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

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 today, 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 tomorrow, 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 upstairs, 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.