She did not want to incense Eugene here, but she was very bitter.
Eugene merely frowned.
“Is this your decision, Suzanne, too?” he asked wearily.
“I think mama is terrible, Eugene,” replied Suzanne evasively, or perhaps as a reply to her mother. “You and I have planned our lives, and we will work them out. We have been a little selfish, now that I think of it. I think a year won’t do any harm, perhaps, if it will stop all this fussing. I can wait, if you can.”
An inexpressible sense of despair fell upon Eugene at the sound of this, a sadness so deep that he could scarcely speak. He could not believe that it was really Suzanne who was saying that to him. Willing to wait a year! She who had declared so defiantly that she would not. It would do no harm? To think that life, fate, her mother were triumphing over him in this fashion, after all. What then was the significance of the black-bearded men he had seen so often of late? Why had he been finding horseshoes? Was fate such a liar? Did life in its dark, subtle chambers lay lures and traps for men? His position gone, his Blue Sea venture involved in an indefinite delay out of which might come nothing, Suzanne going for a whole year, perhaps for ever, most likely so, for what could not her mother do with her in a whole year, having her alone? Angela alienated—a child approaching. What a climax!
“Is this really your decision, Suzanne?” he asked, sadly, a mist of woe clouding his whole being.
“I think it ought to be, perhaps, Eugene,” she replied, still evasively. “It’s very trying. I will be faithful to you, though. I promise you that I will not change. Don’t you think we can wait a year? We can, can’t we?”
“A whole year without seeing you, Suzanne?”
“Yes, it will pass, Eugene.”
“A whole year?”
“Yes, Eugene.”
“I have nothing more to say, Mrs. Dale,” he said, turning to her mother solemnly, a sombre, gloomy light in his eye, his heart hardening towards Suzanne for the moment. To think she should treat him so—throw him down, as he phrased it. Well, such was life. “You win,” he added. “It has been a terrible experience for me. A terrible passion. I love this girl. I love her with my whole heart. Sometimes I have vaguely suspected that she might not know.”
He turned to Suzanne, and for the first time he thought that he did not see there that true understanding which he had fancied had been there all the time. Could fate have been lying to him also in this? Was he mistaken in this, and had he been following a phantom lure of beauty? Was Suzanne but another trap to drag him down to his old nothingness? God! The prediction of the Astrologer of a second period of defeat after seven or eight years came back.
“Oh, Suzanne!” he said, simply and unconsciously dramatic. “Do you really love me?”
“Yes, Eugene,” she replied.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He held out his arms and she came, but for the life of him he could not dispel this terrible doubt. It took the joy out of his kiss—as if he had been dreaming a dream of something perfect in his arms and had awaked to find it nothing—as if life had sent him a Judas in the shape of a girl to betray him.
“Do let us end this, Mr. Witla,” said Mrs. Dale coldly, “there is nothing to be gained by delaying. Let us end it for a year, and then talk.”
“Oh, Suzanne,” he continued, as mournful as a passing bell, “come to the door with me.”
“No, the servants are there,” put in Mrs. Dale. “Please make your farewells here.”
“Mama,” said Suzanne angrily and defiantly, moved by the pity of it, “I won’t have you talk this way. Leave the room, or I shall go to the door with him and further. Leave us, please.”
Mrs. Dale went out.
“Oh, Flower Face,” said Eugene pathetically, “I can’t believe it. I can’t. I can’t! This has been managed wrong. I should have taken you long ago. So it is to end this way. A year, a whole year, and how much longer?”
“Only a year,” she insisted. “Only a year, believe me, can’t you? I won’t change, I won’t!”
He shook his head, and Suzanne as before took his face in her hands. She kissed his cheeks, his lips, his hair.
“Believe me, Eugene. I seem cold. You don’t know what I have gone through. It is nothing but trouble everywhere. Let us wait a year. I promise you I will come to you. I swear. One year. Can’t we wait one year?”
“A year,” he said. “A year. I can’t believe it. Where will we all be in a year? Oh, Flower Face, Myrtle Bloom, Divine Fire. I can’t stand this. I can’t. It’s too much. I’m the one who is paying now. Yes, I pay.”
He took her face and looked at it, all its soft, enticing features, her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her hair.
“I thought, I thought,” he murmured.
Suzanne only stroked the back of his head with her hands.
“Well, if I must, I must,” he said.
He turned away, turned back to embrace her, turned again and then, without looking back, walked out into the hall. Mrs. Dale was there waiting.
“Good night, Mrs. Dale,” he said gloomily.
“Good night, Mr. Witla,” she replied frigidly, but with a sense of something tragic in her victory at that.
He took his hat and walked out.
Outside the bright October stars were in evidence by millions. The Bay and Harbor of New York were as wonderfully lit as on that night when Suzanne came to him after the evening at Fort Wadsworth on her own porch. He recalled the spring odours, the wonderful feel of youth and love—the hope that was springing then. Now, it was five or six months later, and all that romance was gone. Suzanne, sweet voice, accomplished shape, light whisper, delicate touch. Gone. All gone—
“Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise.”
Gone were those bright days in which they had ridden together, dined together, walked in sylvan places beside their car. A little way from here he first played tennis with her. A little way from here he had come so often to meet her clandestinely. Now she was gone—gone.
He had come in his car, but he really did not want it. Life was accursed. His own was a failure. To think that all his fine dreams should crumble this way. Shortly he would have no car, no home on Riverside Drive, no position, no anything.
“God, I can’t stand this!” he exclaimed, and a little later—”By God, I can’t! I can’t!”
He dismissed his car at the Battery, telling his chauffeur to take it to the garage, and walking gloomily through all the tall dark streets of lower New York. Here was Broadway where he had often been with Colfax and Winfield. Here was this great world of finance around Wall Street in which he had vaguely hoped to shine. Now these buildings were high and silent—receding from him in a way. Overhead were the clear bright stars, cool and refreshing, but without meaning to him now. How was he to settle it? How adjust it? A year! She would never come back—never! It was all gone. A bright cloud faded. A mirage dissolved into its native nothingness. Position, distinction, love, home—where were they? Yet a little while and all these things would be as though they had never been. Hell! Damn! Curse the brooding fates that could thus plot to destroy him!
Back in her room in Daleview Suzanne had locked herself in. She was not without a growing sense of the tragedy of it. She stared at the floor, recalled his face.
“Oh, oh,” she said, and for the first time in her life felt as though she could cry from a great heartache—but she could not.
And in Riverside Drive was another woman brooding, lonely, despondently, desperately, over the nature of the tragedy that was upon her. How were things to be adjusted? How was she to be saved? Oh! oh! her life, her child! If Eugene could be made to understand! If he could only be made to see!
Chapter 23
During the weeks which followed Colfax’s talk with him, and Suzanne’s decision, which amounted practically to a dismissal, Eugene tried to wind up his affairs at the United Magazines Corporation, as well as straighten out his relationship with Angela. It was no easy task. Colfax helped him considerably by suggesting that he should say he was going abroad for the company, for the time being, and should make it appear imperative that he go at once. Eugene called in his department heads, and told them what Colfax suggested, but added that his own interests elsewhere, of which they knew, or suspected, were now so involved that he might possibly not return, or only for a little while at best. He put forward an air of great sufficiency and self-satisfaction, considering the difficulties he was encountering, and the thing passed off as a great wonder, but with no suspicion of any immediate misfortune attaching to him. As a matter of fact, it was assumed that he was destined to a much higher estate—the control of his private interests.