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

detained by her mother, wrote Eugene a letter which Elizabeth, her maid, secretly conveyed to the mail for her, telling him how things stood. Her mother had told Dr. Woolley and Kinroy. She had decided that September fifteenth was the time she would leave home, unless their companionship was quietly sanctioned. Kinroy had threatened to kill him to her, but she did not think he had anything to fear. Kinroy was just excited. Her mother wanted her to go to Europe for six months and think it over, but this she would not do. She was not going to leave the city, and he need not fear, if he did not hear anything for a few days at a time, that anything was wrong with her. They must wait until the storm subsided a little. "I shall be here, but perhaps it is best for you not to try to see me just now. When the time comes, I will come to you, and if I get a chance, I will see you before."

Eugene was both pained and surprised at the turn things had taken, but still encouraged to hope for the best by the attitude Suzanne took toward it all. Her courage strengthened him. She was calm, so purposeful! What a treasure she was!

So began a series of daily love notes for a few days, until Suzanne advised him to cease. There were constant arguments between her, her mother and Kinroy. Because she was being so obviously frustrated, she began to grow bitter and hard, and short contradictory phrases passed between her and her mother, principally originating in Suzanne.

"No, no, no!" was her constantly reiterated statement. "I won't do it! What of it? It's silly! Let me alone! I won't talk!" So it went.

Mrs. Dale was planning hourly how to abduct her. Chloroforming and secret removal after the fashion she had in her mind was not so easy of accomplishment. It was such a desperate thing to do to Suzanne. She was afraid she might die under its influence. It could not be administered without a doctor. The servants would think it strange. She fancied there were whispered suspicions already. Finally she thought of pretending to agree with Suzanne, removing all barriers, and asking her to come to Albany to confer with her guardian, or rather the legal representative of the Marquardt Trust Company, which held her share of her father the late Westfield Dale's estate in trust for her, in regard to some property in western New York, which belonged to her. Mrs. Dale decided to pretend to be obliged to go to Albany in order to have Suzanne sign a waiver of right to any share in her mother's private estate, after which, supposedly, she would give Suzanne her freedom, having also disinherited her in her will. Suzanne, according to this scheme, was then to come back to New York and go her way and her mother was not to see her any more.

To make this more effective, Kinroy was sent to tell her of her mother's plan and beg her for her own and her family's sake not to let the final separation come about. Mrs. Dale changed her manner. Kinroy acted his part so effectively that what with her mother's resigned look and indifferent method of address, Suzanne was partly deceived. She imagined her mother had experienced a complete change of heart and might be going to do what Kinroy said.

"No," she replied to Kinroy's pleadings, "I don't care whether she cuts me off. I'll be very glad to sign the papers. If she wants me to go away, I'll go. I think she has acted very foolishly through all this, and so have you."

"I wish you wouldn't let her do that," observed Kinroy, who was rather exulting over the satisfactory manner in which this bait was being swallowed. "Mama is broken hearted. She wants you to stay here, to wait six months or a year before you do anything at all, but if you won't, she's going to ask you to do this. I've tried to persuade her not to. I'd hate like anything to see you go. Won't you change your mind?"

"I told you I wouldn't, Kinroy. Don't ask me."

Kinroy went back to his mother and reported that Suzanne was stubborn as ever, but that the trick would in all probability work. She would go aboard the train thinking she was going to Albany. Once aboard, inside a closed car, she would scarcely suspect until the next morning, and then they would be far in the Adirondack Mountains.

The scheme worked in part. Her mother, as had Kinroy, went through this prearranged scene as well as though she were on the stage. Suzanne fancied she saw her freedom near at hand. Only a travelling bag was packed, and Suzanne went willingly enough into the auto and the train, only stipulating one thing—that she be allowed to call up Eugene and explain. Both Kinroy and her mother objected, but, when finally she refused flatly to go without, they acceded. She called him up at the office—it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and they were leaving at five-thirty—and told him. He fancied at once it was a ruse, and told her so, but she thought not. Mrs. Dale had never lied to her before, neither had her brother. Their words were as bonds.

"Eugene says this is a trap, mama," said Suzanne, turning from the phone to her mother, who was near by. "Is it?"

"You know it isn't," replied her mother, lying unblushingly.

"If it is, it will come to nothing," she replied, and Eugene heard her. He was strengthened into acquiescence by the tone of her voice. Surely she was a wonderful girl—a master of men and women in her way.

"Very well, if you think it's all right," said Eugene; "but I'll be very lonely. I've been so already. I shall be more so, Flower Face, unless I see you soon. Oh, if the time were only up!"

"It will be, Eugene," she replied, "in a very few days now. I'll be back Thursday, and then you can come down and see me."

"Thursday afternoon?"

"Yes. We're to be back Thursday morning."

She finally hung up the receiver and they entered the automobile and an hour later the train.

CHAPTER XVII

It was a Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec express, and it ran without stopping to Albany. By the time it was nearing the latter place Suzanne was going to bed—and because it was a private car—Mrs. Dale explained that the president of the road had lent it to her—no announcement of its arrival, which would have aroused Suzanne, was made by the porter. When it stopped there shortly after ten o'clock it was the last car at the south end of the train, and you could hear voices calling, but just what it was was not possible to say. Suzanne, who had already gone to bed, fancied it might be Poughkeepsie or some wayside station. Her mother's statement was that since they arrived so late, the car would be switched to a siding, and they would stay aboard until morning. Nevertheless, she and Kinroy were alert to prevent any untoward demonstration or decision on Suzanne's part, and so, as the train went on, she slept soundly until Burlington in the far northern part of Vermont was reached the next morning. When she awoke and saw that the train was still speeding on, she wondered vaguely but not clearly what it could mean. There were mountains about, or rather tall, pine-covered hills, mountain streams were passed on high trestles and sections of burned woodlands were passed where forest fires had left lonely, sad charred stretches of tree trunks towering high in the air. Suddenly it occurred to Suzanne that this was peculiar, and she came out of the bath to ask why.

"Where are we, mama?" she asked. Mrs. Dale was leaning back in a comfortable willow chair reading, or pretending to read a book. Kinroy was out on the observation platform for a moment. He came back though shortly, for he was nervous as to what Suzanne would do when she discovered her whereabouts. A hamper of food had been put aboard the night before, unknown to Suzanne, and Mrs. Dale was going shortly to serve breakfast. She had not risked a maid on this journey.

"I don't know," replied her mother indifferently, looking out at a stretch of burnt woods.

"I thought we were to be in Albany a little after midnight?" said Suzanne.

"So we were," replied Mrs. Dale, preparing to confess. Kinroy came back into the car.

"Well, then," said Suzanne, pausing, looking first out of the windows and then fixedly at her mother. It came to her as she saw the unsettled, somewhat nervous expression in her mother's face and eyes and in Kinroy's that this was a trick and that she was being taken somewhere—where?—against her will.

"This is a trick, mama," she said to her mother grandly. "You have lied to me—you and Kinroy. We are not going to Albany at all. Where are we going?"

"I don't want to tell you now, Suzanne," replied Mrs. Dale quietly. "Have your bath and we'll talk about it afterwards. It doesn't matter. We're going up into Canada, if you want to know. We are nearly there now. You'll know fast enough when we get there."

"Mama," replied Suzanne, "this is a despicable trick! You are going to be sorry for this. You have lied to me—you and Kinroy. I see it now. I might have known, but I didn't believe you would lie to me, mama. I can't do anything just now, I see that very plainly. But when the time comes, you are going to be sorry. You can't control me this way. You ought to know better. You yourself are going to take me back to New York." And she fixed her mother with a steady look which betokened a mastership which her mother felt nervously and wearily she might eventually be compelled to acknowledge.

"Now, Suzanne, what's the use of talking that way?" pleaded Kinroy. "Mama is almost crazy, as it is. She couldn't think of any other way or thing to do."

"You hush, Kinroy," replied Suzanne. "I don't care to talk to you. You have lied to me, and that is more than I ever did to you. Mama, I am astonished at you," she returned to her mother. "My mother lying to me! Very well, mama. You have things in your hands today. I will have them in mine later. You have taken just the wrong course. Now you wait and see."

Mrs. Dale winced and quailed. This girl was the most unterrified, determined fighter she had ever known. She wondered where she got her courage—from her late husband, probably. She could actually feel the quietness, grit, lack of fear, which had grown up in her during the last few weeks under the provocation which antagonism had provided. "Please don't talk that way, Suzanne," she pleaded. "I have done it all for your own good. You know I have. Why will you torture me? You know I won't give you up to that man. I won't. I'll move heaven and earth first. I'll die in this struggle, but I won't give you up."

"Then you'll die, mama, for I'm going to do what I said. You can take me to where this car stops, but you can't take me out of it. I'm going back to New York. Now, a lot you have accomplished, haven't you?"

"Suzanne, I am convinced almost that you are out of your mind. You have almost driven me out of mine, but I am still sane enough to see what is right."

"Mama, I don't propose to talk to you any more, or to Kinroy. You can take me back to New York, or