Chapter IX

There followed now a series of meetings contrived with difficulty, fraught with danger, destructive of his peace of mind, of his recently acquired sense of moral and commercial responsibility, of the sense of singleness of purpose and interest in his editorial and publishing world, which had helped him so much recently. The meetings nevertheless were full of such intense bliss for him that it seemed as though he were a thousand times repaid for all the subtlety and folly he was practicing. There were times when he came to the ice house in a hired car, others when she notified him by phone or note to his office of times when she was coming in to town to stay. He took her in his car one afternoon to Blue Sea when he was sure no one would encounter him. He persuaded Suzanne to carry a heavy veil, which could be adjusted at odd moments. Another time—several, in fact she came to the apartment in Riverside Drive, ostensibly to see how Mrs. Witla was getting along, but really, of course, to see Eugene. Suzanne did not really care so much for Angela, although she did not dislike her. She thought she was an interesting woman, though perhaps not a happy mate for Eugene. The latter had told her not so much that he was unhappy as that he was out of love. He loved her now, Suzanne, and only her.

The problem as to where this relationship was to lead to was complicated by another problem, which Eugene knew nothing of, but which was exceedingly important. For Angela, following the career of Eugene with extreme pleasure and satisfaction on the commercial side, and fear and distrust on the social and emotional sides, had finally decided to risk the uncertain outcome of a child in connection with Eugene and herself, and to give him something which would steady his life and make him realize his responsibilities and offer him something gladdening besides social entertainment and the lure of beauty in youth. She had never forgotten the advice which Mrs. Sanifore and her physician had given her in Philadelphia, nor had she ever ceased her cogitations as to what the probable effect of a child would be. Eugene needed something of this sort to balance him. His position in the world was too tenuous, his temperament too variable. A child—a little girl, she hoped, for he always liked little girls and made much of them—would quiet him. If she could only have a little girl now!

Some two months before her illness, while Eugene was becoming, all unsuspected by her, so frenzied about Suzanne, she had relaxed, or rather abandoned, her old-time precautions entirely, and had recently begun to suspect that her fears, or hopes, or both, were about to be realized. Owing to her subsequent illness and its effect on her heart, she was not very happy now. She was naturally very uncertain as to the outcome as well as to how Eugene would take it. He had never expressed a desire for a child, but she had no thought of telling him as yet, for she wanted to be absolutely sure. If she were not correct in her suspicions, and got well, he would attempt to dissuade her for the future. If she were, he could not help himself. Like all women in that condition, she was beginning to long for sympathy and consideration and to note more keenly the drift of Eugene's mind toward a world which did not very much concern her. His interest in Suzanne had puzzled her a little, though she was not greatly troubled about her because Mrs. Dale appeared to be so thoughtful about her daughter. Times were changing. Eugene had been going out much alone. A child would help. It was high time it came.

When Suzanne had started coming with her mother, Angela thought nothing of it; but on the several occasions when Suzanne called during her illness, and Eugene had been present, she felt as though there might easily spring up something between them. Suzanne was so charming. Once as she lay thinking after Suzanne had left the room to go into the studio for a few moments, she heard Eugene jesting with her and laughing keenly. Suzanne's laugh, or gurgling giggle, was most infectious. It was so easy, too, for Eugene to make her laugh, for his type of jesting was to her the essence of fun. It seemed to her that there was something almost overgay in the way they carried on. On each occasion when she was present, Eugene proposed that he take Suzanne home in his car, and this set her thinking.

There came a time when, Angela being well enough from her rheumatic attack, Eugene invited a famous singer, a tenor, who had a charming repertoire of songs, to come to his apartment and sing. He had met him at a social affair in Brooklyn with which Winfield had something to do. A number of people were invited—Mrs. Dale, Suzanne, and Kinroy, among others; but Mrs. Dale could not come, and as Suzanne had an appointment for the next morning, Sunday, in the city, she decided to stay at the Witlas. This pleased Eugene immensely. He had bought a sketching book which he had begun to fill with sketches of Suzanne from memory and these he wanted to show her. Besides, he wanted her to hear this singer's beautiful voice.

The company was interesting. Kinroy brought Suzanne early and left. Eugene and Suzanne, after she had exchanged greetings with Angela, sat out on the little stone balcony overlooking the river and exchanged loving thoughts. He was constantly holding her hand when no one was looking and stealing kisses. After a time the company began to arrive, and finally the singer himself. The trained nurse, with Eugene's assistance, helped Angela forward, who listened enraptured to the songs. Suzanne and Eugene, swept by the charm of some of them, looked at each other with that burning gaze which love alone understands. To Eugene Suzanne's face was a perfect flower of hypnotic influence. He could scarcely keep his eyes off her for a moment at a time. The singer ceased, the company departed. Angela was left crying over the beauty of "The Erlking," the last song rendered. She went back to her room, and Suzanne ostensibly departed for hers. She came out to say a few final words to Mrs. Witla, then came through the studio to go to her own room again. Eugene was there waiting. He caught her in his arms, kissing her silently. They pretended to strike up a conventional conversation, and he invited her to sit out on the stone balcony for a few last moments. The moon was so beautiful over the river.

"Don't!" she said, when he gathered her in his arms, in the shadow of the night outside. "She might come."

"No," he said eagerly.

They listened, but there was no sound. He began an easy pretence to talk, the while stroking her pretty arm, which was bare. Insanity over her beauty, the loveliness of the night, the charm of the music, had put him beside himself. He drew her into his arms in spite of her protest, only to have Angela suddenly appear at the other end of the room where the door was. There was no concealing anything she saw. She came rapidly forward, even as Suzanne jumped up, a sickening rage in her heart, a sense of her personal condition strong in her mind, a sense of something terrible and climacteric in the very air, but she 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 him. It was like every other petty thing she had ever done. Never, never, never, would he let this stand in the way. Oh, what a mean, cruel, wretched thing to do!

Suzanne came back while they were arguing. She half suspected what it was all about, but she did not dare to act or think clearly. The events of this night were too numerous, too complicated. Eugene had said so forcibly it was a lie whatever it was, that she half believed him. That was a sign surely of the little affection that existed between him and Angela. Angela was not crying. Her face was hard, white, drawn.

"I can't stay here," said Suzanne dramatically to Eugene. "I will go somewhere. I had better go to a hotel for the night. Will you call a car?"

"Listen to me, Suzanne," said Eugene vigorously and determinedly. "You love me, don't you?"

"You know I do," she replied.

Angela stirred sneeringly.

"Then you will stay here. I want you to pay no attention to anything she may say or declare. She has told me a lie tonight. I know why. Don't let her deceive you. Go to your room and your bed. I want to talk to you tomorrow. There is no need of your leaving tonight. There is plenty of room here. It's silly. You're here now—stay."

"But I don't think I'd better stay," said Suzanne nervously.

Eugene took her hand reassuringly.

"Listen to me," he began.

"But she won't stay," said Angela.

"But she will," said Eugene; "and if she don't stay, she goes with me. I will take her home."

"Oh, no, you won't!" replied Angela.

"Listen," said Eugene angrily. "This isn't six years ago, but now. I'm master of this situation, and she stays here. She stays here, or she goes with me and you look to the future as best you may. I love her. I'm not going to give her up, and if you want to make trouble, begin now. The house comes down on your head, not mine."

"Oh!" said Angela, half terrified, "what do I hear?"

"Just that. Now you go to your room. Suzanne will go to hers. I will go to mine. We will not have any more fighting here tonight. The jig is up. The die is cast. I'm through. Suzanne comes to me, if she will."

Angela walked to her room through the studio, stricken by the turn things had taken, horrified by the thoughts in her mind, unable to convince Eugene, unable to depose Suzanne, her throat dry and hot, her hands shaking, her heart beating fitfully; she felt as if her brain would burst, her heart break actually, not emotionally. She thought Eugene had gone crazy, and yet now, for the first time in her married life, she realized what a terrible mistake she had made in always trying to drive him. It hadn't worked tonight, her rage, her domineering, critical attitude. It had failed her completely, and also this scheme, this beautiful plan, this trump card on which she had placed so much reliance for a happy life, this child which she had hoped to play so effectively. He didn't believe her. He wouldn't even admit its possibility. He didn't admire her for it. He despised her! He looked on it as a trick. Oh, what an unfortunate thing it had been to mention it! And yet Suzanne must understand, she must know, she would never countenance anything like this. But what would he do? He was positively livid with rage. What fine auspices these were under which to usher a child into the world! She stared feverishly before her, and finally began to cry hopelessly.

Eugene stood in the hall beside Suzanne after she had gone. His face was drawn, his eyes hunted, his hair tousled. He looked grim and determined in his way, stronger than he had ever looked before.

"Suzanne," he said, taking the latter by her two arms and staring into her eyes, "she has told me a lie, a lie, a cold, mean, cruel lie. She'll tell it you shortly. She says she is with child by me. It isn't so. She couldn't have one. If she did, it would kill her. She would have had one long ago if she could have. I know her. She thinks this will frighten me. She thinks it will drive you away. Will it? It's a lie, do you hear me, whatever she says. It's a lie, and she knows it. Ough!" He dropped her left arm and pulled at his neck. "I can't stand this. You won't leave me. You won't believe her, will you?"

Suzanne stared into his distraught face, his handsome, desperate, significant eyes. She saw the woe there, the agony, and was sympathetic. He seemed wonderfully worthy of love, unhappy, unfortunately pursued; and yet she was frightened. Still she had promised to love him.

"No," she said fixedly, her eyes speaking a dramatic confidence.

"You won't leave here tonight?"

"No."

She smoothed his cheek with her hand.

"You will come and walk with me in the morning? I have to talk with you."

"Yes."

"Don't be afraid. Just lock your door if you are. She won't bother you. She won't do anything. She is afraid of me. She may want to talk with you, but I am close by. Do you still love me?"

"Yes."

"Will you come to me if I can arrange it?"

"Yes."

"Even in the face of what she says?"

"Yes; I don't believe her. I believe you. What difference could it make, anyhow? You don't love her."

"No," he said; "no, no, no! I never have." He drew her into his arms wearily, relievedly. "Oh, Flower Face," he said, "don't give me up! Don't grieve. Try not to, anyhow. I have been bad, as she says, but I love you. I love you, and I will stake all on that. If all this must fall about our heads, then let it fall. I love you."

Suzanne stroked his cheek with her hands nervously. She was deathly pale, frightened, but somehow courageous through it all. She caught strength from his love.

"I love you," she said.

"Yes," he replied. "You won't give me up?"

"No, I won't," she said, not really understanding the depth of her own mood. "I will be true."

"Things will be better tomorrow," he said, somewhat more quietly. "We will be calmer. We will walk and talk. You won't leave without me?"

"No."

"Please don't; for I love you, and we must talk and plan."