The Stone Image | Page 3

died like the knightly gentleman he was, defending his home against barbarian invasion," I said, shaking my fist at the hideous face grinning into mine. "If you'll listen to me, dear, you'll have the beastly thing thrown out before it does more damage."
"Indeed we won't!" Betty answered. "I'm sorry for poor Chang, but I won't have my lovely idol thrown away just because he committed suicide."
Then she added with mock seriousness: "You'd better be careful how you call my image a 'beastly thing,' Phil; who knows but it has the power of injuring its enemies?"
Lightly spoken as the words were, they sent a quick chill through me; for they voiced a thought which had been vaguely gathering in my subconscious mind. "It will be a bad day for one of us if that stone thing and I ever run foul of each other," I promised truculently as I bore Chang's body away.
The second member of our entourage to be driven out by the stone interloper was our cook,
Nora McGinnis. Nora, who was a veritable virtuoso at the kitchen range, had been with us since our second month at housekeeping, and was at once Betty's pride and the neighbors' despair. She was devoted to Betty and me, too, so much so that offers of higher wages from several nearby households had been productive of nothing more than indignant refusals from her and severed diplomatic relations by Betty.
However, Nora was too thoroughly Celtic to be able to share the same roof with that Oriental abomination. Before Chang's murder she had sidled by it like a stray cat passing a group of boys on a snowy day, after that she crossed herself devoutly each time she had to pass through the hall.
Finally she came to Betty and announced her intention of leaving forthwith.
"Oi've cooked fer yez an' Oi've washed fer yez, an' Oi loiks ye bot'," she explained, "but that there haythen thing out there"--she jerked her thumb toward the hall--"wunk its oye at me whin Oi came through there jest now, an' Oi'll not shlape another noight in th' same house wid it, so Oi won't!" And she didn't.
If a predisposition to baldness and three years of married life hadn't rendered the operation wellnigh impossible, I should have torn my hair. "See what your precious image has let us in for now," I stormed at Betty. "First he kills Chang, then he drives Nora off, and now I suppose we'll all have to die of starvation."
Betty pursed her small lips stubbornly. "I'll do the cooking myself until we can get another maid," she promised.
"Please, Betty," I besought, "let's go to a hotel and board until the new cook comes." I had to spend the rest of the morning explaining that remark to a very much insulted wife. But we went to the hotel just the same.
We menaced our digestions with hotel fare for nearly a week before we managed to secure a Swedish girl who cooked our meals, broke our best china, and regarded the stone image with an equal degree of bovine indifference. The very sight of her passing the hateful thing with never the tribute of a sidelong glance had a steadying effect upon my nerves which more than atoned for the havoc her clumsy hands wrought among our Royal Minton cups and plates. After observing her indifference for a week or so, I, too, got so that I could go by the stone monster with no more than a shrug of disapproval.
The violence of my aversion to the image might have simmered down to nothing more than an artistic distaste if Betty's infatuation had not seemed to increase in geometrical progression as time went by. She would stand gazing at its ugly painted face for minutes on end, almost in a state of hypnosis, till I grew actually jealous.
If it had been a piece of noble Greek artistry claiming her admiration I could have understood and condoned her love for it, for Betty is an aesthetic little person, with an intense appreciation of the beautiful. But her regard for this carven Calaban--
"Upon my word, my dear," I told her one day, somewhat nettled by her attitude, "I do believe you're letting that Eastern nightmare make an idolatress of you."
Betty laughed, a little nervously, I thought. "I don't know what there is about the thing that's so fascinating," she confessed. "Sometimes I think I hate it as much as you do, Phil. But"--she hesitated a second, as if doubting the wisdom of taking me into her confidence--"but sometimes, when I look at it for a while I do feel as though I ought to go on my knees before it."
"And if I ever catch you doing such a trick," I said, "I'll be up in police court next morning for