An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [448]
And in consequence, in addition to paying her own expenses here, Mrs. Griffiths was literally compelled to deduct other reducing sums from this, her present and only source of income. It was terrible—considering Clyde’s predicament—but nevertheless must she not sustain herself in every way in order to win to victory? She could not reasonably abandon her husband in order to aid Clyde alone.
Yet in the face of this—as time went on, the audiences growing smaller and smaller until at last they constituted little more than a handful—and barely paying her expenses—although through this process nonethe-less she finally managed to put aside—over and above all her expenses—eleven hundred dollars.
Yet, also, just at this time, and in a moment of extreme anxiety, Frank and Julia wiring her that if she desired to see Asa again she had better come home at once. He was exceedingly low and not expected to live. Whereupon, played upon by these several difficulties and there being no single thing other than to visit him once or twice a week—as her engagements permitted—which she could do for Clyde, she now hastily conferred with Belknap and Jephson, setting forth her extreme difficulties.
And these, seeing that eleven hundred dollars of all she had thus far collected was to be turned over to them, now, in a burst of humanity, advised her to return to her husband. Decidedly Clyde would do well enough for the present seeing that there was an entire year—or at least ten months before it was necessary to file the record and the briefs in the case. In addition another year assuredly must elapse before a decision could be reached. And no doubt before that time the additional part of the appeal fee could be raised. Or, if not—well, then—anyhow (seeing how worn and distrait she was at this time) she need not worry. Messrs. Belknap and Jephson would see to it that her son’s interests were properly protected. They would file an appeal and make an argument—and do whatever else was necessary to insure her son a fair hearing at the proper time.
And with that great burden off her mind—and two last visits to Clyde in which she assured him of her determination to return as speedily as possible—once Asa was restored to strength again and she could see her way to financing such a return—she now departed only to find that, once she was in Denver once more, it was not so easy to restore him by any means.
And in the meantime Clyde was left to cogitate on and make the best of a world that at its best was a kind of inferno of mental ills— above which—as above Dante’s might have been written—”abandon hope—ye who enter here.”
The somberness of it. Its slow and yet searing psychic force! The obvious terror and depression—constant and unshakeable of those who, in spite of all their courage or their fears, their bravado or their real indifference (there were even those) were still compelled to think and wait. For, now, in connection with this coldest and bitterest form of prison life he was in constant psychic, if not physical contact, with twenty other convicted characters of varying temperaments and nationalities, each one of whom, like himself, had responded to some heat or lust or misery of his nature or his circumstances. And with murder, a mental as well as physical explosion, as the final outcome or concluding episode which, being detected, and after what horrors and wearinesses of mental as well as legal contest and failure, such as fairly paralleled his own, now found themselves islanded—immured—in one or another of these twenty-two iron cages and awaiting—awaiting what?
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