An American Tragedy

by Theodore Dreiser

  But in the meantime, Belknap, himself finally wearied and confused by this strange story, the impossibility as he now saw it of submitting to, let alone convincing, any ordinary backwoods jury of this region, of the innocence of these dark and bitter plans and deeds, finally in great weariness and uncertainty and mental confusion, even, getting up and placing his hands on Clyde’s shoulders, saying: “Well, that’ll be enough for this for to-day, Clyde, I think. I see how you felt and how it all came about—also I see how tired you are, and I’m mighty glad you’ve been able to give me the straight of this, because I know how hard it’s been for you to do it. But I don’t want you to talk any more now. There are going to be other days, and I have a few things I want to attend to before I take up some of the minor phases of this with you tomorrow or next day. Just you sleep and rest for the present. You’ll need all you can get for the work both of us will have to do a little later. But just now, you’re not to worry, because there’s no need of it, do you see? I’ll get you out of this—or we will—my partner and I. I have a partner that I’m going to bring around here presently. You’ll like him, too. But there are one or two things that I want you to think about and stick to—and one of these is that you’re not to let anybody frighten you into anything, because either myself or my partner will be around here once a day anyhow, and anything you have to say or want to know you can say or find out from us. Next you’re not to talk to anybody—Mason, the sheriff, these jailers, no one—unless I tell you to. No one, do you hear! And above all things, don’t cry any more. For if you are as innocent as an angel, or as black as the devil himself, the worst thing you can do is to cry before any one. The public and these jail officers don’t understand that—they invariably look upon it, as weakness or a confession of guilt. And I don’t want them to feel any such thing about you now, and especially when I know that you’re really not guilty. I know that now. I believe it. See! So keep a stiff upper lip before Mason and everybody.

  “In fact, from now on I want you to try and laugh a little—or at any rate, smile and pass the time of day with these fellows around here. There’s an old saying in law, you know, that the consciousness of innocence makes any man calm. Think and look innocent. Don’t sit and brood and look as though you had lost your last friend, because you haven’t. I’m here, and so is my partner, Mr. Jephson. I’ll bring him around here in a day or two, and you’re to look and act toward him exactly as you have toward me. Trust him, because in legal matters he’s even smarter than I am in some ways. And tomorrow I’m going to bring you a couple of books and some magazines and papers, and I want you to read them or look at the pictures. They’ll help keep your mind off your troubles.”

  Clyde achieved a rather feeble smile and nodded his head.

  “From now on, too,—I don’t know whether you’re at all religious—but whether you are or not, they hold services here in the jail on Sundays, and I want you to attend ’em regularly—that is, if they ask you to. For this is a religious community and I want you to make as good an impression as you can. Never mind what people say or how they look—you do as I tell you. And if this fellow Mason or any of those fellows around here get to pestering you any more, send me a note.

  “And now I’ll be going, so give me a cheerful smile as I go out—and another one as I come in. And don’t talk, see?”

  Then shaking Clyde briskly by the shoulders and slapping him on the back, he strode out, actually thinking to himself: “But do I really believe that this fellow is as innocent as he says? Would it be possible for a fellow to strike a girl like that and not know that he was doing it intentionally? And then swimming away afterwards, because, as he says, if he went near her he thought he might drown too. Bad. Bad! What twelve men are going to believe that? And that bag, those two hats, that missing suit! And yet he swears he didn’t intentionally strike her. But what about all that planning—the intent—which is just as bad in the eyes of the law. Is he telling the truth or is he lying even now—perhaps trying to deceive himself as well as me? And that camera—we ought to get hold of that before Mason finds it and introduces it. And that suit. I ought to find that and mention it, maybe, so as to offset the look of its being hidden—say that we had it all the time—send it to Lycurgus to be cleaned. But no, no—wait a minute—I must think about that.”

  And so on, point by point, while deciding wearily that perhaps it would be better not to attempt to use Clyde’s story at all, but rather to concoct some other story—this one changed or modified in some way which would make it appear less cruel or legally murderous.

  Chapter 15

  MR. REUBEN JEPHSON was decidedly different from Belknap, Catchuman, Mason, Smillie—in fact any one, thus far, who had seen Clyde or become legally interested in this case. He was young, tall, thin, rugged, brown, cool but not cold spiritually, and with a will and a determination of the tensile strength of steel. And with a mental and legal equipment which for shrewdness and self-interest was not unlike that of a lynx or a ferret. Those shrewd, steel, very light blue eyes in his brown face. The force and curiosity of the long nose. The strength of the hands and the body. He had lost no time, as soon as he discovered there was a possibility of their (Belknap & Jephson) taking over the defense of Clyde, in going over the minutes of the coroner’s inquest as well as the doctors’ reports and the letters of Roberta and Sondra. And now being faced by Belknap who was explaining that Clyde did now actually admit to having plotted to kill Roberta, although not having actually done so, since at the fatal moment, some cataleptic state of mind or remorse had intervened and caused him to unintentionally strike her—he merely stared without the shadow of a smile or comment of any kind.

  “But he wasn’t in such a state when he went out there with her, though?”

  “No.”

  “Nor when he swam away afterwards?”

  “No.”

  “Nor when he went through the woods, or changed to another suit and hat, or hid that tripod?”

  “No.”

  “Of course you know, constructively, in the eyes of the law, if we use his own story, he’s just as guilty as though he had struck her, and the judge would have to so instruct.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve thought of all that.”

  “Well, then——”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Jephson, it’s a tough case and no mistake. It looks to me now as though Mason has all the cards. If we can get this chap off, we can get anybody off. But as I see it, I’m not so sure that we want to mention that cataleptic business yet—at least not unless we want to enter a plea of insanity or emotional insanity, or something like that—about like that Harry Thaw case, for instance.” He paused and scratched his slightly graying temple dubiously.

  “You think he’s guilty, of course?” interpolated Jephson, dryly.

  “Well, now, as astonishing as it may seem to you, no. At least, I’m not positive that I do. To tell you the truth, this is one of the most puzzling cases I have ever run up against. This fellow is by no means as hard as you think, or as cold—quite a simple, affectionate chap, in a way, as you’ll see for yourself—his manner, I mean. He’s only twenty-one or two. And for all his connections with these Griffiths, he’s very poor—just a clerk, really. And he tells me that his parents are poor, too. They run a mission of some kind out west—Denver, I believe—and before that in Kansas City. He hasn’t been home in four years. In fact, he got into some crazy boy scrape out there in Kansas City when he was working for one of the hotels as a bell-boy, and had to run away. That’s something we’ve got to look out for in connection with Mason—whether he knows about that or not. It seems he and a bunch of other bell-hops took some rich fellow’s car without his knowing it, and then because they were afraid of being late, they ran over and killed a little girl. We’ve got to find out about that and prepare for it, for if Mason does know about it, he’ll spring it at the trial, and just when he thinks we’re least expecting it.”

  “Well, he won’t pull that one,” replied Jephs
on, his hard, electric, blue eyes gleaming, “not if I have to go to Kansas City to find out.”

  And Belknap went on to tell Jephson all that he knew about Clyde’s life up to the present time—how he had worked at dish-washing, waiting on table, soda-clerking, driving a wagon, anything and everything, before he had arrived in Lycurgus—how he had always been fascinated by girls—how he had first met Roberta and later Sondra. Finally how he found himself trapped by one and desperately in love with the other, whom he could not have unless he got rid of the first one.

  “And notwithstanding all that, you feel a doubt as to whether he did kill her?” asked Jephson, at the conclusion of all this.

  “Yes, as I say, I’m not at all sure that he did. But I do know that he is still hipped over this second girl. His manner changed whenever he or I happened to mention her. Once, for instance, I asked him about his relations with her—and in spite of the fact that he’s accused of seducing and killing this other girl, he looked at me as though I had said something I shouldn’t have—insulted him or her.” And here Belknap smiled a wry smile, while Jephson, his long, bony legs propped against the walnut desk before him, merely stared at him.

  “You don’t say,” he finally observed.

  “And not only that,” went on Belknap, “but he said, ‘Why, no, of course not. She wouldn’t allow anything like that, and besides,’ and then he stopped. ‘And besides what, Clyde,’ I asked. ‘Well, you don’t want to forget who she is.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ I said. And then, will you believe it, he wanted to know if there wasn’t some way by which her name and those letters she wrote him couldn’t be kept out of the papers and this case—her family prevented from knowing so that she and they wouldn’t be hurt too much.”

  “Not really? But what about the other girl?”

  “That’s just the point I’m trying to make. He could plot to kill one girl and maybe even did kill her, for all I know, after seducing her, but because he was being so sculled around by his grand ideas of this other girl, he didn’t quite know what he was doing, really. Don’t you see? You know how it is with some of these young fellows of his age, and especially when they’ve never had anything much to do with girls or money, and want to be something rand.”

  “You think that made him a little crazy, maybe?” put in Jephson.

  “Well, it’s possible—confused, hypnotized, loony—you know—a brain storm as they say down in New York. But he certainly is still cracked over that other girl. In fact, I think most of his crying in jail is over her. He was crying, you know, when I went in to to see him, sobbing as if his heart would break.”

  Meditatively Belknap scratched his right ear. “But just the same, there certainly is something to this other idea—that his mind was turned by all this—that Alden girl forcing him on the one hand to marry her while the other girl was offering to marry him. I know. I was once in such a scrape myself.” And here he paused to relate that to Jephson. “By the way,” he went on, “he says we can find that item about that other couple drowning in The Times-Union of about June 18th or 19th.”

  “All right,” replied Jephson, “I’ll get it.”

  “What I want you to do to-morrow,” continued Belknap, “is to go over there with me and see what impression you get of him. I’ll be there to see if he tells it all to you in the same way. I want your own individual viewpoint of him.”

  “You most certainly will get it,” snapped Jephson.

  Belknap and Jephson proceeded the next day to visit Clyde in jail. And Jephson, after interviewing him and meditating once more on his strange story, was even then not quite able to make up his mind whether Clyde was as innocent of intending to strike Roberta as he said, or not. For if he were, how could he have swum away afterward, leaving her to drown? Decidedly it would be more difficult for a jury than for himself, even, to be convinced.

  At the same time, there was that contention of Belknap’s as to the possibility of Clyde’s having been mentally upset or unbalanced at the time that he accepted The Times-Union plot and proceeded to act on it. That might be true, of course, yet personally, to Jephson at least, Clyde appeared to be wise and same enough now. As Jephson saw him, he was harder and more cunning than Belknap was willing to believe—a cunning, modified of course, by certain soft and winning social graces for which one could hardly help liking him. However, Clyde was by no means as willing to confide in Jephson as he had been in Belknap—an attitude which did little to attract Jephson to him at first. At the same time, there was about Jephson a hard, integrated earnestness which soon convinced Clyde of his technical, if not his emotional interest. And after a while he began looking toward this younger man, even more than toward Belknap as the one who might do most for him. “Of course, you know that those letters which Miss Alden wrote you are very strong?” began Jephson, after hearing Clyde restate his story.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’re very sad to any one who doesn’t know all of the facts, and on that account they are likely to prejudice any jury against you, especially when they’re put alongside Miss Finchley’s letters.”

  “Yes, I suppose they might,” replied Clyde, “but then, she wasn’t always like that, either. It was only after she got in trouble and I wanted her to let me go that she wrote like that.”

  “I know. I know. And that’s a point we want to think about and maybe bring out, if we can. If only there were some way to keep those letters out,” he now turned to Belknap to say. Then, to Clyde, “but what I want to ask you now is this—you were close to her for something like a year, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In all of that time that you were with her, or before, was she ever friendly, or maybe intimate, with any other young man anywhere—that is, that you know of?”

  As Clyde could see, Jephson was not afraid, or perhaps not sufficiently sensitive, to refrain from presenting any thought or trick that seemed to him likely to provide a loophole for escape. But, far from being cheered by this suggestion, he was really shocked. What a shameful thing in connection with Roberta and her character it would be to attempt to introduce any such lie as this. He could not and would not hint at any such falsehood, and so he replied:

  “No, sir. I never heard of her going with any one else. In fact, I know she didn’t.”

  “Very good! That settles that,” snapped Jephson. “I judged from her letters that what you say is true. At the same time, we must know all the facts. It might make a very great difference if there were some one else.”

  And at this point Clyde could not quite make sure whether he was attempting to impress upon him the value of this as an idea or not, but just the same he decided it was not right even to consider it. And yet he was thinking: If only this man could think of a real defense for me! He looks so shrewd.

  “Well, then,” went on Jephson, in the same hard, searching tone, devoid, as Clyde saw it, of sentiment or pity of any kind, “here’s something else I want to ask you. In all the time that you knew her, either before you were intimate with her or afterwards, did she ever write you a mean or sarcastic or demanding or threatening letter of any kind?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say that she ever did,” replied Clyde, “in fact, I know she didn’t. No, sir. Except for those few last ones, maybe—the very last one.”

  “And you never wrote her any, I suppose?”

  “No, sir, I never wrote her any letters.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she was right there in the factory with me, you see. Besides at the last there, after she went home, I was afraid to.”

  “I see.”

  At the same time, as Clyde now proceeded to point out, and that quite honestly, Roberta could be far from sweet-tempered at times—could in fact be quite determined and even stubborn. And she had paid no least attention to his plea that her forcing him to marry her now would ruin him socially as well as in every other way, and that even in the face of his willingness to work along and pay for her support—an attitude which, as he no
w described it, was what had caused all the trouble—whereas Miss Finchley (and here he introduced an element of reverence and enthusiasm which Jephson was quick to note) was willing to do everything for him.

  “So you really loved that Miss Finchley very much then, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you couldn’t care for Roberta any more after you met her?”

  “No, no. I just couldn’t.”

  “I see,” observed Jephson, solemnly nodding his head, and at the same time meditating on how futile and dangerous, even, it might be to let the jury know that. And then thinking that possibly it were best to follow the previous suggestion of Belknap’s, based on the customary legal proceeding of the time, and claim insanity, or a brain storm, brought about by the terrifying position in which he imagined himself to be. But apart from that he now proceeded:

  “You say something came over you when you were in the boat out there with her on that last day—that you really didn’t know what you were doing at the time that you struck her?”