The Stone Image | Page 3

its teeth," she explained
between sobs.
I picked up Chang's little corpse and stroked its stiff gray fur gently.
"He 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