An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [320]
“Don’t want to go, eh?” exclaimed Mason, pausing as he heard this. “It would hurt your pride, would it, to have ‘em know? Well, then, supposing you just answer some of the things I want to know—and come clean and quick, or off we go—and that without one more moment’s delay! Now, will you answer or won’t you?” And again he turned to confront Clyde, who, with lips trembling and eyes confused and wavering, nervously and emphatically announced:
“Of course I knew her. Of course I did. Sure! Those letters show that. But what of it? I didn’t kill her. And I didn’t go up there with her with any intention of killing her, either. I didn’t. I didn’t, I tell you! It was all an accident. I didn’t even want to take her up there. She wanted me to go—to go away with her somewhere, because—because, well you know—her letters show. And I was only trying to get her to go off somewhere by herself, so she would let me alone, because I didn’t want to marry her. That’s all. And I took her out there, not to kill her at all, but to try to persuade her, that’s all. And I didn’t upset the boat—at least, I didn’t mean to. The wind blew my hat off, and we—she and I—got up at the same time to reach for it and the boat upset—that’s all. And the side of it hit her on the head. I saw it, only I was too frightened the way she was struggling about in the water to go near her, because I was afraid that if I did she might drag me down. And then she went down. And I swam ashore. And that’s the God’s truth!”
His face, as he talked, had suddenly become all flushed, and his hands also. Yet his eyes were tortured, terrified pools of misery. He was thinking—but maybe there wasn’t any wind that afternoon and maybe they would find that out. Or the tripod hidden under a log. If they found that, wouldn’t they think he hit her with that? He was wet and trembling.
But already Mason was beginning to question him again.
“Now, let’s see as to this a minute. You say you didn’t take her up there with any intention of killing her?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Well, then, how was it that you decided to write your name two different ways on those registers up there at Big Bittern and Grass Lake?”
“Because I didn’t want any one to know that I was up there with her.”
“Oh, I see. Didn’t want any scandal in connection with the condition she was in?”
“No, sir. Yes, sir, that is.”
“But you didn’t mind if her name was scandalized in case she was found afterwards?”
“But I didn’t know she was going to be drowned,” replied Clyde, slyly and shrewdly, sensing the trap in time.
“But you did know that you yourself weren’t coming back, of course. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Why, no, sir, I didn’t know that I wasn’t coming back. I thought I was.”
“Pretty clever. Pretty clever,” thought Mason to himself, but not saying so, and then, rapidly: “And so in order to make everything easy and natural as possible for you to come back, you took your own bag with you and left hers up there. Is that the way? How about that?”
“But I didn’t take it because I was going away. We decided to put our lunch in it.”
“We, or you?”
“We.”
“And so you had to carry that big bag in order to take a little lunch along, eh? Couldn’t you have taken it in a paper, or in her bag?”
“Well, her bag was full, and I didn’t like to carry anything in a paper.”
“Oh, I see. Too proud and sensitive, eh? But not too proud to carry a heavy bag all the way, say twelve miles, in the night to Three Mile Bay, and not ashamed to be seen doing it, either, were you?”
“Well, after she was drowned and I didn’t want to be known as having been up there with her, and had to go along—”
He paused while Mason merely looked at him, thinking of the many, many questions he wanted to ask him—so many, many more, and which, as he knew or guessed, would be impossible for him to explain. Yet it was getting late, and back in the camp were Clyde