The Yellow God | Page 4

teak, a rich carpet made the footfall noiseless, an
antique Venus stood upon a marble pedestal in the corner, and over the
mantelpiece hung a fine portrait by Gainsborough, that of a certain
Miss Aylward, a famous beauty in her day, with whom, be it added, its
present owner could boast no connection whatsoever.
Sir Robert was seated at his ebony desk playing with a pencil, and the
light from a cheerful fire fell upon his face.
In its own way it was a remarkable face, as he appeared then in his
fourth and fortieth year; very pale but with a natural pallor, very well
cut and on the whole impressive. His eyes were dark, matching his
black hair and pointed beard, and his nose was straight and rather
prominent. Perhaps the mouth was his weakest feature, for there was a
certain shiftiness about it, also the lips were thick and slightly sensuous.
Sir Robert knew this, and therefore he grew a moustache to veil them
somewhat. To a careful observer the general impression given by this
face was such as is left by the sudden sight of a waxen mask. "How
strong! How lifelike!" he would have said, "but of course it isn't real.
There may be a man behind, or there may be wood, but that's only a
mask." Many people of perception had felt like this about Sir Robert
Aylward, namely, that under the mask of his pale countenance dwelt a
different being whom they did not know or appreciate.
If these had seen him at this moment of the opening of our story, they
might have held that Wisdom was justified of her children. For now in
the solitude of his splendid office, of a sudden Sir Robert's mask
seemed to fall from him. His face broke up like ice beneath a thaw. He
rose from his table and began to walk up and down the room. He talked
to himself aloud.
"Great Heavens!" he muttered, "what a game to have played, and it will
go through. I believe that it will go through."
He stopped at the table, switched on an electric light and made a rapid
calculation on the back of a letter with a blue pencil.

"Yes," he said, "that's my share, a million and seventeen thousand
pounds in cash, and two million in ordinary shares which can be
worked off at a discount--let us say another seven hundred and fifty
thousand, plus what I have got already--put that at only two hundred
and fifty thousand net. Two millions in all, which of course may or
may not be added to, probably not, unless the ordinaries boom, for I
don't mean to speculate any more. That's the end of twenty years' work,
Robert Aylward. And to think of it, eighteen months ago, although I
seemed so rich, I was on the verge of bankruptcy--the very verge, not
worth five thousand pounds. Now what did the trick? I wonder what
did the trick?"
He walked down the room and stopped opposite the ancient marble,
staring at it--
"Not Venus, I think," he said, with a laugh, "Venus never made any
man rich." He turned and retraced his steps to the other end of the room,
which was veiled in shadow. Here upon a second marble pedestal stood
an object that gleamed dimly through the gloom. It was about ten
inches or a foot high, but in that place nothing more could be seen of it,
except that it was yellow and had the general appearance of a toad. For
some reason it seemed to attract Sir Robert Aylward, for he halted to
stare at it, then stretched out his hand and switched on another lamp, in
the hard brilliance of which the thing upon the pedestal suddenly
declared itself, leaping out of the darkness into light. It was a terrible
object, a monstrosity of indeterminate sex and nature, but surmounted
by a woman's head and face of extraordinary, if devilish loveliness,
sunk back between high but grotesquely small shoulders, like to those
of a lizard, so that it glared upwards. The workmanship of the thing
was rude yet strangely powerful. Whatever there is cruel, whatever
there is devilish, whatever there is inhuman in the dark places of the
world, shone out of the jewelled eyes which were set in that yellow
female face, yellow because its substance was of gold, a face which
seemed not to belong to the embryonic legs beneath, for body there was
none, but to float above them. A hollow, life-sized mask with two tiny
frog-like legs, that was the fashion of it.

"You are an ugly brute," muttered Sir Robert, contemplating this effigy,
"but although I believe in nothing in heaven above or earth below,
except the abysmal folly of the