The Genius (81 page)

She felt exceedingly bitter toward Eugene, and was rejoicing
that at last she was beginning to have her innings.

"Mama," said Suzanne, "I am never going to forgive you for this.
You are acting horribly—I will wait, but it will come to the same
thing in the end. I am going to have him."

"I don't care what you do after a year," said Mrs. Dale
cheerfully and subtly. "If you will just wait that long and give
yourself time to think and still want to marry him, you can do so.
He can probably get a divorce in that time, anyhow." She did not
mean what she was saying, but any argument was good for the
situation, if it delayed matters.

"But I don't know that I want to marry him," insisted Suzanne,
doggedly, harking back to her original idea. "That isn't my theory
of it."

"Oh, well," replied Mrs. Dale complaisantly, "you will know
better what to think of that after a year. I don't want to coerce
you, but I'm not going to have our home and happiness broken up in
this way without turning a hand, and without your stopping to think
about it. You owe it to me—to all these years I have cared for you,
to show me some consideration. A year won't hurt you. It won't hurt
him. You will find out then whether he really loves you or not.
This may just be a passing fancy. He has had other women before
you. He may have others after you. He may go back to Mrs. Witla. It
doesn't make any difference what he tells you. You ought to test
him before you break up his home and mine. If he really loves you,
he will agree readily enough. Do this for me, Suzanne, and I will
never cross your path any more. If you will wait a year you can do
anything you choose. I can only hope you won't go to him without
going as his wife, but if you insist, I will hush the matter up as
best I can. Write to him and tell him that you have decided that
you both ought to wait a year. You don't need to see him any more.
It will just stir things all up afresh. If you don't see him, but
just write, it will be better for him, too. He won't feel so badly
as he will if you see him again and go all over the ground once
more."

Mrs. Dale was terribly afraid of Eugene's influence, but she
could not accomplish this.

"I won't do that," said Suzanne, "I won't do it. I'm going back
to New York, that's all there is about it!" Mrs. Dale finally
yielded that much. She had to.

There was a letter from Suzanne after three days, saying that
she couldn't answer his letter in full, but that she was coming
back to New York and would see him, and subsequently a meeting
between Suzanne and Eugene at Daleview in her mother's presence—Dr.
Woolley and Mr. Pitcairn were in another part of the house at the
time—in which the proposals were gone over anew.

Eugene had motored down after Mrs. Dale's demands had been put
before him in the gloomiest and yet more feverish frame of mind in
which he had ever been,—gloomy because of heavy forebodings of evil
and his own dark financial condition—while inspirited at other
moments by thoughts of some splendid, eager revolt on the part of
Suzanne, of her rushing to him, defying all, declaring herself
violently and convincingly, and so coming off a victor with him.
His faith in her love was still so great.

The night was one of those cold October ones with a steely sky
and a sickle moon, harbinger of frost, newly seen in the west, and
pointed stars thickening overhead. As he sat in his car on the
Staten Island ferry boat, he could see a long line of southward
bound ducks, homing to those reedy marshes which Bryant had in mind
when he wrote "To a Waterfowl." They were honking as they went,
their faint "quacks" coming back on the thin air and making him
feel desperately lonely and bereft. When he reached Daleview,
speeding past October trees, and entered the great drawing-room
where a fire was blazing and where once in spring he had danced
with Suzanne, his heart leaped up, for he was to see her, and the
mere sight of her was as a tonic to his fevered body—a cool drink
to a thirsting man.

Mrs. Dale stared at Eugene defiantly when he came, but Suzanne
welcomed him to her embrace. "Oh!" she exclaimed, holding him close
for a few moments and breathing feverishly. There was complete
silence for a time.

"Mama insists, Eugene," she said after a time, "that we ought to
wait a year, and I think since there is such a fuss about it, that
perhaps it might be just as well. We may have been just a little
hasty, don't you think? I have told mama what I think about her
action in going to Mr. Colfax, but she doesn't seem to care. She is
threatening now to have me adjudged insane. A year won't make any
real difference since I am coming to you, anyhow, will it? But I
thought I ought to tell you this in person, to ask you about
it"—she paused, looking into his eyes.

"I thought we settled all this up in St. Jacques?" said Eugene,
turning to Mrs. Dale, but experiencing a sinking sensation of
fear.

"We did, all except the matter of not seeing her. I think it is
highly inadvisable that you two should be together. It isn't
possible the way things stand. People will talk. Your wife's
condition has to be adjusted. You can't be running around with her
and a child coming to you. I want Suzanne to go away for a year
where she can be calm and think it all out, and I want you to let
her. If she still insists that she wants you after that, and will
not listen to the logic of the situation in regard to marriage,
then I propose to wash my hands of the whole thing. She may have
her inheritance. She may have you if she wants you. If you have
come to your senses by that time, as I hope you will have, you will
get a divorce, or go back to Mrs. Witla, or do whatever you do in a
sensible way."

She did not want to incense Eugene here, but she was very
bitter.

Eugene merely frowned.

"Is this your decision, Suzanne, too?" he asked wearily.

"I think mama is terrible, Eugene," replied Suzanne evasively,
or perhaps as a reply to her mother. "You and I have planned our
lives, and we will work them out. We have been a little selfish,
now that I think of it. I think a year won't do any harm, perhaps,
if it will stop all this fussing. I can wait, if you can."

An inexpressible sense of despair fell upon Eugene at the sound
of this, a sadness so deep that he could scarcely speak. He could
not believe that it was really Suzanne who was saying that to him.
Willing to wait a year! She who had declared so defiantly that she
would not. It would do no harm? To think that life, fate, her
mother were triumphing over him in this fashion, after all. What
then was the significance of the black-bearded men he had seen so
often of late? Why had he been finding horseshoes? Was fate such a
liar? Did life in its dark, subtle chambers lay lures and traps for
men? His position gone, his Blue Sea venture involved in an
indefinite delay out of which might come nothing, Suzanne going for
a whole year, perhaps for ever, most likely so, for what could not
her mother do with her in a whole year, having her alone? Angela
alienated—a child approaching. What a climax!

"Is this really your decision, Suzanne?" he asked, sadly, a mist
of woe clouding his whole being.

"I think it ought to be, perhaps, Eugene," she replied, still
evasively. "It's very trying. I will be faithful to you, though. I
promise you that I will not change. Don't you think we can wait a
year? We can, can't we?"

"A whole year without seeing you, Suzanne?"

"Yes, it will pass, Eugene."

"A whole year?"

"Yes, Eugene."

"I have nothing more to say, Mrs. Dale," he said, turning to her
mother solemnly, a sombre, gloomy light in his eye, his heart
hardening towards Suzanne for the moment. To think she should treat
him so—throw him down, as he phrased it. Well, such was life. "You
win," he added. "It has been a terrible experience for me. A
terrible passion. I love this girl. I love her with my whole heart.
Sometimes I have vaguely suspected that she might not know."

He turned to Suzanne, and for the first time he thought that he
did not see there that true understanding which he had fancied had
been there all the time. Could fate have been lying to him also in
this? Was he mistaken in this, and had he been following a phantom
lure of beauty? Was Suzanne but another trap to drag him down to
his old nothingness? God! The prediction of the Astrologer of a
second period of defeat after seven or eight years came back.

"Oh, Suzanne!" he said, simply and unconsciously dramatic. "Do
you really love me?"

"Yes, Eugene," she replied.

"Really?"

"Yes."

He held out his arms and she came, but for the life of him he
could not dispel this terrible doubt. It took the joy out of his
kiss—as if he had been dreaming a dream of something perfect in his
arms and had awaked to find it nothing—as if life had sent him a
Judas in the shape of a girl to betray him.

"Do let us end this, Mr. Witla," said Mrs. Dale coldly, "there
is nothing to be gained by delaying. Let us end it for a year, and
then talk."

"Oh, Suzanne," he continued, as mournful as a passing bell,
"come to the door with me."

"No, the servants are there," put in Mrs. Dale. "Please make
your farewells here."

"Mama," said Suzanne angrily and defiantly, moved by the pity of
it, "I won't have you talk this way. Leave the room, or I shall go
to the door with him and further. Leave us, please."

Mrs. Dale went out.

"Oh, Flower Face," said Eugene pathetically, "I can't believe
it. I can't. I can't! This has been managed wrong. I should have
taken you long ago. So it is to end this way. A year, a whole year,
and how much longer?"

"Only a year," she insisted. "Only a year, believe me, can't
you? I won't change, I won't!"

He shook his head, and Suzanne as before took his face in her
hands. She kissed his cheeks, his lips, his hair.

"Believe me, Eugene. I seem cold. You don't know what I have
gone through. It is nothing but trouble everywhere. Let us wait a
year. I promise you I will come to you. I swear. One year. Can't we
wait one year?"

"A year," he said. "A year. I can't believe it. Where will we
all be in a year? Oh, Flower Face, Myrtle Bloom, Divine Fire. I
can't stand this. I can't. It's too much. I'm the one who is paying
now. Yes, I pay."

He took her face and looked at it, all its soft, enticing
features, her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her hair.

"I thought, I thought," he murmured.

Suzanne only stroked the back of his head with her hands.

"Well, if I must, I must," he said.

He turned away, turned back to embrace her, turned again and
then, without looking back, walked out into the hall. Mrs. Dale was
there waiting.

"Good night, Mrs. Dale," he said gloomily.

"Good night, Mr. Witla," she replied frigidly, but with a sense
of something tragic in her victory at that.

He took his hat and walked out.

Outside the bright October stars were in evidence by millions.
The Bay and Harbor of New York were as wonderfully lit as on that
night when Suzanne came to him after the evening at Fort Wadsworth
on her own porch. He recalled the spring odours, the wonderful feel
of youth and love—the hope that was springing then. Now, it was
five or six months later, and all that romance was gone. Suzanne,
sweet voice, accomplished shape, light whisper, delicate touch.
Gone. All gone—

"Faded the flower and all its
budded charms,
Faded the sight of
beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape
of beauty from my arms,
Faded the
voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise."

Gone were those bright days in which they had ridden together,
dined together, walked in sylvan places beside their car. A little
way from here he first played tennis with her. A little way from
here he had come so often to meet her clandestinely. Now she was
gone—gone.

He had come in his car, but he really did not want it. Life was
accursed. His own was a failure. To think that all his fine dreams
should crumble this way. Shortly he would have no car, no home on
Riverside Drive, no position, no anything.

"God, I can't stand this!" he exclaimed, and a little later—"By
God, I can't! I can't!"

He dismissed his car at the Battery, telling his chauffeur to
take it to the garage, and walking gloomily through all the tall
dark streets of lower New York. Here was Broadway where he had
often been with Colfax and Winfield. Here was this great world of
finance around Wall Street in which he had vaguely hoped to shine.
Now these buildings were high and silent—receding from him in a
way. Overhead were the clear bright stars, cool and refreshing, but
without meaning to him now. How was he to settle it? How adjust it?
A year! She would never come back—never! It was all gone. A bright
cloud faded. A mirage dissolved into its native nothingness.
Position, distinction, love, home—where were they? Yet a little
while and all these things would be as though they had never been.
Hell! Damn! Curse the brooding fates that could thus plot to
destroy him!

Back in her room in Daleview Suzanne had locked herself in. She
was not without a growing sense of the tragedy of it. She stared at
the floor, recalled his face.

"Oh, oh," she said, and for the first time in her life felt as
though she could cry from a great heartache—but she could not.

And in Riverside Drive was another woman brooding, lonely,
despondently, desperately, over the nature of the tragedy that was
upon her. How were things to be adjusted? How was she to be saved?
Oh! oh! her life, her child! If Eugene could be made to understand!
If he could only be made to see!

During the weeks which followed Colfax's talk with him, and
Suzanne's decision, which amounted practically to a dismissal,
Eugene tried to wind up his affairs at the United Magazines
Corporation, as well as straighten out his relationship with
Angela. It was no easy task. Colfax helped him considerably by
suggesting that he should say he was going abroad for the company,
for the time being, and should make it appear imperative that he go
at once. Eugene called in his department heads, and told them what
Colfax suggested, but added that his own interests elsewhere, of
which they knew, or suspected, were now so involved that he might
possibly not return, or only for a little while at best. He put
forward an air of great sufficiency and self-satisfaction,
considering the difficulties he was encountering, and the thing
passed off as a great wonder, but with no suspicion of any
immediate misfortune attaching to him. As a matter of fact, it was
assumed that he was destined to a much higher estate—the control of
his private interests.

In his talk with Angela he made it perfectly plain that he was
going to leave her. He would not make any pretence about this. She
ought to know. He had lost his position; he was not going to
Suzanne soon; he wanted her to leave him, or he would leave her.
She should go to Wisconsin or Europe or anywhere, for the time
being, and leave him to fight this thing out alone. He was not
indispensable to her in her condition. There were nurses she could
hire—maternity hospitals where she could stay. He would be willing
to pay for that. He would never live with her any more, if he could
help it—he did not want to. The sight of her in the face of his
longing for Suzanne would be a wretched commentary—a reproach and a
sore shame. No, he would leave her and perhaps, possibly, sometime
when she obtained more real fighting courage, Suzanne might come to
him. She ought to. Angela might die. Yes, brutal as it may seem, he
thought this. She might die, and then—and then—— No thought of the
child that might possibly live, even if she died, held him. He
could not understand that, could not grasp it as yet. It was a mere
abstraction.

Eugene took a room in an apartment house in Kingsbridge, where
he was not known for the time being, and where he was not likely to
be seen. Then there was witnessed that dreary spectacle of a man
whose life has apparently come down in a heap, whose notions,
emotions, tendencies and feelings are confused and disappointed by
some untoward result. If Eugene had been ten or fifteen years
older, the result might have been suicide. A shade of difference in
temperament might have resulted in death, murder, anything. As it
was, he sat blankly at times among the ruins of his dreams
speculating on what Suzanne was doing, on what Angela was doing, on
what people were saying and thinking, on how he could gather up the
broken pieces of his life and make anything out of them at all.

The one saving element in it all was his natural desire to work,
which, although it did not manifest itself at first, by degrees
later on began to come back. He must do something, if it was not
anything more than to try to paint again. He could not be running
around looking for a position. There was nothing for him in
connection with Blue Sea. He had to work to support Angela, of whom
he was now free, if he did not want to be mean; and as he viewed it
all in the light of what had happened, he realized that he had been
bad enough. She had not been temperamentally suited to him, but she
had tried to be. Fundamentally it was not her fault. How was he to
work and live and be anything at all from now on?

There were long arguments over this situation between him and
Angela—pleas, tears, a crashing downward of everything which was
worth while in life to Angela, and then, in spite of her pathetic
situation, separation. Because it was November and the landlord had
heard of Eugene's financial straits, or rather reverse of fortune,
it was possible to relinquish the lease, which had several years to
run, and the apartment was given up. Angela, distraught, scarcely
knew which way to turn. It was one of those pitiless, scandalous
situations in life which sicken us of humanity. She ran helplessly
to Eugene's sister, Myrtle, who first tried to conceal the scandal
and tragedy from her husband, but afterward confessed and
deliberated as to what should be done. Frank Bangs, who was a
practical man, as well as firm believer in Christian Science
because of his wife's to him miraculous healing from a tumor
several years before, endeavored to apply his understanding of the
divine science—the omnipresence of good to this situation.

"There is no use worrying about it, Myrtle," he said to his
wife, who, in spite of her faith, was temporarily shaken and
frightened by the calamities which seemingly had overtaken her
brother. "It's another evidence of the workings of mortal mind. It
is real enough in its idea of itself, but nothing in God's grace.
It will come out all right, if we think right. Angela can go to a
maternity hospital for the time being, or whenever she's ready. We
may be able to persuade Eugene to do the right thing."

Angela was persuaded to consult a Christian Science
practitioner, and Myrtle went to the woman who had cured her and
begged her to use her influence, or rather her knowledge of science
to effect a rehabilitation for her brother. She was told that this
could not be done without his wish, but that she would pray for
him. If he could be persuaded to come of his own accord, seeking
spiritual guidance or divine aid, it would be a different matter.
In spite of his errors, and to her they seemed palpable and
terrible enough at present, her faith would not allow her to
reproach him, and besides she loved him. He was a strong man, she
said, always strange. He and Angela might not have been well mated.
But all could be righted in
Science
. There was a dreary
period of packing and storing for Angela, in which she stood about
amid the ruins of her previous comfort and distinction and cried
over the things that had seemed so lovely to her. Here were all
Eugene's things, his paintings, his canes, his pipes, his clothes.
She cried over a handsome silk dressing gown in which he had been
wont to lounge about—it smacked so much, curiously, of older and
happier days. There were hard, cold and determined conferences also
in which some of Angela's old fighting, ruling spirit would come
back, but not for long. She was beaten now, and she knew
it—wrecked. The roar of a cold and threatening sea was in her
ears.

It should be said here that at one time Suzanne truly imagined
she loved Eugene. It must be remembered, however, that she was
moved to affection for him by the wonder of a personality that was
hypnotic to her. There was something about the personality of
Eugene that was subversive of conventionality. He approached,
apparently a lamb of conventional feelings and appearances;
whereas, inwardly, he was a ravening wolf of indifference to
convention. All the organized modes and methods of life were a joke
to him. He saw through to something that was not material life at
all, but spiritual, or say immaterial, of which all material things
were a shadow. What did the great forces of life care whether this
system which was maintained here with so much show and fuss was
really maintained at all or not? How could they care? He once stood
in a morgue and saw human bodies apparently dissolving into a kind
of chemical mush and he had said to himself then how ridiculous it
was to assume that life meant anything much to the forces which
were doing these things. Great chemical and physical forces were at
work, which permitted, accidentally, perhaps, some little
shadow-play, which would soon pass. But, oh, its presence—how sweet
it was!

Naturally Suzanne was cast down for the time being, for she was
capable of suffering just as Eugene was. But having given her word
to wait, she decided to stick to that, although she had not stuck
to her other. She was between nineteen and twenty now—Eugene was
nearing forty. Life could still soothe her in spite of herself. In
Eugene's case it could only hurt the more. Mrs. Dale went abroad
with Suzanne and the other children, visiting with people who could
not possibly have heard, or ever would except in a vague, uncertain
way for that matter. If it became evident, as she thought it might,
that there was to be a scandal, Mrs. Dale proposed to say that
Eugene had attempted to establish an insidious hold on her child in
defiance of reason and honor, and that she had promptly broken it
up, shielding Suzanne, almost without the latter's knowledge. It
was plausible enough.

What was he to do now? how live? was his constant thought. Go
into a wee, small apartment in some back street with Angela, where
he and she, if he decided to stay with her, could find a pretty
outlook for a little money and live? Never. Admit that he had lost
Suzanne for a year at least, if not permanently, in this suddenly
brusque way? Impossible. Go and confess that he had made a mistake,
which he still did not feel to be true? or that he was sorry and
would like to patch things up as before? Never. He was not sorry.
He did not propose to live with Angela in the old way any more. He
was sick of her, or rather of that atmosphere of repression and
convention in which he had spent so many years. He was sick of the
idea of having a child thrust on him against his will. He would not
do it. She had no business to put herself in this position. He
would die first. His insurance was paid up to date. He had carried
during the last five years a policy for something over eighteen
thousand in her favor, and if he died she would get that. He wished
he might. It would be some atonement for the hard knocks which fate
had recently given her, but he did not wish to live with her any
more. Never, never, child or no child. Go back to the apartment
after this night—how could he? If he did, he must pretend that
nothing had happened—at least, nothing untoward between him and
Suzanne. She might come back. Might! Might! Ah, the mockery of
it—to leave him in this way when she really could have come to
him—should have—oh, the bitterness of this thrust of fate!

There was a day when the furniture was sent away and Angela went
to live with Myrtle for the time being. There was another tearful
hour when she left New York to visit her sister Marietta at Racine,
where they now were, intending to tell her before she came away, as
a profound secret, the terrible tragedy which had overtaken her.
Eugene went to the train with her, but with no desire to be there.
Angela's one thought, in all this, was that somehow time would
effect a reconciliation. If she could just wait long enough; if she
could keep her peace and live and not die, and not give him a
divorce, he might eventually recover his sanity and come to think
of her as at least worth living with. The child might do it, its
coming would be something that would affect him surely. He was
bound to see her through it. She told herself she was willing and
delighted to go through this ordeal, if only it brought him back to
her. This child—what a reception it was to receive, unwanted,
dishonored before its arrival, ignored; if by any chance she should
die, what would he do about it? Surely he would not desert it.
Already in her nervous, melancholy way, she was yearning toward
it.

"Tell me," she said to Eugene one day, when they were
alternately quarreling and planning, "if the baby comes, and I—and
I—die, you won't absolutely desert it? You'll take it, won't
you?"

"I'll take it," he replied. "Don't worry. I'm not an absolute
dog. I didn't want it. It's a trick on your part, but I'll take it.
I don't want you to die. You know that."

Angela thought if she lived that she would be willing to go
through a period of poverty and depression with him again, if only
she could live to see him sane and moral and even semi-successful.
The baby might do it. He had never had a child. And much as he
disliked the idea now, still, when it was here, he might change his
mind. If only she could get through that ordeal. She was so old—her
muscles so set. Meanwhile she consulted a lawyer, a doctor, a
fortune teller, an astrologer and the Christian Science
practitioner to whom Myrtle had recommended her. It was an aimless,
ridiculous combination, but she was badly torn up, and any port
seemed worth while in this storm.

The doctor told her that her muscles were rather set, but with
the regimen he prescribed, he was satisfied she would be all right.
The astrologer told her that she and Eugene were fated for this
storm by the stars—Eugene, particularly, and that he might recover,
in which case, he would be successful again in a measure. As for
herself, he shook his head. Yes, she would be all right. He was
lying. The fortune teller laid the cards to see if Eugene would
ever marry Suzanne, and Angela was momentarily gratified to learn
that she would never enter his life—this from a semi-cadaverous,
but richly dressed and bejeweled lady whose ante-room was filled
with women whose troubles were of the heart, the loss of money, the
enmity of rivals, or the dangers of childbirth. The Christian
Science practitioner declared all to be divine mind—omnipotent,
omnipresent, omniscient good, and that evil could not exist in
it—only the illusion of it. "It is real enough to those who give it
their faith and believe," said the counselor, "but without
substance or meaning to those who know themselves to be a perfect,
indestructible reflection of an idea in God. God is a principle.
When the nature of that principle is realized and yourself as a
part of it, evil falls away as the troublesome dream that it is. It
has no reality." She assured her that no evil could befall her in
the true understanding of Science. God is love.

The lawyer told her, after listening to a heated story of
Eugene's misconduct, that under the laws of the State of New York,
in which these misdeeds were committed, she was not entitled to
anything more than a very small fraction of her husband's estate,
if he had any. Two years was the shortest time in which a divorce
could be secured. He would advise her to sue if she could establish
a suitable condition of affluence on Eugene's part, not otherwise.
Then he charged her twenty-five dollars for this advice.