An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

does there?”

“No, I don’t see any one on the lake. I saw two men in that

billiard room at the back there, and there was a girl in the

ladies’ room, that was all. Isn’t this water cold?” She had

put her hand over the side and was trailing it in the blue-

black ripples made by his oars.

“Is it? I haven’t felt it yet.”

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He paused in his rowing and put out his hand, then

resumed. He would not row directly to that island to the

south. It was—too far—too early. She might think it odd.

Better a little delay. A little time in which to think—a little

while in which to reconnoiter. Roberta would be wanting to

eat her lunch (her lunch!) and there was a charming looking

point of land there to the west about a mile further on. They

could go there and eat first—or she could—for he would not

be eating to-day. And then—and then——

She was looking at the very same point of land that he was

—a curved horn of land that bent to the south and yet

reached quite far out into the water and combed with tall

pines. And now she added:

“Have you any spot in mind, dear, where we could stop and

eat? I’m getting a little hungry, aren’t you?” (If she would

only not call him dear, here and now!)

The little inn and the boathouse to the north were growing

momentarily smaller,—looking now, like that other boat-

house and pavilion on Crum Lake the day he had first

rowed there, and when he had been wishing that he might

come to such a lake as this in the Adirondacks, dreaming of

such a lake—and wishing to meet such a girl as Roberta—

then—— And overhead was one of those identical woolly

clouds that had sailed above him at Crum Lake on that

fateful day.

The horror of this effort!

They might look for water-lilies here to-day to kill time a

little, before—to kill time … to kill, (God)—he must quit

thinking of that, if he were going to do it at all. He needn’t

be thinking of it now, at any rate.

At the point of land favored by Roberta, into a minute

protected bay with a small, curved, honey-colored beach,

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and safe from all prying eyes north or east. And then he

and she stepping out normally enough. And Roberta, after

Clyde had extracted the lunch most cautiously from his bag,

spreading it on a newspaper on the shore, while he walked

here and there, making strained and yet admiring

comments on the beauty of the scene—the pines and the

curve of this small bay, yet thinking—thinking, thinking of

the island farther on and the bay below that again

somewhere, where somehow, and in the face of a

weakening courage for it, he must still execute this grim

and terrible business before him—not allow this carefully

planned opportunity to go for nothing—if—if—he were to

not really run away and leave all that he most desired to

keep.

And yet the horror of this business and the danger, now that

it was so close at hand—the danger of making a mistake of

some kind—if nothing more, of not upsetting the boat right—

of not being able to—to—oh, God! And subsequently,

maybe, to be proved to be what he would be—then—a

murderer. Arrested! Tried. (He could not, he would not, go

through with it. No, no, no!)

And yet Roberta, sitting here with him now on the sand,

feeling quite at peace with all the world as he could see.

And she was begining to hum a little, and then to make

advisory and practical references to the nature of their

coming adventure together—their material and financial

state from now on—how and where they would go from here

—Syracuse, most likely—since Clyde seemed to have no

objection to that—and what, once there, they would do. For

Roberta had heard from her brother-in-law, Fred Gabel, of a

new collar and shirt factory that was just starting up in

Syracuse. Might it not be possible for Clyde, for the time

being at least, to get himself a position with that firm at

once? And then later, when her own worst trouble was

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over, might not she connect herself with the same

company, or some other? And temporarily, since they had

so little money, could they not take a small room together,

somewhere in some family home, or if he did not like that,

since they were by no means so close temperamentally as

they once had been, then two small adjoining rooms,

maybe. She could still feel his unrelenting opposition under

all this present show of courtesy and consideration.

And he thinking, Oh, well, what difference such talk now?

And whether he agreed or whether he did not. What

difference since he was not going—or she either—that way.

Great God! But here he was talking as though to-morrow

she would be here still. And she would not be.

If only his knees would not tremble so; his hands and face

and body continue so damp.

And after that, farther on down the west shore of this small

lake in this little boat, to that island, with Clyde looking

nervously and wearily here and there to see that there was

no one—no one—not anywhere in sight on land or water—

no one. It was so still and deserted here, thank God. Here—

or anywhere near here might do, really,—if only he had the

courage so to do now, which he had not,—yet. Roberta

trailing her hand in the water, asking him if he thought they

might find some water-lilies or wild flowers somewhere on

shore. Water-lilies! Wild flowers! And he convincing himself

as he went that there were no roads, cabins, tents, paths,

anything in the form of a habitation among these tall, close,

ranking pines—no trace of any little boat on the widespread

surface of this beautiful lake on this beautiful day. Yet might

there not be some lone, solitary hunter and trapper or guide

or fisherman in these woods or along these banks? Might

there not be? And supposing there were one here now

somewhere? And watching!

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Fate!

Destruction!

Death! Yet no sound and no smoke. Only—only—these tall,

dark, green pines—spear-shaped and still, with here and

there a dead one—ashen pale in the hard afternoon sun, its

gaunt, sapless arms almost menacingly outstretched.

Death!

And the sharp metallic cry of a blue-jay speeding in the

depths of these woods. Or the lone and ghostly tap-tap-tap

of some solitary woodpecker, with now and then the red

line of a flying tanager, the yellow and black of a yellow-

shouldered blackbird.

“Oh, the sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home.”

It was Roberta singing cheerfully, one hand in the deep

blue water.

And then a little later—“I’ll be there Sunday if you will,” one

of the popular dance pieces of the day.

And then at last, after fully an hour of rowing, brooding,

singing, stopping to look at some charming point of land,

reconnoitering some receding inlet which promised water-

lilies, and with Roberta already saying that they must watch

the time and not stay out too long,—the bay, south of the

island itself—a beautiful and yet most funereally pine-

encircled and land delimited bit of water—more like a

smaller lake, connected by an inlet or passage to the larger

one, and yet itself a respectable body of water of perhaps

twenty acres of surface and almost circular in form. The

manner in which to the east, the north, the south, the west,

even, except for the passage by which the island to the

north of it was separated from the mainland, this pool or

tarn was encircled by trees! And cat-tails and water-lilies

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here and there—a few along its shores. And somehow

suggesting an especially arranged pool or tarn to which one

who was weary of life and cares—anxious to be away from

the strife and contentions of the world, might most wisely

and yet gloomily repair.

And as they glided into this, this still dark water seemed to

grip Clyde as nothing here or anywhere before this ever had

—to change his mood. For once here he seemed to be

fairly pulled or lured along into it, and having encircled its

quiet banks, to be drifting, drifting—in endless space where

was no end of anything—no plots—no plans—no practical

problems to be solved—nothing. The insidious beauty of

this place! Truly, it seemed to mock him—this strangeness

—this dark pool, surrounded on all sides by those

wonderful, soft, fir trees. And the water itself looking like a

huge, black pearl cast by some mighty hand, in anger

possibly, in sport or phantasy maybe, into the bosom of this

valley of dark, green plush—and which seemed bottomless

as he gazed into it.