The Genius by Theodore Dreiser

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed in a shrill staccato, “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to say! I don’t know what to think! If I only knew how to think or what to do!”

“What’s the matter?” begged Eugene, releasing his hold and turning his thoughts partially to himself and his own condition as well as to hers. His nerves were put on edge by these emotional tantrums—his brain fairly ached. It made his hands tremble. In his days of physical and nervous soundness it did not matter, but now, when he was sick, when his own heart was weak, as he fancied, and his nerves set to jangling by the least discord, it was almost more than he could bear. “Why don’t you speak?” he insisted. “You know I can’t stand this. I’m in no condition. What’s the trouble? What’s the use of carrying on this way? Are you going to tell me?”

“There!” Angela said, pointing her finger at the box of letters she had laid aside on the window-sill. She knew he would see them, would remember instantly what they were about.

Eugene looked. The box came to his memory instantly. He picked it up nervously, sheepishly, for this was like a blow in the face which he had no power to resist. The whole peculiar nature of his transactions with Ruby and with Christina came back to him, not as they had looked to him at the time, but as they were appearing to Angela now. What must she think of him? Here he was protesting right along that he loved her, that he was happy and satisfied to live with her, that he was not interested in any of these other women whom she knew to be interested in him and of whom she was inordinately jealous, that he had always loved her and her only, and yet here were these letters suddenly come to light, giving the lie to all these protestations and asseverations—making him look like the coward, the blackguard, the moral thief that he knew himself to be. To be dragged out of the friendly darkness of lack of knowledge and understanding on her part and set forth under the clear white light of positive proof—he stared helplessly, his nerves trembling, his brain aching, for truly he was in no condition for an emotional argument.

And yet Angela was crying now. She had walked away from him and was leaning against the mantel-piece sobbing as if her heart would break. There was a real convincing ache in the sound—the vibration expressing the sense of loss and defeat and despair which she felt. He was staring at the box wondering why he had been such an idiot as to leave them in his trunk, to have saved them at all.

“Well, I don’t know that there is anything to say to that,” he observed finally, strolling over to where she was. There wasn’t anything that he could say—that he knew. He was terribly sorry—sorry for her, sorry for himself. “Did you read them all?” he asked, curiously.

She nodded her head in the affirmative.

“Well, I didn’t care so much for Christina Channing,” he observed, deprecatingly. He wanted to say something, anything which would relieve her depressed mood. He knew it couldn’t be much. If he could only make her believe that there wasn’t anything vital in either of these affairs, that his interests and protestations had been of a light, philandering character. Still the Ruby Kenny letter showed that she cared for him desperately. He could not say anything against Ruby.

Angela caught the name of Christina Channing clearly. It seared itself in her brain. She recalled now that it was she of whom she had heard him speak in a complimentary way from time to time. He had told in studios of what a lovely voice she had, what a charming platform presence she had, how she could sing so feelingly, how intelligently she looked upon life, how good looking she was, how she was coming back to grand opera some day. And he had been in the mountains with her—had made love to her while she, Angela, was out in Blackwood waiting for him patiently. It aroused on the instant all the fighting jealousy that was in her breast; it was the same jealousy that had determined her once before to hold him in spite of the plotting and scheming that appeared to her to be going on about her. They should not have him—these nasty studio superiorities—not any one of them, nor all of them combined, if they were to unite and try to get him. They had treated her shamefully since she had been in the East. They had almost uniformly ignored her. They would come to see Eugene, of course, and now that he was famous they could not be too nice to him, but as for her—well, they had no particular use for her. Hadn’t she seen it! Hadn’t she watched the critical, hypocritical, examining expressions in their eyes! She wasn’t smart enough! She wasn’t literary enough or artistic enough. She knew as much about life as they did and more—ten times as much; and yet because she couldn’t strut and pose and stare and talk in an affected voice they thought themselves superior. And so did Eugene, the wretched creature! Superior! The cheap, mean, nasty, selfish upstarts! Why, the majority of them had nothing. Their clothes were mere rags and tags, when you came to examine them closely—badly sewed, of poor material, merely slung together, and yet they wore them with such a grand air! She would show them. She would dress herself too, one of these days, when Eugene had the means. She was doing it now—a great deal more than when she first came, and she would do it a great deal more before long. The nasty, mean, cheap, selfish, make-belief things. She would show them! O-oh! how she hated them.

Now as she cried she also thought of the fact that Eugene could write love letters to this horrible Christina Channing—one of the same kind, no doubt; her letters showed it. O-oh! how she hated her! If she could only get at her to poison her. And her sobs sounded much more of the sorrow she felt than of the rage. She was helpless in a way and she knew it. She did not dare to show him exactly what she felt. She was afraid of him. He might possibly leave her. He really did not care for her enough to stand everything from her—or did he? This doubt was the one terrible, discouraging, annihilating feature of the whole thing—if he only cared.

“I wish you wouldn’t cry, Angela,” said Eugene appealingly, after a time. “It isn’t as bad as you think. It looks pretty bad, but I wasn’t married then, and I didn’t care so very much for these people—not as much as you think; really I didn’t. It may look that way to you, but I didn’t.”

“Didn’t care!” sneered Angela, all at once, flaring up. “Didn’t care! It looks as though you didn’t care, with one of them calling you Honey Boy and Adonis, and the other saying she wishes she were dead. A fine time you’d have convincing anyone that you didn’t care. And I out in Blackwood at that very time, longing and waiting for you to come, and you up in the mountains making love to another woman. Oh, I know how much you cared. You showed how much you cared when you could leave me out there to wait for you eating my heart out while you were off in the mountains having a good time with another woman. ‘Dear E—,’ and ‘Precious Honey Boy,’ and ‘Adonis’! That shows how much you cared, doesn’t it!”

Eugene stared before him helplessly. Her bitterness and wrath surprised and irritated him. He did not know that she was capable of such an awful rage as showed itself in her face and words at this moment, and yet he did not know but that she was well justified. Why so bitter though—so almost brutal? He was sick. Had she no consideration for him?

“I tell you it wasn’t as bad as you think,” he said stolidly, showing for the first time a trace of temper and opposition. “I wasn’t married then. I did like Christina Channing; I did like Ruby Kenny. What of it? I can’t help it now. What am I going to say about it? What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”

“Oh,” whimpered Angela, changing her tone at once from helpless accusing rage to pleading, self-commiserating misery. “And you can stand there and say to me ‘what of it’? What of it! What of it! What shall you say? What do you think you ought to say? And me believing that you were so honorable and faithful! Oh, if I had only known! If I had only known! I had better have drowned myself a hundred times over than have waked and found that I wasn’t loved. Oh, dear, oh, dear! I don’t know what I ought to do! I don’t know what I can do!”