But Belknap and Jephson merely looking at one another in unconvinced and pagan astonishment.
Such faith!
An exhorter!
An Evangelist, no less!
Yet to Jephson, here was an idea!
There was the religious element to be reckoned with everywhere — strong in its agreement with just such faith.
Assuming the Griffiths of Lycurgus to remain obdurate and unmoved — why then — why then — and now that she was here — there were the churches and the religious people generally.
Might it not be possible, with such a temperament and such faith as this, to appeal to the very element that had hitherto most condemned Clyde and made his conviction a certainty, for funds wherewith to carry this case to the court of appeals?
This lorn mother.
Her faith in her boy.
Presto!
A lecture, at so much for admission, and in which, hard-pressed as she was and could show, she would set forth the righteousness of her boy’s claim — seek to obtain the sympathy of the prejudiced public and incidentally two thousand dollars or more with which this appeal could be conducted.
And now Jephson, turning to her and laying the matter before her and offering to prepare a lecture or notes — a condensation of his various arguments — in fact, an entire lecture which she could re- arrange and present as she chose — all the data which was the ultimate, basic truth in regard to her son.
And she, her brown cheeks flushing and her eyes brightening, agreeing she would do it.
She would try.
She could do no less than try.
Verily, verily, was not this the Voice and Hand of God in the darkest hour of her tribulation?
On the following morning Clyde was arraigned for sentence, with Mrs. Griffiths given a seat near him and seeking, paper and pencil in hand, to make notes of, for her, an unutterable scene, while a large crowd surveyed her.
His own mother!
And acting as a reporter!
Something absurd, grotesque, insensitive, even ludicrous, about such a family and such a scene.
And to think the Griffiths of Lycurgus should be so immediately related to them.
Yet Clyde sustained and heartened by her presence.
For had she not returned to the jail the previous afternoon with her plan?
And as soon as this was over — whatever the sentence might be — she would begin with her work.
And so, and that almost in spite of himself, in his darkest hour, standing up before Justice Oberwaltzer and listening first to a brief recital of his charge and trial (which was pronounced by Oberwaltzer to have been fair and impartial), then to the customary:
“Have you any cause which shows why the judgment of death should not now be pronounced against you according to law?”— to which and to the astonishment of his mother and the auditors (if not Jephson, who had advised and urged him so to do), Clyde now in a clear and firm voice replied:
“I am innocent of the crime as charged in the indictment.
I never killed Roberta Alden and therefore I think this sentence should not be passed.”
And then staring straight before him conscious only of the look of admiration and love turned on him by his mother.
For had not her son now declared himself, here at this fatal moment, before all these people?
And his word here, if not in that jail, would be true, would it not?
Then her son was not guilty.
He was not.
He was not.
Praised be the name of the Lord in the highest.
And deciding to make a great point of this in her dispatch — so as to get it in all the papers, and in her lecture afterwards.
However, Oberwaltzer, without the faintest sign of surprise or perturbation, now continued:
“Is there anything else you care to say?”
“No,” replied Clyde, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Clyde Griffiths,” then concluded Oberwaltzer, “the judgment of the Court is that you, Clyde Griffiths, for the murder in the first degree of one, Roberta Alden, whereof you are convicted, be, and you are hereby sentenced to the punishment of death; and it is ordered that, within ten days after this day’s session of Court, the Sheriff of this county of Cataraqui deliver you, together with the warrant of this Court, to the Agent and Warden of the State Prison of the State of New York at Auburn, where you shall be kept in solitary confinement until the week beginning Monday the 28th day of January, 19 — and, upon some day within the week so appointed, the said Agent and Warden of the State Prison of the State of New York at Auburn is commended to do execution upon you, Clyde Griffiths, in the mode and manner prescribed by the laws of the State of New York.”
And that done, a smile from Mrs. Griffiths to her boy and an answering smile from Clyde to her.
For since he had announced that he was not guilty — HERE— her spirit had risen in the face of this sentence.
He was really innocent — he must be, since he had declared it here.
And Clyde because of her smile saying to himself, his mother believed in him now.
She had not been swayed by all the evidence against him.
And this faith, mistaken or not, was now so sustaining — so needed.
What he had just said was true as he now saw it.
He had not struck Roberta.
That WAS true.