Theodore Dreiser - THEODORE DREISER - Novels, Short Stories, Essays & Biographical Works

Confound it – why should his mind keep dwelling on this idea? Was he actually planning to do a thing like this? But he was not! He could not be! He, Clyde Griffiths, could not be serious about a thing like this. That was not possible. He could not be. Of course! It was all too impossible, too wicked, to imagine that he, Clyde Griffiths, could bring himself to execute a deed like that. And yet . . .

And forthwith an uncanny feeling of wretchedness and insufficiency for so dark a crime insisted on thrusting itself forward. He decided to retrace his steps toward Lycurgus, where at least he could be among people.

There are moments when in connection with the sensitively imaginative or morbidly anachronistic – the mentality assailed and the same not of any great strength and the problem confronting it of sufficient force and complexity – the reason not actually toppling from its throne, still totters or is warped or shaken – the mind befuddled to the extent that for the time being, at least, unreason or disorder and mistaken or erroneous counsel would appear to hold against all else. In such instances the will and the courage confronted by some great difficulty which it can neither master nor endure, appears in some to recede in precipitate flight, leaving only panic and temporary unreason in its wake.

And in this instance, the mind of Clyde might well have been compared to a small and routed army in full flight before a major one, yet at various times in its precipitate departure, pausing for a moment to meditate on some way of escaping complete destruction and in the coincident panic of such a state, resorting to the weirdest and most haphazard of schemes of escaping from an impending and yet wholly unescapable fate. The strained and bedeviled look in his eyes at moments – the manner in which, from moment to moment and hour to hour, he went over and over his hitherto poorly balanced actions and thoughts but with no smallest door of escape anywhere. And yet again at moments the solution suggested by the item in The Times–Union again thrusting itself forward, psychogenetically, born of his own turbulent, eager and disappointed seeking. And hence persisting.

Indeed, it was now as though from the depths of some lower or higher world never before guessed or plumbed by him . . . a region otherwhere than in life or death and peopled by creatures otherwise than himself . . . there had now suddenly appeared, as the genie at the accidental rubbing of Aladdin’s lamp – as the efrit emerging as smoke from the mystic jar in the net of the fisherman – the very substance of some leering and diabolic wish or wisdom concealed in his own nature, and that now abhorrent and yet compelling, leering and yet intriguing, friendly and yet cruel, offered him a choice between an evil which threatened to destroy him (and against his deepest opposition) and a second evil which, however it might disgust or sear or terrify, still provided for freedom and success and love.

Indeed the center or mentating section of his brain at this time might well have been compared to a sealed and silent hall in which alone and undisturbed, and that in spite of himself, he now sat thinking on the mystic or evil and terrifying desires or advice of some darker or primordial and unregenerate nature of his own, and without the power to drive the same forth or himself to decamp, and yet also without the courage to act upon anything.

For now the genie of his darkest and weakest side was speaking. And it said: “And would you escape from the demands of Roberta that but now and unto this hour have appeared unescapable to you? Behold! I bring you a way. It is the way of the lake – Pass Lake. This item that you have read – do you think it was placed in your hands for nothing? Remember Big Bittern, the deep, blue-black water, the island to the south, the lone road to Three Mile Bay? How suitable to your needs! A row-boat or a canoe upset in such a lake and Roberta would pass forever from your life. She cannot swim! The lake – the lake – that you have seen – that I have shown you – is it not ideal for the purpose? So removed and so little frequented and yet comparatively near – but a hundred miles from here. And how easy for you and Roberta to go there – not directly but indirectly – on this purely imaginative marriage-trip that you have already agreed to. And all that you need do now is to change your name – and hers – or let her keep her own and you use yours. You have never permitted her to speak of you and this relationship, and she never has. You have written her but formal notes. And now if you should meet her somewhere as you have already agreed to, and without any one seeing you, you might travel with her, as in the past to Fonda, to Big Bittern – or some point near there.”

“But there is no hotel at Big Bittern,” at once corrected Clyde. “A mere shack that entertains but few people and that not very well.”

“All the better. The less people are likely to be there.”

“But we might be seen on the train going up together. I would be identified as having been with her.”

“Were you seen at Fonda, Gloversville, Little Falls? Have you not ridden in separate cars or seats before and could you not do so now? Is it not presumably to be a secret marriage? Then why not a secret honeymoon?”

“True enough – true enough.”

“And once you have arranged for that and arrive at Big Bittern or some lake like it – there are so many there – how easy to row out on such a lake? No questions. No registry under your own name or hers. A boat rented for an hour or half-day or day. You saw the island far to the south on that lone lake. Is it not beautiful? It is well worth seeing. Why should you not go there on such a pleasure trip before marriage? Would she not be happy so to do – as weary and distressed as she is now – an outing – a rest before the ordeal of the new life? Is not that sensible – plausible? And neither of you will ever return presumably. You will both be drowned, will you not? Who is to see? A guide or two – the man who rents you the boat – the innkeeper once, as you go. But how are they to know who you are? Or who she is? And you heard the depth of the water.”

“But I do not want to kill her. I do not want to kill her. I do not want to injure her in any way. If she will but let me go and she go her own way, I will be so glad and so happy never to see her more.”

“But she will not let you go or go her way unless you accompany her. And if you go yours, it will be without Sondra and all that she represents, as well as all this pleasant life here – your standing with your uncle, his friends, their cars, the dances, visits to the lodges on the lakes. And what then? A small job! Small pay! Another such period of wandering as followed that accident at Kansas City. Never another chance like this anywhere. Do you prefer that?”

“But might there not be some accident here, destroying all my dreams – my future – as there was in Kansas City?”

“An accident, to be sure – but not the same. In this instance the plan is in your hands. You can arrange it all as you will. And how easy! So many boats upsetting every summer – the occupants of them drowning, because in most cases they cannot swim. And will it ever be known whether the man who was with Roberta Alden on Big Bittern could swim? And of all deaths, drowning is the easiest – no noise – no outcry – perhaps the accidental blow of an oar – the side of a boat. And then silence! Freedom – a body that no one may ever find. Or if found and identified, will it not be easy, if you but trouble to plan, to make it appear that you were elsewhere, visiting at one of the other lakes before you decided to go to Twelfth Lake. What is wrong with it? Where is the flaw?”