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

was still too ill to risk a great demonstration or to declare herself fully. It seemed now once more the whole world had fallen about her ears, for because of her plans and in spite of all her suspicions, she had not been ready to believe that Eugene would really trespass again. She had come to surprise him, if possible, but she had not actually expected to, had hoped not to. Here was this beautiful girl, the victim of his wiles, and here was she involved by her own planning, while Eugene, shame-faced, she supposed, stood by ready to have this ridiculous liaison nipped in the bud. She did not propose to expose herself to Suzanne if she could help it, but sorrow for herself, shame for him, pity for Suzanne in a way, the desire to preserve the shell of appearances, which was now, after this, so utterly empty for her though so important for the child, caused her to swell with her old-time rage, and yet to hold it in check. Six years before she would have raged to his face, but time had softened her in this respect. She did not see the value of brutal words.

"Suzanne," she said, standing erect in the filtered gloom of the room which was still irradiated by the light of the moon in the west, "how could you! I thought so much better of you."

Her face, thinned by her long illness and her brooding over her present condition, was still beautiful in a spiritual way. She wore a pale yellow and white flowered dressing gown of filmy, lacy texture, and her long hair, done in braids by the nurse, was hanging down her back like the Gretchen she was to him years before. Her hands were thin and pale, but artistic, and her face drawn in all the wearisome agony of a mater dolorosa.

"Why, why," exclaimed Suzanne, terribly shaken out of her natural fine poise for the moment but not forgetful of the dominating thought in her mind, "I love him; that's why, Mrs. Witla."

"Oh, no, you don't! you only think you love him, as so many women have before you, Suzanne," said Angela frozenly, the thought of the coming child always with her. If she had only told him before! "Oh, shame, in my house, and you a young, supposedly innocent girl! What do you suppose your mother would think if I should call her up and tell her now? Or your brother? You knew he was a married man. I might excuse you if it weren't for that if you hadn't known me and hadn't accepted my hospitality. As for him, there is no need of my talking to him. This is an old story with him, Suzanne. He has done this with other women before you, and he will do it with other women after you. It is one of the things I have to bear for having married a man of so-called talent. Don't think, Suzanne, when you tell me you love him, that you tell me anything new. I have heard that story before from other women. You are not the first, and you will not be the last."

Suzanne looked at Eugene inquiringly, vaguely, helplessly, wondering if all this were so.

Eugene hardened under Angela's cutting accusation, but he was not at all sure at first what he ought to do. He wondered for the moment whether he ought not to abandon Suzanne and fall back into his old state, dreary as it might seem to him; but the sight of her pretty face, the sound of Angela's cutting voice, determined him quickly. "Angela," he began, recovering his composure the while Suzanne contemplated him, "why do you talk that way? You know that what you say isn't true. There was one other woman. I will tell Suzanne about her. There were several before I married you. I will tell her about them. But my life is a shell, and you know it. This apartment is a shell. Absolutely it means nothing at all to me. There has been no love between us, certainly not on my part, for years, and you know that. You have practically confessed to me from time to time that you do not care for me. I haven't deceived this girl. I am glad to tell her now how things stand."

"How things stand! How things stand!" exclaimed Angela, blazing and forgetting herself for the moment. "Will you tell her what an excellent, faithful husband you have made me? Will you tell her how honestly you have kept your word pledged to me at the altar? Will you tell her how I have worked and sacrificed for you through all these years? How I have been repaid by just such things as this? I'm sorry for you, Suzanne, more than anything else," went on Angela, wondering whether she should tell Eugene here and now of her condition but fearing he would not believe it. It seemed so much like melodrama. "You are just a silly little girl duped by an expert man, who thinks he loves you for a little while, but who really doesn't. He will get over it. Tell me frankly what do you expect to get out of it all? You can't marry him. I won't give him a divorce. I can't, as he will know later, and he has no grounds for obtaining one. Do you expect to be his mistress? You have no hope of ever being anything else. Isn't that a nice ambition for a girl of your standing? And you are supposed to be virtuous! Oh, I am ashamed of you, if you are not! I am sorry for your mother. I am astonished to think that you would so belittle yourself."

Suzanne had heard the "I can't," but she really did not know how to interpret it. It had never occurred to her that there could ever be a child here to complicate matters. Eugene told her that he was unhappy, that there was nothing between him and Angela and never could be.

"But I love him, Mrs. Witla," said Suzanne simply and rather dramatically. She was tense, erect, pale and decidedly beautiful. It was a great problem to have so quickly laid upon her shoulders.

"Don't talk nonsense, Suzanne!" said Angela angrily and desperately. "Don't deceive yourself and stick to a silly pose. You are acting now. You're talking as you think you ought to talk, as you have seen people talk in plays. This is my husband. You are in my home. Come, get your things. I will call up your mother and tell her how things stand, and she will send her auto for you."

"Oh, no," said Suzanne, "you can't do that! I can't go back there, if you tell her. I must go out in the world and get something to do until I can straighten out my own affairs. I won't be able to go home any more. Oh, what shall I do?"

"Be calm, Suzanne," said Eugene determinedly, taking her hand and looking at Angela defiantly. "She isn't going to call up your mother, and she isn't going to tell your mother. You are going to stay here, as you intended, and tomorrow you are going where you thought you were going."

"Oh, no, she isn't!" said Angela angrily, starting for the phone. "She is going home. I'm going to call her mother."

Suzanne stirred nervously. Eugene put his hand in hers to reassure her.

"Oh, no, you aren't," he said determinedly. "She isn't going home, and you are not going to touch that phone. If you do, a number of things are going to happen, and they are going to happen quick."

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