The Jade Button by Bernard Capes
The jade button is a Belmont family talisman which confers prosperity, immense bodily portliness, and apparent invulnerability upon whoever wears it, provided it is treated with proper reverence. Its possessors die only when it is removed, neglected, or insulted. Adolphus Belmont receives it from Elephoo Ting, a Chinese mandarin facing execution, after unsuccessfully attacking Ting with a carving-knife and learning that the button makes its wearer immortal. Ting gives Adolphus the button, warning him that it is jealous and will swiftly avenge any slight. Adolphus and his descendants grow rich and enormously fat under its influence. The first Belmont dies after the button is torn from his waistcoat; the second dies after opening his waistcoat and exposing the button; and John Belmont dies of dropsy after accidentally sending it to the wash. The affront also ruins much of his fortune. His widow, Inez, Mrs. John Belmont, keeps the recovered button close to her person and tries to regain its favour, while John’s sister, Miss Emma Belmont, resents her possession of the family heirloom. Emma considers Inez an adventuress and disapproves of her conduct, while Inez mocks Emma’s piety and insists she will never surrender the button. After an Assembly ball, Jim Hurley, a former protégé of Miss Emma’s who has returned to crime and is dying of an internal illness, steals the button from Mrs. John as she leaves. He brings it to Emma’s house, intending to restore what he believes is rightfully hers and to gain himself an easy bed in prison. Emma refuses even to see the stolen object, and police pursuing Hurley arrest him in her dining-room. Hurley has hidden the button on a ledge beneath the table. Mrs. John accuses Emma of having plotted the theft through her former servant and demands the button, leaving Emma overwhelmed by guilt and terror. The narrator, called in by Emma, learns the truth and realizes that Hurley’s well-meant theft has endangered her reputation. As Hurley is moved to hospital because he seems near death, the narrator visits him and persuades him that he must prove Emma’s innocence by producing the button himself. Hurley agrees on condition that Mrs. John does not regain it. The narrator secretly retrieves the button from beneath Emma’s dining-table and brings it to Hurley, who devises a public demonstration. Before Emma, Mrs. John, Captain Naylor, and a policeman, Hurley claims to have hidden it in his boot. He theatrically unscrews the heel and reveals the button inside, having covertly placed it there. Mrs. John immediately demands the button, but Hurley refuses, declaring that it belongs to Emma or to nobody. Emma herself refuses it, desperate to avoid further trouble. When Mrs. John urges Captain Naylor to seize it, Hurley swallows the button. It lodges in his pancreas and cannot be removed. From that moment his fatal illness reverses: he recovers, grows fat and vigorous on any substance, and becomes protected by the talisman’s power. Released after a nominal sentence, he prospers into a rich, respected, enormously portly man. Mrs. John, deprived of the button, falls into decline and dies while being nursed by Emma. The narrator concludes that the button has finally found its true home in Hurley, who may be immortal so long as it remains within him.
By Bernard Capes · First published 1900 · Genre: Supernatural Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Comic Fantasy · 6,945 words
First lines
The little story I am about to tell will meet, I have no doubt, with a good deal of incredulity, not to say derision. Very well; there is the subject of it himself to testify. If you can put an end to him by any lethal process known to man, I will acknowledge myself misinformed, and attend your last moments on the scaffold.
Miss Belmont disapproved of Mrs. John Belmont; and Mrs. John Belmont hated Miss Belmont. And the visible token of this antagonism was a button.
What this Textopian page supports
The Jade Button is listed on Textopian as a short story by Bernard Capes, dated 1900 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: Bernard Capes
- Date: 1900 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Supernatural Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Comic Fantasy, Gothic Fiction, Satire
- Length: 6,945 words
- Structure: 1 section, 135 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Jade Button by Bernard Capes
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres
- Supernatural Fiction — The plot centers on a jade talisman that confers prosperity and apparent immortality while punishing perceived disrespect, and its effects remain materially real throughout the story.
- Dark Fantasy — A magical object governs human fate in an otherwise recognizably realistic world, combining fantastic premises with grim consequences.
- Comic Fantasy — The narrator treats extraordinary events with extravagant wit, irony, and grotesque humor, particularly in the descriptions of bodily prosperity and Hurley's miraculous recovery.
- Gothic Fiction — The inherited cursed object, family decay, jealousy, death, moral transgression, and atmosphere of ominous fate are strongly Gothic elements.
Tags
supernatural fiction · fantastic short story · dark comedy · Victorian-era England · nineteenth-century China · cursed talisman · jade amulet · family heirloom · magical object · immortality · prosperity and wealth · gluttony and obesity