The Genius (65 page)

"I'm so afraid," she said, "I scarcely know what I am doing. Are
you sure no one will see us?"

"Let us walk down the path to the field." It was the same way
they had taken in the early spring when he had met her here before.
In the west hung low a waning moon, yellow, sickle shaped, very
large because of the hour.

"Do you remember when we were here before?"

"Yes."

"I loved you then. Did you care for me?"

"No."

They walked on under the trees, he holding her hand.

"Oh, this night, this night," he said, the strain of his intense
emotion wearying him.

They came out from under the trees at the end of the path. There
was a sense of August dryness in the air. It was warm, sensuous.
About were the sounds of insects, faint bumblings, cracklings. A
tree toad chirped, or a bird cried.

"Come to me, Suzanne," he said at last when they emerged into
the full light of the moon at the end of the path and paused. "Come
to me." He slipped his arm about her.

"No," she said. "No."

"Look at me, Suzanne," he pleaded; "I want to tell you how much
I love you. Oh, I have no words. It seems ridiculous to try to tell
you. Tell me that you love me, Suzanne. Tell me now. I am crazy
with love of you. Tell me."

"No," she said, "I can't."

"Kiss me!"

"No!"

He drew her to him and turned her face up by her chin in spite
of her. "Open your eyes," he pleaded. "Oh, God! That this should
come to me! Now I could die. Life can hold no more. Oh, Flower
Face! Oh, Silver Feet! Oh, Myrtle Bloom! Divine Fire! How perfect
you are. How perfect! And to think you love me!"

He kissed her eagerly.

"Kiss me, Suzanne. Tell me that you love me. Tell me. Oh, how I
love that name, Suzanne. Whisper to me you love me."

"No."

"But you do."

"No."

"Look at me, Suzanne. Flower face. Myrtle Bloom. For God's sake,
look at me! You love me."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes," she sobbed of a sudden, throwing her arm
around his neck. "Oh, yes, yes."

"Don't cry," he pleaded. "Oh, sweet, don't cry. I am mad for
love of you, mad. Kiss me now, one kiss. I am staking my soul on
your love. Kiss me!"

He pressed his lips to hers, but she burst away,
terror-stricken.

"Oh, I am so frightened," she exclaimed all at once. "Oh, what
shall I do? I am so afraid. Oh, please, please. Something terrifies
me. Something scares me. Oh, what am I going to do? Let me go
back."

She was white and trembling. Her hands were nervously clasping
and unclasping.

Eugene smoothed her arm soothingly. "Be still, Suzanne," he
said. "Be still. I shall say no more. You are all right. I have
frightened you. We will go back. Be calm. You are all right."

He recovered his own poise with an effort because of her obvious
terror, and led her back under the trees. To reassure her he drew
his cigar case from his pocket and pretended to select a cigar.
When he saw her calming, he put it back.

"Are you quieter now, sweet?" he asked, tenderly.

"Yes, but let us go back."

"Listen. I will only go as far as the edge. You go alone. I will
watch you safely to the door."

"Yes," she said peacefully.

"And you really love me, Suzanne?"

"Oh, yes, but don't speak of it. Not tonight. You will frighten
me again. Let us go back."

They strolled on. Then he said: "One kiss, sweet, in parting.
One. Life has opened anew for me. You are the solvent of my whole
being. You are making me over into something different. I feel as
though I had never lived until now. Oh, this experience! It is such
a wonderful thing to have done—to have lived through, to have
changed as I have changed. You have changed me so completely, made
me over into the artist again. From now on I can paint again. I can
paint you." He scarcely knew what he was saying. He felt as though
he were revealing himself to himself as in an apocalyptic
vision.

She let him kiss her, but she was too frightened and wrought to
even breathe right. She was intense, emotional, strange. She did
not really understand what it was that he was talking about.

"Tomorrow," he said, "at the wood's edge. Tomorrow. Sweet
dreams. I shall never know peace any more without your love."

And he watched her eagerly, sadly, bitterly, ecstatically, as
she walked lightly from him, disappearing like a shadow through the
dark and silent door.

It would be impossible to describe even in so detailed an
account as this the subtleties, vagaries, beauties and terrors of
the emotions which seized upon him, and which by degrees began also
to possess Suzanne, once he became wholly infatuated with her. Mrs.
Dale, was, after a social fashion, one of Eugene's best friends.
She had since she had first come to know him spread his fame far
and wide as an immensely clever publisher and editor, an artist of
the greatest power, and a man of lovely and delightful ideas and
personal worth. He knew from various conversations with her that
Suzanne was the apple of her eye. He had heard her talk, had, in
fact, discussed with her the difficulties of rearing a simple
mannered, innocent-minded girl in present day society. She had
confided to him that it had been her policy to give Suzanne the
widest liberty consistent with good-breeding and current social
theories. She did not want to make her bold or unduly self-reliant,
and yet she wanted her to be free and natural. Suzanne, she was
convinced, from long observation and many frank conversations, was
innately honest, truthful and clean-minded. She did not understand
her exactly, for what mother can clearly understand any child; but
she thought she read her well enough to know that she was in some
indeterminate way forceful and able, like her father, and that she
would naturally gravitate to what was worth while in life.

Had she any talent? Mrs. Dale really did not know. The girl had
vague yearnings toward something which was anything but social in
its quality. She did not care anything at all for most of the young
men and women she met. She went about a great deal, but it was to
ride and drive. Games of chance did not interest her. Drawing-room
conversations were amusing to her, but not gripping. She liked
interesting characters, able books, striking pictures. She had been
particularly impressed with those of Eugene's; she had seen and had
told her mother that they were wonderful. She loved poetry of high
order, and was possessed of a boundless appetite for the ridiculous
and the comic. An unexpected faux pas was apt to throw her into
uncontrollable fits of laughter and the funny page selections of
the current newspaper artists, when she could obtain them, amused
her intensely. She was a student of character, and of her own
mother, and was beginning to see clearly what were the motives that
were prompting her mother in her attitude toward herself, quite as
clearly as that person did herself and better. At bottom she was
more talented than her mother, but in a different way. She was not,
as yet, as self-controlled, or as understanding of current theories
and beliefs as her mother, but she was artistic, emotional,
excitable, in an intellectual way, and capable of high flights of
fancy and of intense and fine appreciations. Her really sensuous
beauty was nothing to her. She did not value it highly. She knew
she was beautiful, and that men and boys were apt to go wild about
her, but she did not care. They must not be so silly, she thought.
She did not attempt to attract them in any way. On the contrary,
she avoided every occasion of possible provocation. Her mother had
told her plainly how susceptible men were, how little their
promises meant, how careful she must be of her looks and actions.
In consequence, she went her way as gaily and yet as inoffensively
as she could, trying to avoid the sadness of entrancing anyone
hopelessly and wondering what her career was to be. Then Eugene
appeared.

With his arrival, Suzanne had almost unconsciously entered upon
a new phase of her existence. She had seen all sorts of men in
society, but those who were exclusively social were exceedingly
wearisome to her. She had heard her mother say that it was an
important thing to marry money and some man of high social
standing, but who this man was to be and what he was to be like she
did not know. She did not look upon the typical society men she had
encountered as answering suitably to the term high. She had seen
some celebrated wealthy men of influential families, but they did
not appear to her really human enough to be considered. Most of
them were cold, self-opinionated, ultra-artificial to her easy,
poetic spirit. In the realms of real distinction were many men whom
the papers constantly talked about, financiers, politicians,
authors, editors, scientists, some of whom were in society, she
understood, but most of whom were not. She had met a few of them as
a girl might. Most of those she met, or saw, were old and cold and
paid no attention to her whatever. Eugene had appeared trailing an
atmosphere of distinction and acknowledged ability and he was
young. He was good looking, too—laughing and gay. It seemed almost
impossible at first to her that one so young and smiling should be
so able, as her mother said. Afterwards, when she came to know him,
she began to feel that he was more than able; that he could do
anything he pleased. She had visited him once in his office,
accompanied by her mother, and she had been vastly impressed by the
great building, its artistic finish, Eugene's palatial
surroundings. Surely he was the most remarkable young man she had
ever known. Then came his incandescent attentions to her, his
glowing, radiant presence and then——

Eugene speculated deeply on how he should proceed. All at once,
after this night, the whole problem of his life came before him. He
was married; he was highly placed socially, better than he had ever
been before. He was connected closely with Colfax, so closely that
he feared him, for Colfax, in spite of certain emotional vagaries
of which Eugene knew, was intensely conventional. Whatever he did
was managed in the most offhand way and with no intention of
allowing his home life to be affected or disrupted. Winfield, whom
also Mrs. Dale knew, was also conventional to outward appearances.
He had a mistress, but she was held tightly in check, he
understood. Eugene had seen her at the new casino, or a portion of
it, the East Wing, recently erected at Blue Sea, and he had been
greatly impressed with her beauty. She was smart, daring, dashing.
Eugene looked at her then, wondering if the time would ever come
when he could dare an intimacy of that character. So many married
men did. Would he ever attempt it and succeed?

Now that he had met Suzanne, however, he had a different notion
of all this, and it had come over him all at once. Heretofore in
his dreams, he had fancied he might strike up an emotional
relationship somewhere which would be something like Winfield's
towards Miss De Kalb, as she was known, and so satisfy the weary
longing that was in him for something new and delightful in the way
of a sympathetic relationship with beauty. Since seeing Suzanne, he
wanted nothing of this, but only some readjustment or rearrangement
of his life whereby he could have Suzanne and Suzanne only.
Suzanne! Suzanne! Oh, that dream of beauty. How was he to obtain
her, how free his life of all save a beautiful relationship with
her? He could live with her forever and ever. He could, he could!
Oh, this vision, this dream!

It was the Sunday following the dance that Suzanne and Eugene
managed to devise another day together, which, though, it was one
of those semi-accidental, semi-voiceless, but nevertheless not
wholly thoughtless coincidences which sometimes come about without
being wholly agreed upon or understood in the beginning, was
nevertheless seized upon by them, accepted silently and
semi-consciously, semi-unconsciously worked out together. Had they
not been very strongly drawn to each other by now, this would not
have happened at all. But they enjoyed it none the less. To begin
with, Mrs. Dale was suffering from a sick headache the morning
after. In the next place, Kinroy suggested to his friends to go for
a lark to South Beach, which was one of the poorest and scrubbiest
of all the beaches on Staten Island. In the next place, Mrs. Dale
suggested that Suzanne be allowed to go and that perhaps Eugene
would be amused. She rather trusted him as a guide and mentor.

Eugene said calmly that he did not object. He was eager to be
anywhere alone with Suzanne, and he fancied that some opportunity
would present itself whereby once they were there, they could be
together, but he did not want to show it. Once more the car was
called and they departed, being let off at one end of a silly
panorama which stretched its shabby length for a mile along the
shore. The chauffeur took the car back to the house, it being
agreed that they could reach him by phone. The party started down
the plank walk, but almost immediately, because of different
interests, divided. Eugene and Suzanne stopped to shoot at a
shooting gallery. Next they stopped at a cane rack to ring canes.
Anything was delightful to Eugene which gave him an opportunity to
observe his inamorata, to see her pretty face, her smile, and to
hear her heavenly voice. She rung a cane for him. Every gesture of
hers was perfection; every look a thrill of delight. He was walking
in some elysian realm which had nothing to do with the tawdry
evidence of life about him.

They followed the boardwalk southward, after a ride in the
Devil's Whirlpool, for by now Suzanne was caught in the persuasive
subtlety of his emotion and could no more do as her honest judgment
would have dictated than she could have flown. It needed some
shock, some discovery to show her whither she was drifting and this
was absent. They came to a new dance hall, where a few servant
girls and their sweethearts were dancing, and for a lark Eugene
proposed that they should enter. They danced together again, and
though the surroundings were so poor and the music wretched, Eugene
was in heaven.

"Let's run away and go to the Terra-Marine," he suggested,
thinking of a hotel farther south along the shore. "It is so
pleasant there. This is all so cheap."

"Where is it?" asked Suzanne.

"Oh, about three miles south of here. We could almost walk
there."

He looked down the long hot beach, but changed his mind.

"I don't mind this," said Suzanne. "It's so very bad that it's
good, you know. I like to see how these people enjoy
themselves."

"But it is
so
bad," argued Eugene. "I wish I had your
live, healthy attitude toward things. Still we won't go if you
don't want to."

Suzanne paused, thinking. Should she run away with him? The
others would be looking for them. No doubt they were already
wondering where they had gone. Still it didn't make so much
difference. Her mother trusted her with Eugene. They could go.

"Well," she said finally, "I don't care. Let's."

"What will the others think?" he said doubtfully.

"Oh, they won't mind," she said. "When they're ready, they'll
call the car. They know that I am with you. They know that I can
get the car when I want it. Mama won't mind."

Eugene led the way back to a train which ran to Hugenot, their
destination. He was beside himself with the idea of a day all alone
with Suzanne. He did not stay to consider or give ear to a thought
concerning Angela at home or how Mrs. Dale would view it. Nothing
would come of it. It was not an outrageous adventure. They took the
train south, and in a little while were in another world, on the
veranda of a hotel that overlooked the sea. There were numerous
autos of idlers like themselves in a court before the hotel. There
was a great grassy lawn with swings covered by striped awnings of
red and blue and green, and beyond that a pier with many little
white launches anchored near. The sea was as smooth as glass and
great steamers rode in the distance trailing lovely plumes of
smoke. The sun was blazing hot, brilliant, but here on the cool
porch waiters were serving pleasure lovers with food and drink. A
quartette of negroes were singing. Suzanne and Eugene seated
themselves in rockers at first to view the perfect day and later
went down and sat in a swing. Unthinkingly, without words, these
two were gradually gravitating toward each other under some spell
which had no relationship to everyday life. Suzanne looked at him
in the double seated swing where they sat facing each other and
they smiled or jested aimlessly, voicing nothing of all the upward
welling deep that was stirring within.

"Was there ever such a day?" said Eugene finally, and in a voice
that was filled with extreme yearning. "See that steamer out there.
It looks like a little toy."

"Yes," said Suzanne with a little gasp. She inhaled her breath
as she pronounced this word which gave it an airy breathlessness
which had a touch of demure pathos in it. "Oh, it is perfect."

"Your hair," he said. "You don't know how nice you look. You fit
this scene exactly."

"Don't speak of me," she pleaded. "I look so tousled. The wind
in the train blew my hair so I ought to go the ladies' dressing
room and hunt up a maid."

"Stay here," said Eugene. "Don't go. It is all so lovely."

"I won't now. I wish we might always sit here. You, just as you
are there, and I here."

"Did you ever read the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember the lines 'Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou
canst not leave'?"

"Yes, yes," she answered ecstatically.

"'Bold lover, never, never
canst thou kiss
Though winning near
the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She
cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love and she be
fair.'"

"Don't, don't," she pleaded.

He understood. The pathos of that great thought was too much for
her. It hurt her as it did him. What a mind!

They rocked and swung idly, he pushing with his feet at times in
which labor she joined him. They strolled up the beach and sat down
on a green clump of grass overlooking the sea. Idlers approached
and passed. He laid his arm to her waist and held her hand, but
something in her mood stayed him from any expression. Through
dinner at the hotel it was the same and on the way to the train,
for she wanted to walk through the dark. Under some tall trees,
though, in the rich moonlight prevailing, he pressed her hand.