AS he had expected, the Foreign Office beamed on him. It was immensely
gratified that a man of his statesmanlike qualities should have
differentiated so acutely between the values of the two spheres of his
suggested activities. In bureaucratic satisfaction it rubbed its hands
at a departmental score. Mr. Baltazar had only to name his terms and
conditions. With the Foreign Office it was all plain sailing. Nay, more.
If it could have prevailed with an ultra-conservative Admiralty, it
would have sent him out to China in the newest, fastest and most
mysterious battle-cruiser. But in Government circles outside the Foreign
Office there was the devil to pay. Consternation also reigned in the
office of _The New Universe_. For two or three weeks Baltazar had a grim
time.
The first announcement in an evening newspaper of his retirement from
the projected Ministry smote the eyes of an incredulous and bewildered
Marcelle. She caught him on the telephone.
“Is it true?”
“Yes. Quite true.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“I’ll come round this evening and explain.”
“No. I’ll come to you. I shan’t be alone here.”
“Come to dinner.”
“Miss Graham and I are just sitting down to ours. I’ll run round after.”
“All right. I’m free all the evening.”
Baltazar dined alone with Quong Ho, and talked cheerfully of matters far
remote from the war. No reference was made to his retirement from
English politics, about which Quong Ho knew everything, or to the
Chinese Mission, of which Quong Ho as yet had no official knowledge.
Apart from the expressed desire of the Foreign Office to keep the
appointment from the press, it was characteristic of Baltazar to
maintain silence, even to those dear to him, as to his especially
meteoric doings. Besides, of the two, Marcelle must have the privilege
of being the first to learn from his own lips.
She arrived about half-past eight, and he received her in the
drawing-room. She wore a simple, semi-evening old black dress into which
she had changed before her quiet dinner with her friend, a long pre-war
confection, a favourite of Godfrey’s, moulding her, as he said, in
soldierly daring, like Juno. Her thick brown hair crowned her
gloriously. Rest had restored her to health, and in spite of the anxiety
in her eyes, she appeared to Baltazar in the ripe fullness of her
beauty. He strode to meet her, with his usual gesture of outstretched
hands, strong, confident, admiring, smiling. Yet never did she appear
more desirable, or more remote from his desires.
“What is the meaning of it—your resignation? I thought it was the one
thing in life you were working for.”
“I find,” said he, “I can serve my country better in other ways.”
She put a hand to a puzzled forehead.
“How?”
He looked steadily into her eyes. What was the use of beating the air
with idle words? She would have to know the truth sooner or later.
“By going to China.”
She stared at him open-mouthed.
“China?”
“Why not?”
He stood, his hands deep in his dinner-jacket pockets, balancing himself
alternately on toes and heels, with the air of a conqueror.
“I know more about inner China, I suppose, than any man living. I go out
with a free hand to pull two or three million people together and
establish a wise government and exterminate the German. Hundreds of men
can do my job in England. But those who can do it in China may be
counted on the fingers of a mutilated hand.”
“It’s all so sudden.”
“I’m a sudden sort of fellow, as you ought to know,” he laughed.
“But you always said you hated the place—would rather die than go
back.”
“In these days you’ve got to do things you hate—for the good of your
country.”
She sat down, feeling stupefied by his news. She asked:
“How long will you be away?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Possibly years. Who knows?”
“And when do you start?”
“As soon as I can wind up here. Say in a fortnight’s time.” She shook
her head and looked at the floor, making little hopeless gestures with
her fingers. “You see, my dear,” said he, “except my own personal
ambitions, which I have scrapped for the time, there’s nothing very much
to keep me here. I’ve done my duty by Quong Ho. He’s on the road to fame
at Cambridge. Godfrey’s settled in France till the end of the war. And
you—well, my dear,” he smiled, “we won’t lose touch with each other for
another twenty years.”
“No, of course not,” she said in a queer voice. “We’ll—we’ll write to
each other.” She raised her eyes to his timidly. “Won’t you be rather
lonely out there, without us?”
He turned swiftly aside so that she should not see his face. “Naturally
I’ll miss you. Miss the three of you. I’m human. But, on the other hand,
I’m used to being alone. I’m a solitary by temperament.” Then he flashed
round on her. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll have my hands too full to
be lonely. I’ll have a real man’s job to get through.”
In his vehement way he sketched the kind of work that lay before him,
went off into picturesque reminiscence, unfolded some of the plans he
had already made for the conquest of those in power in disaffected
districts. Anyone but Marcelle he would have convinced of the
whole-hearted and enthusiastic anticipation of his mission. But a woman
whom a man loves is apt to know him even better than the woman who loves
him. A suspicion, vague but insistent, began to haunt her. Presently she
gave words to it.
“Have Godfrey’s affairs anything to do with this sudden decision of
yours?”
He assumed a puzzled look. “Godfrey’s affairs?”
“Yes. The Donnithorpe business.”
He laughed. “My dear, we’re dealing in high international politics. What
on earth can a boy’s calf love have to do with it?”
“You’ve never told me what happened at Waterloo. Nor did Godfrey.”
“I simply pulled them apart. Sent Lady Edna home, and despatched Godfrey
to France a day before his time. That’s all over.”
“But you met Mr. Donnithorpe. Quong Ho——”
“Oh yes, I met Donnithorpe. That’s what saved the situation. He expected
to find Godfrey. Found me instead.” He grinned in the most disarming
manner. “A comedy situation. And off he went defeated.” He took her
hand, apparently in the gayest of moods. “It’s only a woman,” said he,
“that could throw a bridge between Waterloo station and the interior of
China.”
She let the question drop; but the suspicion remained, and every minute
that passed, until the ormolu clock on the drawing-room mantelpiece gave
her the signal for conventional retirement, converted it into certainty.
He walked with her as usual to the door of her block of flats. On
parting she found tremulous utterance for the sense of utter forlornness
which she had been trying all the evening to formulate:
“What’s to become of me when you’re gone?”
She fled upstairs, not waiting for the lift, and went straight to her
room, with the words echoing in her ears. No. They did not at all convey
her heart’s meaning. They sounded heartless, selfish. Yet they were
true. What would become of her? For a year she had been enwrapped soul
and mind and thought in the dynamic man. Dynamic, yet so tender, so
chivalrous, so childlike. Without him existence was a blank full of
shuddering fears. And then a coldness as of death fell upon her. Never
once, on this night of the parting of the ways, had he hinted at his
love for her. Had she, by her selfish folly, her now incomprehensible
sex shrinkings, killed at last the love that once was hers for the
taking? Slowly she undressed and crept into bed; but sleep mocked her.
Agonizingly awake, she stared at her life. . . . And she stared too,
almost in rhythmic alternation, at the life of John Baltazar. Nothing
but some supreme emotional crisis could have caused this characteristic
revolution, this sudden surrender of the prize of his ambition, this
gorgeous acceptance of exile. For all his contemptuous dismissal of the
suggestion, she knew, with a woman’s unerring logic, that Baltazar had
bought Godfrey’s release from entanglement at the price of his own
career. And never a hint of regret, never a murmur against fate. Never
the faintest appeal to pity. . . . And she arraigned her own narrow
nurse’s self, and condemned it mercilessly. And the lower she sank in
her own esteem, the higher rose Baltazar until he loomed gigantic as a
god above her puny mortality.
Her throat was dry. She got out of bed and drank a glass of water. On
her way back across the room her glance fell on the little brass Yale
latchkey, lying on her dressing-table, which he, in his big, careless
way, had insisted on her having, so that she could gain entrance, as of
right, to the house, whenever she chose. She took it up, gazing at it
stupidly. The key to his home, the key to his heart, the key to his
soul—all in her keeping. And she had despised it. Now she had lost it.
The home would pass into alien hands. His heart was barred. For the
first time, for a whole year, they had met without his uttering one
little word, playful or wistful or tyrannic, to prove that his nature
was open hungrily for her. To-night she had been but his dear friend. He
had accepted her gift of friendship. She remembered the old French
adage: _L’amitié, c’est le tombeau de l’amour_. She sat on the edge of
the bed and mourned hopelessly the death of his love.
And the brass Yale latchkey lay mockingly within her range of vision.
* * * * *
Baltazar walked home, her last words echoing in his ears. His absence in
China would naturally make a difference to her. She had become part of
his household. Godfrey, to whom she had given a mother’s heart, was
indefinitely in France and alienated from her by his resentment of her
breach of confidence. She had identified herself so unreservedly with
the fortunes of the House of Baltazar that now, cut adrift, she would be
on the high seas, derelict. What could he do to mitigate her loneliness?
If he died, she would be well provided for. He had made his will some
months ago. But he had every hope of living for many robust years. What
indeed would become of the beloved woman now that their new attachments
to life were broken? The nurse’s career, in which she had spent the
splendid energies of her young womanhood? If Godfrey were in London, he
could commend her, with authority, to his care. But Godfrey’s vanishing
to France was the essence of the whole business. There remained only
Quong Ho. His appreciation of the comic put Quong Ho out of court.
He entered his house in Sussex Gardens remorseful for lack of
consideration for Marcelle. But, hang it all, one couldn’t think of
everything at once. If she had cared enough for him to marry him,
well—there would have been the Light that never was on Sea or Land. He
would have snapped his fingers at the doings of the little planet Earth.
He would have been Master of the Universe. But that was not to be.
Either all in all as a wife or not at all. An irrevocable decision. It
was not Marcelle’s fault that she did not love him in that way. . . . No
use thinking of it. It was all over. They had drifted, however, into an
exquisite companionship, as exquisite to her—he had no false modesty
about it—as to him. And now that was over. What was to become of
Marcelle?
He was filling his pipe when Quong Ho entered the library with his
little deferential bow.
“Sir,” said he, “may I be allowed to commit an indiscretion?”
“You’ll do it so discreetly,” said Baltazar, “that it won’t matter. Fire
ahead.”
“In the event of your leaving this country on a mission to the Far
East——”
“What the devil do you know about it?” asked Baltazar.
“In high Chinese circles in London it is common knowledge,” replied
Quong Ho.
“Together with lots of other things concerning me, I suppose.”
“You have many times observed,” said Quong Ho, “that my countrymen are
afflicted with an abnormal thirst for unessential information.”
In spite of his heavy-heartedness, Baltazar smiled grimly.
“Well, suppose I am going to China. What of it?”
“May I postpone Cambridge degree and Fellowship for several years and
accompany you?”
Baltazar’s brow grew black. “Isn’t England good enough for you?”
Quong Ho broke into florid Chinese, the only vehicle for his emotion.
England was the land of his dreams. But why should he lie beneath the
passion-flower of luxury while his master ate the bread of exile? Surely
his degraded unworthiness might be useful to his illustrious Excellency
as confidential secretary not unversed, thanks to his honoured master
and patron, in the language and scholarship of the Mandarins. Or, if
that was deemed too honourable a position, his filial piety ordained
that he should offer himself as slave or any debased instrument for
which use could be found.
“Oh, for God’s sake talk English!” cried Baltazar, his nerves on edge,
foreseeing such endless verbiage in similar perfect phrasing that
awaited him in China.
Quong Ho spread out his hands and his face grew impassive. “I have
spoken,” he replied simply.
“I don’t want any more careers upset,” said Baltazar, irritably. “You’re
fixed. You’ve to get your Fellowship. You’ll stay in England. Besides, I
need you here to look after Miss Baring’s interests.”
“I confess,” said Quong Ho, gravely, “to being oblivious of that side of
the question.”
Baltazar, lying deep in his arm-chair, pipe in mouth, gazed intently
into the oblique steadfast eyes of the son of his quaint adoption. The
idea of leaving Marcelle under his protection did not seem in the least
comic. He passed an impatient hand over his brow. Was he losing his
sense of values?
Apart from his intellectual gifts, Quong Ho was a man of shrewd common
sense and of infinite trustworthiness. Marcelle knew this. Unlike so
many untravelled Englishwomen, she did not regard a Chinaman as a sort
of dangerous toy dog. She shared his faith in Quong Ho.
“I thank you for your offer, my dear fellow,” he said at last, repenting
his ungraciousness. “I know you made it out of affection for me. I
deeply appreciate it. If it weren’t for Miss Baring, I wouldn’t
hesitate. As it is, I leave you here as my agent.”
Quong Ho bowed. “So long as I can be of service to you, sir, your word
is law,” said he, and retired.
Baltazar, left alone, resumed his uninspired reflections. He felt
physically and morally weary, a beaten man. He shrank from his Chinese
exile with pathetic dread; shrank from the toilsome journeys, the
eternal compliments of convention that delayed serious discussion, the
perpetual ceremonial, the futile tea-drinking, the mass of tradition and
prejudice and ignorance, the smiling craft that used it as a buffer
against enlightenment. He looked with dismay on his exclusion from the
keen intellectual talk in which he had revelled for the past year, from
the brain-thrilling battle of Western Thought. It was a man’s work, his
mission; a picked man’s work. Hundreds would have regarded it as a
climax of their diplomatic ambition. But to him, who had thrown himself
into vast schemes for the reconstruction of the war-torn world, it was
exile, defeat. It was not in his nature to regret his sacrifice. What
was done was done. The stars in their courses had fought against him
individually, even though, in their inscrutable wisdom they fought, as
he believed, for his House. No man who has saturated himself for years
with Chinese thought can escape the spiritual influence of fatalism. He
was a fatalist. It was written that he should fail in every one of his
great adventures. Yet the fact of it being written made his lot none the
less damnable for the very human and vivid man, once more involved in
predestined shipwreck.
He smoked many pipes thinking disconnectedly, without method, and
feeling old and lonely and broken, and very, very tired. At last his
pipe dropped to the floor and he fell asleep.
Suddenly the subconsciousness of a presence in the room caused him to
awake with a start. He looked up and, bewildered, saw Marcelle standing
by his chair. She was crying. He sprang to his feet, passing his hands
over his eyes.
“You here?” His glance instinctively sought the clock on the
mantelpiece. “Why, it’s half-past two in the morning!”
She said: “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t rest. I had to come.”
He did not understand.
“What is the matter, my dearest? What can I do for you?”
“Only go on loving me, and forgive me,” she said desperately.
“But I do,” he cried, puzzled. “It’s just hell for me to leave you. But
I can’t help it, my dear. My hand has been forced. It’s even harder to
leave you than it was twenty years ago. I love you and want you more
than ever I did in my life.”
“So do I,” she said, in a shaking voice. “That’s why I’m here, at
half-past two in the morning.”
Baltazar uttered a great triumphant cry and clasped her in his arms.
“My God,” said he, “I’ve won after all!”
He held her at arm’s length and looked at her exultantly. Thank Heaven
she had no suspicion of his sense of downfall. Not Pity, but Love at
last awakened, had brought her to him.
“Yes,” he repeated. “I’ve won after all.”
After a while, when he had almost forgotten his words, she asked him:
“What did you think you had lost?”
“My faith in my destiny. The star of Baltazar. Once upon a time the
original bearer of my name, with the others, had faith in a star, and he
followed it and found God.”
She smiled. “Dear, aren’t you talking a bit wildly?”
“What’s the good of speech if one can’t use it wildly in wild moments?”
He laughed. “Oh, you belovedest woman,” said he, and kissed her.
Presently: “You’ll come out to China with me? You’ll progress like a
queen. I’ll see to that.”
“It doesn’t matter how I progress,” she said, “so long as I’m with you.
I’m yours body and soul to the end of time.”
“To the end of Eternity,” he cried. “I prefer that. It’s bigger. The
biggest there is is good enough for me.”
His dancing eyes burned like flames of pride and happiness. Twenty years
seemed to have fallen from him, and she saw before her the young man
whom as a girl she had loved.
“You and I are going over to the greatest work ever attempted by man.
The regeneration of half the continent of Asia. I couldn’t have done it
alone. The prospect frightened me. Yes, it did. I hadn’t the heart. But
with you—I stake my faith in the Star—it’ll be one of the great
accomplishments of the war. Quong Ho will come with us. He’ll have his
chance. I’ll make him one of the great men of the New China.”
He went on, expounding his vision of the new order of Oriental things.
She marvelled at him, for it seemed as if he had but lived for that
moment.
And divining his Great Sacrifice, she forgot the selfless years that had
all but moulded her into a mere machine of tender service to maimed and
diseased humanity, and felt a thing of small account before this man
whose unconquerable faith and indomitable courage transformed his
colossal vanities into virtues, and who, for all his egotism, was
endowed with the supreme gift of love.
“Godfrey will be astonished at all this,” she hazarded.
“Astonishment,” said he, “is an emotion salutary for the very young. It
stimulates thought.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.
End of Project Gutenberg's The House of Baltazar, by William J. Locke