Part 5

To all outward appearances the house across the way was heavily boarded up and closed. It had always been closed since the time that Jasper Wald had come to live in Peach Tree Road. Yet every evening in the window directly facing his he had seen the shadow of a man moving to and fro; to and fro, beyond the drawn blind. He would sit there watching the dark, undefined shadow until he felt that he had to work, and then the whole thing would slip from his mind until the following evening when he would again be at his desk.

Strangely enough he had never mentioned the presence of the shadow to anyone. There was about it a certain mysterious unreality. That much he, Jasper Wald, was capable of knowing. It was the one thing outside of himself that gripped at his intelligence.

During all those six years he had waited at his desk each night for the coming of the shadow. And when it came he had started to work. He never explained the thing to himself. He never thought he had to explain anything to his own understanding. Had he tried, he would have been utterly at a loss for an explanation. So Jasper Wald had come to look upon the shadow as a sign of luck; a superstition-fostered thing that epitomized his genius to himself.

Naturally it had not always been that way. The first time that Jasper Wald had felt the shadow he had experienced an uncanny sense of terror. That had been before he had really seen it.

He had been standing there beside the window just after he and Ellen had moved into their home, looking out at the closed house opposite. He had felt a queer oppression which he readily interpreted as the vibration of his new environment. When the thing had persisted he had become a bit uneasy. The sense of oppression so utterly unknown to him had changed to one which grew upon him; as if he were being forced out of himself in some uncanny manner.

There was about it all a curious sensation of remoteness of self and at the same time a weird consciousness of the haunting permeation of something invisible and dynamic.

He never thought back to that evening without a positive horror. The whole thing was so completely alien to him.

It had been with a great sense of relief that he had, finally, been able to see and to rivet his attention upon the shadow there against the blind of the house opposite. He had clinched his thought onto it. And the other thing had left him; had lessened in its maddening oppression.

That evening he had started to write. He had felt that writing was a thing he had to do. It was entirely because of his first fear that he kept the knowledge of the shadow to himself.

Cock sure as he was of himself, thoroughly certain of his genius, and inordinately vain of his success, there was one thing about it all that Jasper Wald could not quite make out. Not for worlds would he have admitted it. Still there was the one thing. And the one thing was that Jasper Wald could not understand the kind of thought behind what he himself wrote.

It was late one summer evening that Jasper Wald sat at his desk in the square living room; his pen was in his hand; a pile of blank paper made a white patch on the dark wood before him. His blue eyes that bulged a bit looked out into the graying half light. The green of the lawn was matted with dark shadows. A mist of shadows were pressed into the faint lined leaves of the two drooping willow trees on either side of the wicker gate. An unreal light held in the sky.

His eyes were fixed on the one window of the house opposite. With his pen in his hand, Jasper Wald waited.

From somewhere in the house came the chimes of a clock striking the half hour.

Starting from his chair, Jasper Wald went to the side of the desk and leaned far out of the window. A wave of heat came up to him from the earth. His eyes stared intently at the window opposite.

The door behind him was thrown open. He turned to see Ellen's tall, not ungraceful, figure standing in the doorway. Her two hands grasped the bowl of a lighted lamp.

"I don't need that."

Jasper Wald told it to her impatiently.

She came a step into the room.

"It's dark in here, Jasper."

"But I don't need any more light, Ellen. I don't need it, I tell you!"

"It's dark in here, Jasper."

"All right, then; put the thing down. I can't take up my time arguing with you. How can a man write in a place like this, anyway? Have you no consideration? Must I always be disturbed? Have you no respect for genius?"

She came a step further toward the center of the room.

"Genius,--Jasper?"

"My genius, Ellen. Mine."

He watched her cross the room with that odd, sinuous moving of hers and place the lamp in the center of his desk. And then he saw her go to a chair within its light and, sitting down, pick up some sewing which she had left there.

He went back and sat at his desk.

He had made up his mind that this new book of his would be something big; something bigger than he had ever done before. He wanted to write a stupendous thing.

He caught up his pen and dipped it in the ink.

She startled him with a quick cough.

"Can't you be still?" He turned toward her. "You know I can't write if I'm bothered. You don't have to sit in here if you're going to cough your head off. There're plenty of other rooms in the house."

She half rose from her chair.

"D'you want me to go?"

"Oh, sit there," he muttered irritably. "Only, for heaven's sake be still!"

"Yes, Jasper."

All of his books had brought him fame; but this one; this one would bring him fame with something else. This book would be the great work that would show to people the staggering power of one man's mind; his mind.

His eyes that stared at the window of the house opposite came back to be pile of blank paper which made a white patch on the dark wood before him.

Without any definite idea he began to write. A word. A sentence. A paragraph.

He tore the thing up without stopping to read it.

Ellen's dull-toned voice came to him through the stillness of the room.

"Anything wrong, Jasper?"

"Wrong? What should be wrong?"

"I don't know."

He began to write again.

He looked out of his window at the window of the house opposite.

He went on with his writing till he had covered the whole page. Again he tore the paper up and threw it from him.

"I'm going, Jasper."

He turned to see her standing in the center of the room, her heavily lidded eyes fixed on the floor.

"I told you you could stay here!"

"I'd best be going, Jasper."

"Sit down, over there; and do be still."

"I seem to bother you. You haven't started to write. Is it because I'm here, Jasper?"

"You!" He snorted contemptuously. "What've you got to do with it?"

"I don't know," she said quietly, and she went back to her chair.

Again his eyes were fixed on that one window. He leaned forward quickly. His hands gripped the chair's arms on either side of him. His brows drew down together above the bulging blue eyes.

Thrown on the clear blank of the window blind, moving to and fro across it, went the shadow.

With a sharp sigh of relief Jasper Wald began to write.

It was not until he had gotten far down the page that he became suddenly conscious of Ellen standing directly behind him.

He looked over at the window. The shadow was still there.

"What is it? What d'you want?"

The lamplight brought out her features, good and very regular and still somewhat nondescript. The lamplight showed her strange green eyes and beneath the heavy lids the lamplight brought out in a glinting streak the expression of the eyes themselves.

"What made you do that, Jasper?"

"I'm trying to write. You keep interrupting me. What are you talking about? Made me do what?"

"Made you write, Jasper."

"Don't I always write?"

"Yes, Jasper. Always. All of a sudden--; like that."

"Well, what of it?"

"What makes you do it, Jasper?"

"Oh, Lord, can't you leave me alone?"

"D'you know what makes you do it, Jasper?"

"Of course I know."

"Well, what?"

"My--it's my inspiration!"

"That comes"; she spoke slowly. "Every night when you look out of the window. That's how it comes, Jasper."

"Look out of the window? Why shouldn't I look out of the window?"

"What is it you see? Over there; in that house; in that one window?"

He looked across the way at the shadow moving to and fro against the window blind.

He started to his feet so suddenly that his chair crashed to the floor behind him. He faced her angrily.

"What under the sun's the matter with you?"

"Nothing."

"Then why can't you leave me alone?"

"I want to know, Jasper."

"You don't know what you want."

"Yes, Jasper; I--want--to--know--"

"Leave the room," he said furiously. "Leave the room! I've got to write!"

She started for the door.

"You've got to write?" Her words came back to him across the length of the room with a curious insistence. "_You've_--got--to--write, Jasper?"

He waited until the door closed behind her and then he went back to his desk.

What had she meant by that last question of hers? Didn't she know that he had to write? Didn't she realize that he had to write?

And this book of his; this book that was to be the biggest thing that he had yet done.

"Ellen," he called. "Ellen!"

He heard her feet coming toward him along the passageway.

She came back into the room as though nothing had happened.

"Yes, Jasper?"

"What--what did you mean by that, Ellen? By what you just said?"

She faced him in the center of the room.

"I've been wanting to tell you, Jasper."

"Well?"

Her hands hung quite quietly at her sides.

"I've put up with you for a long time, Jasper. I haven't said very much, you know."

"What?" He stuttered.

"Oh, yes," she went on evenly. "If it weren't for your vanity you'd have realized long ago what a contemptible little man you really are."

He interrupted her.

"Ellen!"

His tone was astonished.

"You're so full of yourself that you can't see anything else. You're so full of that genius--; of--yours--"

"You don't have to speak of that--; you can leave that out of it--; you've nothing to do with it--; with my genius."

"Your genius." She laughed then. "It's your genius, Jasper, that has nothing to do with you!"

"Nothing--to--do--with--me?"

"No, Jasper. I haven't been blind."

"Blind?"

"I've seen, Jasper; sitting here night after night in this room with you; I've seen."

"What?"

"Over there--; in the house opposite."

"You mean--"

"And you can't write without it, Jasper! You couldn't write before and you can't write now without it. It isn't you. It isn't you who writes. It's something--something working through you. And you call it your own. Jasper, you're a fool!"

"Ellen, how dare you!"

"Dare!"

She spoke the word disdainfully. He had never in his whole life seen her this way; he had never thought to see her like this; but then, he had never given Ellen much thought of any kind.

"It's you who're the fool." He was furious. "It's I who've always been the brains; if you could you'd have hampered me with your stupidity. But you couldn't. I shut you quite outside. I nurtured my own genius. If I'd have left things to you, I'd have been down and out by now; and that's all there is to it."

"No!" Her voice rang through the room. "I won't let you say that, Jasper. I'll tell you the truth now. And take it or leave it as you will. You won't be able to get away from it. Not if I tell you the truth, Jasper. There'll be no getting away from it!"

"Truth--; about what?"

"You and your genius. I wouldn't have told you but it's no good going on like this. I thought there was some hope for you; I couldn't think any human being would be as self-satisfied, as disgustingly material as you are. Why, if you have a soul, but you haven't, and I thought--God, how I hoped!"

He started to speak. He could not find his voice.

She went on presently in that quiet, monotonous voice which had been hers for so many years.

"You left me alone; I wouldn't have complained; I wouldn't complain now if you had some excuse for it. It all made me different. There's no use in telling you how; you couldn't understand. But I got to feeling things I'd never felt before; and then I saw things. And after a while I found I could bring those things to me. And that night, the first night we moved in here--"

He interrupted her in spite of himself.

"What of that night? What?"

"That night when you were standing there at the window I got down on my knees and prayed. I brought something to you that night. And you called the genius yours." She broke off and was silent for a second. "I brought it to you because I wanted you to be great. I thought with all that energy of yours for writing that if it could work through you, you'd be big. But you were too small for it! You tried to make it a thing of your own. And I've held on to it. For six years I've kept it here with you; and now it's going. I'm letting it go back again. You're too small; you can't ever be anything but just--you!"

He walked over to his desk, and sank down into the arm chair.

"I don't--know--what--you're--talking--about."

"You do! And if you don't, why do you look out of the window there every night? Why d'you wait for it to come, before you start to write?"

His exclamation was involuntary.

"The shadow!"

"Yes. Its shadow--; from this room where I kept it--casting--over--there--its--shadow."

So that was what she meant. The superstition-fostered thing that epitomized his genius to himself. The shadow that he had come to look upon as a sign of luck. But it was nonsense. It wasn't possible; not such rot as that. It was his mind; the big creative mind of him that wrote.

"Have you said all you're going to say?"

For a second her gaze met his and then the heavy lids came down again over those strange green eyes, hiding all expression.

"Yes, Jasper."

He looked out of the window. His eyes stared through the night beyond the two shadowy, drooping willow trees on either side of the wicker gate and over at the house opposite. He caught his breath. The yellow light from the lamp on his desk played across the clear blank of the window blind across the way. The shadow had gone.

"Ellen--" His voice was hoarse. "Ellen!"

"What is it?"

"It's not there, Ellen--; six years; now--; why, Ellen--"

She went and sat down in the chair beside the desk.

"Yes."

"It isn't there! I tell you--"

"I thought it could make no difference to you!"

"It was--lucky--Ellen."

"Oh, lucky, Jasper?"

He made an effort to pull himself together.

"It won't make any difference to me--not to my writing; not to my genius."

After the silence of a moment her voice came to him in its low even measure.

"Then--; write!"

"Of course." His tone was high pitched, hysterical. "Naturally I'll write."

"Write, Jasper."

He caught up his pen and dipped it in the ink. He drew the white pile of paper nearer to him.

"Jasper--"

"How can I work if you don't stop talking? How can I do anything? How can I write?"

"Are--you--writing--Jasper? Are--you--?"

He did not answer her.

"Because;" she went on very quietly. "It's gone back, Jasper. It's--gone--now--"

His pen went to and fro; to and fro across the page. His figure was bent well over the desk. Every now and again, without moving, his bulging blue eyes would lift themselves to the clear blank blind of the window opposite and then they would come back and fix themselves intently upon the white page of paper which he was so busily covering with stupid, meaningless little drawings.

THE EFFIGY

"Mr. Evans is upstairs in the library, ma'am."

Genevieve Evans hurried through the hall and up the steps. She pulled off her gloves as she went. She rolled them into a hard, small ball and tucked them automatically in her muff.

She had hoped that she would get there before him. She had been thinking of that all during the quick rush home. She would have liked to have had a moment to pull herself together. After what she had been through she wondered if she could keep from going all to pieces. It could not be helped. She did not even know if she cared a lot about it. She was quite numbed. He was there ahead of her; there in the library. Of all the rooms in the house that he should have chosen the one so rarely used. The room she hated.

At the door of the library she paused breathless.

For a second she thought the long dark room empty.

Then she saw Ernest.

He was standing in one of the deep windows. A short squat figure black against the dim yellow of the velvet curtains. One hand held his cigarette; the fingers of the other hand tapped unevenly on the window glass.

She knew then that he must have seen her come into the house.

"Ernest."

He turned.

"I've been waiting for you," he told her with studied indifference. "Where've you been, Jenny?"

She took a step into the room.

"I'm sorry, Ernest. I didn't know you'd be home so early."

"It's late. Where've you been?"

She wondered why she should bother avoiding answering his question.

"Oh--out."

Her tone was vague.

"No," he scoffed. "I wouldn't have guessed it. Really, I wouldn't!"

She loosened the fur from her neck and tossed it onto the center table.

"Don't, Ernest."

"Don't what, Jenny?"

She sank down into the depths of the nearest chair.

"Oh--nothing." Her hands clinched themselves. "Nothing."

He came and stood quite close to her. He glanced quickly at her, puffing the while at his cigarette. She thought he looked wicked and pagan; hideous and yellow behind the rising smoke. His narrow eyes peered at her.

"Well, Jenny--out with it, my girl. Where've you been?"

She looked away from him. Her face was pale. In the twilight shadowed room he had seen how wide and strange her eyes were.

She made up her mind then that it was not worth bothering about. She would tell him the truth. She did not care how he took it.

"I've been to see--; to--see--father--"

She whispered the words. Her eyes wavered back to his face.

"Good heavens!" He laughed harshly. "After all you said?"

"Yes."

"Rather a joke, that."

"No. There wasn't anything funny about it."

"Well. Was the old man surprised?"

"No. He told me he knew I'd come--some time."

"Wise old beggar, Daniel Drare!"

Her breath came quickly; unevenly.

"He's a devil, Ernest! That's what he is--; he's--"

He interrupted her.

"Not so fast, Jenny. You went there to see him, you know."

"But, Ernest, I couldn't stand it any longer. I--simply--couldn't--"

He walked deliberately over to the screened fireplace and tossed his cigarette into it.

"Why d'you go to him?"

"You know why I went."

"Why!"

She had felt right along that he must be made to understand it. She could not see why he had not known before.

"Oh, don't pretend any more. I'm sick of it. You know I'm sick of it."

His brows drew together in an angry frown.

"Sick of what? Eh, Jenny?"

Her eyes crept away from his and went miserably about the room. They took no note of the rare old furniture; of the dark paneled walls; of the color mellowed tapestries. She sat looking at it all blindly. Then her eyes raised themselves a bit. She found herself staring at the picture hung just above the wood carved mantel. The famous picture. The work of the great artist. The picture before which she had stood and hated; and hated. The picture which was the pride and portrait of her father, Daniel Drare.

She got to her feet.

"I'm sick of you--;" she said it quite calmly. "And--I'm sick--of--him." She nodded her head in the direction of the portrait. "I'd do anything to get away from both of you--anything!"

He smiled.

"You'll not get away from me," he told her.

"You--!" The one word was contemptuous. "You don't really count."

"What d'you mean?"

He still smiled.

"I mean what I say." Her voice was tired. "You're nothing--; nothing but--oh, a kind of a henchman to him. That's all you are. Not that he needs you. He doesn't need any one. He's too unscrupulously powerful for that. He's never needed any one. Not you. Nor--me. He didn't even need my mother. He broke her heart and let her die because he didn't need her. I think you know he's like that. You're no different where he's concerned than the others."

"After all--I'm your husband!"

"That's the ghastly part of it. You--my--husband. You're only my husband because of him. You knew that when I married you, didn't you? You knew the lies he told me when he wanted me to marry you. You never contradicted them. And I was too silly, too young to know. I wanted to get away from it all; and from him. I couldn't guess that you--d'you think, Ernest, if it hadn't been for those lies I'd have married you? Do you?"

"Oh, I don't know. I usually get what I want, Jenny."

"And why do you get it? Why?"

"Perhaps because I want it."

She laughed harshly.

"Because Daniel Drare gets it for you. Because he's had everything all his life. Because he's behind you for the time being. That's why!"

"And what if it is?"

"My God!" She muttered. "I can't make you understand. I can't even talk to either of you."

"You went to see him!"

"I went to him to tell him I couldn't stand it any longer. I begged him to help me; just--this--once--I told him I couldn't go on this way. I told him I couldn't bear any more. I told him the truth; that I'd--I'd go mad."

"What did he say? Eh, Jenny?"

For a second her eyes closed.

"He laughed. Laughed--"

"Of course!"

"There's no 'of course' about it. I'm serious. Deadly serious."

"Don't be a fool, Jenny. If you ask me I'd say you were mighty well off. Your father gives you everything you want. Your husband gives you everything you want. There isn't a man in the whole city who has more power than Daniel Drare. Or more money for that matter. You ought to be jolly well satisfied."

She waited a full moment before speaking.

"Maybe I'm a fool, Ernest. Maybe I am. A weak, helpless kind of a fool. But I'm not happy, Ernest. I can't go this kind of a life any more. It's gotten unreal and horrible. And the kind of things you do to make money; the kind of things you're proud of. They prey on me, Ernest. There's nothing about all this that's clean. It's making me ill; the rottenness of this sort of living. I'm not happy. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Nonsense. You've no reason for not being happy. The trouble with you, Jenny, is that you've too lively an imagination."

"Oh, no, Ernest. I've got to get away. Somewhere--anywhere. Just by myself. I don't love you, Ernest. You don't really love me. It's only because I'm Daniel Drare's daughter that you married me. It was just his wealth and his power and--and is unscrupulous self that fascinated you."

"You don't know what you're saying."

"I do, I do, Ernest! You'd like to be like him. But you can't. You are like him in a lot of ways. The little ways. But you're not big enough to be really like him. Let me go, Ernest. Before it's too late;--let me go!"

He came and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'll never let you go," he said.

"You must!" She whispered. "You've got to let me. Just to get away from all this. I've never been away in all my life. He'd never let me go--either."

Unconsciously her eyes went up to the picture.

The full, red face with the hard lines in it. The thick, sensual lips. The small, cunning eyes that laughed. The ponderous, heavy set of the figure. The big, powerful hands.

His gaze followed after hers.

And very suddenly he left her side. He walked over to the mantel.

"Funny," he muttered to himself. "Jolly strange--that!"

Her fingers clutched at her breast.

"Ernest--! What're you doing?"

"Can you see anything wrong here, Jenny?"

He was looking up at the portrait.

"Wrong?" She said it beneath her breath. "Wrong--"

He reached up a hand. He drew his fingers across the canvas.

"By Jove!" His voice was excited. "So it is. Thought I wasn't crazy. When could it have happened, eh? Ever notice this, Jenny?"

She could not take her eyes from his hand that was going over and over the canvas along the arm of the painted figure.

"Can't you see it, Jenny?"

"I--I can't see anything."

She whispered it.