Теодор Драйзер - The Genius

Her head ached, her hands were hot, she fancied she might be suffering a terrible nightmare, she was so sick and weak; but, no, this was her room. A little while ago she was sitting in her husband's studio, surrounded by friends, the object of much solicitude, Eugene apparently considerate and thoughtful of her, a beautiful programme being rendered for their special benefit. Now she was lying here in her room, a despised wife, an outcast from affection and happiness, the victim of some horrible sorcery of fate whereby another woman stood in her place in Eugene's affection. To see Suzanne, proud in her young beauty, confronting her with bold eyes, holding her husband's hand, saying in what seemed to her to be brutal, or insane, or silly melodramatic make–believe, "But I love him, Mrs. Witla," was maddening. Oh, God! Oh, God! Would her tortures never cease? Must all her beautiful dreams come to nothing? Would Eugene leave her, as he so violently said a little while ago? She had never seen him like this. It was terrible to see him so determined, so cold and brutal. His voice had actually been harsh and guttural, something she had never known before in him.

She trembled as she thought, and then great flashes of rage swept her only to be replaced by rushes of fear. She was in such a terrific position. The woman was with him, young, defiant, beautiful. She had heard him call to her, had heard them talking. Once she thought that now would be the time to murder him, Suzanne, herself, the coming life and end it all; but at this critical moment, having been sick and having grown so much older, with this problem of the coming life before her, she had no chart to go by. She tried to console herself with the thought that he must abandon his course, that he would when the true force of what she had revealed had had time to sink home; but it had not had time yet. Would it before he did anything rash? Would it before he had completely compromised himself and Suzanne? Judging from her talk and his, he had not as yet, or she thought not. What was he going to do? What was he going to do?

Angela feared as she lay there that in spite of her revelation he might really leave her immediately. There might readily spring a terrible public scandal out of all this. The mockery of their lives laid bare; the fate of the child jeopardized; Eugene, Suzanne, and herself disgraced, though she had little thought for Suzanne. Suzanne might get him, after all. She might accidentally be just hard and cold enough. The world might possibly forgive him. She herself might die! What an end, after all her dreams of something bigger, better, surer! Oh, the pity, the agony of this! The terror and horror of a wrecked life!

And then Eugene came into the room.

He was haggard, stormy–eyed, thoughtful, melancholy, as he entered. He stood in the doorway first, intent, then clicked a little night–lamp button which threw on a very small incandescent light near the head of Angela's bed, and then sat down in a rocking–chair which the nurse had placed near the medicine table. Angela had so much improved that no night nurse was needed—only a twelve–hour one.

"Well," he said solemnly but coldly, when he saw her pale, distraught, much of her old, youthful beauty still with her, "you think you have scored a splendid trick, don't you? You think you have sprung a trap? I simply came in here to tell you that you haven't—that you have only seen the beginning of the end. You say you are going to have a child. I don't believe it. It's a lie, and you know it's a lie. You saw that there was an end coming to all this state of weariness some time, and this is your answer. Well, you've played one trick too many, and you've played it in vain. You lose. I win this time. I'm going to be free now, I want to say to you, and I am going to be free if I have to turn everything upside down. I don't care if there were seventeen prospective children instead of one. It's a lie, in the first place; but if it isn't, it's a trick, and I'm not going to be tricked any longer. I've had all I want of domination and trickery and cheap ideas. I'm through now, do you hear me? I'm through."

He felt his forehead with a nervous hand. His head ached, he was half sick. This was such a dreary pit to find himself in, this pit of matrimony, chained by a domineering wife and a trickily manoeuvred child. His child! What a mockery at this stage of his life! How he hated the thought of that sort of thing, how cheap it all seemed!

Angela, who was wide–eyed, flushed, exhausted, lying staring on her pillow, asked in a weary, indifferent voice: "What do you want me to do, Eugene, leave you?"

"I'll tell you, Angela," he said sepulchrally, "I don't know what I want you to do just at this moment. The old life is all over. It's as dead as dead can be. For eleven or twelve years now I have lived with you, knowing all the while that I was living a lie. I have never really loved you since we were married. You know that. I may have loved you in the beginning, yes, I did, and at Blackwood, but that was a long, long while ago. I never should have married you. It was a mistake, but I did, and I've paid for it, inch by inch. You have, too. You have insisted all along that I ought to love you. You have browbeaten and abused me for something I could no more do than I could fly. Now, at this last minute, you introduce a child to hold me. I know why you have done it. You imagine that in some way you have been appointed by God to be my mentor and guardian. Well, I tell you now that you haven't. It's all over. If there were fifty children, it's all over. Suzanne isn't going to believe any such cheap story as that, and if she did she wouldn't leave me. She knows why you do it. All the days of weariness are over for me, all the days of being afraid. I'm not an ordinary man, and I'm not going to live an ordinary life. You have always insisted on holding me down to the little, cheap conventions as you have understood them. Out in Wisconsin, out in Blackwood. Nothing doing. It's all over from now on. Everything's over. This house, my job, my real estate deal—everything. I don't care what your condition is. I love this girl in there, and I'm going to have her. Do you hear me? I love her, and I'm going to have her. She's mine. She suits me. I love her, and no power under God is going to stay me. Now you think this child proposition you have fixed up is going to stay me, but you are going to find out that it can't, that it won't. It's a trick, and I know it, and you know it. It's too late. It might have last year, or two years ago, or three, but it won't work now. You have played your last card. That girl in there belongs to me, and I'm going to have her."

Again he smoothed his face in a weary way, pausing to sway the least bit in his chair. His teeth were set, his eyes hard. Consciously he realized that it was a terrible situation that confronted him, hard to wrestle with.

Angela gazed at him with the eyes of one who is not quite sure that she even sees aright. She knew that Eugene had developed. He had become stronger, more urgent, more defiant, during all these years in which he had been going upward. He was no more like the Eugene who had clung to her for companionship in the dark days at Biloxi and elsewhere than a child is like a grown man. He was harder, easier in his manner, more indifferent, and yet, until now, there had never been a want of traces of the old Eugene. What had become of them so suddenly? Why was he so raging, so bitter? This girl, this foolish, silly, selfish girl, with her Circe gift of beauty, by tolerance of his suit, by yielding, perhaps by throwing herself at Eugene's head, had done this thing. She had drawn him away from her in spite of the fact that they had appeared to be happily mated. Suzanne did not know that they were not. In this mood he might actually leave her, even as she was, with child. It depended on the girl. Unless she could influence her, unless she could bring pressure to bear in some way, Eugene might readily be lost to her, and then what a tragedy! She could not afford to have him go now. Why, in six months―! She shivered at the thought of all the misery a separation would entail. His position, their child, society, this apartment. Dear God, it would drive her crazy if he were to desert her now!