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

Objection and argument finally ending in the question being allowed.

“Yes, sir, certainly I cared for her,” replied Clyde⁠—but after a slight hesitancy which was noticeable⁠—a tightening of the throat and a swelling and sinking of the chest as he exhaled and inhaled.

“Much?”

“Yes, sir⁠—much.” He didn’t venture to look at anyone now.

“Hadn’t she always done as much as she could for you, in her way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, Clyde, how was it, after all that, and even though that dreadful accident had occurred, you could run away and stay away so long without so much as one word to tell her that you were by no means as guilty as you seemed and that she shouldn’t worry because you were working and trying to be a good boy again?”

“But I did write her⁠—only I didn’t sign my name.”

“I see. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. I sent her a little money. Ten dollars once.”

“But you didn’t think of going back at all?”

“No, sir. I was afraid that if I went back they might arrest me.”

“In other words,” and here Jephson emphasized this with great clearness, “you were a moral and mental coward, as Mr. Belknap, my colleague, said.”

“I object to this interpretation of this defendant’s testimony for the benefit of the jury!” interrupted Mason.

“This defendant’s testimony really needs no interpretation. It is very plain and honest, as anyone can see,” quickly interjected Jephson.

“Objection sustained!” called the judge. “Proceed. Proceed.”

“And it was because you were a moral and mental coward as I see it, Clyde⁠—not that I am condemning you for anything that you cannot help. (After all, you didn’t make yourself, did you?)”

But this was too much, and the judge here cautioned him to use more discretion in framing his future questions.

“Then you went about in Alton, Peoria, Bloomington, Milwaukee, and Chicago⁠—hiding away in small rooms in back streets and working as a dishwasher or soda fountain man, or a driver, and changing your name to Tenet when you really might have gone back to Kansas City and resumed your old place?” continued Jephson.

“I object! I object!” yelled Mason. “There is no evidence here to show that he could have gone there and resumed his old place.”

“Objection sustained,” ruled Oberwaltzer, although at the time in Jephson’s pocket was a letter from Francis X. Squires, formerly captain of the bellhops of the Green-Davidson at the time Clyde was there, in which he explained that apart from the one incident in connection with the purloined automobile, he knew nothing derogatory to Clyde; and that always previously, he had found him prompt, honest, willing, alert and well-mannered. Also that at the time the accident occurred, he himself had been satisfied that Clyde could have been little else than one of those led and that if he had returned and properly explained matters he would have been reinstated. It was irrelevant.

Thereafter followed Clyde’s story of how, having fled from the difficulties threatening him in Kansas City and having wandered here and there for two years, he had finally obtained a place in Chicago as a driver and later as a bellboy at the Union League, and also how while still employed at the first of these places he had written his mother and later at her request was about to write his uncle, when, accidentally meeting him at the Union League, he was invited by him to come to Lycurgus. And thereupon, in their natural order, followed all of the details, of how he had gone to work, been promoted and instructed by his cousin and the foreman as to the various rules, and then later how he had met Roberta and still later Miss X. But in between came all the details as to how and why he had courted Roberta Alden, and how and why, having once secured her love he felt and thought himself content⁠—but how the arrival of Miss X, and her overpowering fascination for him, had served completely to change all his notions in regard to Roberta, and although he still admired her, caused him to feel that never again as before could he desire to marry her.

But Jephson, anxious to divert the attention of the jury from the fact that Clyde was so very fickle⁠—a fact too trying to be so speedily introduced into the case⁠—at once interposed with:

“Clyde! You really loved Roberta Alden at first, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, you must have known, or at least you gathered from her actions, from the first, didn’t you, that she was a perfectly good and innocent and religious girl.”

“Yes, sir, that’s how I felt about her,” replied Clyde, repeating what he had been told to say.

“Well, then, just roughly now, without going into detail, do you suppose you could explain to yourself and this jury how and why and where and when those changes came about which led to that relationship which we all of us” (and here he looked boldly and wisely and coldly out over the audience and then afterwards upon the jurors) “deplore. How was it, if you thought so highly of her at first that you could so soon afterwards descend to this evil relationship? Didn’t you know that all men, and all women also, view it as wrong, and outside of marriage unforgivable⁠—a statutory crime?”

The boldness and ironic sting of this was sufficient to cause at first a hush, later a slight nervous tremor on the part of the audience which, Mason as well as Justice Oberwaltzer noting, caused both to frown apprehensively. Why, this brazen young cynic! How dared he, via innuendo and in the guise of serious questioning, intrude such a thought as this, which by implication at least picked at the very foundations of society⁠—religious and moral! At the same time there he was, standing boldly and leoninely, the while Clyde replied:

“Yes, sir, I suppose I did⁠—certainly⁠—but I didn’t try to seduce her at first or at any time, really. I was in love with her.”

“You were in love with her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very