"Mind? I'm eager to see it, too," said Gregory, with a pang of self-reproach. "Of course we must wait tea."
The porter, in the passage, was carrying away the outer boards of the packing-case and in the drawing-room they found Barker, knee deep in straw, ripping the heavy sacking covering that enveloped a much diminished but still enormous parcel.
Gregory came to his aid. They drew forth fine shavings and unwrapped layers of paper, neatly secured; slowly the core of the mystery disclosed itself in a temple-like form with a roof of dull black lacquer and dimly gilded inner walls, a thickly swathed figure wedged between them. The gift was, they now perceived, a Chinese Bouddha in his shrine, and, as Gregory and Barker disengaged the figure and laid it upon the ground, amusement, though still of an acrid sort, overcame Gregory's vexation. "A Bouddha, upon my word!" he said. "This is a gorgeous gift."
Karen stooped to help unroll as if from a mummy, the multitudinous bandages of fine paper; the passive bronze visage of the idol was revealed, and by degrees, the seated figure, ludicrously prone. They moved the temple to the end of the room, where two pictures were taken down and a sofa pushed away to make room for it; the Bouddha was hoisted, with difficulty, on to its lotus, and there, dark on its glimmering background of gold, it sat and ambiguously blessed them.
Karen had worked with them neatly and expeditionary, and in silence, and Gregory, glancing at her face from time to time, felt sure that she was adjusting herself to a mingled bewilderment and disappointment; to the wish also, that she might be worthy of her new possession. She stood now before the Bouddha and gazed at it.
They had turned up the electric lights, but the curtains were not drawn and the scent, and light, and vague, diffused roar of London at this evening hour came in at the open windows. Barker, the porter and the housemaid were carrying away the litter of paper and straw. The bright cheerful room with its lovable banality and familiar comfort smiled its welcome; and there, in the midst, the majestic and alien presence sat, overpowering, and grotesque in its inappropriateness.
Karen now turned her eyes on her husband and slightly smiled. "It is very wonderful," she said, "but I feel as if Tante expected a great deal of me in giving it to me—a great deal more than is in me. It ought to be a very deep and mystic person to have that Bouddha."
"Yes, it's a wonderful thing; quite awesome. Perhaps she expects you to become deep and mystic," said Gregory. "Please don't."
"There is no danger of that," said Karen. "Of course it is the beauty of it and the strangeness, that made Tante care for it. It is the sort of thing she would love to have herself."
"Where on earth is he to go?" Gregory surmised. "Yes, he might look well in that big music-room at Les Solitudes, or in some vast hall where he would be more of an episode and less of a white elephant. I hardly think he'll fit anywhere into the passage," he ventured.