The Pagan Madonna - Page 137/141

Cleigh stood perfectly still. The butler eyed him with mild perturbation.

Rarely he saw bewilderment on his master's countenance.

"Cases?"

"Yes, sir. Fourteen or fifteen of them, sir."

Cleigh felt oddly numb. For days now he had denied to himself the reason

for his agitation whenever the telephone or doorbell rang. Hope! It had

not served to crush it down, to buffet it aside by ironical commentaries

on the weakness of human nature; the thing was uncrushable, insistent.

Packing cases!

"Denny! Jane!" he cried, and bolted for the door.

The call needed no interpretation. The two understood, and followed him

downstairs precipitately, with the startled Benson the tail to the kite.

"No, no!" shouted Cleigh. "The big one first!" as Dennison laid one of the

smaller cases on the floor. "Benson, where the devil is the claw hammer?"

The butler foraged in the coat closet and presently emerged with a prier.

Cleigh literally snatched it from the astonished butler's grasp, pried and

tore off a board. He dug away at the excelsior until he felt the cool

glass under his fingers. He peered through this glass.

"Denny, it's the rug!"

Cleigh's voice cracked and broke into a queer treble note.

Jane shook her head. Here was an incurable passion, based upon the

specious argument that galleries and museums had neither consciences nor

stomachs. You could not hurt a wall by robbing it of a painting--a passion

that would abide with him until death. Not one of these treasures in the

casings was honourably his, but they were more to him than all his

legitimate possessions. To ask him to return the objects to the galleries

and museums to which they belonged would be asking Cleigh to tear out his

heart. Though the passion was incomprehensible, Jane readily observed its

effects. She had sensed the misery, the anxiety, the stinging curiosity

of all these months. Not to know exactly what had become of the rug and

the paintings! Not to know if he would ever see them again! There was only

one comparison she could bring to bear as an illustration: Cleigh was like

a man whose mistress had forsaken him without explanations.

She was at once happy and sad: happy that her faith in Cunningham had not

been built upon sand, sad that she could not rouse Cleigh's conscience.

Secretly a charitable man, honest in his financial dealings, he could

keep--in hiding, mind you!--that which did not belong to him. It was

beyond her understanding.

An idea, which had been nebulous until this moment, sprang into being.