The Genius (62 page)

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originally made upon him.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.