The ''Genius'', Theodore Dreiser [classic reads txt] 📗

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