The «Genius» II

THE “GENIUS” II

“Don’t!” she pleaded. “Don’t! I have to go now.”

And when he released her she ran quickly down the stairs, giving him a swift, parting smile.

So Frieda was added to the list of his conquests and he pondered over it gravely. If Angela could have seen this scene, what a storm there would have been! If she ever became conscious of what was going on, what a period of wrath there would be! It would be terrible. After her recent discovery of his letters he hated to think of that. Still this bliss of caressing youth – was it not worth any price? To have a bright, joyous girl of eighteen put her arms about you – could you risk too much for it? The world said one life, one love. Could he accede to that? Could any one woman satisfy him? Could Frieda if he had her? He did not know. He did not care to think about it. Only this walking in a garden of flowers – how delicious it was. This having a rose to your lips!

Angela saw nothing of this attraction for some time. She was not prepared yet to believe, poor little depender on the conventions as she understood them, that the world was full of plots and counter-plots, snares, pitfalls and gins. The way of the faithful and well-meaning woman in marriage should be simple and easy. She should not be harassed by uncertainty of affection, infelicities of temper, indifference or infidelity. If she worked hard, as Angela was trying to do, trying to be a good wife, saving, serving, making a sacrifice of her time and services and moods and wishes for her husband’s sake, why shouldn’t he do the same for her? She knew of no double standard of virtue. If she had she would not have believed in it. Her parents had raised her to see marriage in a different light. Her father was faithful to her mother. Eugene’s father was faithful to

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his wife – that was perfectly plain. Her brothers-in-law were faithful to her sisters, Eugene’s brothers-in-law were faithful to his sisters. Why should not Eugene be faithful to her?

So far, of course, she had no evidence to the contrary. He probably was faithful and would remain so. He had said so, but this pre-matrimonial philandering of his looked very curious. It was an astonishing thing that he could have deceived her so. She would never forget it. He was a genius to be sure. The world was waiting to hear what he had to say. He was a great man and should associate with great men, or, failing that, should not want to associate with anyone at all. It was ridiculous for him to be running around after silly women. She thought of this and decided to do her best to prevent it. The seat of the mighty was in her estimation the place for Eugene, with her in the foreground as a faithful and conspicuous acolyte, swinging the censer of praise and delight.

The days went on and various little meetings – some accidental, some premeditated – took place between Eugene and Frieda. There was one afternoon when he was at his sister’s and she came there to get a pattern for her foster-mother from Sylvia. She lingered for over an hour, during which time Eugene had opportunities to kiss her a dozen times. The beauty of her eyes and her smile haunted him after she was gone. There was another time when he saw her at dusk near his boathouse, and kissed her in the shadow of the sheltering grape-arbor. In his own home there were clandestine moments and in his studio, the barn loft, for Frieda made occasion a few times to come to him – a promise to make a sketch of her being the excuse. Angela resented this, but she could not prevent it. In the main Frieda exhibited that curious patience in love which

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women so customarily exhibit and which a man can never understand. She could wait for her own to come to her – for him to find her; while he, with that curious avidness of the male in love, burned as a fed fire to see her. He was jealous of the little innocent walks she took with boys she knew. The fact that it was necessary for her to be away from him was a great deprivation. The fact that he was married to Angela was a horrible disaster. He would look at Angela, when she was with him, preventing him from his freedom in love, with almost calculated hate in his eyes. Why had he married her? As for Frieda, when she was near, and he could not draw near her, his eyes followed her movements with a yearning, devouring glance. He was fairly beside himself with anguish under the spell of her beauty. Frieda had no notion of the consuming flame she had engendered.

It was a simple thing to walk home with her from the postoffice – quite accidentally on several occasions. It was a fortuitous thing that Anna Roth should invite Angela and himself, as well as his father and mother, to her house to dinner. On one occasion when Frieda was visiting at the Witla homestead, Angela thought Frieda stepped away from Eugene in a curiously disturbed manner when she came into the parlor. She was not sure. Frieda hung round him in a good-natured way most of the time when various members of the family were present. She wondered if by any chance he was making love to her, but she could not prove it. She tried to watch them from then on, but Eugene was so subtle, Frieda so circumspect, that she never did obtain any direct testimony. Nevertheless, before they left Alexandria there was a weeping scene over this,

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hysterical, tempestuous, in which she accused him of making love to Frieda, he denying it stoutly.

“If it wasn’t for your relatives’ sake,” she declared, “I would accuse her to her face, here before your eyes. She couldn’t dare deny it.”

“Oh, you’re crazy,” said Eugene. “You’re the most suspicious woman I ever knew. Good Lord! Can’t I look at a woman any more? This little girl! Can’t I even be nice to her?”

“Nice to her? Nice to her? I know how you’re nice to her. I can see! I can feel! Oh, God! Why can’t you give me a faithful husband!”

“Oh, cut it out!” demanded Eugene defiantly. “You’re always watching. I can’t turn around but you have your eye on me. I can tell. Well, you go ahead and watch. That’s all the good it will do you. I’ll give you some real reason for watching one of these days. You make me tired!”

“Oh, hear how he talks to me,” moaned Angela, “and we’re only married one year! Oh, Eugene, how can you? Have you no pity, no shame? Here in your own home, too! Oh! oh! oh!”

To Eugene such hysterics were maddening. He could not understand how anyone should want or find it possible to carry on in this fashion. He was lying “out of the whole cloth” about Frieda, but Angela didn’t know and he knew she didn’t know. All these tantrums were based on suspicion. If she would do this on a mere suspicion, what would she not do when she had a proved cause?

Still by her tears she as yet had the power of rousing his sympathies and awakening his sense of shame. Her sorrow made him slightly ashamed of his conduct or rather sorry, for the tougher nature was constantly presenting itself. Her sus-

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picions made the further pursuit of this love quest practically impossible. Secretly he already cursed the day he had married her, for Frieda’s face was ever before him, a haunting lure to love and desire. In this hour life looked terribly sad to him. He couldn’t help feeling that all the perfect things one might seek or find were doomed to the searing breath of an inimical fate. Ashes of roses – that was all life had to offer. Dead sea fruit, turning to ashes upon the lips. Oh, Frieda! Frieda! Oh, youth, youth! That there should dance before him for evermore an unattainable desire – the holy grail of beauty. Oh life, oh death! Which was really better, waking or sleeping? If he could only have Frieda now it would be worth living, but without her –

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CHAPTER XV

The weakness of Eugene was that he was prone in each of these new conquests to see for the time being the sum and substance of bliss, to rise rapidly in the scale of uncontrollable, exaggerated affection, until he felt that here and nowhere else, now and in this particular form was ideal happiness. He had been in love with Stella, with Margaret, with Ruby, with Angela, with Christina, and now with Frieda, quite in this way, and it had taught him nothing as yet concerning love except that it was utterly delightful. He wondered at times how it was that the formation of a particular face could work this spell. There was plain magic in the curl of a lock of hair, the whiteness or roundness of a forehead, the shapeliness of a nose or ear, the arched redness of full-blown petal lips. The cheek, the chin, the eye – in combination with these things – how did they work this witchery? The tragedies to which he laid himself open by yielding to these spells – he never stopped to think of them.

It is a question whether the human will, of itself alone, ever has cured or ever can cure any human weakness. Tendencies are subtle things. They are involved in the chemistry of one’s being, and those who delve in the mysteries of biology frequently find that curious anomaly, a form of minute animal life born to be the prey of another form of animal life –

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chemically and physically attracted to its own disaster. Thus, to quote Calkins, “some protozoa are apparently limited to special kinds of food. The ‘slipper-animal’ (Paramecium) and the ‘bell-animal’ (Vorticella) live on certain kinds of bacteria, and many others, which live upon smaller protozoa, seem to have a marked affinity for certain kinds. I have watched one of these creatures (Actinobolus) lie perfectly quiet while hundreds of bacteria and smaller kinds of protozoa bumped against it, until a certain variety (Halteria grandinella) came near, when a minute dart, or ‘trochocyst,’ attached to a relatively long thread, was launched. The victim was invariably hit, and after a short struggle was drawn in and devoured. The results of many experiments indicate that the apparently willful selection in these cases is the inevitable action of definite chemical and physical laws which the individual organism can no more change than it can change the course of gravitation. The killing dart mentioned above is called out by the particular kind of prey with the irresistible attraction of an iron filing for a magnet.”

Eugene did not know of these curious biologic experiments at this time, but he suspected that these attractions were deeper than human will. He thought at times that he ought to resist his impulses. At other times he asked himself why. If his treasure was in this and he lost it by resistance, what had he? A sense of personal purity? It did not appeal to him. The respect of his fellow-citizens? He believed that most of his fellow-citi- zens were whited sepulchres. What good did their hypocritical respect do him? Justice to others? Others were not concerned, or should not be in the natural affinity which might manifest itself between two people. That was for them to settle. Besides,

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there was very little justice in the world. As for his wife – well, he had given her his word, but he had not done so willingly. Might one swear eternal fealty and abide by it when the very essence of nature was lack of fealty, inconsiderateness, destruction, change? A gloomy Hamlet to be sure, asking “can honor set a leg?” – a subtle Machiavelli believing that might made right, sure that it was a matter of careful planning, not ethics which brought success in this world, and yet one of the poorest planners in it. An anarchistic manifestation of selfishness surely; but his additional plea was that he did not make his own mind, nor his emotions, nor anything else. And worst of all, he counselled himself that he was not seizing anything ruthlessly. He was merely accepting that which was thrust temptingly before him by fate.

Hypnotic spells of this character like contagion and fever have their period of duration, their beginning, climax and end. It is written that love is deathless, but this was not written of the body nor does it concern the fevers of desire. The marriage of true minds to which Shakespeare would admit no impediment is of a different texture and has little sex in it. The friendship of Damon and Pythias was a marriage in the best sense, though it concerned two men. The possibilities of intellectual union between a man and a woman are quite the same. This is deathless in so far as it reflects the spiritual ideals of the universe – not more so. All else is illusion of short duration and vanishes in thin air.

When the time came for Eugene to leave Alexandria as he had originally wanted to do, he was not at all anxious to depart; rather it was an occasion of great suffering for him. He could not see any solution to the problem which confronted him

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in connection with Frieda’s love for him. As a matter of fact, when he thought about it at all he was quite sure that she did not understand or appreciate the nature of her affection for him or his for her. It had no basis in responsibility. It was one of those things born of thin air – sunlight, bright waters, the reflection of a bright room – things which are intangible and insubstantial. Eugene was not one who, if he thought anything at all about it, would persuade a girl to immorality for the mere sake of indulgence. His feelings were invariably compounded of finer things, love of companionship, love of beauty, a variable sense of the consequences which must ensue, not so much to him as to her, though he took himself into consideration. If she were not already experienced and he had no method of protecting her, if he could not take her as his wife or give her the advantages of his presence and financial support, secretly or openly, if he could not keep all their transactions a secret from the world, he was inclined to hesitate. He did not want to do anything rash – as much for her sake as for his. In this case, the fact that he could not marry her, that he could not reasonably run away with her, seeing that he was mentally sick and of uncertain financial condition, the fact that he was surrounded by home conditions which made it of the greatest importance that he should conduct himself circumspectly, weighed greatly with him. Nevertheless a tragedy could easily have resulted here. If Frieda had been of a headstrong, unthinking nature; if Angela had been less watchful, morbid, appealing in her mood; if the family and town conditions had been less weighty; if Eugene had had health and ample means, he would probably have deserted Angela, taken Frieda to some European city – he dreamed of Paris in this connection – and

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found himself confronted later by an angry father or a growing realization that Frieda’s personal charms were not the sum and substance of his existence, or both. George Roth, for all he was a traveling salesman, was a man of considerable determination. He might readily have ended the life of his daughter’s betrayer – art reputation or no. He worshiped Frieda as the living image of his dead wife, and at best he would have been heartbroken.

As it was, there was not much chance of this, for Eugene was not rash. He was too philosophic. Conditions might have arisen in which he would have shown the most foolhardy bravado, but not in his present state. There was not sufficient anguish in his own existence to drive him to action. He saw no clear way. So, in June, with Angela he took his departure for Blackwood, pretending, to her, outward indifference as to his departure, but inwardly feeling as though his whole life were coming to nothing.

When he reached Blackwood he was now, naturally, disgusted with the whole atmosphere of it. Frieda was not there. Alexandria, from having been the most wearisome sidepool of aimless inactivity, had suddenly taken on all the characteristics of paradise. The little lakes, the quiet streets, the court house square, his sister’s home, Frieda’s home, his own home, had been once more invested for him with the radiance of romance – that intangible glory of feeling which can have no existence outside the illusion of love. Frieda’s face was everywhere in it, her form, the look of her eyes. He could see nothing there now save the glory of Frieda. It was as though the hard, weary face of a barren landscape were suddenly bathed in the soft effulgence of a midnight moon.

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