An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [454]
He pressed a button. His secretary entered. It was plain that the interview was ended. Mrs. Griffiths, violently shaken and deeply depressed by the peculiar silence and evasion of McMillan at the crucial moment of this interview when the Governor had asked such an all important and direct question as to the guilt of her son, was still unable to say a word more. But now what? Which way? To whom to turn? God, and God only. She and Clyde must find in their Creator the solace for his failure and death in this world. And as she was thinking and still weeping, the Reverend McMillan approached and gently led her from the room.
When she was gone the Governor finally turned to his secretary:
“Never in my life have I faced a sadder duty. It will always be with me.” He turned and gazed out upon a snowy February landscape.
And after this but two more weeks of life for Clyde, during which time, and because of his ultimate decision conveyed to him first by McMillan, but in company with his mother, from whose face Clyde could read all, even before McMillan spoke, and from whom he heard all once more as to his need of refuge and peace in God, his Savior, he now walked up and down his cell, unable to rest for any length of time anywhere. For, because of this final completely convincing sensation, that very soon he was to die, he felt the need, even now of retracing his unhappy life. His youth. Kansas City. Chicago. Lycurgus. Roberta and Sondra. How swiftly they and all that was connected with them passed in review. The few, brief, bright intense moments. His desire for more—more—that intense desire he had felt there in Lycurgus after Sondra came and now this, this! And now even this was ending—this—this— Why, he had scarcely lived at all as yet—and these last two years so miserably between these crushing walls. And of this life but fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight of the filtering and now feverish days left. They were going—going. But life—life—how was one to do without that—the beauty of the days— of the sun and rain—of work love, energy, desire. Oh, he really did not want to die. He did not. Why say to him so constantly as his mother and the Reverend McMillan now did to resolve all his care in divine mercy and think only of God, when now, now, was all? And yet the Reverend McMillan insisting that only in Christ and the hereafter was real peace. Oh, yes—but just the same, before the Governor might he not have said—might he not have said that he was not guilty—or at least not entirely guilty—if only he had seen it that way—that time—and then—then—why then the Governor might have commuted his sentence to life imprisonment—might he not? For he had asked his mother what the Reverend McMillan had said to the Governor—(yet without saying to her that he had ever confessed all to him), and she had replied that he had told him how sincerely he had humbled himself before the Lord—but not that he was not guilty. And Clyde, feeling how strange it was that the Reverend McMillan could not conscientiously bring himself to do more than that for him. How sad. How hopeless. Would no one ever understand—or give him credit for his human—if all too human and perhaps wrong hungers—yet from which so many others—along with himself suffered?
But worse yet, if anything, Mrs. Griffiths, because of what the Reverend McMillan had said—or failed to say, in answer to the final question asked by Governor Waltham—and although subsequently in answer to an inquiry of her own, he had repeated the statement, she was staggered by the thought that perhaps, after all, Clyde was as guilty as at first she had feared. And because of that asking at one point:
“Clyde, if there is anything you have not confessed, you must confess it before you go.”
“I have confessed everything to God and to Mr. McMillan, Mother. Isn’t that enough?”
“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