An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser (librera reader txt) 📗

seeking a religious school in which to teach somewhere⁠—while nursing Asa. But she was asking the Rev. Duncan McMillan, a young minister whom she had encountered in Syracuse, in the course of her work there, to come and see him. He was so spiritual and so kindly. And she was sure, if he would but come, that Clyde would find him a helpful and a strong support in these, his dark and weary hours when she could no longer be with him herself.

For while Mrs. Griffiths was first canvassing the churches and ministers of this section for aid for her son, and getting very little from any quarter, she had met the Rev. Duncan McMillan in Syracuse, where he was conducting an independent, nonsectarian church. He was a young, and like herself or Asa, unordained minister or evangelist of, however, far stronger and more effective temperament religiously. At the time Mrs. Griffiths appeared on the scene, he had already read much concerning Clyde and Roberta⁠—and was fairly well satisfied that, by the verdict arrived at, justice had probably been done. However, because of her great sorrow and troubled search for aid he was greatly moved.

He, himself, was a devoted son. And possessing a highly poetic and emotional though so far repressed or sublimated sex nature, he was one who, out of many in this northern region, had been touched and stirred by the crime of which Clyde was presumed to be guilty. Those highly emotional and tortured letters of Roberta’s! Her seemingly sad life at Lycurgus and Biltz! How often he had thought of those before ever he had encountered Mrs. Griffiths. The simple and worthy virtues which Roberta and her family had seemingly represented in that romantic, pretty country world from which they had derived. Unquestionably Clyde was guilty. And yet here, suddenly, Mrs. Griffiths, very lorn and miserable and maintaining her son’s innocence. At the same time there was Clyde in his cell doomed to die. Was it possible that by any strange freak or circumstance⁠—a legal mistake had been made and Clyde was not as guilty as he appeared?

The temperament of McMillan was exceptional⁠—tense, exotic. A present hour St. Bernard, Savonarola, St. Simeon, Peter the Hermit. Thinking of life, thought, all forms and social structures as the word, the expression, the breath of God. No less. Yet room for the Devil and his anger⁠—the expelled Lucifer⁠—going to and fro in the earth. Yet, thinking on the Beatitudes, on the Sermon on the Mount, on St. John and his direct seeing and interpretation of Christ and God. “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth.” A strange, strong, tense, confused, merciful and too, after his fashion beautiful soul; sorrowing with misery yearning toward an impossible justice.

Mrs. Griffiths in her talks with him had maintained that he was to remember that Roberta was not wholly guiltless. Had she not sinned with her son? And how was he to exculpate her entirely? A great legal mistake. Her son was being most unjustly executed⁠—and by the pitiful but none-the-less romantic and poetic letters of this girl which should never have been poured forth upon a jury of men at all. They were, as she now maintained, incapable of judging justly or fairly where anything sad in connection with a romantic and pretty girl was concerned. She had found that to be true in her mission work.

And this idea now appealed to the Rev. Duncan as important and very likely true. And perhaps, as she now contended, if only some powerful and righteous emissary of God would visit Clyde and through the force of his faith and God’s word make him see⁠—which she was sure he did not yet, and which she in her troubled state, and because she was his mother, could not make him⁠—the blackness and terror of his sin with Roberta as it related to his immortal soul here and hereafter⁠—then in gratitude to, reverence and faith in God, would be washed away, all his iniquity, would it not? For irrespective of whether he had committed the crime now charged against him or not⁠—and she was convinced that he had not⁠—was he not, nevertheless, in the shadow of the electric chair⁠—in danger at any time through death (even before a decision should be reached) of being called before his maker⁠—and with the deadly sin of adultery, to say nothing of all his lies and false conduct, not only in connection with Roberta but that other girl there in Lycurgus, upon him? And by conversion and contrition should he not be purged of this? If only his soul were saved⁠—she and he too would be at peace in this world.

And after a first and later a second pleading letter from Mrs. Griffiths, in which, after she had arrived at Denver, she set forth Clyde’s loneliness and need of counsel and aid, the Rev. Duncan setting forth for Auburn. And once there⁠—having made it clear to the warden what his true purpose was⁠—the spiritual salvation of Clyde’s soul, for his own, as well as his mother and God’s sake, he was at once admitted to the death house and to Clyde’s presence⁠—the very door of his cell, where he paused and looked through, observing Clyde lying most wretchedly on his cot trying to read. And then McMillan outlining his tall, thin figure against the bars and without introduction of any kind, beginning, his head bowed in prayer:

“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.”

“Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.”

“For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

“Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest and be clear when Thou judgest.”

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

“Behold, Thou desireth truth in the inward parts; and in the hidden