Теодор Драйзер
The "Genius"
CHAPTER IV
It had been while he was first perfecting his undertaking with Winfield as to what his relationship to the new Sea Island Construction Company was to be that Eugene had been dwelling more and more fondly upon the impression which Suzanne Dale had originally made upon him. It was six weeks before they met again, and then it was on the occasion of a dance that Mrs. Dale was giving in honor of Suzanne that Eugene and Angela were invited. Mrs. Dale admired Angela's sterling qualities as a wife, and while there might be temperamental and social differences, she did not think they were sufficient to warrant any discrimination between them, at least not on her part. Angela was a good woman – not a social figure at all – but interesting in her way. Mrs. Dale was much more interested in Eugene, because in the first place they were very much alike temperamentally, and in the next place because Eugene was a successful and brilliant person. She liked to see the easy manner in which he took life, the air with which he assumed that talent should naturally open all doors to him. He was not conscious apparently of any inferiority in anything but rather of a splendid superiority. She heard it from so many that he was rapidly rising in his publishing world and that he was interested in many things, the latest this project to create a magnificent summer resort. Winfield was a personal friend of hers. He had never attempted to sell her any property, but he had once said that he might some day take her Staten Island holdings and divide them up into town lots. This was one possibility which tended to make her pleasant to him.
The evening in question Eugene and Angela went down to Daleview in their automobile. Eugene always admired this district, for it gave him a sense of height and scope which was not easily attainable elsewhere about New York. It was still late winter and the night was cold but clear. The great house with its verandas encased in glass was brightly lit. There were a number of people – men and women, whom Eugene had met at various places, and quite a number of young people whom he did not know. Angela had to be introduced to a great many, and Eugene felt that peculiar sensation which he so often experienced of a certain incongruity in his matrimonial state. Angela was nice, but to him she was not like these other women who carried themselves with such an air. There was a statuesqueness and a sufficiency about many of them, to say nothing of their superb beauty and sophistication which made him feel, when the contrast was forced upon him closely, that he had made a terrible mistake. Why had he been so silly as to marry? He could have told Angela frankly that he would not at the time, and all would have been well. He forgot how badly, emotionally, he had entangled himself. But scenes like these made him dreadfully unhappy. Why, his life if he were single would now be but beginning!
As he walked round tonight he was glad to be free socially even for a few minutes. He was glad that first this person and that took the trouble to talk to Angela. It relieved him of the necessity of staying near her, for if he neglected her or she felt neglected by others she was apt to reproach him. If he did not show her attention, she would complain that he was conspicuous in his indifference. If others refused to talk to her, it was his place. He should. Eugene objected to this necessity with all his soul, but he did not see what he was to do about it. As she often said, even if he had made a mistake in marrying her, it was his place to stick by her now that he had. A real man would.
One of the things that interested him was the number of beautiful young women. He was interested to see how full and complete mentally and physically so many girls appeared to be at eighteen. Why, in their taste, shrewdness, completeness, they were fit mates for a man of almost any age up to forty! Some of them looked so wonderful to him – so fresh and ruddy with the fires of ambition and desire burning briskly in their veins. Beautiful girls – real flowers, like roses, light and dark. And to think the love period was all over for him – completely over!
Suzanne came down with others after a while from some room upstairs, and once more Eugene was impressed with her simple, natural, frank, good-natured attitude. Her light chestnut-colored hair was tied with a wide band of light blue ribbon which matched her eyes and contrasted well with her complexion. Again, her dress was some light flimsy thing, the color of peach blossoms, girdled with ribbon and edged with flowers like a wreath. Soft white sandals held her feet.
"Oh, Mr. Witla!" she said gaily, holding out her smooth white arm on a level with her eyes and dropping her hand gracefully. Her red lips were parted, showing even white teeth, arching into a radiant smile. Her eyes were quite wide as he remembered, with an innocent, surprised look in them, which was wholly unconscious with her. If wet roses could outrival a maiden in all her freshness, he thought he would like to see it. Nothing could equal the beauty of a young woman in her eighteenth or nineteenth year.
"Yes, quite, Mr. Witla," he said, beaming. "I thought you had forgotten. My, we look charming this evening! We look like roses and cut flowers and stained-glass windows and boxes of jewels, and, and, and – "
He pretended to be lost for more words and looked quizzically up at the ceiling.
Suzanne began to laugh. Like Eugene, she had a marked sense of the comic and the ridiculous. She was not in the least vain, and the idea of being like roses and boxes of jewels and stained-glass windows tickled her fancy.
"Why, that's quite a collection of things to be, isn't it?" she laughed, her lips parted. "I wouldn't mind being all those things if I could, particularly the jewels. Mama won't give me any. I can't even get a brooch for my throat."
"Mama is real mean, apparently," said Eugene vigorously. "We'll have to talk to mama, but she knows, you know, that you don't need any jewels, see? She knows that you have something which is just as good, or better. But we won't talk about that, will we?"
Suzanne had been afraid that he was going to begin complimenting her, but seeing how easily he avoided this course she liked him for it. She was a little overawed by his dignity and mental capacity, but attracted by his gaiety and lightness of manner.
"Do you know, Mr. Witla," she said, "I believe you like to tease people."
"Oh, no!" said Eugene. "Oh, never, never! Nothing like that. How could I? Tease people! Far be it from me! That's the very last thing I ever think of doing. I always approach people in a very solemn manner and tell them the dark sad truth. It's the only way. They need it. The more truth I tell the better I feel. And then they like me so much better for it."
At the first rush of his quizzical tirade Suzanne's eyes opened quaintly, inquiringly. Then she began to smile, and in a moment after he ceased she exclaimed: "Oh, ha! ha! Oh, dear! Oh, dear, how you talk!" A ripple of laughter spread outward, and Eugene frowned darkly.
"How dare you laugh?" he said. "Don't laugh at me. It's against the rules to laugh, anyhow. Don't you remember growing girls should never laugh? Solemnity is the first rule of beauty. Never smile. Keep perfectly solemn. Look wise. Hence. Therefore. If. And – "
He lifted a finger solemnly, and Suzanne stared. He had fixed her eye with his and was admiring her pretty chin and nose and lips, while she gazed not knowing what to make of him. He was very different; very much like a boy, and yet very much like a solemn, dark master of some kind.
"You almost frighten me," she said.
"Now, now, listen! It's all over. Come to. I'm just a silly-billy. Are you going to dance with me this evening?"
"Why, certainly, if you want me to! Oh, that reminds me! We have cards. Did you get one?"
"No."
"Well, they're over here, I think."
She led the way toward the reception hall, and Eugene took from the footman who was stationed there two of the little books.
"Let's see," he said, writing, "how greedy dare I be?"
Suzanne made no reply.
"If I take the third and the sixth and the tenth would that be too many?"
"No-o," said Suzanne doubtfully.
He wrote in hers and his and then they went back to the drawing-room where so many were now moving. "Will you be sure and save me these?"
"Why, certainly," she replied. "To be sure, I will!"
"That's nice of you. And now here comes your mother. Remember, you mustn't ever, ever, ever laugh. It's against the rules."
Suzanne went away, thinking. She was pleased at the gaiety of this man who seemed so light-hearted and self-sufficient. He seemed like someone who took her as a little girl, so different from the boys she knew who were solemn in her presence and rather love sick. He was the kind of man one could have lots of fun with without subjecting one's self to undue attention and having to explain to her mother. Her mother liked him. But she soon forgot him in the chatter of other people.
Eugene was thinking again, though, of the indefinable something in the spirit of this girl which was attracting him so vigorously. What was it? He had seen hundreds of girls in the last few years, all charming, but somehow this one – She seemed so strong, albeit so new and young. There was a poise there – a substantial quality in her soul which could laugh at life and think no ill of it. That was it or something of it, for of course her beauty was impressive, but a courageous optimism was shining out through her eyes. It was in her laugh, her mood. She would never be afraid.
The dance began after ten, and Eugene danced with first one and then another – Angela, Mrs. Dale, Mrs. Stevens, Miss Willy. When the third set came he went looking for Suzanne and found her talking to another young girl and two society men.
"Mine, you know," he said smilingly.
She came out to him laughing, stretching her arm in a sinuous way, quite unconscious of the charming figure she made. She had a way of throwing back her head which revealed her neck in beautiful lines. She looked into Eugene's eyes simply and unaffectedly, returning his smile with one of her own. And when they began to dance he felt as though he had never really danced before.
What was it the poet said of the poetry of motion? This was it. This was it. This girl could dance wonderfully, sweetly, as a fine voice sings. She seemed to move like the air with the sound of the two-step coming from an ambush of flowers, and Eugene yielded himself instinctively to the charm – the hypnotism of it. He danced and in dancing forgot everything except this vision leaning upon his arm and the sweetness of it all. Nothing could equal this emotion, he said to himself. It was finer than anything he had ever experienced. There was joy in it, pure delight, an exquisite sense of harmony; and even while he was congratulating himself the music seemed to hurry to a finish. Suzanne had looked up curiously into his eyes.
"You like dancing, don't you?" she said.
"I do, but I don't dance well."
"Oh, I think so!" she replied. "You dance so easily."
"It is because of you," he said simply. "You have the soul of the dance in you. Most people dance poorly, like myself."
"I don't think so," she said, hanging on to his arm as they walked toward a seat. "Oh, there's Kinroy! He has the next with me."
Eugene looked at her brother almost angrily. Why should circumstances rob him of her company in this way? Kinroy looked like her – he was very handsome for a boy.
"Well, then, I have to give you up. I wish there were more."
He left her only to wait impatiently for the sixth and the tenth. He knew it was silly to be interested in her in this way, for nothing could come of it. She was a young girl hedged about by all the conventions and safeguards which go to make for the perfect upbringing of girlhood. He was a man past the period of her interest, watched over by conventions and interests also. There could be absolutely nothing between them, and yet he longed for her just the same, for just this little sip of the nectar of make-believe. For a few minutes in her company, married or not, so many years older or not, he could be happy in her company, teasing her. That sense of dancing – that sense of perfect harmony with beauty – when had he ever experienced that before?
The night went by, and at one he and Angela went home. She had been entertained by some young officer in the army stationed at Fort Wadsworth who had known her brother David. That had made the evening pleasant for her. She commented on Mrs. Dale and Suzanne, what a charming hostess the former was and how pretty and gay Suzanne looked, but Eugene manifested little interest. He did not want it to appear that he had been interested in Suzanne above any of the others.
"Yes, she's very nice," he said. "Rather pretty; but she's like all girls at that age. I like to tease them."
Angela wondered whether Eugene had really changed for good. He seemed saner in all his talk concerning women. Perhaps large affairs had cured him completely, though she could not help feeling that he must be charmed and delighted by the beauty of some of the women whom he saw.
Five weeks more went by and then he saw Suzanne one day with her mother on Fifth Avenue, coming out of an antique shop. Mrs. Dale explained that she was looking after the repair of a rare piece of furniture. Eugene and Suzanne were enabled to exchange but a few gay words. Four weeks later he met them at the Brentwood Hadleys, in Westchester. Suzanne and her mother were enjoying a season of spring riding. Eugene was there for only a Saturday afternoon and Sunday. On this occasion he saw her coming in at half-past four wearing a divided riding skirt and looking flushed and buoyant. Her lovely hair was flowing lightly about her temples.
"Oh, how are you?" she asked, with that same inconsequent air, her hand held out to him at a high angle. "I saw you last in Fifth Avenue, didn't I? Mama was having her chair fixed. Ha, ha! She's such a slow rider! I've left her miles behind. Are you going to be here long?"
"Just today and tomorrow."
He looked at her, pretending gaiety and indifference.
"Is Mrs. Witla here?"
"No, she couldn't come. A relative of hers is in the city."
"I need a bath terribly," said the desire of his eyes, and passed on, calling back: "I'll see you again before dinner, very likely."
Eugene sighed.
She came down after an hour, dressed in a flowered organdie, a black silk band about her throat, a low collar showing her pretty neck. She picked up a magazine, passing a wicker table, and came down the veranda where Eugene was sitting alone. Her easy manner interested him, and her friendliness. She liked him well enough to be perfectly natural with him and to seek him out where he was sitting once she saw he was there.
"Oh, here you are!" she said, and sat down, taking a chair which was near him.
"Yes, here I am," he said, and began teasing her as usual, for it was the only way in which he knew how to approach her. Suzanne responded vivaciously, for Eugene's teasing delighted her. It was the one kind of humor she really enjoyed.
"You know, Mr. Witla," she said to him once, "I'm not going to laugh at any of your jokes any more. They're all at my expense."
"That makes it all the nicer," he said. "You wouldn't want me to make jokes at my expense, would you? That would be a terrible joke."
She laughed and he smiled. They looked at a golden sunset filtering through a grove of tender maples. The spring was young and the leaves just budding.
"Isn't it lovely tonight?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, in a mellow, meditative voice, the first ring of deep sincerity in it that he ever noticed there.
"Do you like nature?" he asked.
"Do I?" she returned. "I can't get enough of the woods these days. I feel so queer sometimes, Mr. Witla. As though I were not really alive at all, you know. Just a sound, or a color in the woods."
He stopped and looked at her. The simile caught him quite as any notable characteristic in anyone would have caught him. What was the color and complexity of this girl's mind? Was she so wise, so artistic and so emotional that nature appealed to her in a deep way? Was this wonderful charm that he felt the shadow or radiance of something finer still?
"So that's the way it is, is it?" he asked.
"Yes," she said quietly.
He sat and looked at her, and she eyed him as solemnly.
"Why do you look at me so?" she asked.
"Why do you say such curious things?" he answered.
"What did I say?"
"I don't believe you really know. Well, never mind. Let us walk, will you? Do you mind? It's still an hour to dinner. I'd like to go over and see what's beyond those trees."
They went down a little path bordered with grass and under green budding twigs. It came to a stile finally and looked out upon a stony green field where some cows were pasturing.
"Oh, the spring! The spring!" exclaimed Eugene, and Suzanne answered: "You know, Mr. Witla, I think we must be something alike in some ways. That's just the way I feel."
"How do you know how I feel?"
"I can tell by your voice," she said.
"Can you, really?"
"Why, yes. Why shouldn't I?"
"What a strange girl you are!" he said thoughtfully. "I don't think I understand you quite."
"Why, why, am I so different from everyone else?"
"Quite, quite," he said; "at least to me. I have never seen anyone quite like you before."
CHAPTER V
It was after this meeting that vague consciousness came to Suzanne that Mr. Witla, as she always thought of him to herself, was just a little more than very nice to her. He was so gentle, so meditative, and withal so gay when he was near her! He seemed fairly to bubble whenever he came into her presence, never to have any cause for depression or gloom such as sometimes seized on her when she was alone. He was always immaculately dressed, and had great affairs, so her mother said. They discussed him once at table at Daleview, and Mrs. Dale said she thought he was charming.
"He's one of the nicest fellows that comes here, I think," said Kinroy. "I don't like that stick, Woodward."
He was referring to another man of about Eugene's age who admired his mother.
"Mrs. Witla is such a queer little woman," said Suzanne. "She's so different from Mr. Witla. He's so gay and good-natured, and she's so reserved. Is she as old as he is, mama?"
"I don't think so," said Mrs. Dale, who was deceived by Angela's apparent youth. "What makes you ask?"
"Oh, I just wondered!" said Suzanne, who was vaguely curious concerning things in connection with Eugene.
There were several other meetings, one of which Eugene engineered, once when he persuaded Angela to invite Suzanne and her mother to a spring night revel they were having at the studio, and the other when he and Angela were invited to the Willebrands, where the Dales were also.
Angela was always with him. Mrs. Dale almost always with Suzanne. There were a few conversations, but they were merely gay, inconsequent make-believe talks, in which Suzanne saw Eugene as one who was forever happy. She little discerned the brooding depths of longing that lay beneath his gay exterior.
The climax was brought about, however, when one July day after a short visit to one of the summer resorts, Angela was taken ill. She had always been subject to colds and sore throats, and these peculiar signs, which are associated by medical men with latent rheumatism, finally culminated in this complaint. Angela had also been pronounced to have a weak heart, and this combined with a sudden, severe rheumatic attack completely prostrated her. A trained nurse had to be called, and Angela's sister Marietta was sent for. Eugene's sister Myrtle, who now lived in New York, was asked by him to come over and take charge, and under her supervision, pending Marietta's arrival, his household went forward smoothly enough. The former, being a full-fledged Christian Scientist, having been instantly cured, as she asserted, of a long-standing nervous complaint, was for calling a Christian Science practitioner, but Eugene would have none of it. He could not believe that there was anything in this new religious theory, and thought Angela needed a doctor. He sent for a specialist in her complaint. He pronounced that six weeks at the least, perhaps two months, must elapse before Angela would be able to sit up again.
"Her system is full of rheumatism," said her physician. "She is in a very bad way. Rest and quiet, and constant medication will bring her round."
Eugene was sorry. He did not want to see her suffer, but her sickness did not for one minute alter his mental attitude. In fact, he did not see how it could. It did not change their relative mental outlook in any way. Their peculiar relationship of guardian and restless ward was quite unaffected.
All social functions of every kind were now abandoned and Eugene stayed at home every evening, curious to see what the outcome would be. He wanted to see how the trained nurse did her work and what the doctor thought would be the next step. He had a great deal to do at all times, reading, consulting, and many of those who wished to confer with him came to the apartment of an evening. All those who knew them socially at all intimately called or sent messages of condolence, and among those who came were Mrs. Dale and Suzanne. The former because Eugene had been so nice to her in a publishing way and was shortly going to bring out her first attempt at a novel was most assiduous. She sent flowers and came often, proffering the services of Suzanne for any day that the nurse might wish to be off duty or Myrtle could not be present. She thought Angela might like to have Suzanne read to her. At least the offer sounded courteous and was made in good faith.
Suzanne did not come alone at first, but after a time, when Angela had been ill four weeks and Eugene had stood the heat of the town apartment nightly for the chance of seeing her, she did. Mrs. Dale suggested that he should run down to her place over Saturday and Sunday. It was not far. They were in close telephone communication. It would rest him.
Eugene, though Angela had suggested it a number of times before, had refused to go to any seaside resort or hotel, even for Saturday and Sunday, his statement being that he did not care to go alone at this time. The truth was he was becoming so interested in Suzanne that he did not care to go anywhere save somewhere that he might see her again.
Mrs. Dale's offer was welcome enough, but having dissembled so much he had to dissemble more. Mrs. Dale insisted. Angela added her plea. Myrtle thought he ought to go. He finally ordered the car to take him down one Friday afternoon and leave him. Suzanne was out somewhere, but he sat on the veranda and basked in the magnificent view it gave of the lower bay. Kinroy and some young friend, together with two girls, were playing tennis on one of the courts. Eugene went out to watch them, and presently Suzanne returned, ruddy from a walk she had taken to a neighbor's house. At the sight of her every nerve in Eugene's body tingled – he felt a great exaltation, and it seemed as though she responded in kind, for she was particularly gay and laughing.
"They have a four," she called to him, her white duck skirt blowing. "Let's you and I get rackets and play single."
"I'm not very good, you know," he said.
"You couldn't be worse than I am," she replied. "I'm so bad Kinroy won't let me play in any game with him. Ha, ha!"
"Such being the case – " Eugene said lightly, and followed her to get the rackets.
They went to the second court, where they played practically unheeded. Every hit was a signal for congratulation on the part of one or the other, every miss for a burst of laughter or a jest. Eugene devoured Suzanne with his eyes, and she looked at him continually, in wide-eyed sweetness, scarcely knowing what she was doing. Her own hilarity on this occasion was almost inexplicable to her. It seemed as though she was possessed of some spirit of joy which she couldn't control. She confessed to him afterward that she had been wildly glad, exalted, and played with freedom and abandon, though at the same time she was frightened and nervous. To Eugene she was of course ravishing to behold. She could not play, as she truly said, but it made no difference. Her motions were beautiful.
Mrs. Dale had long admired Eugene's youthful spirit. She watched him now from one of the windows, and thought of him much as one might of a boy. He and Suzanne looked charming playing together. It occurred to her that if he were single he would not make a bad match for her daughter. Fortunately he was sane, prudent, charming, more like a guardian to Suzanne than anything else. Her friendship for him was rather a healthy sign.
After dinner it was proposed by Kinroy that he and his friends and Suzanne go to a dance which was being given at a club house, near the government fortifications at The Narrows, where they spread out into the lower bay. Mrs. Dale, not wishing to exclude Eugene, who was depressed at the thought of Suzanne's going and leaving him behind, suggested that they all go. She did not care so much for dancing herself, but Suzanne had no partner and Kinroy and his friend were very much interested in the girls they were taking. A car was called, and they sped to the club to find it dimly lighted with Chinese lanterns, and an orchestra playing softly in the gloom.
"Now you go ahead and dance," said her mother to Suzanne. "I want to sit out here and look at the water a while. I'll watch you through the door."
Eugene held out his hand to Suzanne, who took it, and in a moment they were whirling round. A kind of madness seized them both, for without a word or look they drew close to each other and danced furiously, in a clinging ecstasy of joy.
"Oh, how lovely!" Suzanne exclaimed at one turn of the room, where, passing an open door, they looked out and saw a full lighted ship passing silently by in the distant dark. A sail boat; its one great sail enveloped in a shadowy quiet, floated wraith-like, nearer still.
"Do scenes like that appeal to you so?" asked Eugene.
"Oh, do they!" she pulsated. "They take my breath away. This does, too, it's so lovely!"
Eugene sighed. He understood now. Never, he said to himself, was the soul of an artist so akin to his own and so enveloped in beauty. This same thirst for beauty that was in him was in her, and it was pulling her to him. Only her soul was so exquisitely set in youth and beauty and maidenhood that it overawed and frightened him. It seemed impossible that she should ever love him. These eyes, this face of hers – how they enchanted him! He was drawn as by a strong cord, and so was she – by an immense, terrible magnetism. He had felt it all the afternoon. Keenly. He was feeling it intensely now. He pressed her to his bosom, and she yielded, yearningly, suiting her motions to his subtlest moods. He wanted to exclaim: "Oh, Suzanne! Oh, Suzanne!" but he was afraid. If he said anything to her it would frighten her. She did not really dream as yet what it all meant.
"You know," he said, when the music stopped, "I'm quite beside myself. It's narcotic. I feel like a boy."
"Oh, if they would only go on!" was all she said. And together they went out on the veranda, where there were no lights but only chairs and the countless stars.
"Well?" said Mrs. Dale.
"I'm afraid you don't love to dance as well as I do?" observed Eugene calmly, sitting down beside her.
"I'm afraid I don't, seeing how joyously you do it. I've been watching you. You two dance well together. Kinroy, won't you have them bring us ices?"
Suzanne had slipped away to the side of her brother's friends. She talked to them cheerily the while Eugene watched her, but she was intensely conscious of his presence and charm. She tried to think what she was doing, but somehow she could not – she could only feel. The music struck up again, and for looks' sake he let her dance with her brother's friend. The next was his, and the next, for Kinroy preferred to sit out one, and his friend also. Suzanne and Eugene danced the major portions of the dances together, growing into a wild exaltation, which, however, was wordless except for a certain eagerness which might have been read into what they said. Their hands spoke when they touched and their eyes when they met. Suzanne was intensely shy and fearsome. She was really half terrified by what she was doing – afraid lest some word or thought would escape Eugene, and she wanted to dwell in the joy of this. He went once between two dances, when she was hanging over the rail looking at the dark, gurgling water below, and leaned over beside her.
"How wonderful this night is!" he said.
"Yes, yes!" she exclaimed, and looked away.
"Do you wonder at all at the mystery of life?"
"Oh, yes; oh, yes! All the time."
"And you are so young!" he said passionately, intensely.
"Sometimes, you know, Mr. Witla," she sighed, "I do not like to think."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know; I just can't tell you! I can't find words. I don't know."
There was an intense pathos in her phrasing which meant everything to his understanding. He understood how voiceless a great soul really might be, new born without an earth-manufactured vocabulary. It gave him a clearer insight into a thought he had had for a long while and that was that we came, as Wordsworth expressed it, "trailing clouds of glory." But from where? Her soul must be intensely wise – else why his yearning to her? But, oh, the pathos of her voicelessness!
They went home in the car, and late that night, while he was sitting on the veranda smoking to soothe his fevered brain, there was one other scene. The night was intensely warm everywhere except on this hill, where a cool breeze was blowing. The ships on the sea and bay were many – twinkling little lights – and the stars in the sky were as a great army. "See how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," he quoted to himself. A door opened and Suzanne came out of the library, which opened on to the veranda. He had not expected to see her again, nor she him. The beauty of the night had drawn her.
