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

Derrick shook his head.

“Then don’t go, sir. It’s no place for a white man, and less for a white woman. Folks seem to go mad there without knowing it, a sort of slow, creeping madness that by and by gets them. It’s the jungle that does it, with the smell of the orchids like a woman’s breast, air that thick and heavy you could almost cut it with a knife like cheese, soft under your foot with things dying and being born. There are butterflies as big as your hat that go fluttering round as though they were drunk with the smell of the flowers, as I guess they are; and the flowers are like pulp, with nothing to touch a Lady Hillingdon in the whole country. It seemed to me after a while that most everyone is either mad or drunk in the jungle, which is perhaps the same thing, but of course they don’t know it. Anyway, it was eight years ago, no, seven, that Mr. Millicent came along. He had traveled up river to see the country, being interested in that sort of thing. I was away still further up at the time, and when he got back on his way to Rangoon he stopped at my place because there was nowhere else to stay. What happened there I didn’t know at the time, but⁠—”

He broke off helplessly, locked and twisted his thick fingers together, stared uncertainly at Derrick and then at Blunt.

“Go on,” said the latter quietly.

“It was nearly a year before I found out, but when I got back my wife had gone, leaving no word. Then I went mad, too, blaming myself because I had kept her so long in the jungle and she begging me to take her out. Perhaps as I see it now she felt the madness coming on her, but trade was so promising that I hung on. After a while the natives told me about Mr. Millicent, but none of them knew his name, only that he had come from up country, and there were queer stories about him. I started tracing the thing back till I found a priest who told me that an Englishman like him had robbed a temple up in the Mong Hills. Then I sold my stuff and started for Rangoon. There was more of the story there, and I got Mr. Millicent’s address from a clerk in the shipping office. I took the first boat to England, came to Bamberley, and my wife didn’t know me.”

Martin stopped abruptly, and Derrick made a sudden gesture of sympathy. Blunt’s face did not alter a fraction. This was but a tale to him, and apparently not of great interest, a minor scene in the play.

“Go on!” he said again.

“Looking back at it now, I can see one reason for some of it. Soon after we married she had a son, but he didn’t live only a few days. She was never quite the same afterward, knowing she couldn’t have another. Maybe that had a little to do with her going off after Mr. Millicent. You can’t guess what it’s like to be hunting a wife who has gone in pursuit of a man you never saw.”

“No,” said Derrick slowly, “I can’t.”

“Well, sir, that was my case, and when finally I found her I learned the truth. It wasn’t Mr. Millicent himself at all, but that damned jade god he had stolen, that and perhaps the jungle madness. Maybe Blunt here will tell you more about the thing. Mind you, the natives believed in it, and whatever it was that got into her blood made her believe in it, too. At any rate, Mr. Millicent had the ungodly thing, though I suppose he never knew just why he stole it, and that anchored her wherever he happened to be, like a moth trying to get inside a lamp. She couldn’t get away if she wanted to. Mr. Millicent himself never knew, I believe that, and was always kind to her as he was to everyone else, and nothing more. Had I thought there was anything else I would have killed him myself, and I don’t care if the sergeant hears me say so, either. So my wife went into his family as a servant, just to be near him. Mad, yes, she was mad enough. Did you never notice her eyes, sir?”

“I think we all noticed them.”

“Then I needn’t say much more about that. As I say, I got to Beech Lodge, and she looked straight in my face and didn’t know me for her husband. She knew that she had known me before, but that was all, if you understand. I couldn’t force myself on her without destroying what little comfort she got out of being near her master, though God knows that was more pain than comfort. At the same time, I couldn’t leave her without some kind of protection, for I had never wanted any woman but her, so I applied for the job of gardener, and got it, perhaps because I knew the country Mr. Millicent was thinking of most of the time. There I was, working for the same people as my own wife, but no more a husband of my wife’s than one of my own shrubs. The jade god had her for its own, and it had Mr. Millicent, too. The fear was on him. I could see that.”

“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Millicent the truth as soon as you got to Beech Lodge?”

“Because my wife would have gone clean mad if I had, for he would have tried to send her away. And back of all this I knew there were those in the Mong Hills who would never rest or be content till they got the damned thing back in their own hands. What’s more, they weren’t the sort who cared much what they did to get it. Millicent’s life wouldn’t be worth a snap of the finger when they found out where he was, if they