"Very much so, I mean."
"You never do know just what you do mean. Do you, William?"
"Naturally, I do."
"It wouldn't be natural for you if you did."
The girl slid away from him and went and perched herself comfortably on
the arm of the chair in which he had been sitting. Her hands were busy
with her hatpins and her eyes that peered up at him were filled with
laughter.
"How did you get up from the station, Gina?"
"Oh, such a lovely way, Billy! And so very energetic for me. I walked.
Now, what do you know about that?"
He frowned a bit.
"Very good for you, I don't doubt." He said it stiffly. "After all the
motoring you must have done with those friends of yours!"
She had gotten her hat off. She sat dangling it by the brim. The
lamplight streaked over her hair.
"Now, don't be nasty, William. And whatever you do, don't speak to me
as if I were a congregation. The Trents are perfectly lovely people,
even if they are terribly rich and not very Christian. And--and Georgie
Trent is a sweet boy; and," she added it hastily. "Wood Mills is a duck
of a place!"
He thrust his hands into his coat pockets.
"I never said it wasn't, Gina."
She paid no attention to him. Her legs were crossed. Her one foot was
swinging to and fro. Her eyes were fixed speculatively on the foot.
"And you ought to be very glad to have me here again. Suppose I'd
listened to Georgie and married him right off, instead of coming back
here. A nice fix you'd have been in. You know perfectly well no one in
all the world does for you as nicely as I do. You know that, don't you?"
He smiled down at her.
"To be sure I do."
"As a matter of fact," she went on. "When I came in here you were half,
if not altogether, asleep in this chair."
"I wasn't asleep, Gina."
"Oh, that's what you always say. But I banged in and you didn't hear me.
I lighted the lamp and you didn't seem particularly conscious of it. And
the window. The window was wide open. I closed that for you. The wind
was bringing in just yards of those flower smells you hate so."
"Was it, Gina?"
"Huh--huh."
"You smelled them, then?"
His tone was strangely quiet.
"Of course I did. Come and sit here, Billy." She wiggled herself into a
more comfortable position on the arm of the chair. "And tell your
onliest sister how much you love her."
He went and sat beside her in the chair. He put his arm about her waist.
"You're a dear child, Gina."
"I know it!" She snuggled close to him. "And I've had the most divine
time, Billy. Wood Mills is a glorious place. There wasn't an awful lot
to do; but whatever we did was great fun."
"You'd have a good time anywhere, little sister."
"Would I?"
Her eyes wavered about the room a bit hungrily.
Something in her voice pulled his eyes up to her face.
"Gina, what is it?"
"Nothing, Billy."
She felt his fingers tighten at her side.
"Aren't you happy here, Gina?"
"Of course I am, Billy!" Her head was thrown back so that the long line
of her throat showed in its firm molded whiteness. "Only, Billy, I
want--I don't think I even know what I want. Only just sometimes I feel
it. A want--that--perhaps--isn't--even--mine. It's for something;--well,
for something that doesn't feel here."
He stroked her hand.
"It's lonesome for you, Gina."
"No, it isn't that. It's just; oh, I guess it's just that I worry about
you."
"Me, Gina?"
"Yes, Billy. Sometimes you look so--so starved. That's what makes me
think it's your want I feel--; yours that you want very
much--and--and--Billy, that you can't get hold of."
"No, Gina! No!"
She pressed her cheek against his.
"Oh, Billy." She spoke quickly. "There was one place out there at Wood
Mills. You wouldn't have liked it. But it was too wonderful!"
He drew a deep breath of relief at the sudden change in her voice.
"What was it, Gina? Why wouldn't I have liked it?"
She fidgeted a bit.
"Why? Oh--because."
"Because what, Gina?"
"It was just one big estate, Billy. A girl owns it. She's an orphan.
She's very beautiful. She lives there all by herself except for a couple
of old servants. Claire Trent and I saw her once or twice when we rode
through the place. Claire says she's sort of queer. She doesn't bother
about people. She doesn't like them, Claire says. She spends all her
time around the place."
"That sounds very strenuous, Gina."
"Oh, it isn't, Billy. It's lovely. The estate is."
"I've heard the places there are pretty."
"Pretty! But this one, Billy;" in her enthusiasm she leaned eagerly
forward. "You couldn't imagine it! There are miles and miles. And the
whole thing; Claire says the whole year round; it's just one big mass of
flowers."
In spite of himself he pulled his arm away from the girl's waist.
"Oh, is it?"
"Billy, I know you don't like flowers. But this! You've never seen
anything like this!"
"There're probably lots and lots of places like it, little sister."
"Oh, no!" Her tone was vehement. "There couldn't be. Not such a garden!
All rhododendrons and lilies of the valley--; is anything wrong, Billy?"
"Nothing. Those flowers grow in all gardens at this time of the year."
She stared into his blanched face and her brows drew together in a
puzzled frown.
"Not like this, Billy. Really. I've never seen such rhododendrons or
such lilies. And the violets and roses!"
He got to his feet suddenly.
"What?" He asked hoarsely. "What flowers did you say?"
"Why, rhododendrons--and lilies,--and--lilies. What is it, Billy?"
"Go on, Gina. Go on!"
"Billy!"
"Lilies of the valley and violets, Gina--"
"And roses;" she finished mechanically.
"What kind of roses, Gina?"
The puzzled frown left her face.
"Glorious roses, Billy." She was enthusiastic again. "There've never
been roses like these. Why, there's one kind of a rose. It's known all
over now. It took her years and years to grow it."
"What sort of a rose, Gina? What sort did you say?"
"I didn't say, Billy. I don't even know the name of it. But it's a
yellow rose; almost gold. And its center is pink and--and scarlet."
For a moment they were silent.
"Did you see this--this woman, Gina--often?"
"Oh, once or twice, Billy."
"When, Gina?"
"In the evenings; each time."
"Where was she, Gina?"
"Why, how strange you are, Billy."
"Where, Gina? Tell me, d'you hear--tell me--where?"
"In her garden, Billy. What's there to get so excited about?"
He fought for his control then.
"I'd like to know, Gina--where you saw her and--and--"
The girl interrupted him.
"I saw her in the evenings--in her garden. She used to walk
down--well--it looked like a long lane of flowers. To be exact, Billy,
it was always in the evening and kind of gray. So I couldn't see very
much except that she wore a light clingy sort of dress."
She stopped for a second.
"Yes, Gina?"
His voice was more quiet now.
"I told you she was a bit queer, didn't I?"
"Queer? God! she--was--lonesome--Gina!"
"Yes," the girl caught at his last words. "I'll bet she was lonesome.
Any one would be, living like that. That's what makes her queer I guess.
I saw her both times with my own eyes come down the garden with her
hands full of flowers. Both times I saw her stand quite still. And then
Claire and I would see her drop her flowers to the ground. That was the
funny part. She didn't throw them away. It wasn't that, you know."
"No, Gina."
"She'd, well, she'd drop them. One by one. As if--"
"As if what, Gina?"
"Oh, as if she were being made to do it."
He went to his knees then. He buried his head in the girl's lap.
She leaned anxiously forward, her hand smoothing his hair.
"Billy--Billy, dear--aren't you well? Billy, tell me."
He could not bring himself to speak.
"Billy, is this what you do when I come home to you? Shame on you,
Billy! Why--why, Billy, aren't you glad to have me here? Say, aren't
you?"
"Thank God!" He whispered. "Thank God!"
He got to his feet then.
The girl rose from her chair and clung to him.
"I've never seen you like this, Billy."
"Listen, Gina;" his voice was low. "When you go upstairs to take off
your things, pack my grip, little sister. I'm going away."
"Away, Billy?"
"Yes, Gina."
"But where, Billy?"
"To a place where I've wanted to go for a very long--long time, little
sister."
"But, Billy--"
"Will you do that for me? Now, Gina? I--I--want to--leave."
"When, Billy?"
"As--soon--as--I can, Gina. It--must--be--soon."
The girl went out of the room very quietly.
He crossed over to the window and threw it open.
Darkness as far as he could see. Darkness in which were smudged lighter
things without shape. Somewhere in the distance the feathery ends of
branches brushed their leaves to and fro against the sky.
He knew that the wind was stirring.
He looked up at the heavens. Gray and dark save where the thin crescent
moon held its haunting yellow light that was slurred over by drifting
clouds and then held again.
He could see the wind driving the clouds.
The swish of the wind out there going through those smudged lighter
things without shape.
He leaned far over the sill.
And suddenly the night wind brought him the smell of flowers.
Gradually the odor of the flowers blending subtly and faint at first,
grew more distinct; heavier.
He stood there smiling.
Flowers--
Her--flowers--
"I'm coming;" he whispered. "I'm--coming--to--you--now--dear--"
THE SHADOW
He was colossally vain.
He lived with his wife Ellen, in the small house on Peach Tree Road.
There was nothing pretentious about the house; there were any number of
similar houses along the line of Peach Tree Road. For that matter the
house was the kind planted innumerable times in the numerous suburbs of
the large city. Still, it was his house. His own. That meant a lot to
him whenever he thought of it; and he thought of it often enough. He
liked to feel the thing actually belonged to him. It emphasized his
being to himself.
The house was a two-storied affair built of wood and white washed. A
green mansard roof came down over the small green shuttered upper
windows. On the lower floor the windows were somewhat larger with the
same solid wooden green shutters. A gravel path led up to the front
door. Two drooping willow trees stood on either side of the wicker gate.
Before the time when his aunt had died and had left him the house he had
not been particularly successful. At the age of forty-one he had found
himself a hard-working journalist and nothing more. He had had no
ambition to ever be anything else. He was at all times so utterly
confident that the work he was doing was quite right; chiefly because it
was the work that he was doing. No man had a more unbounded faith in
himself. At that time he had not been conscious of his lack of success.
Now, of course, he looked back on it all as a period of development;
something which had prepared him for this that was even then destined to
come.
He told himself that in this small house, away from the surrounding
clatter and nuisances of the city, he had found time to write; to be
himself; to really express what he knew himself to be.
He had become tremendously well known in that space of six years. No one
ever doubted the genius of Jasper Wald. He wrote as a man writes who is
actually inspired. His books were read with interest and surprisingly
favorable comment. There was something different; something singularly
appealing in all of Jasper Wald's works.
At that time his conceit was inordinate. It extended to a sort of
personal, physical vanity. In itself that was grotesque. There was
absolutely nothing attractive in the loosely jointed, stoop-shouldered
body of him; or for that matter in the narrow head covered with sparse
blond gray hair. The eyes of him were of rather a washed blue and bulged
a bit from out their sockets; the nose was a singularly squat affair, at
the same time too long. The mouth was unpleasantly small with lips so
colorless and thin that the line of it was like some weird mark. Yet he
was vain of his appearance. But then his egoism was the keynote of his
entire being.
Some people could not forgive it in him; even when they acknowledged him
as a writer and praised his work. The man in literature was spoken of as
a mystic, a poet, a possessor of subtlety that was close to genius. In
actual life, Jasper Wald was an out and out materialist.
As for his wife, Ellen:
She was rather a tall woman; thin but not ungraceful. Her features were
good, very regular, still somewhat nondescript. All but her eyes. Her
eyes were strange; green in color, and so heavily lidded that one could
rarely see the expression of them. Then, too, she had an odd manner of
moving. There never seemed to be any effort or any abruptness in
whatever she did. Even her walk was sinuous.
He had married her when they both were young. Through his persistent
habit of ignoring her she had been dwarfed into a nonentity. To have
looked at the woman one would have said that hers was a distinctive
personality unbelievably suppressed. It would not have been possible for
any one living with Jasper Wald to have asserted himself. Perhaps she
had learned that years before. Certainly his was the character which
predominated; domineered through the encouragement of his own egoism.
Her attitude toward him was perpetually one of self-effacement. She
stood for his conceit in a peculiarly passive way. If it ever irritated
her she gave no sign. And he kept right on with his semi-indulgent
manner of patronizing her stupidity. That is, when he noticed her at
all.
She was essential to him in so far as she supplied all of his physical
wants. Those in themselves were of great importance to Jasper Wald.
There was no companionship between them. Jasper Wald could never have
indulged in companionship of any kind. He had put himself far beyond
that. To his way of thinking he was a super being who had no need
whatever for the rest of man. He was all self-sufficient.
If there had ever been love between them in those days when they had
first come together they had both of them completely lost sight of it.
He in his complacent conceit; she in her monotonous negation.
And as time went on, and as his work became greater Jasper Wald grew
even further away from the sort of thing he wrote; so that it was more
than ever difficult for those who knew him to disassociate him from his
writings. There was always the temptation to try to find some of his
literary idealism in himself; to find some of his prosaic realism in his
works.
On one occasion Delafield, his publisher, came to him; to the house on
Peach Tree Road. It was a peculiarity of Jasper Wald's to persistently
refuse any request to leave his home. It was the one thing about which
he was superstitious. He had never by word or thought attributed his
success to anyone or anything outside of himself. He had made his name
in this house and he would not leave it.
Delafield's visit came at a time just after Jasper Wald's last book had
been published.
Sitting in the square, simply furnished living room, Delafield for all
his enthusiasm for the author had felt a certain inexplicable disgust.
"It's great, Wald; there's genius to it. We'll have it run through its
second edition a week after we put it on the market."
"I don't doubt that;" Jasper Wald's tone was matter-of-fact in his
confidence. "Not for a moment."
Delafield bit off the end of his cigar.
"When will your next one be ready?"
He asked it abruptly.
"Oh, I don't know," Jasper Wald had pulled leisurely at his pipe.
"Whenever I make up my mind to it, I suppose. It's going to be the
biggest thing I've tackled yet, Delafield."
"Well--" Delafield got up to go. "It can't be too soon. You'll have a
barrel of money before you get done. Genius doesn't usually pay that
way, either. But--;" he could not help himself. "You've got the knack of
the thing. Heaven knows where you get it; but it's the knowledge we all
need that comes from--"
He broke off quite suddenly as Ellen Wald came into the room.
"I didn't know;" she said uncertainly. "I thought you were alone."
"My wife, Delafield." Jasper Wald made the introduction impatiently.
"Ellen, this is Mr. Delafield, who publishes my books."
She came toward them and held out her hand to Delafield. He could not
help but noticing her odd manner of moving.
"Good evening," she said.
Delafield had not known that Jasper Wald was married. It was almost
impossible for him to imagine anyone living with this man. He looked at
the woman curiously. He had the feeling that her individuality had been
stultified. It did not surprise him. Jasper Wald could have accomplished
that. It would have been difficult to have matched him with as
flagrantly material a person as he himself was. Only that sort of person
would have stood a chance with him. Any other would have had to fall
flat. She had fallen flat. Delafield knew that the moment he looked at
her.
"Why, I didn't know;" Delafield took her hand in his. "You never told
me, Wald, that you were married."
"Didn't I? No, of course not.--But, about the new book, Delafield."
Delafield dropped her hand. He had never felt anything quite as inert as
that hand. It impressed the nondescript quality of her upon him even
more strongly than had her appearance.
"Your husband has promised me another book, Mrs. Wald." He spoke slowly.
He felt he had to speak that way or she would not understand him. "Your
husband is a great author, Mrs. Wald."
"Yes."
"Why don't you say, genius, Delafield, and be done with it? Why don't
you make a clean breast of it with--genius?"
"I've got to be going."
Delafield felt a strange irritation. The man was a fool. For what reason
under the sun could this woman with those half closed eyes let herself
be dominated by him? The two of them got on his nerves.
"Won't you stay to dinner?"
Jasper Wald was obviously anxious for a chance to speak of himself.
"Sorry, Wald. I've got to be getting on."
Delafield still watched the woman. She stood there quite silent.
"I thought you might have something to say about that book of mine."
"No--There's nothing more." Delafield started for the door. "I've just
told you that it's full of the sort of knowledge all of us are in need
of. I can't say more, you know. I suppose that knowledge is what
constitutes genius; but--" He was staring now full into those bulging
blue eyes--"Lord, man, where, where d'you get it from?"
Glancing at the woman, Delafield saw that she was looking straight at
him. Her eyes met his in a way which he was completely at a loss to
explain. There was something eerie about it.
"Where does he get it?"
She repeated his question stupidly and once again the heavy lids came
down over those strange green eyes, hiding all expression.
Jasper Wald drew in his breath.
"I write it," he said.
After that Delafield left them both severely alone. The woman puzzled
him. He could not tolerate the man, Jasper Wald, and he could not for
worlds have the genius of Jasper Wald hurt or slighted in any way. He
knew how big it was. It often left him breathless. But the man; he would
have liked to have hit him that day in the living room in the house on
Peach Tree Road; to have kicked him into some sort of a realization as
to what an utter little rat he was.
And so, because of his physical make-up, people stayed away from Jasper
Wald. Not that he avoided people; not that he wanted to live the life of
a recluse. He never made any attempt to conceal his living from the
general public. He was too much of the egoist to attempt concealment of
any kind. So his life was known to any man, woman or child who cared for
the knowledge. His life of narrow selfishness, of tranquil complacency;
of colossal conceit. And of genius.
He always wrote in the evenings, did Jasper Wald. And often he would
keep at his writing well on into the morning.
He liked to sit there in the square, old-fashioned living room with its
wide window that gave out upon Peach Tree Road.
When he had first moved into the house as an obscure, hard-working
journalist he had placed the desk against the window ledge so that he
could look directly out of the window without moving. And he had kept
the desk there. He was just a bit insistent about it. Then, too, he
liked the blind up so that he could stare out into the evening and at
the house opposite.
For all his impossible vanity there must have been imbedded deep down in
the small, hard soul of the man some excessive, frantic hunger of
self-recognition by others. A potential desire to accomplish an
assertion of self that could in no way be denied; a fundamental energy
which had in some way made possible the work, but which he could never
admit for fear that it might evade the importance of himself.
The house opposite interested him tremendously. Sitting there in an
abstract fit of musing, he watched it as one subconsciously watches a
place that has one's attention.
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.