E. Phillips Oppenheim

“ On shelves of red, highly polished wood were ranged lumps of jade and quartz, bowls of ancient china of which even his inexperience could gauge the pricelessness, silk coats, faded but marvellously embroidered, barbaric stones in open trays, a great circlet of Malay pearls, and, on a shelf alone, staring at him, bland and unmistakable, the other of the twin Images which he and his friend had dragged down from their pedestals in the Temple. Ballaston stared at it speechless. The face itself had a touch of sphinxlike mysticism, the remoteness of a god, the benevolence of a kindly spirit. ”

“ Gregory drew on his dressing gown and staggered out on to the deck. He walked up and down for an hour and a half, fighting a distinct and definite battle, and with every step he took it seemed to him that he became saner. His waking idea took shape, gave him encouragement and life. With his craving for what it might have to give abandoned, the power of the Image, too, for evil, must decline. He wanted those jewels no longer. He was ready to face life and all its possibilities from a new standard. ”

“ Endacott began——
“Ralph!” she interrupted indignantly. “You are too great a man to talk such shibboleth. I dare say he has been a roué, and a profligate and a great gambler. I dare say he has squandered his money, has been reckless and selfish, but don’t you understand, Ralph, he is of the sort of men who could never treat a woman badly? I wish I could make you understand. At least, believe me that Bertram has treated me from the moment we first met—even when I was desperate, willing in my heart to consent to anything—as though I were a thing almost sacred. He kept my self-respect alive. ”

“ Endacott enquired.
“We would divide equally,” was Gregory’s prompt proposal.
Wu Ling, a man not given to gestures, beat the air in front of him gently with the fingers of his hands.
“We would not agree,” he said. “I would not agree. Mr. Endacott would not agree. Our partner, who is not here, would not agree.”
Gregory frowned. He followed Wu Ling’s steadfast gaze, followed it into the further recesses of the second warehouse. He began to think of the Image he had lost, the Image in the steel chamber. A sense of its beauty suddenly possessed him. He coveted it passionately. ”

“ I have seen it in my younger days in Egypt, and I have seen it also in China. I have seen a man who posed as a great savant and Egyptologist destroy a sacred tomb. The newspapers of the world were filled with accounts of the treasure he discovered. He died within a few months, and to this day no one knows how. And then tell me this, by what right does a young man like Gregory Ballaston, simply because he has courage and enterprise, and because he is faced with ruin, dare to come out to a strange country, break into a sacred temple and rob it? ”

“ Ballaston answered.
“That may be,” was the tranquil comment. “On the other hand, we may find the whole story to be an allegory. You may discover nothing but emptiness and disappointment in the Body. Here, at least, in the Soul, you find reflected by the divine skill of the craftsman, the jewels of pure living and spiritual thought. You were of Oxford, young man?”
“Magdalen.”
“You have the air. Nearly all of your age and small vision scoff in your hearts at any religion which may seek to express the qualities for which that Image stands. It is your ill-fortune that you have the Body. ”

“ Gregory suggested, “you could break them up.”
Mr. Endacott raised his hand to his forehead as though in pain. Wu Ling’s expression appeared unchanged. Yet somehow or other he gave one the impression of having listened with distaste to words of blasphemy.
“You speak like a huckster from the new cities,” Mr. Endacott said wearily. “They are great works of art, these Images, sanctified by the years, alive by virtue of their greatness. To raise a hand against them would be barbarous. Besides, Wu Ling and I believe the legend. We believe that those will die who treat the Images roughly.” ”

“ Above the roofs of the village was the sloping park, but the moon had not yet risen and here was only a sea of obscurity. On his way back he poured himself out a glass of water and drank it.
“Angèle,” he said, “our lives have lain very far apart. I have seen very little of you, understood very little of you. Did you love De Fourgenet?”
“I have loved only one man,” she replied, “and I have loved him, not, as you believe, for his unworthiness, but for his worthiness. De Fourgenet turned my head for a week—and neglected me for years. I loved Bertram from the first day we met. ”

“ Sometimes lately I have awakened in the night and found myself crying out with fear, found great drops of sweat upon my body, and it hasn’t been a knife at my throat or any horror of that sort, but men with catalogues, little Jew men with pince-nez, peering at the pictures; fat, coarse-looking men floundering through the rooms and looking at the hall-marks of my china through magnifying glasses. ”

“ She laughed softly.
“I think the poetry of this afternoon is lingering in your brain,” she said. “Still, I dare say it was strange to see an American girl with a New York frock amongst all that medley. You must have thought our little house stranger yet. Can you imagine my uncle, surrounded with all those beautiful things, living between bare walls and with oil-cloth upon the floor, and—am I very greedy—with such a terrible cook? Are you shocked at me for my materialism? You know I never pretended to be anything else. I love life as it comes to me day by day, with just the things it brings.” ”

“ Wu Abst, with a little shrug of the shoulders, relit his pipe. Perhaps, after all, there would have been no more silver!
That evening seemed to the released man like a foretaste of paradise. He lay on a couch in Wu Ling’s cabin, with the roof and sides rolled back and nothing but a cunning arrangement of mosquito netting between him and the violet twilight. Above was the moon and the brilliantly starlit night; on either side occasional groves of trees—trees growing almost down to the river’s edge, some with poisonous odours, others almost sickly sweet. ”

“ Endacott turned towards the speaker, his thin lips protruding.
“Only by contrast with its fellow,” he retorted sharply. “It was the wish of the sculptor, a wish which has been zealously kept through the centuries, that the two statues shall never be separated. Each is the complement of the other. Body and Soul commingled make one life. The artist dragged aside the component parts and separated them. Here in this one we have all that is gross and evil, unredeemed by any strain of virtue, and in the other statue there is charity and spirituality without a trace of the defiling qualities. ”

“ He stopped abruptly, confused by a turbulent flood of memory. They moved away to the music, in and out of the string of lights, rocking now in an unexpected night breeze. Claire danced still with the joy of her youthful strength and gracious temperament. Once or twice, when Gregory’s arm seemed to be drawing her a little closer, she freed herself slightly. Once she caught a flash of that disturbing glint in his eyes, but she only laughed at her own uneasiness.
“Please don’t look so terribly in earnest,” she begged him. “Dancing is one of the happiest things in the world. ”

“ Wu Ling asked, “that even in youth you risk so much?”
Gregory Ballaston clasped his hands behind his head. He was gazing steadily up at the stars, listening to the melody dying away in the distance. Although he addressed his companion, he had the air of one soliloquising.
“The further West you go, Wu Ling,” he said, “the more you need money to taste life. Artistically, of course, it’s all wrong, but then the world’s all wrong. It’s slipped out of shape somehow, during the last thousand years. We aren’t natural any longer. The natural person accepts pleasure, but doesn’t seek it. ”

“ Henry Ballaston, on behalf of the family, came to call upon the newcomer at the Great House. From the lodge gates onward the progress of the seldom seen lesser autocrat of the village and neighbourhood was something like a royal procession. The tradesmen hastened to their shop windows to perform their salutes, the roadmender stood, bare-headed, looking downward as one receiving a blessing. The solitary occupant of the brougham sat with expressionless face, his hand raised all the time to his hat. It was impressive and distinctly a survival. ”

“ But as it happens, money is no temptation to me. I am already rich. In fairness the treasure such as it is should go back to China. If I were a younger, stronger man, the crowning joy of my life would be to take it back and to choose for myself how to distribute it. That, however, can never be. I will try to be fair from your point of view. China has a claim to the treasure. That young man, Gregory Ballaston, may be said to also have a claim—a claim which I should never have admitted for a single moment but for your prayers. ”

“ Nowhere, however, could they discover the slightest sign of any join or any possible aperture, however cunningly concealed. The wood had become as smooth and hard as marble, black as jet, shining as though with generations of polish. Gregory drew the curtain and turned away, baffled once more. With his back turned to the Image he made a long and deliberate toilet. Afterwards he lit a cigarette and for the first time since he had boarded the steamer, ventured on deck to find only a few people promenading, a dozen or so drinking cocktails in the smoking room. ”

“ Well, he found no treasure, but for the evil which has come because of his wrong-doing, you must not blame me who point the finger to his guilt. You must blame something which neither you nor I fully understand, but which is working for a punishment just as surely.”
“But you don’t think,” she faltered, “you can’t believe, that Gregory Ballaston killed Mr. Endacott.” ”

“ In the Jacobean banquetting hall where she sat at her host’s right hand, her fresh, girlish beauty, with its additional charm of a constant and piquant enthusiasm, seemed in exquisite contrast to her majestic but gloomy surroundings; the great, dimly lit room, the stately rows of oil paintings, the cumbersome but magnificent furniture, impressive not because of any intrinsic art of selection, but because it was true to its period and had grown old with the house. ”

“ Johnson watched her every step. An ordinary young woman without a doubt, wearing ordinary clothes, saying ordinary things, and with an unusual gift for concealment. Yet there was something in her very reticence which had its allurement. Mr. Johnson, who was not a profound psychologist, although he had always understood the men with whom he had had to deal, had a flash of inspiration. She was ordinary, just as she was reticent—because she was, by temperament, or circumstance, intensely self-possessive. ”

“ They left the room, crossed a fine tapestry-hung hall, and entered the great library with its arched roof and famous stained-glass window; a room of magnificent proportions. There were bookshelves reaching to the ceiling, and opposite the fireplace a wonderfully carved Jacobean sideboard on which coffee and liqueurs were already arranged. They lingered here for a few minutes. Then, with a brief word of invitation, Sir Bertram led the way to an inner door.
“You don’t mind our invading your sanctum for a minute or two, Henry?” he asked, looking round towards his brother. ”

“ Directly you seek, you begin a terrible chase, and we’re all seekers over westward, Wu Ling. We have lost the art of being. We have lost the gift of repose. We have lost the capacity for quiet enjoyments. Sport, ambitions and love-making have all joined in the débâcle. No one man can live alone and away from his fellows, even if he sees into the evil of these things. All life to us has come to run on wheels which need always the oil of money. ”

“ Gregory declared, lighting a cigarette. “It’s there, a wooden Image behind a curtain, down in my stateroom. Now get ready to laugh. I assure you, Doctor, every moment I spend with that damned thing makes me feel more of a rotter.”
“Where did you get it?” the doctor enquired curiously.
Gregory glanced towards the closed door.
“I am not sure whether it is wise to tell you,” he replied, “but, as a matter of fact, it is a small statue of a famous Chinese god. It is meant to represent all the gross side of a man’s life. It is meant to depict every evil that can haunt the sinner.” ”

“ Nothing can bring my uncle back to life; nothing can ever still the remorse of whoever killed him. Beyond that, let it rest. I implore you, Mr. Johnson, to do nothing more.”
“My dear young lady,” he replied gravely, “think of what you are proposing. You can scarcely be content to let your uncle’s murderer go scot free.”
“That is just what I do want,” she persisted. “He gained nothing by it, and—I am quite sure that, whoever it was, he was not altogether sane. Even on the steamer—Mr. Johnson, I beg you to believe me—Gregory Ballaston was under the influence of that horrible Image. ”

“ Pank, the landlord, in the middle of his supper, and drank a glass of gin and tonic. Then the quick explosions of his bicycle disturbed once more the quiet, drowsy street, as he flashed through the village on his homeward way.
Throughout the whole of that long summer day it had scarcely seemed possible that there could be a more peaceful spot in the world than the wide street, the cobbled market place, and the winding country lanes which emptied themselves into the village of Market Ballaston. ”