An American tragedy, v. 2

by Theodore Dreiser

"No, Clyde. You have told the world that you are innocent. But if you are not you must say so."

"But if my conscience tells me that I am right, is not that enough?"

"No, not if God's word says differently, Clyde," replied Mrs. Griffiths nervously—and with great inward spiritual torture. But he chose to say nothing further at that time. How could he discuss with his mother or the world the strange shadings which in his confession and subsequent talks with the Reverend McMillan he had not been able to solve. It was not to be done.

And because of that refusal on her son's part to confide in her, Mrs. Griffiths, tortured, not only spiritually but personally. Her own son—and so near death and not willing to say what already apparently he had said to Mr. McMillan. Would not God ever be done with this testing her? And yet on account of what McMillan had already said,—that he considered Clyde, whatever his past sins, contrite and clean before the Lord—a youth truly ready to meet his Maker—she was prone to rest. The Lord was great! He was merciful. In His bosom was peace. What was death—what life—to one whose heart and mind were at peace with Him? It was nothing. A few years (how very few) and she and Asa and after them, his brothers and sisters, would come to join him—and all his miseries here would be forgotten. But without peace in the Lord—the full and beautiful realization of His presence, love, care and mercy...! She was tremulous at moments now in her spiritual exaltation—no longer quite normal—as Clyde could see and feel. But also by her prayers and anxiety as to his spiritual welfare, he was also able to see how little, really, she had ever understood of his true moods and aspirations. He had longed for so much there in Kansas City and he had had so little. Things—just things—had seemed so very important to him—and he had so resented being taken out on the street as he had been, before all the other boys and girls, many of whom had all the things that he so craved, and when he would have been glad to have been anywhere else in the world than out there—on the street! That mission life that to his mother was so wonderful, yet, to him, so dreary! But was it wrong for him to feel so? Had it been? Would the Lord resent it now? And, maybe, she was right as to her thoughts about him. Unquestionably he would have been better off if he had followed her advice. But how strange it was, that to his own mother, and even now in these closing hours, when above all things he craved sympathy—but more than sympathy, true and deep understanding—even now—and as much as she loved and sympathized with, and was seeking to aid him with all her strength in her stern and self-sacrificing way,—still he could not turn to her now and tell her—his own mother, just how it all happened. It was as though there was an unsurmountable wall or impenetrable barrier between them, built by the lack of understanding—for it was just that. She would never understand his craving for ease and luxury, for beauty, for love—his particular kind of love that went with show, pleasure, wealth, position, his eager and immutable aspirations and desires. She could not understand these things. She would look on all of it as sin—evil, selfishness. And in connection with all the fatal steps involving Roberta and Sondra, as adultery—unchastity—murder, even. And she would and did expect him to be terribly sorry and wholly repentant, when, even now, and for all he had said to the Reverend McMillan and to her, he could not feel so—not wholly so—although great was his desire now to take refuge in God, but better yet, if it were only possible, in her own understanding and sympathetic heart. If it were only possible.

Lord, it was all so terrible! He was so alone, even in these last few and elusive hours (the swift passing of the days), with his mother and also the Reverend McMillan here with him, but neither understanding.

But, apart from all this and much worse, he was locked up here and they would not let him go. There was a system—a horrible routine system—as long since he had come to feel it to be so. It was iron. It moved automatically like a machine without the aid or the hearts of men. These guards! They with their letters, their inquiries, their pleasant and yet really hollow words, their trips to do little favors, or to take the men in and out of the yard or to their baths—they were iron, too—mere machines, automatons, pushing and pushing and yet restraining and restraining one—within these walls, as ready to kill as to favor in case of opposition—but pushing, pushing, pushing—always toward that little door over there, from which there was no escape—no escape—just on and on—until at last they would push him through it—never to return! Never to return!

Each time he thought of this he arose and walked the floor. Afterwards, usually, he resumed the puzzle of his own guilt. He tried to think of Roberta and the evil he had done her, to read the Bible—even—lying on his face on the iron cot—repeating over and over: "Lord, give me peace. Lord, give me light. Lord, give me strength to resist any evil thoughts that I should not have. I know I am not wholly white. Oh, no. I know I plotted evil. Yes, yes, I know that. I confess. But must I really die now? Is there no help? Will you not help me, Lord? Will you not manifest yourself, as my mother says you will—for me? Will you get the Governor to change my sentence before the final moment to life imprisonment? Will you get the Reverend McMillan to change his views and go to him, and my mother, too? I will drive out all sinful thoughts. I will be different. Oh, yes, I will, if you will only spare me. Do not let me die now—so soon. Do not. I will pray. Yes, I will. Give me the strength to understand and believe—and pray. Oh, do!"

It was like this in those short, horrible days between the return of his mother and the Reverend McMillan from their final visit to the Governor and in his last hour that Clyde thought and prayed—yet finally in a kind of psychic terror, evoked by his uncertainty as to the meaning of the hereafter, his certainty of death, and the faith and emotions of his mother, as well as those of the Reverend McMillan, who was about every day with his interpretations of divine mercy and his exhortations as to the necessity of complete faith and reliance upon it, he, himself coming at last to believe, not only must he have faith but that he had it—and peace—complete and secure. In that state, and at the request of the Reverend McMillan, and his mother, finally composing, with the personal aid and supervision of McMillan, who changed some of the sentences in his presence and with his consent, an address to the world, and more particularly to young men of his own years, which read:

In the shadow of the Valley of Death it is my desire to do everything that would remove any doubt as to my having found Jesus Christ, the personal Savior and unfailing friend. My one regret at this time is that I have not given Him the preëminence in my life while I had the opportunity to work for Him.

If I could only say some one thing that would draw young men to Him I would deem it the greatest privilege ever granted me. But all I can now say is, "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day"