The "Genius"

To Suzanne she exclaimed aloud:

"Are you talking of living with this, with this, oh, I don't dare to name him. I'll die if I don't get this matter straightened out; of living without a marriage ceremony and without his being divorced? I can't believe that I am awake. I can't! I can't!"

"Certainly I am," replied Suzanne. "It is all arranged between us. Mrs. Witla knows. She has given her consent. I expect you to give yours, if you desire me to stay here, mama."

"Give my consent! As God is my witness! Am I alive? Is this my daughter talking to me? Am I in this room here with you? I." She stopped, her mouth wide open. "If it weren't so horribly tragic, I should laugh. I will! I will become hysterical! My brain is whirling like a wheel now. Suzanne Dale, you are insane. You are madly, foolishly insane. If you do not hush and cease this terrible palaver, I will have you locked up. I will have an inquiry made into your sanity. This is the wildest, most horrible, most unimaginable thing ever proposed to a mother. To think that I should have lived with you eighteen long years, carried you in my arms, nursed you at my breast and then have you stand here and tell me that you will go and live unsanctioned with a man who has a good true woman now living as his wife. This is the most astounding thing I have ever heard of. It is unbelievable. You will not do it. You will no more do it than you will fly. I will kill him! I will kill you! I would rather see you dead at my feet this minute than to even think that you could have stood there and proposed such a thing to me. It will never be! It will never be! I will give you poison first. I will do anything, everything, but you shall never see this man again. If he dares to cross this threshold, I will kill him at sight. I love you. I think you are a wonderful girl, but this thing shall never be. And don't you dare to attempt to dissuade me. I will kill you, I tell you. I would rather see you dead a thousand times. To think! To think! To think! Oh, that beast! That villain! that unconscionable cur! To think that he should come into my house after all my courtesy to him and do this thing to me. Wait! He has position, he has distinction. I will drive him out of New York. I will ruin him. I will make it impossible for him to show his face among decent people. Wait and see!"

Her face was white, her hands clenched, her teeth set. She had a keen, savage beauty, much like that of a tigress when it shows its teeth. Her eyes were hard and cruel and flashing. Suzanne had never imagined her mother capable of such a burst of rage as this.

"Why, mama," she said calmly and quite unmoved, "you talk as though you ruled my life completely. You would like to make me feel, I suppose, that I do not dare to do what I choose. I do, mama. My life is my own, not yours. You cannot frighten me. I have made up my mind what I am going to do in this matter, and I am going to do it. You cannot stop me. You might as well not try. If I don't do it now, I will later. I love Eugene. I am going to live with him. If you won't let me I will go away, but I propose to live with him, and you might as well stop now trying to frighten me, for you can't."

"Frighten you! Frighten you! Suzanne Dale, you haven't the faintest, weakest conception of what you are talking about, or of what I mean to do. If a breath of this – the faintest intimation of your intention were to get abroad, you would be socially ostracized. Do you realize that you would not have a friend left in the world – that all the people you now know and are friendly with would go across the street to avoid you? If you didn't have independent means, you couldn't even get a position in an ordinary shop. Going to live with him? You are going to die first, right here in my charge and in my arms. I love you too much not to kill you. I would a thousand times rather die with you myself. You are not going to see that man any more, not once, and if he dares to show his face here, I will kill him. I have said it. I mean it. Now you provoke me to action if you dare."

Suzanne merely smiled. "How you talk, mama. You make me laugh."

Mrs. Dale stared.

"Oh, Suzanne! Suzanne!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Before it is too late, before I learn to hate you, before you break my heart, come to my arms and tell me that you are sorry – that it is all over – that it is all a vile, dark, hateful dream. Oh, my Suzanne! My Suzanne!"

"No, mama, no. Don't come near, don't touch me," said Suzanne, drawing back. "You haven't any idea of what you are talking about, of what I am, or what I mean to do. You don't understand me. You never did, mama. You have always looked down on me in some superior way as though you knew a great deal and I very little. It isn't that way at all. It isn't true. I know what I am about. I know what I am doing. I love Mr. Witla, and I am going to live with him. Mrs. Witla understands. She knows how it is. You will. I don't care anything at all about what people think. I don't care what any society friends do. They are not making my life. They are all just as narrow and selfish as they can be, anyhow. Love is something different from that. You don't understand me. I love Eugene, and he is going to have me, and I am going to have him. If you want to try to wreck my life and his, you may, but it won't make any difference. I will have him, anyhow. We might just as well quit talking about it now."

"Quit talking about it? Quit talking about it? Indeed, I haven't even begun talking yet. I am just trying to collect my wits, that's all. You are raging in insanity. This thing will never be. It will nev-er be. You are just a poor, deluded slip of girl, whom I have failed to watch sufficiently. From now on, I will do my duty by you, if God spares me. You need me. Oh, how you need me. Poor little Suzanne!"

"Oh, hush, mama! Stop the hysteria," interrupted Suzanne.

"I will call up Mr. Colfax. I will call up Mr. Winfield. I will have him discharged. I will expose him in the newspapers. The scoundrel, the villain, the thief! Oh, that I should have lived to see this day. That I should have lived to have seen this day!"

"That's right, mama," said Suzanne, wearily. "Go on. You are just talking, you know, and I know that you are. You cannot change me. Talking cannot. It is silly to rave like this, I think. Why won't you be quiet? We may talk, but needn't scream."

Mrs. Dale put her hands to her temples. Her brain seemed to be whirling.

"Never mind, now," she said. "Never mind. I must have time to think. But this thing you are thinking will never be. It never will be. Oh! Oh!" and she turned sobbing to the window.

Suzanne merely stared. What a peculiar thing emotions were in people – their emotions over morals. Here was her mother, weeping, and she was looking upon the thing her mother was crying about as the most essential and delightful and desirable thing. Certainly life was revealing itself to her rapidly these days. Did she really love Eugene so much? Yes, yes, yes, indeed. A thousand times yes. This was not a tearful emotion for her, but a great, consuming, embracing joy.

CHAPTER XIV

For hours that night, until one, two, and three o'clock in the morning; from five, six and seven on until noon and night of the next day, and the next day after that and the fourth day and the fifth day, the storm continued. It was a terrible, siege, heart burning, heart breaking, brain racking; Mrs. Dale lost weight rapidly. The color left her cheeks, a haggard look settled in her eyes. She was terrified, nonplussed, driven to extremities for means wherewith to overcome Suzanne's opposition and suddenly but terribly developed will. No one would have dreamed that this quiet, sweet-mannered, introspective girl could be so positive, convinced and unbending when in action. She was as a fluid body that has become adamant. She was a creature made of iron, a girl with a heart of stone; nothing moved her – her mother's tears, her threats of social ostracism, of final destruction, of physical and moral destruction for Eugene and herself, her threats of public exposure in the newspapers, of incarceration in an asylum. Suzanne had watched her mother a long time and concluded that she loved to talk imposingly in an easy, philosophic, at times pompous, way, but that really there was very little in what she said. She did not believe that her mother had true courage – that she would risk incarcerating her in an asylum, or exposing Eugene to her own disadvantage, let alone poisoning or killing her. Her mother loved her. She would rage terribly for a time this way, then she would give in. It was Suzanne's plan to wear her down, to stand her ground firmly until her mother wearied and broke under the strain. Then she would begin to say a few words for Eugene, and eventually by much arguing and blustering, her mother would come round. Eugene would be admitted to the family councils again. He and Suzanne would argue it all out together in her mother's presence. They would probably agree to disagree in a secret way, but she would get Eugene and he her. Oh, the wonder of that joyous dénouement. It was so near now, and all for a little courageous fighting. She would fight, fight until her mother broke, and then – Oh, Eugene, Eugene!

Mrs. Dale was not to be so easily overcome as Suzanne imagined. Haggard and worn as she was, she was far from yielding. There was an actual physical conflict between them once when Suzanne, in the height of an argument, decided that she would call up Eugene on the phone and ask him to come down and help her settle the discussion. Mrs. Dale was determined that she should not. The servants were in the house listening, unable to catch at first the drift of the situation, but knowing almost by intuition that there was a desperate discussion going on. Suzanne decided to go down to the library where the phone was. Mrs. Dale put her back to the door and attempted to deter her. Suzanne tried to open it by pulling. Her mother unloosed her hands desperately, but it was very difficult, Suzanne was so strong.

"For shame," she said. "For shame! To make your mother contest with you. Oh, the degradation" – the while she was struggling. Finally, angry, hysteric tears coursed involuntarily down her cheeks and Suzanne was moved at last. It was so obvious that this was real bitter heart-burning on her mother's part. Her hair was shaken loose on one side – her sleeve torn.

"Oh, my goodness! my goodness!" Mrs Dale gasped at last, throwing herself in a chair and sobbing bitterly. "I shall never lift my head again. I shall never lift my head again."

Suzanne looked at her somewhat sorrowfully. "I'm sorry, mama," she said, "but you have brought it all on yourself. I needn't call him now. He will call me and I will answer. It all comes from your trying to rule me in your way. You won't realize that I am a personality also, quite as much as you are. I have my life to live. It is mine to do with as I please. You are not going to prevent me in the long run. You might just as well stop fighting with me now. I don't want to quarrel with you. I don't want to argue, but I am a grown woman, mama. Why don't you listen to reason? Why don't you let me show you how I feel about this? Two people loving each other have a right to be with each other. It isn't anyone else's concern."

"Anyone else's concern! Anyone else's concern!" replied her mother viciously. "What nonsense. What silly, love-sick drivel. If you had any idea of life, of how the world is organized, you would laugh at yourself. Ten years from now, one year even, you will begin to see what a terrible mistake you are trying to make. You will scarcely believe that you could have done or said what you are doing and saying now. Anyone else's concern! Oh, Merciful Heaven! Will nothing put even a suggestion of the wild, foolish, reckless character of the thing you are trying to do in your mind?"

"But I love him, mama," said Suzanne.

"Love! Love! You talk about love," said her mother bitterly and hysterically. "What do you know about it? Do you think he can be loving you when he wants to come here and take you out of a good home and a virtuous social condition and wreck your life, and bring you down into the mire, your life and mine, and that of your sisters and brother for ever and ever? What does he know of love? What do you? Think of Adele and Ninette and Kinroy. Have you no regard for them? Where is your love for me and for them? Oh, I have been so afraid that Kinroy might hear something of this. He would go and kill him. I know he would. I couldn't prevent it. Oh, the shame, the scandal, the wreck, it would involve us all in. Have you no conscience, Suzanne; no heart?"

Suzanne stared before her calmly. The thought of Kinroy moved her a little. He might kill Eugene – she couldn't tell – he was a courageous boy. Still there was no need for any killing, or exposure, or excitement of any kind if her mother would only behave herself. What difference did it make to her, or Kinroy, or anybody anywhere what she did? Why couldn't she if she wanted to? The risk was on her head. She was willing. She couldn't see what harm it would do.

She expressed this thought to her mother once who answered in an impassioned plea for her to look at the facts. "How many evil women of the kind and character you would like to make of yourself, do you know? How many would you like to know? How many do you suppose there are in good society? Look at this situation from Mrs. Witla's point of view. How would you like to be in her place? How would you like to be in mine? Suppose you were Mrs. Witla and Mrs. Witla were the other woman. What then?"

"I would let him go," said Suzanne.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! You would let him go. You might, but how would you feel? How would anyone feel? Can't you see the shame in all this, the disgrace? Have you no comprehension at all? No feeling?"

"Oh, how you talk, mama. How silly you talk. You don't know the facts. Mrs. Witla doesn't love him any more. She told me so. She has written me so. I had the letter and gave it back to Eugene. He doesn't care for her. She knows it. She knows he cares for me. What difference does it make if she doesn't love him. He's entitled to love somebody. Now I love him. I want him. He wants me. Why shouldn't we have each other?"

In spite of all her threats, Mrs. Dale was not without subsidiary thoughts of what any public move on her part would certainly, not probably, but immediately involve. Eugene was well known. To kill him, which was really very far from her thoughts, in any save a very secret way, would create a tremendous sensation and involve no end of examination, discussion, excited publicity. To expose him to either Colfax or Winfield meant in reality exposing Suzanne to them, and possibly to members of her own social set, for these men were of it, and might talk. Eugene's resignation would cause comment. If he left, Suzanne might run away with him – then what? There was the thought on her part that the least discussion or whisper of this to anybody might produce the most disastrous results. What capital the so-called "Yellow" newspapers would make out of a story of this character. How they would gloat over the details. It was a most terrible and dangerous situation, and yet it was plain that something had to be done and that immediately. What?

In this crisis it occurred to her that several things might be done and that without great danger of irremediable consequences if she could only have a little time in which Suzanne would promise to remain quiescent and do so. If she could get her to say that she would do nothing for ten days or five days all might be well for them. She could go to see Angela, Eugene, Mr. Colfax, if necessary. To leave Suzanne in order to go on these various errands, she had to obtain Suzanne's word, which she knew she could respect absolutely, that she would make no move of any kind until the time was up. Under pretense that Suzanne herself needed time to think, or should take it, she pleaded and pleaded until finally the girl, on condition that she be allowed to phone to Eugene and state how things stood, consented. Eugene had called her up on the second day after the quarrel began and had been informed by the butler, at Mrs. Dale's request, that she was out of town. He called the second day, and got the same answer. He wrote to her and Mrs. Dale hid the letter, but on the fourth day, Suzanne called him up and explained. The moment she did so, he was sorry that she had been so hasty in telling her mother, terribly so, but there was nothing to be done now save to stand by his guns. He was ready in a grim way to rise or fall so long as, in doing either, he should obtain his heart's desire.

"Shall I come and help you argue?" he asked.

"No, not for five days. I have given my word."

"Shall I see you?"

"No, not for five days, Eugene."

"Mayn't I even call you up?"

"No, not for five days. After that, yes."

"All right, Flower Face – Divine Fire. I'll obey. I'm yours to command. But, oh, sweet, it's a long time."

"I know, but it will pass."

"And you won't change?"

"No."

"They can't make you?"

"No, you know they can't, dearest. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I can't help feeling a little fearful, sweet. You are so young, so new to love."

"I won't change. I won't change. I don't need to swear. I won't."

"Very well, then, Myrtle Bloom."

She hung up the receiver, and Mrs. Dale knew now that her greatest struggle was before her.

Her several contemplated moves consisted first, in going to see Mrs. Witla, unknown to Suzanne and Eugene, learning what she knew of how things were and what she would advise.

This really did no good, unless the fact that it fomented anew the rage and grief of Angela, and gave Mrs. Dale additional material wherewith to belabor Eugene, could be said to be of advantage. Angela, who had been arguing and pleading with Eugene all this time, endeavoring by one thought and another to awaken him to a sense of the enormity of the offense he was contemplating, was practically in despair. She had reached the point where she had become rather savage again, and he also. In spite of her condition, in spite of all she could say, he was cold and bitter, so insistent that he was through with the old order that he made her angry. Instead of leaving him, as she might have done, trusting to time to alter his attitude, or to teach her the wisdom of releasing him entirely, she preferred to cling to him, for there was still affection left. She was used to him, he was the father of her coming child, unwelcome as it was. He represented her social position to her, her station in the world. Why should she leave him? Then, too, there was this fear of the outcome, which would come over her like a child. She might die. What would become of the child?

"You know, Mrs. Dale," she said at one point significantly, "I don't hold Suzanne absolutely guiltless. She is old enough to know better. She has been out in society long enough to know that a married man is sacred property to another woman."

"I know, I know," replied Mrs. Dale resentfully, but cautiously, "but Suzanne is so young. You really don't know how much of a child she is. And she has this silly, idealistic, emotional disposition. I suspected something of it, but I did not know it was so strong. I'm sure I don't know where she gets it. Her father was most practical. But she was all right until your husband persuaded her."

"That may be all true," went on Angela, "but she is not guiltless. I know Eugene. He is weak, but he will not follow where he is not led, and no girl need be tempted unless she wants to."

"Suzanne is so young," again pleaded Mrs. Dale.

"Well, I'm sure if she knew Mr. Witla's record accurately," went on Angela foolishly, "she wouldn't want him. I have written her. She ought to know. He isn't honest and he isn't moral as this thing shows. If this were the first time he had fallen in love with another woman, I could forgive him, but it isn't. He did something quite as bad six or seven years ago, and only two years before that there was another woman. He wouldn't be faithful to Suzanne if he had her. It would be a case of blazing affection for a little while, and then he would tire and cast her aside. Why, you can tell what sort of a man he is when he would propose to me, as he did here, that I should let him maintain a separate establishment for Suzanne and say nothing of it. The idea!"

Mrs. Dale clicked her lips significantly. She considered Angela foolish for talking in this way, but it could not be helped now. Possibly Eugene had made a mistake in marrying her. This did not excuse him, however, in her eyes for wanting to take Suzanne under the conditions he proposed. If he were free, it would be an entirely different matter. His standing, his mind, his manners, were not objectionable, though he was not to the manner born.

Mrs. Dale went away toward evening, greatly nonplussed by what she had seen and heard, but convinced that no possible good could come of the situation. Angela would never give him a divorce. Eugene was not a fit man morally for her daughter, anyhow. There was great scandal on the verge of exposure here in which her beloved daughter would be irretrievably smirched. In her desperation, she decided, if she could do no better, she would try to dissuade Eugene from seeing Suzanne until he could obtain a divorce, in which case, to avoid something worse, she would agree to a marriage, but this was only to be a lip promise. The one thing she wanted to do was to get Suzanne to give him up entirely. If Suzanne could be spirited away, or dissuaded from throwing herself away on Eugene, that would be the thing. Still, she proposed to see what a conversation with Eugene would do.

The next morning as he was sitting in his office wondering what the delay of five days portended, and what Suzanne was doing, as well as trying to fix his mind on the multitudinous details which required his constant attention, and were now being rather markedly neglected, the card of Mrs. Emily Dale was laid on his table, and a few moments later, after his secretary had been dismissed, and word given that no one else was to be allowed to enter, Mrs. Dale was shown in.

She was pale and weary, but exquisitely dressed in a greenish blue silk and picture hat of black straw and feathers. She looked quite young and handsome herself, not too old for Eugene, and indeed once she had fancied he might well fall in love with her. What her thoughts were at that time, she was not now willing to recall, for they had involved the probable desertion or divorce, or death of Angela, and Eugene's passionate infatuation for her. All that was over now, of course, and in the excitement and distress, almost completely obliterated. Eugene had not forgotten that he had had similar sensations or imaginations at the time, and that Mrs. Dale had always drawn to him in a sympathetic and friendly way. Here she was, though, this morning coming upon a desperate mission no doubt, and he would have to contend with her as best he could.

The conversation opened by his looking into her set face as she approached and smiling blandly, though it was something of an effort. "Well," he said, in quite a business like way, "what can I do for you?"

"You villain," she exclaimed melodramatically, "my daughter has told me all."

"Yes, Suzanne phoned me that she told you," he replied, in a conciliatory tone.

"Yes," she said in a low, tense voice, "and I ought to kill you where you stand. To think that I should have ever harbored such a monster as you in my home and near my dear, innocent daughter. It seems incredible now. I can't believe it. That you should dare. And you with a dear, sweet wife at home, sick and in the condition she is in. I should think if you had any manhood at all any sense of shame! When I think of that poor, dear little woman, and what you have been doing, or trying to do – if it weren't for the scandal you would never leave this office alive."

"Oh, bother! Don't talk rot, Mrs. Dale," said Eugene quietly, though irritably. He did not care for her melodramatic attitude. "The dear, darling little woman you speak of is not as badly off as you think, and I don't think she needs as much of your sympathy as you are so anxious to give. She is pretty well able to take care of herself, sick as she is. As for killing me, you or anyone else, well that wouldn't be such a bad idea. I'm not so much in love with life. This is not fifty years ago, though, but the nineteenth century, and this is New York City. I love Suzanne. She loves me. We want each other desperately. Now, an arrangement can be made which will not interfere with you in any way, and which will adjust things for us. Suzanne is anxious to make that arrangement. It is as much her proposition as it is mine. Why should you be so vastly disturbed? You know a great deal about life."