An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

very much, because I didn’t really kill her. That’s right, I didn’t. Yet his skin blue and the lids of his eyes red and puffy and his hands trembling slightly in spite of himself. And Jephson, his long, tensile and dynamic body like that of a swaying birch, turning toward him and looking fixedly into Clyde’s brown eyes with his blue ones, beginning:

“Now, Clyde, the first thing we want to do is make sure that the jury and everyone else hears our questions and answers. And next, when you’re all set, you’re going to begin with your life as you remember it⁠—where you were born, where you came from, what your father did and your mother, too, and finally, what you did and why, from the time you went to work until now. I may interrupt you with a few questions now and then, but in the main I’m going to let you tell it, because I know you can tell it better than anyone.” Yet in order to reassure Clyde and to make him know each moment that he was there⁠—a wall, a bulwark, between him and the eager, straining, unbelieving and hating crowd⁠—he now drew nearer, at times so close as to put one foot on the witness stand, or if not that to lean forward and lay a hand on the arm of the chair in which Clyde sat. And all the while saying, “Yay-uss⁠—Yay-uss.” “And then what?” “And then?” And invariably at the strong and tonic or protective sound of his voice Clyde stirring as with a bolstering force and finding himself able, and without shaking or quavering, to tell the short but straitened story of his youth.

“I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My parents were conducting a mission there at that time and used to hold open air meetings⁠ ⁠…”

XXIV

Clyde’s testimony proceeded to the point where the family had removed from Quincy, Illinois (a place resorted to on account of some Salvation Army work offered his father and mother), to Kansas City, where from his twelfth to his fifteenth year he had browsed about trying to find something to do while still resenting the combination of school and religious work expected of him.

“Were you up with your classes in the public schools?”

“No, sir. We had moved too much.”

“In what grade were you when you were twelve years old?”

“Well, I should have been in the seventh but I was only in the sixth. That’s why I didn’t like it.”

“And how about the religious work of your parents?”

“Well, it was all right⁠—only I never did like going out nights on the street corners.”

And so on, through five-and-ten cent store, soda and newspaper carrier jobs, until at last he was a bellhop at the Green-Davidson, the finest hotel in Kansas City, as he informed them.

“But now, Clyde,” proceeded Jephson who, fearful lest Mason on the cross-examination and in connection with Clyde’s credibility as a witness should delve into the matter of the wrecked car and the slain child in Kansas City and so mar the effect of the story he was now about to tell, was determined to be beforehand in this. Decidedly, by questioning him properly he could explain and soften all that, whereas if left to Mason it could be tortured into something exceedingly dark indeed. And so now he continued:

“And how long did you work there?”

“A little over a year.”

“And why did you leave?”

“Well, it was on account of an accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

And here Clyde, previously prepared and drilled as to all this plunged into the details which led up to and included the death of the little girl and his flight⁠—which Mason, true enough, had been intending to bring up. But, now, as he listened to all this, he merely shook his head and grunted ironically, “He’d better go into all that,” he commented. And Jephson, sensing the import of what he was doing⁠—how most likely he was, as he would have phrased it, “spiking” one of Mr. Mason’s best guns, continued with:

“How old were you then, Clyde, did you say?”

“Between seventeen and eighteen.”

“And do you mean to tell me,” he continued, after he had finished with all of the questions he could think of in connection with all this, “that you didn’t know that you might have gone back there, since you were not the one who took the car, and after explaining it all, been paroled in the custody of your parents?”

“Object!” shouted Mason. “There’s no evidence here to show that he could have returned to Kansas City and been paroled in the custody of his parents.”

“Objection sustained!” boomed the judge from his high throne. “The defense will please confine itself a little more closely to the letter of the testimony.”

“Exception,” noted Belknap, from his seat.

“No, sir. I didn’t know that,” replied Clyde, just the same.

“Anyhow was that the reason after you got away that you changed your name to Tenet as you told me?” continued Jephson.

“Yes, sir.”

“By the way, just where did you get that name of Tenet, Clyde?”

“It was the name of a boy I used to play with in Quincy.”

“Was he a good boy?”

“Object!” called Mason, from his chair. “Incompetent, immaterial, irrelevant.”

“Oh, he might have associated with a good boy in spite of what you would like to have the jury believe, and in that sense it is very relevant,” sneered Jephson.

“Objection sustained!” boomed Justice Oberwaltzer.

“But didn’t it occur to you at the time that he might object or that you might be doing him an injustice in using his name to cover the identity of a fellow who was running away?”

“No, sir⁠—I thought there were lots of Tenets.”

An indulgent smile might have been expected at this point, but so antagonistic and bitter was the general public toward Clyde that such levity was out of the question in this courtroom.

“Now listen, Clyde,” continued Jephson, having, as he had just seen, failed to soften the mood of the throng, “you cared for your mother, did