The Genius (68 page)

He moved between her and the telephone receiver, which hung in
the hall outside the studio and toward which she was edging.

Angela paused at the ominous note in his voice, the determined
quality of his attitude. She was surprised and amazed at the almost
rough manner in which he put her aside. He had taken Suzanne's
hand, he, her husband, and was begging her to be calm.

"Oh, Eugene," said Angela desperately, frightened and horrified,
her anger half melted in her fears, "you don't know what you are
doing! Suzanne doesn't. She won't want anything to do with you when
she does. Young as she is, she will have too much womanhood."

"What are you talking about?" asked Eugene desperately. He had
no idea of what Angela was driving at, not the faintest suspicion.
"What are you talking about?" he repeated grimly.

"Let me say just one word to you alone, not here before Suzanne,
just one, and then perhaps you will be willing to let her go home
tonight."

Angela was subtle in this, a little bit wicked. She was not
using her advantage in exactly the right spirit.

"What is it?" demanded Eugene sourly, expecting some trick. He
had so long gnawed at the chains which bound him that the thought
of any additional lengths which might be forged irritated him
greatly. "Why can't you tell it here? What difference can it
make?"

"It ought to make all the difference in the world. Let me say it
to you alone."

Suzanne, who wondered what it could be, walked away. She was
wondering what it was that Angela had to tell. The latter's manner
was not exactly suggestive of the weighty secret she bore. When
Suzanne was gone, Angela whispered to him.

"It's a lie!" said Eugene vigorously, desperately, hopelessly.
"It's something you've trumped up for the occasion. It's just like
you to say that, to do it! Pah! I don't believe it. It's a lie!
It's a lie! You know it's a lie!"

"It's the truth!" said Angela angrily, pathetically, outraged in
her every nerve and thought by the reception which this fact had
received, and desperate to think that the announcement of a coming
child by him should be received in this manner under such
circumstances that it should be forced from her as a last resort,
only to be received with derision and scorn. "It's the truth, and
you ought to be ashamed to say that to me. What can I expect from a
man, though, who would introduce another woman into his own home as
you have tonight?" To think that she should be reduced to such a
situation as this so suddenly! It was impossible to argue it with
him here. She was ashamed now that she had introduced it at this
time. He would not believe her, anyhow now, she saw that. It only
enraged him and her. He was too wild. This seemed to infuriate
him—to condemn her in his mind as a trickster and a sharper,
someone who was using unfair means to hold him. He almost jumped
away from her in disgust, and she realized that she had struck an
awful blow which apparently, to him, had some elements of
unfairness in it.

"Won't you have the decency after this to send her away?" she
pleaded aloud, angrily, eagerly, bitterly.

Eugene was absolutely in a fury of feeling. If ever he
thoroughly hated and despised Angela, he did so at that moment. To
think that she should have done anything like this! To think that
she should have complicated this problem of weariness of her with a
thing like this! How cheap it was, how shabby! It showed the
measure of the woman, to bring a child into the world, regardless
of the interests of the child, in order to hold him against his
will. Damn! Hell! God damn such a complicated, rotten world! No,
she was lying. She could not hold him that way. It was a horrible,
low, vile trick. He would have nothing to do with her. He would
show her. He would leave her. He would show her that this sort of
thing would not work with him. It was like every other petty thing
she had ever done. Never, never, never, would he let this stand in
the way. Oh, what a mean, cruel, wretched thing to do!

Suzanne came back while they were arguing. She half suspected
what it was all about, but she did not dare to act or think
clearly. The events of this night were too numerous, too
complicated. Eugene had said so forcibly it was a lie whatever it
was, that she half believed him. That was a sign surely of the
little affection that existed between him and Angela. Angela was
not crying. Her face was hard, white, drawn.

"I can't stay here," said Suzanne dramatically to Eugene. "I
will go somewhere. I had better go to a hotel for the night. Will
you call a car?"

"Listen to me, Suzanne," said Eugene vigorously and
determinedly. "You love me, don't you?"

"You know I do," she replied.

Angela stirred sneeringly.

"Then you will stay here. I want you to pay no attention to
anything she may say or declare. She has told me a lie tonight. I
know why. Don't let her deceive you. Go to your room and your bed.
I want to talk to you tomorrow. There is no need of your leaving
tonight. There is plenty of room here. It's silly. You're here
now—stay."

"But I don't think I'd better stay," said Suzanne nervously.

Eugene took her hand reassuringly.

"Listen to me," he began.

"But she won't stay," said Angela.

"But she will," said Eugene; "and if she don't stay, she goes
with me. I will take her home."

"Oh, no, you won't!" replied Angela.

"Listen," said Eugene angrily. "This isn't six years ago, but
now. I'm master of this situation, and she stays here. She stays
here, or she goes with me and you look to the future as best you
may. I love her. I'm not going to give her up, and if you want to
make trouble, begin now. The house comes down on your head, not
mine."

"Oh!" said Angela, half terrified, "what do I hear?"

"Just that. Now you go to your room. Suzanne will go to hers. I
will go to mine. We will not have any more fighting here tonight.
The jig is up. The die is cast. I'm through. Suzanne comes to me,
if she will."

Angela walked to her room through the studio, stricken by the
turn things had taken, horrified by the thoughts in her mind,
unable to convince Eugene, unable to depose Suzanne, her throat dry
and hot, her hands shaking, her heart beating fitfully; she felt as
if her brain would burst, her heart break actually, not
emotionally. She thought Eugene had gone crazy, and yet now, for
the first time in her married life, she realized what a terrible
mistake she had made in always trying to drive him. It hadn't
worked tonight, her rage, her domineering, critical attitude. It
had failed her completely, and also this scheme, this beautiful
plan, this trump card on which she had placed so much reliance for
a happy life, this child which she had hoped to play so
effectively. He didn't believe her. He wouldn't even admit its
possibility. He didn't admire her for it. He despised her! He
looked on it as a trick. Oh, what an unfortunate thing it had been
to mention it! And yet Suzanne must understand, she must know, she
would never countenance anything like this. But what would he do?
He was positively livid with rage. What fine auspices these were
under which to usher a child into the world! She stared feverishly
before her, and finally began to cry hopelessly.

Eugene stood in the hall beside Suzanne after she had gone. His
face was drawn, his eyes hunted, his hair tousled. He looked grim
and determined in his way, stronger than he had ever looked
before.

"Suzanne," he said, taking the latter by her two arms and
staring into her eyes, "she has told me a lie, a lie, a cold, mean,
cruel lie. She'll tell it you shortly. She says she is with child
by me. It isn't so. She couldn't have one. If she did, it would
kill her. She would have had one long ago if she could have. I know
her. She thinks this will frighten me. She thinks it will drive you
away. Will it? It's a lie, do you hear me, whatever she says. It's
a lie, and she knows it. Ough!" He dropped her left arm and pulled
at his neck. "I can't stand this. You won't leave me. You won't
believe her, will you?"

Suzanne stared into his distraught face, his handsome,
desperate, significant eyes. She saw the woe there, the agony, and
was sympathetic. He seemed wonderfully worthy of love, unhappy,
unfortunately pursued; and yet she was frightened. Still she had
promised to love him.

"No," she said fixedly, her eyes speaking a dramatic
confidence.

"You won't leave here tonight?"

"No."

She smoothed his cheek with her hand.

"You will come and walk with me in the morning? I have to talk
with you."

"Yes."

"Don't be afraid. Just lock your door if you are. She won't
bother you. She won't do anything. She is afraid of me. She may
want to talk with you, but I am close by. Do you still love
me?"

"Yes."

"Will you come to me if I can arrange it?"

"Yes."

"Even in the face of what she says?"

"Yes; I don't believe her. I believe you. What difference could
it make, anyhow? You don't love her."

"No," he said; "no, no, no! I never have." He drew her into his
arms wearily, relievedly. "Oh, Flower Face," he said, "don't give
me up! Don't grieve. Try not to, anyhow. I have been bad, as she
says, but I love you. I love you, and I will stake all on that. If
all this must fall about our heads, then let it fall. I love
you."

Suzanne stroked his cheek with her hands nervously. She was
deathly pale, frightened, but somehow courageous through it all.
She caught strength from his love.

"I love you," she said.

"Yes," he replied. "You won't give me up?"

"No, I won't," she said, not really understanding the depth of
her own mood. "I will be true."

"Things will be better tomorrow," he said, somewhat more
quietly. "We will be calmer. We will walk and talk. You won't leave
without me?"

"No."

"Please don't; for I love you, and we must talk and plan."

The introduction of this astonishing fact in connection with
Angela was so unexpected, so morally diverting and peculiar that
though Eugene denied it, half believed she was lying, he was
harassed by the thought that she might be telling the truth. It was
so unfair, though, was all he could think, so unkind! It never
occurred to him that it was accidental, as indeed it was not, but
only that it was a trick, sharp, cunning, ill-timed for him, just
the thing calculated to blast his career and tie him down to the
old régime when he wanted most to be free. A new life was dawning
for him now. For the first time in his life he was to have a woman
after his own heart, so young, so beautiful, so intellectual, so
artistic! With Suzanne by his side, he was about to plumb the
depths of all the joys of living. Without her, life was to be dark
and dreary, and here was Angela coming forward at the critical
moment disrupting this dream as best she could by the introduction
of a child that she did not want, and all to hold him against his
will. If ever he hated her for trickery and sharp dealing, he did
so now. What would the effect on Suzanne be? How would he convince
her that it was a trick? She must understand; she would. She would
not let this miserable piece of chicanery stand between him and
her. He turned in his bed wearily after he had gone to it, but he
could not sleep. He had to say something, do something. So he
arose, slipped on a dressing gown, and went to Angela's room.

That distraught soul, for all her determination and fighting
capacity, was enduring for the second time in her life the fires of
hell. To think that in spite of all her work, her dreams, this
recent effort to bring about peace and happiness, perhaps at the
expense of her own life, she was compelled to witness a scene like
this. Eugene was trying to get free. He was obviously determined to
do so. This scandalous relationship, when had it begun? Would her
effort to hold him fail? It looked that way, and yet surely
Suzanne, when she knew, when she understood, would leave him. Any
woman would.

Her head ached, her hands were hot, she fancied she might be
suffering a terrible nightmare, she was so sick and weak; but, no,
this was her room. A little while ago she was sitting in her
husband's studio, surrounded by friends, the object of much
solicitude, Eugene apparently considerate and thoughtful of her, a
beautiful programme being rendered for their special benefit. Now
she was lying here in her room, a despised wife, an outcast from
affection and happiness, the victim of some horrible sorcery of
fate whereby another woman stood in her place in Eugene's
affection. To see Suzanne, proud in her young beauty, confronting
her with bold eyes, holding her husband's hand, saying in what
seemed to her to be brutal, or insane, or silly melodramatic
make-believe, "But I love him, Mrs. Witla," was maddening. Oh, God!
Oh, God! Would her tortures never cease? Must all her beautiful
dreams come to nothing? Would Eugene leave her, as he so violently
said a little while ago? She had never seen him like this. It was
terrible to see him so determined, so cold and brutal. His voice
had actually been harsh and guttural, something she had never known
before in him.

She trembled as she thought, and then great flashes of rage
swept her only to be replaced by rushes of fear. She was in such a
terrific position. The woman was with him, young, defiant,
beautiful. She had heard him call to her, had heard them talking.
Once she thought that now would be the time to murder him, Suzanne,
herself, the coming life and end it all; but at this critical
moment, having been sick and having grown so much older, with this
problem of the coming life before her, she had no chart to go by.
She tried to console herself with the thought that he must abandon
his course, that he would when the true force of what she had
revealed had had time to sink home; but it had not had time yet.
Would it before he did anything rash? Would it before he had
completely compromised himself and Suzanne? Judging from her talk
and his, he had not as yet, or she thought not. What was he going
to do? What was he going to do?

Angela feared as she lay there that in spite of her revelation
he might really leave her immediately. There might readily spring a
terrible public scandal out of all this. The mockery of their lives
laid bare; the fate of the child jeopardized; Eugene, Suzanne, and
herself disgraced, though she had little thought for Suzanne.
Suzanne might get him, after all. She might accidentally be just
hard and cold enough. The world might possibly forgive him. She
herself might die! What an end, after all her dreams of something
bigger, better, surer! Oh, the pity, the agony of this! The terror
and horror of a wrecked life!

And then Eugene came into the room.

He was haggard, stormy-eyed, thoughtful, melancholy, as he
entered. He stood in the doorway first, intent, then clicked a
little night-lamp button which threw on a very small incandescent
light near the head of Angela's bed, and then sat down in a
rocking-chair which the nurse had placed near the medicine table.
Angela had so much improved that no night nurse was needed—only a
twelve-hour one.

"Well," he said solemnly but coldly, when he saw her pale,
distraught, much of her old, youthful beauty still with her, "you
think you have scored a splendid trick, don't you? You think you
have sprung a trap? I simply came in here to tell you that you
haven't—that you have only seen the beginning of the end. You say
you are going to have a child. I don't believe it. It's a lie, and
you know it's a lie. You saw that there was an end coming to all
this state of weariness some time, and this is your answer. Well,
you've played one trick too many, and you've played it in vain. You
lose. I win this time. I'm going to be free now, I want to say to
you, and I am going to be free if I have to turn everything upside
down. I don't care if there were seventeen prospective children
instead of one. It's a lie, in the first place; but if it isn't,
it's a trick, and I'm not going to be tricked any longer. I've had
all I want of domination and trickery and cheap ideas. I'm through
now, do you hear me? I'm through."

He felt his forehead with a nervous hand. His head ached, he was
half sick. This was such a dreary pit to find himself in, this pit
of matrimony, chained by a domineering wife and a trickily
manœuvred child. His child! What a mockery at this stage of his
life! How he hated the thought of that sort of thing, how cheap it
all seemed!

Angela, who was wide-eyed, flushed, exhausted, lying staring on
her pillow, asked in a weary, indifferent voice: "What do you want
me to do, Eugene, leave you?"

"I'll tell you, Angela," he said sepulchrally, "I don't know
what I want you to do just at this moment. The old life is all
over. It's as dead as dead can be. For eleven or twelve years now I
have lived with you, knowing all the while that I was living a lie.
I have never really loved you since we were married. You know that.
I may have loved you in the beginning, yes, I did, and at
Blackwood, but that was a long, long while ago. I never should have
married you. It was a mistake, but I did, and I've paid for it,
inch by inch. You have, too. You have insisted all along that I
ought to love you. You have browbeaten and abused me for something
I could no more do than I could fly. Now, at this last minute, you
introduce a child to hold me. I know why you have done it. You
imagine that in some way you have been appointed by God to be my
mentor and guardian. Well, I tell you now that you haven't. It's
all over. If there were fifty children, it's all over. Suzanne
isn't going to believe any such cheap story as that, and if she did
she wouldn't leave me. She knows why you do it. All the days of
weariness are over for me, all the days of being afraid. I'm not an
ordinary man, and I'm not going to live an ordinary life. You have
always insisted on holding me down to the little, cheap conventions
as you have understood them. Out in Wisconsin, out in Blackwood.
Nothing doing. It's all over from now on. Everything's over. This
house, my job, my real estate deal—everything. I don't care what
your condition is. I love this girl in there, and I'm going to have
her. Do you hear me? I love her, and I'm going to have her. She's
mine. She suits me. I love her, and no power under God is going to
stay me. Now you think this child proposition you have fixed up is
going to stay me, but you are going to find out that it can't, that
it won't. It's a trick, and I know it, and you know it. It's too
late. It might have last year, or two years ago, or three, but it
won't work now. You have played your last card. That girl in there
belongs to me, and I'm going to have her."

Again he smoothed his face in a weary way, pausing to sway the
least bit in his chair. His teeth were set, his eyes hard.
Consciously he realized that it was a terrible situation that
confronted him, hard to wrestle with.

Angela gazed at him with the eyes of one who is not quite sure
that she even sees aright. She knew that Eugene had developed. He
had become stronger, more urgent, more defiant, during all these
years in which he had been going upward. He was no more like the
Eugene who had clung to her for companionship in the dark days at
Biloxi and elsewhere than a child is like a grown man. He was
harder, easier in his manner, more indifferent, and yet, until now,
there had never been a want of traces of the old Eugene. What had
become of them so suddenly? Why was he so raging, so bitter? This
girl, this foolish, silly, selfish girl, with her Circe gift of
beauty, by tolerance of his suit, by yielding, perhaps by throwing
herself at Eugene's head, had done this thing. She had drawn him
away from her in spite of the fact that they had appeared to be
happily mated. Suzanne did not know that they were not. In this
mood he might actually leave her, even as she was, with child. It
depended on the girl. Unless she could influence her, unless she
could bring pressure to bear in some way, Eugene might readily be
lost to her, and then what a tragedy! She could not afford to have
him go now. Why, in six months——! She shivered at the thought of
all the misery a separation would entail. His position, their
child, society, this apartment. Dear God, it would drive her crazy
if he were to desert her now!

"Oh, Eugene," she said quite sadly and without any wrath in her
voice at this moment, for she was too torn, terrified and
disheveled in spirit to feel anything save a haunting sense of
fear, "you don't know what a terrible mistake you are making. I did
do this thing on purpose, Eugene. It is true. Long ago in
Philadelphia with Mrs. Sanifore I went to a physician to see if it
were possible that I might have a child. You know that I always
thought that I couldn't. Well, he told me that I could. I went
because I thought that you needed something like that, Eugene, to
balance you. I knew you didn't want one. I thought you would be
angry when I told you. I didn't act on it for a long while. I
didn't want one myself. I hoped that it might be a little girl if
ever there was one, because I know that you like little girls. It
seems silly now in the face of what has happened tonight. I see
what a mistake I have made. I see what the mistake is, but I didn't
mean it evilly, Eugene. I didn't. I wanted to hold you, to bind you
to me in some way, to help you. Do you utterly blame me, Eugene?
I'm your wife, you know."

He stirred irritably, and she paused, scarcely knowing how to go
on. She could see how terribly irritated he was, how sick at heart,
and yet she resented this attitude on his part. It was so hard to
endure when all along she had fancied that she had so many just
claims on him, moral, social, other claims, which he dare not
ignore. Here she was now, sick, weary, pleading with him for
something that ought justly be hers—and this coming child's!

"Oh, Eugene," she said quite sadly, and still without any wrath
in her voice, "please think before you make a mistake. You don't
really love this girl, you only think you do. You think she is
beautiful and good and sweet and you are going to tear everything
up and leave me, but you don't love her, and you are going to find
it out. You don't love anyone, Eugene. You can't. You are too
selfish. If you had any real love in you, some of it would have
come out to me, for I have tried to be all that a good wife should
be, but it has been all in vain. I've known you haven't liked me
all these years. I've seen it in your eyes, Eugene. You have never
come very close to me as a lover should unless you had to or you
couldn't avoid me. You have been cold and indifferent, and now that
I look back I see that it has made me so. I have been cold and
hard. I've tried to steel myself to match what I thought was your
steeliness, and now I see what it has done for me. I'm sorry. But
as for her, you don't love her and you won't. She's too young. She
hasn't any ideas that agree with yours. You think she's soft and
gentle, and yet big and wise, but do you think if she had been that
she could have stood up there as she did tonight and looked me in
the eyes—me, your wife—and told me that she loved you—you, my
husband? Do you think if she had any shame she would be in there
now knowing what she does, for I suppose you have told her? What
kind of a girl is that, anyway? You call her good? Good! Would a
good girl do anything like that?"

"What is the use of arguing by appearances?" asked Eugene, who
had interrupted her with exclamations of opposition and bitter
comments all through the previous address. "The situation is one
which makes anything look bad. She didn't intend to be put in a
position where she would have to tell you that she loved me. She
didn't come here to let me make love to her in this apartment. I
made love to her. She's in love with me, and I made her love me. I
didn't know of this other thing. If I had, it wouldn't have made
any difference. However, let that be as it will. So it is. I'm in
love with her, and that's all there is to it."