american tragedy

Chapter 3 (1)
Chapter 13 (1)
Just as Clyde was thinking of a practical solution, some bad things happened. One of them was that his sister Esta ran away with an actor who happened to come to Kansas City to act. (Though he had little in common with her in character, he took a considerable interest in her.) It goes without saying how much this affair has done to the Griffiths.

As for Esta, the situation was this: although she had been brought up under strict upbringing, and sometimes seemed to have a passion for religion and morals, she was really only a sensitive and weak woman, and she could not even understand what she was thinking. what.Although she lives in that special atmosphere of life, she doesn't seem to belong to this circle in essence.Like many who profess to believe in the popular creed, she accepted it from a very young age without thinking about everything she did, to the point where she has no idea what it means now.Because those persuasions, laws, and truths revealed have already eliminated the elements of her thinking, so as long as everything does not conflict with those, then she will be fine.But once a conflict occurs, it will naturally be unable to withstand such an impact.Therefore her thoughts and feelings are the same as those of her brother Clyde.In the back of her mind, there was a set of dreams at work, which completely canceled out the set of truths told by the family.

But she had neither the perseverance nor the spirit of resistance of Clyde.She's basically a floating figure, between a dazed desire for nice clothes on the one hand and those religious teachings on the other.In the morning or after school some girls walked arm in arm through the brightly lit streets, chattering secrets.And the boys, rough as they were, had that lively, comic animal instinct for courtship, and it all started from that in the end, and there was a charm about it all.As for herself? She often saw courting or flirting young people staying at street corners or gates, looking at her with admiration, and she felt a little trembling in her heart.What she yearns for seems to be the material things on earth rather than the happiness of the illusory heaven.

The look they gave her was like a ray of light invisible to the naked eye, penetrating into her heart, because she was very pleasant in birth, and she grew more and more charming every moment.And that other people's emotions aroused her own, and this interplay is the root of all that is moral and immoral in the world.

Then one day, when she had just come home from school, a young boy who could be called a little boy struck up a conversation with her, probably because she showed a look or mood that attracted people to talk to her, and in her case There was little resistance on the part of the public to stop her, for she was submissive, if not a coquette, at heart.However, the family education has always been very strict, telling her to keep calm, cautious, pure, etc., so at least this day there is no immediate accident.But after this attack, similar things happened, and she accepted the seduction, so it can be said that she didn't avoid it right away.The attack then broke down the discreet walls of her upbringing, and she became stealthy, hiding her actions from her parents.

Some young people walked with her and talked to her, and she couldn't resist.She had always been very shy, and so, at least for a time, she shunned people.But this excessive shame was finally destroyed.She longed for some chance, dreamed of a radiant, joyful, wondrous love affair with someone.

This mood and desire experienced a slow and drastic change deep in my heart, and finally came this actor.He is the kind of flashy, beautiful, and beastly person who only talks about clothes and style, but he has bad conduct (he has no taste, no manners, and even no real tenderness), but he has a strong sense of humor. Appeal.In just a week, and after a few meetings, he was able to drive her mad, fall in love with him, put her at his mercy, let him have his way.But in fact he didn't love her at all.Although he is not smart, but in his mind, she is just another lover, she is quite beautiful, obviously sentimental and unsophisticated, she is a little fool who is hooked by a few sweet words, as long as she shows some false feelings Pretending to talk about marrying her as a wife, taking her to other big cities, enjoying a wider and freer life along the way, etc., will be able to coax her.

But his words sounded like those of a devoted lover.He explained to her that she would just go with him at once and be his bride, and that everything would be fine for her. Since the two of them were married, it would be no good to procrastinate, but it was difficult to get married on the spot. What was the difficulty? , he could not say, because it concerned certain friends of his, but he had a friend in St. Louis who was a priest who could marry them.In the future, she will have beautiful new clothes that she has never worn before, and she can experience many wonderful new things and enjoy love.She can travel with him and see the vast world.She had nothing to worry about but looking after him.She took these words as the truth, thinking that they were verbal guarantees of pure love, but to him, they were just a set of effective rhetoric that he was used to long ago.He used to use this cunning in the past, and it often worked.

In this way, in a short week, using some sporadic time in the morning, afternoon and night, this set of alchemy spells was completed.

One evening in April, in order to avoid the usual Saturday evening crusade, Clyde went for a walk in the city center and came home very late.When he got home, he found his parents worrying about Esta's disappearance.At the crusade that night, she played the piano and sang hymns as usual.After we left, she went back to her room, saying that she was not feeling well and wanted to go to bed early.But at eleven o'clock, when Clyde came home, his mother chanced to look into her room, and found that she was not there, nor could she be found anywhere else.There was a deserted look in her room, some trinkets and clothes had been taken, and a usual suitcase was missing, which her mother had first discovered.Usually when the church is free or after the church is closed, she sometimes goes out alone for a walk or sits and stands in front of the church.However, after searching the whole house, Asa looked back and forth on the street for a while, but couldn't find any results.Clyde and Asa searched around the corner of the street, and then walked along Missouri Avenue, but there was still no sign of Esta.They didn't come back until midnight.Since then, the worry about her has naturally increased.

At first they thought she had gone for a walk somewhere without saying hello.But until 12:30, and finally one o'clock, 01:30, there was still no sign of Esta.They were going to call the police when Clyde came into her room and found a note pinned to the pillow on her little wooden bed, a message his mother had not seen just now.He walked over at once, curious and speculative, for he himself had wondered over and over again how he should tell his parents if he wanted to go away secretly, and he knew that unless he made them be careful in every way. They would never approve of him leaving the house, given his advice.Now that Esta was missing, it was obvious that he himself might have left such a note.He picked up the note, eager to read it, but by chance his mother came in, found the note in his hand, and called out, "What is it? A note? She wrote it?" He handed it to her, and she Spread it out and read it hastily.Her large, strong face, which was always dark and rosy, he noticed now that she had turned pale as she turned toward the outer room.Her rather large mouth was tightly closed in a line.She held up the small note, her big strong hands trembling slightly.

"Asa!" she called, walking toward the next room.There was Asa, his gray curly hair disheveled around his round head.She said, "Look at this."

Clyde followed behind, seeing Asa holding the note in his hand with a somewhat disturbed expression.His lips, already feeble and wrinkled in the middle with age, moved strangely.Anyone who knows his life experience will definitely say that this expression is the expression he had when he was hit by misfortune many times in the past, but this time it is a little more obvious.

(End of this chapter)