An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

to be outdone—“you say you didn’t intend to marry her if

you could help it, before you went up there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That she wanted you to but you hadn’t made up your

mind?”

“Yes.”

“Well, do you recall the cook-book and the salt and pepper

shakers and the spoons and knives and so on that she put

in her bag?”

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“Yes, sir. I do.”

“What do you suppose she had in mind when she left Biltz—

with those things in her trunk—that she was going out to

live in some hall bedroom somewhere, unmarried, while

you came to see her once a week or once a month?”

Before Belknap could object, Clyde shot back the proper

answer.

“I can’t say what she had in her mind about that.”

“You couldn’t possibly have told her over the telephone

there at Biltz, for instance—after she wrote you that if you

didn’t come for her she was coming to Lycurgus—that you

would marry her?”

“No, sir—I didn’t.”

“You weren’t mental and moral coward enough to be bullied

into anything like that, were you?”

“I never said I was a mental and moral coward.”

“But you weren’t to be bullied by a girl you had seduced?”

“Well, I couldn’t feel then that I ought to marry her.”

“You didn’t think she’d make as good a match as Miss X?”

“I didn’t think I ought to marry her if I didn’t love her any

more.”

“Not even to save her honor—and your own decency?”

“Well, I didn’t think we could be happy together then.”

“That was before your great change of heart, I suppose.”

“It was before we went to Utica, yes.”

“And while you were still so enraptured with Miss X?”

“I was in love with Miss X—yes.”

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“Do you recall, in one of those letters to you that you never

answered” (and here Mason proceeded to take up and read

from one of the first seven letters), “her writing this to you; ‘I

feel upset and uncertain about everything although I try not

to feel so—now that we have our plan and you are going to

come for me as you said.’ Now just what was she referring

to there when she wrote—‘now that we have our plan’?”

“I don’t know unless it was that I was coming to get her and

take her away somewhere temporarily.”

“Not to marry her, of course.”

“No, I hadn’t said so.”

“But right after that in this same letter she says: ‘On the way

up, instead of coming straight home, I decided to stop at

Homer to see my sister and brother-in-law, since I am not

sure now when I’ll see them again, and I want so much that

they shall see me respectable or never at all any more.’

Now just what do you suppose, she meant by that word

‘respectable’? Living somewhere in secret and unmarried

and having a child while you sent her a little money, and

then coming back maybe and posing as single and

innocent or married and her husband dead—or what? Don’t

you suppose she saw herself married to you, for a time at

least, and the child given a name? That ‘plan’ she mentions

couldn’t have contemplated anything less than that, could

it?”

“Well, maybe as she saw it it couldn’t,” evaded Clyde. “But I

never said I would marry her.”

“Well, well—we’ll let that rest a minute,” went on Mason

doggedly. “But now take this,” and here he began reading

from the tenth letter: “‘It won’t make any difference to you

about your coming a few days sooner than you intended,

will it, dear? Even if we have got to get along on a little less,

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I know we can, for the time I will be with you anyhow,

probably no more than six or eight months at the most. I

agreed to let you go by then, you know, if you want to. I can

be very saving and economical. It can’t be any other way

now, Clyde, although for your own sake I wish it could.’

What do you suppose all that means—‘saving and

economical’—and not letting you go until after eight

months? Living in a hall bedroom and you coming to see

her once a week? Or hadn’t you really agreed to go away

with her and marry her, as she seems to think here?”

“I don’t know unless she thought she could make me,

maybe,” replied Clyde, the while various backwoodsmen

and farmers and jurors actually sniffed and sneered, so

infuriated were they by the phrase “make me” which Clyde

had scarcely noticed. “I never agreed to.”

“Unless she could make you. So that was the way you felt

about it, was it, Griffiths?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’d swear to that as quick as you would to anything

else?”

“Well, I have sworn to it.”

And Mason as well as Belknap and Jephson and Clyde

himself now felt the strong public contempt and rage that

the majority of those present had for him from the start—

now surging and shaking all. It filled the room. Yet before

him were all the hours Mason needed in which he could

pick and choose at random from the mass of testimony as

to just what he would quiz and bedevil and torture Clyde

with next. And so now, looking over his notes—arranged

fan-wise on the table by Earl Newcomb for his convenience

—he now began once more with:

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“Griffiths, in your testimony here yesterday, through which

you were being led by your counsel, Mr. Jephson” (at this

Jephson bowed sardonically). “You talked about that

change of heart that you experienced after you encountered

Roberta Alden once more at Fonda and Utica back there in

July—just as you were starting on this death trip.”

Clyde’s “yes, sir,” came before Belknap could object, but

the latter managed to have “death trip” changed to “trip.”

“Before going up there with her you hadn’t been liking her

as much as you might have. Wasn’t that the way of it?”

“Not as much as I had at one time—no, sir.”

“And just how long—from when to when—was the time in

which you really did like her, before you began to dislike

her, I mean?”

“Well, from the time I first met her until I met Miss X.”

“But not afterwards?”

“Oh, I can’t say not entirely afterwards. I cared for her some

—a good deal, I guess—but still not as much as I had. I felt

more sorry for her than anything else, I suppose.”

“And now, let’s see—that was between December first last

say, and last April or May—or wasn’t it?”

“About that time, I think—yes, sir.”

“Well, during that time—December first to April or May first

you were intimate with her, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though you weren’t caring for her so much.”

“Why—yes, sir,” replied Clyde, hesitating slightly, while the

rurals jerked and craned at this introduction of the sex crime.

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“And yet at nights, and in spite of the fact that she was

alone over there in her little room—as faithful to you, as you

yourself have testified, as any one could be—you went off

to dances, parties, dinners, and automobile rides, while she

sat there.”

“Oh, but I wasn’t off all the time.”

“Oh, weren’t you? But you heard the testimony of Tracy and

Jill Trumbull, and Frederick Sells, and Frank Harriet, and

Burchard Taylor, on this particular point, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, were they all liars, or were they telling the truth?”

“Well, they were telling the truth as near as they could

remember, I suppose.”

“But they couldn’t remember very well—is that it?”

“Well, I wasn’t off all the time. Maybe I was gone two or

three times a week—maybe four sometimes—not more.”

“And the rest you gave to Miss Alden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that what she meant in this letter here?” And here he

took up another letter from the pile of Roberta’s letters, and

opening it and holding it before him, read: “‘Night after

night, almost every night after that dreadful Christmas day

when you left me, I was alone nearly always.’ Is she lying,

or isn’t she?” snapped Mason fiercely, and Clyde, sensing

the danger of accusing Roberta of lying here, weakly and

shamefacedly replied: “No, she isn’t lying. But I did spend

some evenings with her just the same.”

“And yet you heard Mrs. Gilpin and her husband testify here

that night after night from December first on Miss Alden was

mostly always alone in her room and that they felt sorry for

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her and thought it so unnatural and tried to get her to join

them, but she wouldn’t. You heard them testify to that,

didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And yet you insist that you were with her some?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yet at the same time loving and seeking the company of