IT was not till long afterwards that Baltazar learned the cause of his
son’s discomfiture. Marcelle learned it at once. The boy exploded with
pent-up indignation. Dorothy had turned him down, callously turned him
down. Could Marcelle imagine such heartlessness? He had gone to her
after his Board. Seeing that she had undertaken to keep him in the army,
it was only civil to report progress. Besides, the house had been open
to him since childhood. Well, there she was alone in the drawing-room.
Looked bewitching. Jolly as possible. Everything right as rain. Then, he
didn’t know how it happened—perhaps because she hadn’t discouraged him
at the Carlton—anyhow there it was; he lost his head; told her he loved
her, worshipped her and all the rest of it, and asked her to marry him.
She broke into peals of laughter and recommended him not to be an idiot.
She had the infernal impudence to laugh at him! If she had been a man he
would have wrung her neck.
“And that isn’t all,” he cried. “What do you think she had the colossal
nerve to tell me? That she was engaged to my brother Leopold. Leopold!
‘Why,’ I said, ‘only the other day you informed me you were fed up with
Leopold.’ ‘Oh! that,’ she said airily, ‘was before the engagement.’
Apparently the brute’s just home on leave and has stolen a march on me.
Easy enough with two feet,” he added bitterly.
Marcelle tried to console. After all, he was very young, not yet
one-and-twenty. It would be years before he could marry. He flared up at
the suggestion. That was what Dorothy, a month older than he, had the
cool cheek to say. What did age matter? He was as old as Hell. He had
all his life behind him. In the trenches alone he had spent twenty
years. As for marrying, he was perfectly able to support a wife, not
being, through God’s grace, one of those unhappy devils of new army
officers who were wondering what the deuce they would do to earn their
living when the war was over. . . . She had treated him damnably. A
decent girl would have been kind and sorry and let him down easily. But
she!
“She treated me as though I were a lout of a schoolboy, and she a woman
of thirty. Only the woman of thirty would at least have had manners.
Well, she’s going to marry Leopold. I wish her joy of him. She’ll have a
hell of a time.”
Decidedly it had not been a lucky day for the House of Baltazar.
Marcelle was oppressed by a sense of guilt for her share in the family
disaster, and felt tragically unable to administer comfort. Yesterday
she would have poured healing sympathy over the hurts of the evilly
entreated youth, and her wrath would have flamed out upon the heartless
minx who had spurned the love of a gallant gentleman. But to-day how
could she? Had not some horrible freak of chance put her in the same
dock as Dorothy, worthless criminals both?
“I suppose you were very angry with her,” she said timidly.
He flung out a hand. Oh, that inherited gesture! Angry? Who wouldn’t
have been angry? He would never see her, speak to her, think of her
again. He had told her so. As for receiving favours from General
Mackworth, she was not to dare insult him by dreaming of it. Marcelle
pictured a very pretty rumpus. Godfrey was not John Baltazar’s son for
nothing.
And she, in the modern idiom, had turned down John Baltazar; with less
ostensible reason, for, after all, she had not engaged herself to
another man. Was he, too, like his son, hurling anathema at the head of
a faithless woman? Outwardly he had been very courteous, astonishingly
gentle; but he was older and had learned self-restraint. How was he
taking it now? She was very glad when they reached Churton Towers and
when she stripped from herself the unfamiliar trappings of Marcelle
Baring and put on the comforting impersonal uniform of the nurse.
* * * * *
Baltazar, however, carried out none of Marcelle’s forebodings. He
neither upbraided her nor smashed furniture, nor made one of his
volcanic decisions. He merely lit a pipe and sat down and tried to think
out his unqualified rejection. It was a second Zeppelin bomb,
annihilating the castle in the air which that morning had appeared
utterly solid and assured, as effectively as the first had wiped out
Spendale Farm and all that it signified. He couldn’t make head or tail
of it. He sat a mystified man. For him the glamour of the old days had
not faded. In her ripe woman’s beauty she was more desirable than ever.
Flashes had shown the continuance of her old wit and gaiety. Thank God
she wasn’t eighteen still. What would he do with a child of eighteen?
The association was unthinkable. But the woman into which she had
developed was the ideal mate and companion. As for her being dead, that
was rubbish. Never was woman more splendidly alive. . . . Now let him
try to get her point of view. He clenched his teeth on his pipe. At
eighteen she loved him. She made some sort of hero of him. She kept up
her idealization until she met him an elderly, unromantic savage of
fifty. Then her romance fell tumbling about her ears, and she said to
herself, “Oh, my God! I can’t marry _this_!”
It was the “_that_” which he had thought himself that the second bomb
had sent into eternity. It took a lot of confused and blinking wonder
for him to realize Marcelle’s “_this_.” Having realized, he accepted it
grimly.
He had a little passage of arms with her some days afterwards. She had
invited it, anxious to know how deeply she had wounded.
“I’m wretched because I feel I’ve again brought you unhappiness,” she
confessed.
“That you should be leading the life you wish to lead is my happiness,”
he replied, not insincerely.
“I feel so selfish,” she said.
“Which means that if I pestered and blustered and raved and stormed and
made your days a nightmare of remorse, you would end by marrying me out
of desperation?”
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “I suppose I should.”
“Then I’m damned if I do it. You’d be merely a scared sort of slave of
duty, suffering all the time from acute inflammation of the conscience.
I being a product of human civilization, and not a German or a gorilla,
or even a Hottentot, should be soon aware of the fact, and our lives
would be the most exquisite misery the mind could conceive.”
“I can’t see why you don’t hate me,” she said.
“I think I’ve arrived at an understanding of the phenomenon,” he replied
with a wry smile. “You might just as well try to recreate a vanished
rainbow as a lost illusion.” He smiled. “Go in peace,” said he.
To himself he said: “I wonder what will be the next knock-down blow.”
Not being able to take charge of Marcelle and Godfrey, who both seemed
bent on going their respective independent ways, and Quong Ho still
lingering at Water End, Baltazar applied himself seriously to England.
First he must learn, learn more fully the endless ramifications of
national and international life that formed the nervous ganglion of that
manifestation of activity known as the war. In pursuit of knowledge he
not only read books, but eagerly availed himself of every opportunity of
social intercourse. His circle of acquaintances grew rapidly. His three
friends, loyal sponsors, had started him with the reputation of an
authority on Far Eastern problems. He became a little lion and delighted
in it like a child.
A great monthly review published an article on China written by a
well-known diplomatist. It was so deplorably wrong in its failure to
reach any possible Chinese point of view, that Baltazar shut himself up
for a couple of days in his inn sitting-room and wrote a scathing
refutation of the eminent sciolist’s propositions. This, the ink on the
last sheets scarcely dry, he put into an envelope and sent off to the
editor. A week later the article was returned with the stereotyped form
of rejection. In a fury Baltazar sought Weatherley and consulted him as
to the quickest means of wading in that editor’s blood. Here was this
monstrous ass, he shouted, who, on the strength of having passed a few
months at the Embassy in Pekin, with his owl’s eyes full of the dust
politely thrown in them by bland Chinese officials, not knowing a word
of any Chinese language written or spoken, without the vaguest idea of
the thoughts or aspirations of the educated man in the interior of the
kingdom, was granted the authority of a great review to spread abroad in
this country the miasma of his pestilential ignorance. That stupendous
and pernicious asses of his kidney should be allowed to mould British
public opinion was a scandal of scandals. And when he, who knew, wrote
to expose the solemn red-tape and sealing-wax dummy’s imbecility, an
equally colossal ass of an editor sent back his article as if it were an
essay on Longfellow written by a schoolgirl.
“When you’ve finished foaming at the mouth, my dear J. B.,” said
Weatherley, “let me look at the manuscript. Ah!” he remarked, turning
over the pages, “untyped, difficult to read, owing to _saeva indignatio_
playing the devil with a neat though not very legible handwriting, and
signed by a name calamitously unknown to the young and essentially
Oxford Pennyfeather.”
“Your serene equanimity does me a lot of good,” growled Baltazar.
“You must advance with the times, my dear J. B.,” laughed Weatherley.
“Why on earth didn’t you ring the man up, telling him who you were, and
then have the thing typed?”
“Telephones and typewriters!” cried Baltazar. “This new world’s too
complicated for me.”
“Never mind,” said Weatherley. “Leave things in my hands. I’ll fix up
Pennyfeather. If he persists in his obscurantism, owing to a desire to
save his face, I’ll send the article to Jesson of _The Imperial Review_,
who’ll jump at it.”
“I accept your help gratefully,” replied Baltazar. “But all you’ve said
confirms me in my opinion that your friend Pennyfeather is a lazy,
incompetent hound. He and his jejune magazine can starve to death.”
He laughed after a while at his own vehemence. They talked of the points
at issue. Presently Weatherley said:
“After all, you’re two years behindhand in Chinese affairs. Chinese
adherence to the Allied Cause is of vast importance. Why don’t you go
out again on behalf of the Government and pick up the threads?”
Baltazar burst out:
“I go back to China? That God-forgotten country of dead formulas, in
which I’ve wasted the prime of my life? No, my dear friend, never again.
I’m here at last, among my own people, in the most enthralling moments
in the history of the civilized world. For years I looked upon myself as
a damned Chinaman, and now I’ve woke up to find myself English. And
English I’m going to remain.”
“But,” objected Weatherley, “by undertaking a Government mission in
China, you can remain as English as you please.”
Baltazar refused to consider the suggestion. England, his rediscovered
country, was his appointed sphere of action. No more China for him as
long as he lived. He went away almost angry with Weatherley for putting
such an idea into his head. No doubt he might be useful out there: much
more useful than a diplomatist like the arid ass who had written the
article; but to bury himself there again and leave Godfrey and Marcelle
and the throbbing wonders of his resurrection, was preposterous. As he
descended Weatherley’s staircase a shiver of dismay ran down his spine.
A walk through the streets restored his equanimity. Those crowds which
once had seemed so alien, were now his brothers, all fired by the same
noble aspirations. He would have liked to shake hands with the soldiers
from far oversea, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South
Africans, and thank them for their inspiring presence. The day was fine,
the exhilaration of the Somme victories was in the air. The new mystery
of the tanks exercised all London, which still showed the afterglow of
the laughter caused by continued humoristic descriptions in the morning
papers. A tank waddled up to a house filled with Germans, leaned against
it in a comfortable way, and there was no more house and no more Huns.
He heard scraps of conversation about them as he walked. Yes, Tennyson
was right—a bit of a seer after all that Incarnation of
Victorianism—when he remarked that fifty years in Europe were
preferable to a cycle in Cathay. He went in gayer mood to lunch with
Jackman at a club in the West End, for membership of which his host had
proposed him. The club, like many London clubs, being hard hit by the
war, had taken the unprecedented step of holding an autumn election for
all candidates duly proposed and seconded. Baltazar found invited to
meet him a little party of influential members. He went back to
Godalming forgetful of Weatherley’s idiocy.
A few days afterwards he met Weatherley by appointment at his chambers
in the Temple. A group of publicists outside professional journalism, of
which Baltazar guessed his friend to be one of the initiative forces,
were about to bring out a new weekly review, devoted to the
international phases of the war; to all racial questions from Greenland
to New Guinea. Its international outlook would be unlimited, but, of
course, it would pursue a relentless anti-German policy. Would Baltazar
care to join the band? If so, would he attend a meeting of the founders
of the Review that afternoon?
“My dear fellow,” cried Baltazar, holding out both his hands, “it’s meat
and drink to me.”
“You’ll take up the Far Eastern end of the thing,” said Weatherley.
“I’ll write about China till I’m dead, if you like,” said Baltazar, “so
long as I don’t have to go back to the infernal country.”
Again, after the meeting, Baltazar returned to Godalming in a glow.
Thanks to Weatherley, he had at last got a footing in the Great
Struggle.
In a telephone talk with Marcelle he told her all about it. He heard a
ripple of laughter.
“Where does the fun come in?” he asked.
Her voice said: “You’re so young and enthusiastic. You ought to be the
son and Godfrey the father.”
“By the way,” said he, “what’s the matter with Godfrey? He’s about as
cheerful as a police-court in a fog.”
Marcelle, who could not betray Godfrey’s confidence, attributed his
depression to the tediousness of his recovery and the uncertainty of the
future.
“Of course, of course!” replied Baltazar penitently. “I’m a selfish
beast, never entering into other people’s feelings. I must brighten
things up for him.”
* * * * *
The opportunity came very much sooner than Baltazar had any reason to
anticipate, in their meeting with Lady Edna Donnithorpe in the lounge of
the Carlton.
Young, beautiful, royally assured, she advanced laughing to Baltazar.
“What about your promise, Mr. Baltazar? Pie-crust?”
He had sat next her at dinner a week before and she had invited him to
come to tea one afternoon; to have a quiet, interesting talk, she said,
away from crowds of disturbing people. She was the wife of the
Parliamentary Secretary of one of the new ministries, the daughter of
the Earl of Dunstable, and in other ways a woman of considerable
importance. Her radiant photographs recurred week after week in the
illustrated papers. Gossip whispered that she had turned the Prime
Minister round her little finger and that when he had recovered from
dizziness, he found he had given her elderly and uninspiring husband a
place in the Government. Certainly no one was more surprised than Edgar
Donnithorpe himself. That he owed his advancement to his wife was common
knowledge; but alone of mortals he was unaware of the fact. When asked
by a friend why she had gone to so much pains, she replied: “To get
Edgar out of the way and give him something to play with.” She was
twenty-five, pulling a hundred strings of fascinating intrigue, a
flashing member of scores of war committees, and contrived for herself
illimitable freedom.
Baltazar made his apologies. He meant to keep his promise, but it
required courage on the part of such a back number as himself.
“Back number?” she cried. “Why, on your own showing you’ve only been in
existence a few weeks. You are the newest thing in numbers in London.”
“It is gracious of you to say so,” replied Baltazar. Then, as she gave
no sign of withdrawal: “Lady Edna, may I introduce my son—Lady Edna
Donnithorpe.”
“I thought it must be. How do you do?” There were dovenotes in her voice
which, to the young man’s fancy, invested the commonplace formula with
caressive significance; her liquid dark blue eyes regarded him
understandingly and pityingly; her hand lingered in a firm clasp for
just an appreciable fraction of a second.
“Don’t you agree with me about your father? You and I are old, wise,
battered people compared with him?”
Youth spoke to youth, making gentle mock of middle age—and youth
instantly responded.
“My father,” replied Godfrey, drinking in her laughing beauty and her
sympathetic charm, “has brought back from China all sorts of quaint
notions of filial piety—so, until I know whether my opinions of him are
pious or not, I rather shy at expressing them.”
She beamed appreciation. “I have a father, too, and although he has
never been to China, I sympathize with you. One of these days we’ll have
a little heart to heart talk about fathers.”
“I should love to,” replied Godfrey.
“Would you really? Are you sure faithlessness is not hereditary in your
family?”
“Lady Edna,” said Baltazar, holding out the signet ring on his little
finger. “If you saw this motto of our ancient Huguenot family in a
looking-glass, you would read ‘_Jusqu’à la mort_.’ The word _fidèle_, of
course, being understood.”
“Death is a long way off, let us hope,” she laughed. “But if the family
faithfulness will last out—_jusqu’à jeudi_—no—I can’t manage
Thursday—I’ll give it one day more—say Friday—may I expect you both
to lunch with me? You have my address—160 Belgrave Square.”
Receiving their acceptance of the invitation, she shook hands and went
across the lounge to her waiting friends.
“A most interesting type,” said Baltazar. “A woman of the moment.”
“She’s wonderful!” said Godfrey. And as her head was turned away, he
looked long and lingeringly at her. “Wonderful!”