THE SACRIFICE
THREE DAYS later Mrs. Millicent and Jean turned in at the gate of Beech
Lodge. It was the first time in more than two years they had been there
together. Half-way up the drive they were met by Edith, who came out
anxious to do what she could to help in what she knew was a trying
moment. She kissed Jean affectionately.
“I’m so glad to see you both. You’ll find the house at loose ends, for
it isn’t actually running, but just moving, so please forgive that. Our
temporary servants are very temporary, I’m afraid.”
Mrs. Millicent nodded. She had dreaded the visit and somehow felt more
at peace than she had expected. But her heart sank a little when she
entered the house. In the hall she looked mutely about and hesitated as
Edith led the way to the study.
“Jack doesn’t know you’re here yet,” said the latter cheerfully. “I’m
rather pleased with him to-day.”
“Why?” smiled Jean.
“He’s actually got to work again, more like the old Jack than for
months. I hope you’ll keep him at it when your turn comes.”
She opened the door as she spoke. Derrick, who was behind a litter of
manuscript, jumped up, thrilled at the sight of his visitor. Mrs.
Millicent’s eyes swept the familiar room, fighting lest she see what she
feared to see. She noted that the big desk was now covered with baize,
the rugs differently arranged, the prints rehung, and a flower-box in
the window. Photographs were on the table, another lamp on the desk, new
ornaments on the narrow shelf above the dark wainscoting. She recognized
the thought that lay behind all this, and it touched her deeply. Then
her glance was drawn to the portrait, and she sat down, overcome for the
moment.
“Please don’t mind me,” she said valiantly. “I’ll be all right in a
second, and it’s quite right I should come here first.” She looked
gratefully at Edith, “I’ll be able to say ‘Thank you’ presently. Somehow
you’ve made the room seem ever so much bigger.”
Edith filled the gap of her brother’s silence. His eyes were dwelling on
Jean’s lovely face, with its smooth oval and the delicate lips. Her
throat was very white and perfectly molded, while neck and shoulder
joined in a lissom curve he found amazingly attractive. There was
strength in the slim straightness of her body, and grace in every
gesture; but her chief allure lay in her eyes. These, full of changing
light, seemed like calm, deep pools in the shadows of her dark brows,
reflecting mood and thought with a sweet and rare fidelity. They held a
soft luster all their own. For an instant Derrick stood quite
motionless, a little blinded by it all. Then he heard Edith’s voice and
responded to a note in it that was meant for him, though she spoke to
Mrs. Millicent.
“I thought perhaps you’d sooner come in here at once, and it won’t be so
hard the next time.”
Mrs. Millicent nodded, but her lips were trembling.
“Have you been very much bothered by strangers?” asked Jean quickly.
“I’ve seen so many in the village, and most of them seemed on their way
out here.”
“It was appalling till yesterday; then Sergeant Burke put a man on the
gate, and that stopped it.”
“Where is Martin?” asked Mrs. Millicent. She had looked for him among
the rose-trees and been relieved not to see him.
“He left yesterday,” said Derrick.
“Where did he go?”
“He didn’t say. In fact, I didn’t even see him, or know he was going. I
noticed that he wasn’t in the garden at noon, and the tool-shed was
closed; so I went to the cottage and found a note addressed to myself.
It was rather pathetic. He just wrote that since there was nothing to
keep him here now, he was going back. He didn’t say where, but it was
probably to the Orient. There was a month’s wages due to him to-day, and
he didn’t want them. Then he thanked me for treating him decently, said
he was glad I was going to do what I told Blunt I proposed to do, and
that was all, except a postscript about the Lady Hillingdons.”
“Poor Martin!” said Jean under her breath.
“And that other man?” added her mother.
“He will be free to-morrow, and he also will go.”
“To Burma?”
“I think so. He’s being detained till then on a technical charge only.
He looks different now, with none of his former spring and activity.
That’s because he knows what is going to be done. He seems dazed, and in
a queer way almost horrified, as though it were sacrilege. It was the
same way with him at the inquest, which was very short, considering
everything. Burke, on the other hand, is like another man and bursting
with importance. He expects to be regarded as an authority on unusual
cases, and probably will be. There’s a great demand for his photograph
already.”
“And what did the inquest result in?” she asked timidly.
“Only that the poor woman died at her own hands while under temporary
insanity. There could be no other conclusion. Martin was not charged
with anything before, so there was really nothing he needed to be
cleared of. His evidence, as well as that of Blunt, was taken and
accepted, and a statement will most likely be issued about what took
place here two years ago. Martin was afraid he would be prosecuted for
perjury, but the fact that it was his own wife gets him free of that. So
really the matter is closed now, and it’s just a case of living down
what is always bound to continue for a little while after a thing of
this sort. If I were you I wouldn’t read the papers for a few days, and
then it will be replaced by something else.”
He broke off, pitched his mind as far as possible from the subject, then
remembered that there was one duty still to perform to close the affair
for all time.
“I had a note from Mrs. Thursby this morning,” said Edith musingly. “She
wrote that they would be passing this afternoon, and might they come
in.”
Jean looked up. “She must be tremendously curious.”
“I expect so. She’s rather that sort of woman. I haven’t seen them for
about three months.”
Mrs. Millicent smiled a little. “She’s a great believer in the power of
money and even thought I’d sell my husband’s portrait, to which she took
a great fancy. I couldn’t have it with me, as there’s no room for a big
picture in our cottage. There are some more things up-stairs, too, that
are ours; but I sold everything else in this room.”
Derrick shot a swift inquiring glance at Jean and made a slight gesture
toward the mantel. She looked puzzled for a minute, then nodded.
“You didn’t sell this, Mrs. Millicent?” He touched the panel, and the
jade god gleamed from its wooden prison.
She put her hand to her breast. “So that is where it was kept! I never
knew till Jean told me. No, I didn’t sell it. I never thought of that.”
“It’s hard to say just what it suggests to me now,” he began slowly,
“and still more what it may really mean to a man like Blunt. It’s one of
those things to which there’s no straight answer. But if there had been
no jade god here”—he paused, then added with a brilliant smile—“I
wouldn’t have found Jean. Edith doesn’t believe in all this, but—”
“I didn’t say that,” interrupted his sister, “but just that I didn’t
understand, and”—she shook her head decisively—“I didn’t want to.”
“Perhaps you were the most right,” he chuckled, “when you suggested that
the thing wasn’t somehow healthy.”
“If I did, I stick to it. It’s beastly.”
Mrs. Millicent put out a hand as though to touch it, but withdrew at the
stare of the tiny basilisk eyes. It seemed to her that this fragment of
carved stone, glimmering opaquely as the rays of the level sun filtered
through it, still threatened her, and she felt grateful for the
steadiness of the hand that held it. Youth was about to dissipate the
nightmare of the past. But somehow she did not want to see the thing
done.
“I think,” she said, with a glance at Edith, “that you and I might let
these two perform the ceremony by themselves.”
Edith laughed and nodded. “Jack will certainly smash the end of a finger
before it’s over, and I can see by his face that he’s in tune for a
regular oblation. It’s that sacrificial look.”
Derrick grinned cheerfully but did not speak. When they were alone he
put the image on the mantel and took his girl in his arms.
“It’s years since I saw you.”
She smiled back, her face very close to his. “Dearest, it’s only three
days.”
“Which is three too many. What an inspiration of your mother’s! Do you
know what smashing that thing will be like with you here?”
“What, Jack?”
“Like gathering up all that is dark and ominous and deadly in the world,
and obliterating it in front of everything that is sweet and lovely and
desirable. You never knew that the first one to go was the one who made
it, and then fear of it began to spread. I’ll tell you about it some
day—the whole story. But now it’s all ended and done with.”
“Where will you break it, Jack?”
He stole a glance at Millicent’s portrait. “Here, on the hearth, under
that. I think he’ll know about it and be glad. It won’t burn, but I’ve
got a wax duplicate that ought to make a pillar of flame.”
Opening a drawer in the desk, he took out a hammer and the model, then
laid the image on the tile hearth.
“There is proof, at any rate for you and me,” he said thoughtfully,
“that this exercised a strange influence over the minds of many persons.
It is the object of fear among thousands we shall never see, and the
story of it has run through valleys and hills on the other side of the
earth where the brown people talk of it in whispers. It has brought men
round the world, and there are others who are waiting for the word that
will bring them, too. Just so long as it exists there will be pain and
theft and crime and fear. And this is the finish of all that, darling.”
He raised the hammer. Driven with all the strength of his wrist, it fell
fair on the malignant head. There was a shivering sound as of tinkling
glass, and the jade god dissolved into mottled green fragments. He felt
a sharp pang in his thumb. An emerald splinter quivered there, like a
miniature javelin beaded with blood.
“Evil to the very end,” he grunted, then struck again.
The god’s head dwindled to powder. He swept back the wreckage and
dropped the wax model into the smoldering embers. Flame shot up,
leaping, sputtering, and hissing. They stood staring at it, their cheeks
touching. It was in Derrick’s mind that in this flame the dross of life
was being burned away. Jean did not move till the fiery pyramid
subsided. And as it died there came the sound of a horn from the drive.
“The Thursbys,” he said disgustedly. “Do you want to see them?”
“Please, no. What had I better do?”
“I’d go to your mother, and please ask Edith to join me here.” He gave a
sudden little smile. “I’ve a sort of foolish idea that—” He stopped,
glanced at the hearth, and shook his head. “No, it’s too foolish.”
“Tell me quickly.”
“Wait till Thursby has gone. Kiss me quickly instead.”
She vanished, her cheeks glowing. A moment later Edith came in.
“Well, our friends are here, but why couldn’t they be content with
what’s in the papers?”
He had no time to answer, for the Thursbys were already in the hall.
Mrs. Thursby swept in like a fresh breeze, followed by her husband.
Derrick thought the latter looked a little sheepish.
“My dear,” said the stout woman explosively to Edith, “what a perfectly
awful time you must have had! We were over in France when we read of it,
and even now when I think of that woman Perkins it gives me the shivers.
I’ve blamed myself so much for not telling your brother everything the
first time he came here.”
“Matter of fact,” chimed in Thursby, with a sidelong glance at the
portrait, “I didn’t say anything because it didn’t seem necessary. I
reckoned that ignorance was bliss so far as you were concerned, and we’d
had rather a dose of it ourselves. The agents thought so, too.”
“Perhaps it was,” said Derrick dryly, “and there’s no real harm done.
The thing is finally cleared up.”
“As I said before, I could never understand that woman,” went on Mrs.
Thursby, “but of course I do now. She must have been disappointed in
love early in life, and married Martin to get even with some one else.
Women often do that and pay for it afterward. But fancy living with her
as we both did! Fancy a mad housemaid at your bedside saying the tea is
ready, and thinking, perhaps, about killing one all the time. I wonder
what sent her mad, Mr. Derrick. Didn’t you hear that?”
“There was insanity in her family.”
“Had she been like that for long?”
“A good many years, it seems.”
Mrs. Thursby took a deep breath. “Well, that was the only thing the
matter with Beech Lodge.”
“What?” asked Edith curiously.
“A crazy housemaid. I felt that as soon as we left the place. Of
course,” she continued reflectively, “you’ll think I must have been a
bit crazy myself for not discharging her. I did make up my mind to that
a good many times, but when it came to looking her in the face and
saying she wouldn’t be wanted any more, I—well, I just couldn’t. Silly,
wasn’t it?”
“I can almost understand that.”
“Glad you can. I couldn’t. Was she nice to you?”
“She was a wonderful servant.”
“Well, you see she liked you, but gave me the creeps. And the funny
thing was that I couldn’t imagine the house without her, though it seems
perfectly natural now, and this room is ever so much brighter.”
Thursby nodded. “It’s rather a pity you couldn’t imagine it.”
The stout woman laughed. “James has never quite forgiven me.”
“For what?” asked Derrick. His eyes were keen.
“For letting the place at all. We took another, stayed in it a month,
then gave that up, and have been living in hotels ever since. I hate
living in my trunks.”
“You don’t happen to be in the market for Beech Lodge, do you?”
She sent him a swift look of intelligence. “Whatever made you think of
that? Are we, James? If I do the letting, you generally do the renting.”
Light began to dawn on the Derricks, and Edith made a cautious little
signal.
“My brother is only joking, of course. The idea is too funny. We’ve just
had all the expense and trouble of moving in, and it’s foolish to dream
of anything but staying here. Don’t mind what he says.”
Thursby pushed out his lips. “Oh, I don’t know that it’s so foolish. If
circumstances, I mean business ones, are satisfactory, nothing is
foolish. I learned long ago that when my wife gets a premonition that
we’re going to do something, we most always do. For instance,” he
blurted, “if she were to say she had a feeling we were going to move
back to Beech Lodge I’d bet on it. It’s safe money.”
Derrick laughed. “Aren’t you reckoning a little without your host?”
“I know it sounds like that. I say, I wonder what Mrs. Millicent thought
of all this.”
“She probably thinks it’s a sort of release for that woman and every one
else,” put in his wife hastily; “and that’s the only way to look at it.
A sort of a general clean-up, I call it. Fancy that gardener coming
back, too. He must have been the only person in the world who wasn’t
frightened of his wife.”
“Where do you think you’ll be this summer?” interposed Edith.
Mrs. Thursby folded her plump hands. “I shouldn’t be surprised if that
depended on you,” she said calmly.
“Oh!”
The other woman nodded and went on with a kind of placid deliberation.
“My dear, it’s no earthly use beating about the bush any longer, and I’m
going to come straight out with it. Very soon after we let this place to
you, we took another, didn’t like it, and then I knew we’d been too
impulsive about letting Beech Lodge, and I wanted to come back to it,
Perkins or no Perkins. I never gave the dreadful woman a thought,
because she didn’t seem to matter nearly so much when one had not to
look at her. I told my husband about it, but he only laughed, said I had
changed my mind too late in the day and the idea was absurd. Later we
went over to France for a while.”
“Were you there long?” asked Derrick curiously.
“No, only a few weeks. I couldn’t settle down somehow. Then we read
about what happened here, and I knew what was the matter with me. It was
just as though that woman had telegraphed me that she was out of the way
now, and I might come back.” She paused, with an odd expression on her
round face, and glanced approvingly round the room. “So now, if it is
possible to arrange it, I want to come. If you’re agreeable, then it’s
up to your brother and my husband. So far as I’m concerned, it’s not a
matter of money, and James knows that.”
She leaned back with a nod which announced that on this subject she had
now emptied her mind, and there was no chance of misunderstanding it on
the part of her husband. He was the means to the end. Thursby’s hands
were deep in his pockets, and he stared out over the lawn, his brows
puckered, as though he were adding up figures, which indeed he was.
Edith’s eyes caught those of her brother, and she signaled a message
that left no possibility of doubt in his mind. At that he turned to
Thursby:
“Shall we have a stroll? I’ve put in quite a lot of new roses, and
there’ll be something of a show here next summer.”
The little man nodded jerkily, and they went out. Mrs. Thursby sat up
straight and heaved a contented sigh.
“Then, that’ll be all right, if it suits you. Isn’t it all queer?”
“I think every one feels that.”
“Well, of course I don’t know the ins and outs of it, only what’s in the
papers, and I suppose there’s a lot more, but I felt that neither you
nor I had much to do with that woman staying on here. However, I’ve my
eye on a jewel of a girl now who will go anywhere. Do you suppose if
those men agree there’ll have to be another inventory?”
“I’m afraid so, though we haven’t had time yet to do much damage. That
French window was broken, but it’s been repaired.” She paused, while
something drew her eyes to the hearth. “And there’s that jade image,”
she added uncertainly; “but that’s Mrs. Millicent’s.”
“What jade image? I never saw one here. Where is it?”
“What’s left of it is in the fireplace.”
The stout little woman stooped and picked out an emerald splinter.
“My dear, what perfectly lovely stuff! Were you going to throw it away?”
“It’s Mrs. Millicent’s, and she asked to have the image destroyed.”
“And jade, too! How queer some people are! It’s very fashionable now,
and there’s enough here to make some gorgeous ear-rings.”
The thought of the remodeled god with his cold fingers at her throat
gave Edith an involuntary chill.
“I really don’t want it, and am sure Mrs. Millicent doesn’t, so please
take it if you wish.”
Mrs. Thursby dropped the splinter into her bag, got on her knees, and
poked about among the ashes.
“I’m afraid the rest is all dust. What a pity! I’ve been trying to
mesmerize James for years into buying me something of jade, but he
simply won’t. Now I’m going to give him a surprise, so please don’t say
a thing about it. Here they come now, and I think it’s all arranged.
James is pretty quick in business matters.”
The Thursbys’ car rolled away a few minutes later, and Derrick darted
up-stairs. He found Jean and her mother in Edith’s room and, linking
arms, marched them cheerily back to the study, where Edith waited with a
patience in which there was no virtue whatever. Then he put his arm
round Jean.
“Thursby,” he said contentedly, “was like clay in the hands of the
potter. I began by reminding him that not only had we the lease till
next winter, but also the right of extension for another three years on
the same terms. He pretended to have forgotten that, but of course he
hadn’t. Then I hinted that I’d get into frightful trouble with Edith if
I upset all her plans, and that helped a good deal. It was quite clear
from his manner that he had his orders. I dwelt as much as I dared on
the discomfort of moving and all that, and the more I said the more
anxious he got. He must have the highest regard for his wife’s wishes.
Anyway, it’s arranged. He makes good the cost of our moving here, gives
five hundred for the cancellation of the lease, and also meets the cost
of our moving out. And I think that’s about all.”
“How perfectly wonderful!” said Jean. “Aren’t you glad?”
“Glad is no word for it.”
“Jack,” put in Edith, “I never knew before you were such a business
man.” She paused and glanced at him suspiciously. “Just when have you
committed us to that move?”
“A month from to-day. I thought it over carefully and decided that ought
to suit every one.”
“What!”
Derrick’s eyes grew soft. He leaned over to Mrs. Millicent and took both
her hands in his.
“May I have Jean a month from to-day?” he said very gently.