An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [377]
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 waiting 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