Chains : $b lesser novels and storiesDreiser, Theodore
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Chains : $b lesser novels and stories
Dreiser, Theodore
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American
“Dearest Old Judge: This isn’t the real one. This is just a
hundred-kiss one, this. The real one is pinned to your pillow over
there—our pillow—where it ought to be, don’t you think? I don’t want
you to be unhappy at not finding me home, Judgie, see? And I don’t
want you to get mad and quarrel. And I do want you to be sure to
find the other letter. So don’t be angry, see? But call me up at the
Gildas’. I’m dying to see you, dearie, really and truly I am! I’ve
been so lonesome without you! (Yes!) You’re sure to find me out there.
And you’re not to be angry—not one little frown, do you hear? I just
couldn’t help it, dearest! So read the other letter now!
“IDELLE.”
_If only his hands wouldn’t tremble so! Damn her! Damn her! Damn her!
To think she would always treat him like this! To think he was never
to have one decent hour of her time to himself, not one! Always this
running here, there and everywhere away from him, as it were!_
He crumpled up the note and threw it on the floor, then went to the
window and looked out. There over the way at her own spacious door was
young Mrs. Justus just entering her car—a simple, home-loving little
woman, who would never dream of the treacheries and eccentricities
of Idelle; who, if she even guessed what manner of woman she was,
would never have anything more to do with her. Why couldn’t he have
loved a girl like her—why not? And just beyond, the large quiet house
of the Walterses, those profoundly sober people of the very best
ways and means, always so kind and helpful, anxious to be sociable,
of whom Idelle could think of nothing better to say than “stuffy.”
Anything kind and gentle and orderly was just stuffy to her, or dull.
That was what she considered him, no doubt. That’s because she was
what she was, curses on her! She couldn’t stand, or even understand,
profoundly worthy people like the Justuses or the Walterses. (There
was May Walters now at her dining-room window.) And then there were
the Hartleys.... But that other note of hers—what did it say? He ought
to read that now, whether he left or no; but he would leave this time,
well enough!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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