An American tragedy, v. 2

by Theodore Dreiser

And all congratulating Mason on the masterly way he had presented his case. And Clyde, greatly reduced and saddened by the realization that his mother would be reading all that had transpired the day before. He must ask Jephson to please wire her so that she would not believe it. And Frank and Julia and Esta. And no doubt Sondra reading all this, too, to-day, yet through all these days, all these black nights, not one word! A reference now and then in the papers to a Miss X but at no time a single correct picture of her. That was what a family with money could do for you. And on this very day his defense would begin and he would have to go forward as the only witness of any import. Yet asking himself, how could he? The crowd. Its temper. The nervous strain of its unbelief and hatred by now. And after Belknap was through with him, then Mason. It was all right for Belknap and Jephson. They were in no danger of being tortured, as he was certain of being tortured.

Yet in the face of all this, and after an hour spent with Jephson and Belknap in his cell, finding himself back in the courtroom, under the persistent gaze of this nondescript jury and the tensely interested audience. And now Belknap rising before the jury and after solemnly contemplating each one of them, beginning:

"Gentlemen—somewhat over three weeks ago you were told by the district attorney that because of the evidence he was about to present he would insist that you jurors must find the prisoner at the bar guilty of the crime of which he stands indicted. It has been a long and tedious procedure since then. The foolish and inexperienced, yet in every case innocent and unintentional, acts of a boy of fifteen or sixteen have been gone into before you gentlemen as though they were the deeds of a hardened criminal, and plainly with the intention of prejudicing you against this defendant, who, with the exception of one misinterpreted accident in Kansas City—the most brutally and savagely misinterpreted accident it has ever been my professional misfortune to encounter—can be said to have lived as clean and energetic and blameless and innocent a life as any boy of his years anywhere. You have heard him called a man—a bearded man—a criminal and a crime-soaked product of the darkest vomiting of Hell. And yet he is but twenty-one. And there he sits. And I venture to say that if by some magic of the spoken word I could at this moment strip from your eye the substance of all the cruel thoughts and emotions which have been attributed to him by a clamorous and mistaken and I might say (if I had not been warned not to do so), politically biased prosecution, you could no more see him in the light that you do than you could rise out of that box and fly through those windows.

"Gentlemen of the jury, I have no doubt that you, as well as the district attorney and even the audience, have wondered how under the downpour of such linked and at times almost venomous testimony, I or my colleague or this defendant could have remained as calm and collected as we have." (And here he waved with grave ceremoniousness in the direction of his partner, who was still awaiting his own hour.) "Yet, as you have seen, we have not only maintained but enjoyed the serenity of those who not only feel but know that they have the right and just end of any legal contest. You recall, of course, the words of the Avon bard—'Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just.'

"In fact, we know, as the prosecution in this case unfortunately does not, the peculiarly strange and unexpected circumstances by which this dramatic and most unfortunate death came about. And before we are through you shall see for yourselves. In the meantime, let me tell you, gentlemen, that since this case opened I have believed that even apart from the light we propose to throw on this disheartening tragedy, you gentlemen are not at all sure that a brutal or bestial crime can be laid upon the shoulders of this defendant. You cannot be! For after all, love is love, and the ways of passion and the destroying emotion of love in either sex are not those of the ordinary criminal. Only remember, we were once all boys. And those of you who are grown women were girls, and know well—oh, how very well—the fevers and aches of youth that have nothing to do with a later practical life. 'Judge not, lest ye be judged and with whatsoever measure ye mete, it will be measured unto ye again.'

"We admit the existence and charm and potent love spell of the mysterious Miss X and her letters, which we have not been able to introduce here, and their effect on this defendant. We admit his love for this Miss X, and we propose to show by witnesses of our own, as well as by analyzing some of the testimony that has been offered here, that perhaps the sly and lecherous overtures with which this defendant is supposed to have lured the lovely soul now so sadly and yet so purely accidentally blotted out, as we shall show, from the straight and narrow path of morality, were perhaps no more sly nor lecherous than the proceedings of any youth who finds the girl of his choice surrounded by those who see life only in the terms of the strictest and narrowest moral régime. And, gentlemen, as your own county district attorney has told you, Roberta Alden loved Clyde Griffiths. At the very opening of this relationship which has since proved to be a tragedy, this dead girl was deeply and irrevocably in love with him, just as at the time he imagined that he was in love with her. And people who are deeply and earnestly in love with each other are not much concerned with the opinions of others in regard to themselves. They are in love—and that is sufficient!

"But, gentlemen, I am not going to dwell on that phase of the question so much as on this explanation which we are about to offer. Why did Clyde Griffiths go to Fonda, or to Utica, or to Grass Lake, or to Big Bittern, at all? Do you think we have any reason for or any desire to deny or discolor in any way the fact of his having done so, or with Roberta Alden either? Or why, after the suddenness and seeming strangeness and mystery of her death, he should have chosen to walk away as he did? If you seriously think so for one fraction of a moment, you are the most hopelessly deluded and mistaken dozen jurymen it has been our privilege to argue before in all our twenty-seven years' contact with juries.

"Gentlemen, I have said to you that Clyde Griffiths is not guilty, and he is not. You may think, perhaps, that we ourselves must be believing in his guilt. But you are wrong. The peculiarity, the strangeness of life, is such that oftentimes a man may be accused of something that he did not do and yet every circumstance surrounding him at the time seem to indicate that he did do it. There have been many very pathetic and very terrible instances of miscarriages of justice through circumstantial evidence alone. Be sure! Oh, be very sure that no such mistaken judgment based on any local or religious or moral theory of conduct or bias, because of presumed irrefutable evidence, is permitted to prejudice you, so that without meaning to, and with the best and highest-minded intentions, you yourselves see a crime, or the intention to commit a crime, when no such crime or any such intention ever truly or legally existed or lodged in the mind or acts of this defendant. Oh, be sure! Be very, very sure!"

And here he paused to rest and seemed to give himself over to deep and even melancholy thought, while Clyde, heartened by this shrewd and defiant beginning was inclined to take more courage. But now Belknap was talking again, and he must listen—not lose a word of all this that was so heartening.

"When Roberta Alden's body was taken out of the water at Big Bittern, gentlemen, it was examined by a physician. He declared at the time that the girl had been drowned. He will be here and testify and the defendant shall have the benefit of that testimony, and you must render it to him.