The Jade God by Alan Sullivan (snow like ashes series txt) 📕

my believing it, too. I don’t want to, and I don’t intend to. I’m tremendously in earnest about all this. The reason is that I know I haven’t got the right kind of mental machinery. It would break me all up, while on the contrary it is perfectly natural for you. All I want to do is to carry on here in the ordinary way and make it as easy as possible for you to work. That’s a woman’s job, Jack, and I’m satisfied with it and don’t want to go beyond it. If there’s anything that you’re forced to tell me, well, tell me, but don’t do any more. All this may sound rather hysterical, but it isn’t; and it’s because I know myself better than I begin to think I know you, even after all these years. So don’t try me more than you can avoid.”

While she was speaking, Perkins entered as silently as before. Edith steadied herself, wondering how much the woman had heard. She took the handkerchief and made an indefinite gesture to her brother.

“I say, Perkins,” he put in, “this garden is running wild, and I’ve got to get someone at once or there’ll be nothing worth while in the summer. Do you know of any good man in the neighborhood?”

“I’m sorry; I don’t, sir.”

“What about the village? Any chance there?”

“I can’t say, sir. I haven’t been to the village for more than a year.”

“Mr. Thursby’s man seems to have been very capable. Think you could find him?”

“I don’t know where he is, sir. He came once a week for the past year, but left the village about a month ago. There’s been no one since.”

“Did Mr. Thursby take over Mr. Millicent’s man?”

“No, sir.” Perkins’s expression changed ever so slightly. “He could not.”

“Why was that?”

“Because Martin, Mr. Millicent’s man, had already left.”

“When?” said Derrick curiously.

“Three days after Mr. Millicent died.”

Edith gave an involuntary shiver. “Why should he do that so soon?”

Perkins glanced at the portrait with a kind of mute unconsciousness. “I cannot say, madam. Martin did not tell me.”

“It’s more or less understandable,” hazarded Derrick; “probably Mrs. Millicent let him go. She wasn’t keeping on the place anyway. Do you happen to know where he went, Perkins?”

Edith looked up. “Does that matter, Jack?”

“Yes, I think so. The man’s reputation for roses spread all over the county, and I’d like to get him back if we could afford it. And it’s better to have someone who knows the ground, if possible. What about him, Perkins?”

“No one has heard of him from that day, as yet, sir.”

Edith got up with unmistakable decision. She was evidently feeling herself again.

“Good night, Jack. Perkins, please bring my hot water now.”

Derrick followed her with his eyes but said nothing. When he was alone, he seated himself again at his desk and looked musingly at his manuscript. How thin and unprofitable was all he had written, these doings of characters so obviously fictitious, so utterly divorced from the stinging realities of life. They saw little and felt less, being framed in paper and not flesh and blood. His long hand stole to the edge of the desk, avoiding that discolored patch, and clasped the solid frame as though to draw from it something like real inspiration. He now touched the shadow of Millicent’s lifeblood. His glance traveled then automatically to the portrait. Blood and paint! Between them they held the key of mystery. He scanned the composed features, feeling that the essence of what had once been Millicent was close by. Then it came to him that this essence of the murdered man had its own part to play and was no doubt playing it at this very moment, moving in mysterious channels and in league with mysterious powers. Recurrent and voiceless questions crowded upon him. What could Millicent mean to Perkins, that lank woman with the forbidding eyes? It seemed after a few moments that the painted lips quivered and tried to speak, and the quiet gaze took on something more than the mere flicker of firelight. What was it that Millicent was trying to convey?

“What have you absorbed?” murmured Derrick, half aloud. “What is it you would tell me? You suffered here death and the fear that was perhaps worse than death, but why did you pay the price?” He began to write unconsciously, capturing the words as they came; strange words, unlinked with anything that had gone before, but pregnant with clouded suggestion. “You believed as I do that we are not the masters of things, but that each of us builds up around him invisible towers of influence, by which in time we are dominated. We store the air with records that the air cannot discard or obliterate, eloquent⁠—yet having no voice; strong⁠—yet casting no shadow. And behind it all are Things. We cry for them as children, and when the end comes it is hard to let them go.”

He was staring, puzzled, at what he had written, when Perkins came in, her face grave.

“If you please, sir, the gardener is here.” Her voice was a little breathless.

“What gardener? I thought you told me just a moment ago that you knew of no one.”

“It’s Mr. Millicent’s gardener,” she replied steadily.

“The man who has not been heard of for two years?”

“Yes, sir. He has just returned.”

Derrick took a long breath. “What brings him back now?”

He regretted the question as soon as it was asked, for Perkins was regarding him as though wondering why he should be surprised. It was all part of something else, something bigger. Surely he must realize that.

“I do not know, sir. He only reached the village this evening and came straight here.”

“Does he expect me to engage him?”

“He would like to come back to his old place, sir.”

“How extraordinary!”

Again Derrick spoke too hastily, and again he regretted it. Perkins did not answer. She stood passively, an austere expression on her sallow features; and, scrutinize as he might, there was no penetrating the veil that enshrouded her. She was an embodiment of