An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [396]
“I called to her to try to get to the boat—it was moving away—to take hold of it, but she didn’t seem to hear me or understand what I meant. I was afraid to go too near her at first because she was striking out in every direction—and before I could swim ten strokes forward her head had gone down once and come up and then gone down again for a second time. By then the boat had floated all of thirty or forty feet away and I knew that I couldn’t get her into that. And then I decided that if I wanted to save myself I had better swim ashore.”
And once there, as he now narrated, it suddenly occurred to him how peculiar and suspicious were all the circumstances surrounding his present position. He suddenly realized, as he now said, how had the whole thing looked from the beginning. The false registering. The fact his bag was there—hers not. Besides, to return now meant that he would have to explain and it would become generally known— and everything connected with his life would go—Miss X, his work, his social position—all—whereas, if he said nothing (and here it was, and for the first time, as he now swore, that this thought occurred to him), it might be assumed that he too had drowned. In view of this fact and that any physical help he might now give her would not restore her to life, and that acknowledgment would mean only trouble for him and shame for her, he decided to say nothing. And so, to remove all traces, he had taken off his clothes and wrung them out and wrapped them for packing as best he could. Next, having left the tripod on shore with his bag, he decided to hide that, and did. His first straw hat, the one without the lining (but about which absent lining he now declared he knew nothing), had been lost with the overturning of the boat, and so now he had put on the extra one he had with him, although he also had a cap which he might have worn. (He usually carried an extra hat on a trip because so often, it seemed, something happened to one.) Then he had ventured to walk south through the woods toward a railroad which he thought cut through the woods in that direction. He had not known of any automobile road through there then, and as for making for the Cranstons so directly, he confessed quite simply that he would naturally have gone there. They were his friends and he wanted to get off somewhere where he could think about this terrible thing that had descended upon him so suddenly out of a clear sky.
And then having testified to so much—and no more appearing to occur either to Jephson or himself—the former after a pause now turned and said, most distinctly and yet somehow quietly:
“Now, Clyde, you have taken a solemn oath before this jury, this judge, all these people here, and above all your God, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You realize what that means, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“You swear before God that you did not strike Roberta Alden in that boat?”
“I swear. I did not.”
“Or throw her into the lake?”
“I swear it. I did not.”
“Or willfully or willingly in any way attempt to upset that boat or in any other fashion bring about the death that she suffered?”
“I swear it!” cried Clyde, emphatically and emotionally.
“You swear that it was an accident—unpremeditated and undesigned by you?”
“I do,” lied Clyde, who felt that in fighting for his life he was telling a part of the truth, for that accident was unpremeditated and undesigned. It had not been as he had planned and he could swear to that.
And then Jephson, running one of his large strong hands over his face and looking blandly and nonchalantly around upon the court and jury, the while he compressed his thin lips into a long and meaningful line, announced: