An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [394]
“However, in connection with this last statement, there is another which must be made as a preface to all that is to follow.
“Gentlemen of the jury, the individual who is on trial here for his life is a mental as well as a moral coward—no more and no less— not a downright, hardhearted criminal by any means. Not unlike many men in critical situations, he is a victim of a mental and moral fear complex. Why, no one as yet has been quite able to explain. We all have one secret bugbear or fear. And it is these two qualities, and no others, that have placed him in the dangerous position in which he now finds himself. It was cowardice, gentlemen—fear of a rule of the factory of which his uncle is the owner, as well as fear of his own word given to the officials above him, that caused him first to conceal the fact that he was interested in the pretty country girl who had come to work for him. And later, to conceal the fact that he was going with her.
“Yet no statutory crime of any kind there. You could not possibly try a man for that, whatever privately you might think. And it was cowardice, mental and moral, gentlemen, which prevented him, after he became convinced that he could no longer endure a relationship which had once seemed so beautiful, from saying outright that he could not, and would not continue with her, let alone marry her. Yet, will you slay a man because he is the victim of fear? And again, after all, if a man has once and truly decided that he cannot and will not endure a given woman, or a woman a man—that to live with her could only prove torturesome—what would you have that person do? Marry her? To what end? That they may hate and despise and torture each other forever after? Can you truly say that you agree with that as a rule, or a method, or a law? Yet, as the defense sees it, a truly intelligent and fair enough thing, under the circumstances, was done in this instance. An offer, but without marriage—and alas, without avail—was made. A suggestion for a separate life, with him working to support her while she dwelt elsewhere. Her own letters, read only yesterday in this court, indicate something of the kind. But the oh, so often tragic insistence upon what in so many cases were best left undone! And then that last, long, argumentative trip to Utica, Grass Lake, and Big Bittern. And all to no purpose. Yet with no intention to kill or betray unto death. Not the slightest. And we will show you why.
“Gentlemen, once more I insist that it was cowardice, mental and moral, and not any plot or plan for any crime of any kind, that made Clyde Griffiths travel with Roberta Alden under various aliases to all the places I have just mentioned—that made him write ‘Mr. and Mrs. Carl Graham,’ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Golden’— mental and moral fear of the great social mistake as well as sin that he had committed in pursuing and eventually allowing himself to fail into this unhallowed relationship with her—mental and moral fear or cowardice of what was to follow.
“And again, it was mental and moral cowardice that prevented him there at Big Bittern, once the waters of the lake had so accidentally closed over her, from returning to Big Bittern Inn and making public her death. Mental and Moral Cowardice—and nothing more and nothing less. He was thinking of his wealthy relatives in Lycurgus, their rule which his presence here on the lake with this girl would show to have been broken—of the suffering and shame and rage of her parents. And besides, there was Miss X—the brightest star in the brightest constellation of all his dreams.
“We admit all that, and we are completely willing to concede that he was, or must have been, thinking of all these things.