An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [332]
And Samuel Griffiths after meditating on this reference to his earlier sympathetic folly now giving Gilbert a most suggestive and intensely troubled look, which said: Are we here to discuss the folly of my original, if foolish, good intentions, or the present crisis? And Gilbert thinking: The murderer! And that wretched little show-off, Sondra Finchley, trying to make something of him in order to spite me, Gilbert, principally, and so getting herself smirched. The little fool! But it served her right. She would get her share of this now. Only it would cause him and his father and all of them infinite trouble also. For was this not an ineradicable stain which was likely to defile all—himself, his fiancee, Bella, Myra, his parents—and perhaps cost them their position here in Lycurgus society? The tragedy! Maybe an execution! And in this family!
Yet Samuel Griffiths, on his part, going back in his mind to all that had occurred since Clyde had arrived in Lycurgus.
His being left to work in that basement at first and ignored by the family. Left to his own devices for fully eight months. Might not that have been at least a contributing cause to all this horror? And then being put over all those girls! Was not that a mistake? He could see all this now clearly, although by no means condoning Clyde’s deed in any way—far from it. The wretchedness of such a mind as that—the ungoverned and carnal desires! The uncontrollable brutality of seducing that girl and then because of Sondra—the pleasant, agreeable little Sondra—plotting to get rid of her! And now in jail, and offering no better explanation of all the amazing circumstances, as reported by Smillie, than that he had not intended to kill her at all—had not even plotted to do so—that the wind had blown his hat off! How impossibly weak! And with no suitable explanation for the two hats, or the missing suit, or of not going to the aid of the drowning girl. And those unexplained marks on her face. How strongly all these things pointed to his guilt.
“For God’s sake,” exclaimed Gilbert, “hasn’t he anything better than that to offer, the little fool!” And Smillie replied that that was all he could get him to say, and that Mr. Mason was absolutely and quite dispassionately convinced of his guilt. “Dreadful! Dreadful!” put in Samuel. “I really can’t grasp it yet. I can’t! It doesn’t seem possible that any one of my blood could be guilty of such a thing!” And then getting up and walking the floor in real and crushing distress and fear. His family! Gilbert and his future! Bella, with all her ambitions and dreams! And Sondra! And Finchley!
He clinched his hands. He knitted his brows and tightened his lips. He looked at Smillie, who, immaculate and sleek, showed nevertheless the immense strain that was on him, shaking his head dismally whenever Griffiths looked at him.
And then after nearly an hour and a half more of such questioning and requestioning as to the possibility of some other interpretation than the data furnished by Smillie would permit, Griffiths, senior, pausing and declaring: “Well, it does look bad, I must say. Still, in the face of what you tell me, I can’t find it in me to condemn completely without more knowledge than we have here. There may be some other facts not as yet come to light—he won’t talk, you say, about most things—some little details we don’t know about—some slight excuse of some kind—for without that this does appear to be a most atrocious crime. Has Mr. Brookhart got in from Boston?”
“Yes, sir, he’s here,” replied Gilbert. “He telephoned Mr. Smillie.”
“Well, have him come out here at two this afternoon to see me. I’m too tired to talk more about this right now. Tell him all that you have told me, Smillie. And then come back here with him at two. It may be that he will have some suggestion to make that will be of value to us, although just what I can’t see. Only one thing I want to say—I hope he isn’t guilty. And I want every proper step taken to discover whether he is or not, and if not, to defend him to the limit of the law. But no more than that. No trying to save anybody who is guilty of such a thing as this