclay wrote and which she came across just when she was feeling so out of sorts with life and Gil and everything. That had pictured her own life so keenly and truly; indeed, it seemed to set her own life before her just as it was and as though some one were telling her about herself. It was the story of a girl somewhat like herself who had dreamed her way through a rather pinched girlhood, having to work for a living from the age of fourteen. And then just as she was able to make her own way had made a foolish marriage with a man of no import in any way—a clerk, just like Gil. And he had led her through more years of meagre living, until at last, very tired of it all, she had been about to yield herself to another man who didn’t care very much about her but who had money and could do the things for her that her husband couldn’t. Then of a sudden in this story her husband chose to disappear and leave her to make her way as best she might. The one difference between that story and her own life was that there was no little Tickles to look after. And Gil would never disappear, of course. But the heroine of the story had returned to her work without compromising herself. And in the course of time had met an architect who had the good sense or the romance to fall in love with and marry her. And so the story, which was so much like hers, except for Tickles and the architect, had ended happily.

But hers—well—

But the chances she had taken at that time! The restless and yet dreamy mood in which she had been and moved and which eventually had prompted her to write Mr. Barclay, feeling very doubtful as to whether he would be interested in her and yet drawn to him because of the life he had pictured. Her thought had been that if he could take enough interest in a girl like the one in the book to describe her so truly he might be a little interested in her real life. Only her thought at first had been not to entice him; she had not believed that she could. Rather, it was more the feeling that if he would he might be of some help to her, since he had written so sympathetically of Lila, the heroine. She was faced by the problem of what to do with her life, as Lila had been, but at that she hadn’t expected him to solve it for her—merely to advise her.

But afterwards, when he had written to thank her, she feared that she might not hear from him again and had thought of that picture of herself, the one Dr. Realk had taken of her laughing so heartily, the one that everybody liked so much. She had felt that that might entice him to further correspondence with her, since his letters were so different and interesting, and she had sent it and asked him if his heroine looked anything like her, just as an excuse for sending it. Then had come that kindly letter in which he had explained his point of view and advised her, unless she were very unhappy, to do nothing until she should be able to look after herself in the great world. Life was an economic problem. As for himself, he was too much the rover to be more than a passing word to any one. His work came first. Apart from that, he said he drifted up and down the world trying to make the best of a life that tended to bore him. However if ever he came that way he would be glad to look her up and advise her as best he might, but that she must not let him compromise her in any way. It was not advisable in her very difficult position.

Even then she had not been able to give him up, so interested had she been by all he had written. And besides, he had eventually come to U—— only a hundred and fifty miles away, and had written from there to know if he might come over to see her. She couldn’t do other than invite him, although she had known at the time that it was a dangerous thing to do. There was no solution, and it had only caused trouble—and how much trouble! And yet in the face of her mood then, anything had been welcome as a relief. She had been feeling that unless something happened to break the monotony she would do something desperate. And then something did happen. He had come, and there was nothing but trouble, and very much trouble, until he had gone again.

You would have thought there was some secret unseen force attending her and Gil at that time and leading him to wherever she was at just the time she didn’t want him to be there. Take for example, that matter of Gil finding Mr. Barclay’s letters in the fire after she had taken such care to throw them on the live coals behind some burning wood. He had evidently been able to make out a part of the address, anyhow, for he had said they were addressed to her in care of somebody he couldn’t make out. And yet he was all wrong, as to the writer, of course. He had the crazy notion, based on his having found that picture of Raskoffsky inscribed to Alice, some months before, that they must be from him, just because he thought she had used Alice to write and ask Raskoffsky for his picture—which she had. But that was before she had ever read any of Mr. Barclay’s books. Yet if it hadn’t been for Gil’s crazy notion that it was Raskoffsky she was interested in she wouldn’t have had the courage to face it out the way she had, the danger of losing Tickles, which had come to her the moment Gil had proved so suspicious and watchful, frightening her so. Those three terrible days! And imagine him finding those bits of letters in the ashes and making something out of them! The uncanniness of it all.

And then that time he saw her speeding through the gate into Briscoe Park. They couldn’t have been more than a second passing there, anyhow, and yet he had been able to pick her out! Worse, Mr. Barclay hadn’t even intended coming back that way; they had just made the mistake of turning down Ridgely instead of Warren. Yet, of course, Gil had to be there, of all places, when as a rule he was never out of the office at any time. Fortunately for her she was on her way home, so there was no chance of his getting there ahead of her as, plainly, he planned afterwards. Still, if it hadn’t been for her mother whom everybody believed, and who actually believed that she and Alice had been to the concert, she would never have had the courage to face him. She hadn’t expected him home in the first place, but when he did come and she realized that unless she faced him out then and there in front of her mother who believed in her, that she as well as he would know, there was but one thing to do—brave it. Fortunately her mother hadn’t seen her in that coat and hat which Gil insisted that she had on. For before going she and Alice had taken Tickles over to her mother’s and then she had returned and changed her dress. And before Gil had arrived Alice had gone on home and told her mother to bring over the baby, which was the thing that had so confused Gil really. For he didn’t know about the change and neither did her mother. And her mother did not believe that there had been any, which made her think that Gil was a little crazy, talking that way. And her mother didn’t know to this day—she was so unsuspecting.