CHAPTER XI
IFI don’t smoke, I’m afraid I can’t talk,” said Baltazar.
Sheepshanks smiled politely. “You remember my little weakness? But pray smoke. I’ve got used to it of late years. Times change, and we with them.”
Baltazar filled and lit his pipe.
“A couple of weeks ago,” said he, “I had all but complete two epoch-marking mathematical treatises. I had got systems and results you good people here had never dreamed of. I had also stuff in the way of Chinese scholarship that would have been a revelation to the Western world. Then German aircraft dropped bombs on my house, a hermitage in the middle of a moorland, and wiped out the labour of a lifetime. They also nearly killed a young Chinaman whom I regard as an extraordinary mathematical genius and about whom I want to consult you. They also, thereby, revealed to me a fact of which I was entirely unaware, namely, that the war had been going on for a couple of years.”
He leaned back in his chair and drew a few contented puffs. His host passed a hand over perplexed brows and leaned forward.
“I’m very sorry,” said he, in his precise, nasal voice, “to appear stupid. But you have put forward half a dozen such amazing propositions in one breath that I can’t quite follow you.”
A smile gleamed in Baltazar’s eyes. “I thought that would get you,” he remarked placidly. “But it’s an accurate presentment of my present position.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Sheepshanks. “But you surely haven’t been living a recluse on a moor for the last twenty years?”
“Oh no,” replied Baltazar. “Eighteen of them I spent in China. I went out straight from here.”
“To China? Dear me,” said Sheepshanks. “What an extraordinary place to go to from Cambridge.”
“Didn’t anybody guess where I had vanished to?”
“Not a soul, I assure you. Your disappearance created a sensation. Quite a sensation. A painful one, because you were a man we could ill afford to lose.”
“It’s good of you to say so. But it’s odd that no one seemed to be interested enough in me to reason out China. You all knew I was keen on Chinese.” He cast a swift glance around the bookshelves that lined the room, and shot out an arm. “I shouldn’t be surprised if that’s my little handbook—Introduction to the Language, on a Scientific Basis.”
Sheepshanks’ myopic vision followed Baltazar’s pointing finger.
“Yes. It’s somewhere there. You haven’t changed much from the creature of flashes that you used to be.”
“It happens to be the only yellow-backed book on the shelf. To say nothing of the purple dragon, which is grossly incorrect and unmeaning. It jumps to the eyes. Just as my going to China ought to have jumped to the eyes of everybody.”
“I’m afraid it didn’t. Perhaps we were too much paralysed with dismay.”
“I often tried to guess what you all thought about it,” said Baltazar. “A human being can’t escape his little vanities. It was like being dead and wondering what the dickens people were saying about one.”
“We didn’t know what to say,” replied Sheepshanks. “We had no precedents on which to base any conclusions. We looked for motives for flight and we could find none. We sought for possible imperative objectives, and one so apparently uncompelling as China never occurred to us. Here to-day, gone to-morrow. You vanished, ‘like a snowflake on a river.’ To see you now, after all these years, looking scarcely a day older, is an experience which I must confess is bewildering.”
“I suppose you thought me mad or a fugitive from justice, or one driven by the Furies.”
“We didn’t know what to think, and that’s the truth of it,” replied Sheepshanks.
“Well, call it the last. I wasn’t very old and hardened. Perhaps I mistook Mrs. Grundy with an upraised umbrella for one of the ladies who played the devil with Orestes and Company. I had quite decent reasons then for clearing out. Whether I was wise or not is another matter. Anyhow I cleared, sank my identity and went out to China. After eighteen years I came back. The rest I’ve told you in a sort of pemmican form.”
“I don’t deny,” said Sheepshanks, “that I am still somewhat confused.”
“All right,” said Baltazar. “You sit there, and I’ll tell you what I can. Anyhow, I’ll try to explain why I’m here. I’ll begin from the day I sailed for China.”
The primness of Edgar Sheepshanks,D.SC., relaxed, to some extent, during Baltazar’s story. Like Dominie Sampson’s “Prodigious!” his “Wonderful! wonderful!” punctuated the intervals. To him who had stuck limpet-like to the same academic walls, Baltazar appeared a veritable modern Ulysses. He sighed, wishing that he too had performed the scholarly travels through that far land of Mystery, the Cathay of ancient times, which was now the little better known interior of modern China; he sighed, as he did when gallant youth returned from high adventure in that land of equal mystery, the Front. Baltazar was half through his tale when there entered a venerable man-servant, Sheepshanks’s gyp for innumerable years. At the sight of the guest he started back with the dropped jaw of one who sees a ghost. “Mr. Baltazar!”
“Lord, it’s Punter!”
It was odd how names came back from the moss-grown recesses of memory. He shook hands with the old man.
“Yes, it’s me. And you’re looking just as young as ever. I recognized you at once. And look here, Punter, if you want to do me a service, just spread the news about Cambridge. If I’ve got to go through an Ancient Mariner or Wandering Jew explanation every time I meet anyone, it’ll eventually get on my nerves.”
“I’m sure every one will rejoice to have you back, sir,” said the gyp.
“Punter’s bringing my lunch. I hope you’ll stay and share it with me,” said Sheepshanks politely.
“Delighted,” said Baltazar, and the old man having retired, he went on with his tale.
He continued it over lunch in the next room, a homelier chamber, where Sheepshanks kept his choice books and his two or three good Italian pictures and a few ivories and photographs of nephews and nieces. It was during the meal that he noticed for the first time a lack of effusiveness on the part of his host. Not that he had expected the prim Sheepshanks to throw his arms about him and dance with joy; but he had hoped for more genial signs of welcome. After all, he reflected, he had let the college down very badly; possibly he was still unforgiven. Well, if that was so, he would have to earn forgiveness.
In his tale he had reached the first visit to London.
“I was out of my element, as you perceive,” said he, “and then something happened which made me decide suddenly to go into seclusion for two or three years. Real seclusion. I don’t do things by halves. In some remote spot where not a whisper of the outer world could ever reach me.”
“But what kind of thing could have happened to cause you to take such an extraordinary step?” asked Sheepshanks.
Thought Baltazar: “If I tell him the real reason, he’ll turn into a pillar of frozen don.” Besides, he had not the faintest intention of opening his soul to Sheepshanks, even though the latter should have enacted the part of the father of the Prodigal Son. He waved the question aside.
“Nothing of any importance. Just one of the idiot trifles that always seem to arise and deflect my course through life. The main point is that I found the place I wanted, and went there with Quong Ho.”
Luncheon had been cleared away and he had finished a couple of pipes before he came to the end of his narrative.
“So now you see my position,” said he.
“I think I do,” replied Sheepshanks.
“My whole life-work has gone—except that part of it which exists in the cultivated brain of my remarkable young Chinaman. There seems to be no place for me in London, where everybody’s fitted into the war, where I’m simply dazed and unwanted. So I’ve come here—if only to find something left of my old life to attach myself to.”
“I’m afraid there’s not very much to be done in Cambridge,” said Sheepshanks. “It’s no longer a university, but a military camp.”
“But at any rate,” said Baltazar, “I can find here a few human beings I know who might put me in the way of actual things—help me on my course.”
“That’s quite possible,” said Sheepshanks.
“I also have to see what can be done for Quong Ho. I want him to come up next term. Has the college ever had an undergraduate who has come up with a knowledge of Elliptic Functions?”
“God bless my soul!” ejaculated Sheepshanks, in interested astonishment.
“He’s a wonder,” laughed Baltazar. “I ought to know, because I’ve taught him daily for ten years. Well, he’ll be on your list, if you’ll have him. He’s a dear creature. Manners like a Hidalgo. Mind cultivated in the best of Chinese and English literature. And speaks English like his favourite author, Dr. Johnson.”
Sheepshanks smiled, a very pleasant smile, in which every wrinkle of his dry brown face seemed to have a part.
“How you keep your enthusiasms, Baltazar!”
“Quong Ho is worth them. You’ll see. As soon as he’s fit for it, I’ll send him to you. You set him last June’s Tripos Papers—Part II, if you like. I’ll bet you anything he’ll floor them. Of course I’m enthusiastic,” he said, after re-lighting his pipe, which had gone out. “I’ve no kith or kin in the world. I’ve adopted Quong Ho as my intellectual son and heir.”
Sheepshanks rose, walked to the open window deliberately and looked out. Presently he turned.
“It seems strange,” said he, “that you should adopt a Chinaman, when your English son is giving great promise of following in your footsteps.”
Baltazar regarded him in a puzzled way. Then he laughed.
“My stepson. I’m afraid, my dear Sheepshanks, when I left the mother I left her son. One of the defects of my qualities is honesty. I may be brutal, but I can’t take a sentimental interest in the son of old Doon.”
“The man I’m talking about,” said Sheepshanks, in the precise clipped, nasal manner under which Baltazar remembered many a delinquent and uppish pupil to have wilted in the old days, “isn’t called Doon. His name is Baltazar. He came up with a Minor Scholarship over the way”—he waved a hand, indicating the grey wing of the neighbouring college visible through the window—“and he was the most promising freshman of his year.”
Baltazar rose too.
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. I don’t suppose I’m the only Baltazar left in England. He can be no son of mine. It’s idiotic. You ought to know.”
“I do know,” said Sheepshanks.
Baltazar’s eyes flashed in amazement and he made a stride towards him. “What do you know? What are you suggesting?”
“A child was born here in Cambridge, three months after you left us.”
Something almost physical seemed to hit Baltazar between the eyes, partially stunning him. He felt his way to the nearest chair and sat down.
“My God!” said he. “Oh, my God!”
He remained for some time, his head on his hands, overwhelmed by the significance of the revelation. At last he sprang suddenly to his feet.
“No wonder you haven’t forgiven me,” he cried, with characteristic directness. “To run away from a woman in such circumstances would be the unforgivable sin. But I swear to God I never knew. She gave no hint, and I saw her only a few days before I left. Such a possibility never entered my mind. Has never entered it. I may be any kind of a sinner, but not such a scoundrel as that. I left her because we were miserable together.—I did my best—now and then a brief reconciliation.—I suppose she tried too, in her way.—After the last, things were worse than ever. And then there was the life of someone else I couldn’t sacrifice—a flower of a thing. I felt my wife would be glad to see the last of me. So I fled like Christian from the Burning City. If I had known that—well, that I was leaving this responsibility behind me, I should have faced things out. My God! man, you must believe me,” he ended passionately.
Sheepshanks through his thick gold spectacles met Baltazar’s fierce gaze for a few moments. Then he held out his hand: “I believe you, J. B., and doing so takes a great load off my mind.”
“I’ve noticed your avoidance of the old name,” said Baltazar. “It must have been in pretty evil odour for the past twenty years or so.”
“You’re such an incalculable fellow,” said Sheepshanks, with a kind smile. “The romance you so delicately suggest never occurred to any of us.”
“Well, well,” said Baltazar, “all that is done and over long ago. Anyhow, I wasn’t the heartless wretch Cambridge must have taken me for. I leave my rehabilitation in your hands. To me now the main, staring, extraordinary fact is that I have a son. A son. I, who thought I was wandering lonely as What’s-his-name’s cloud. I’ve got a son. A mathematician. The same lunatic quirk of brain. If he were the village idiot—it would be different.—You remember the ghastly story of Guy de Maupassant? But not only my own flesh and blood, but my own flesh, blood and intellect.” He paced about the room. “What kind of a fellow is he? Is he like me? Have you seen him?”
“Yes; once. Crosby—you remember Crosby?” He waved a hand towards the college visible through the window.
“Yes, yes,” said Baltazar, impatiently.
“Crosby asked me to breakfast, one day, to meet him. The son of John Baltazar, senior mathematical scholar of his year, was a curiosity. We didn’t tell the young man so. Indeed, I suppose he wondered why such an old fossil like myself was there.”
“Never mind what he thought of old fossils, my dear Sheepshanks. What was he like?”
“Like you. Quite recognizable. But fairer, and though sensible and manly, less—if you will allow me to say so—less of a firebrand.”
“Anyhow, a good straight chap. Not merely low mathematical cunning enveloped in any kind of smug exterior?”
“He’s a son any father would be proud of,” said Sheepshanks.
“And where is he now?”
Sheepshanks made a vague gesture. “Where is all the gallant youth of England? Over there, fighting.”
“Are you sure?”
“It would be small compliment to you, J. B., if I wasn’t sure,” replied Sheepshanks with a smile. “The only undergraduates left in the University are a few unhappy youngsters rejected from the army for physical reasons. The maimed, halt and blind; also medical students hurrying through their course, and the usual contingent of Indian students who, not belonging to the fighting races of India, can find no place in the armies of Great Britain.”
“I don’t care about paralytics or doctors or Indians,” said Baltazar. “I want to know about this son of mine.”
“Crosby would tell you. He’s up. I saw him yesterday. Of course, you know he’s master now.”
“Crosby?” cried Baltazar, incredulously. “Crosby—that pragmatical owl, master of——?”
“Even as you are master of intolerance,” Sheepshanks interrupted. “Crosby has developed into a very great man, and there’s not a head of house in the University who is more beloved by his college. You’ll find him in intimate touch with half a dozen generations of undergraduates.”
“I’m learning things every minute,” said Baltazar. “So much for Crosby. I’ll go along and see him. But the boy—I suppose he has got a Christian name. What is it?”
“I forget—but I can easily find out.” Sheepshanks tookThe Cambridge University Calendarfrom a shelf. “But perhaps you’d like to look through it yourself.”
Baltazar turned rapidly over the pages, found the college he sought and the name of Godfrey Baltazar in its list of scholars.
“Godfrey!” he exclaimed. “That was my father’s name.” Then after a pause, as though speaking to himself: “It was good of her. Damned good of her.”
He walked to the casement window which Sheepshanks had vacated and leaned his elbows on the sill, looking out for a long time into a blur of things. Sheepshanks glanced at his broad shoulders which seemed bowed beneath an intolerable burden, and after a moment or two of hesitation slipped noiselessly from the room. Presently Baltazar turned, started to find himself alone, frowned, then recognizing a delicate instinct on the part of his host, went back to the window and his whirl of thoughts and emotions.
What a mess he had made of his life! What folly had been each one of those flaming decisions that had marked his career! Was he a coward? The word stung. There was a difference between flying from temptation and resisting it. He remembered the comparison he had just made between himself and Christian flying from the Burning City, and suddenly saw the meanness and selfishness of Bunyan’s Hero—egotism as colossal as that of St. Simeon Stylites on whom he had once airily lectured to Quong Ho. What mattered anything human, wife, children born and the child within the womb, so long as he saved his own wretchedly unimportant soul? For aught Christian cared, all his family and his friends could go literally to Hell, so long as he himself escaped. A sorry figure. And just such a sorry figure had cut John Baltazar. And, life being real and implacable, he had not even succeeded in saving his paltry soul. He had lost it at every step. His fine phrases to Quong Ho; his boast of altruistic service to mankind? Sheer juggling with sacred things. Sheer egotism. Sheer vanity.
What a mess he had made of his life! What folly had been his cowardly flight! If he had known, he would have remained. Yes. A salve to conscience. But the consciences of brave men need no salve.
He had fooled away his life in a country that had no need of him, from which he had derived no measure of spiritual profit. Strip the glamour of sheer scholarship from his interest in Chinese philosophy, and what remained? Scarcely anything that the heir of Western thought had not picked up in his child’s copybook. And whilst he was wasting his brain and his moral energies and his physical strength in pursuit of the shadows, the son of his loins, a human thing for whose moulding and development he was, by the laws of nature and civilization, responsible, had grown up, haphazard, fatherless, motherless, under alien guidance. He threw his memory back to his wife’s family, the Woodcotts, narrow-minded, bigoted, vulgar—Lord! how he had detested them. Had he abandoned his son to their untender mercies? No matter who had trained the boy, he himself had failed in the most elementary duty of mankind.
Suddenly he raised both clenched fists and cried aloud:
“By God! I swear——”
Then suddenly he saw the ironical face of the village doctor of Water-End and heard his sarcastic words: “A bad habit. I should give it up”—and his arms dropped helpless by his sides. No. What was this oath but one more irretrievable plunge into the morass in which he floundered?
He began again to wonder concerning this newly discovered son, strove to visualize him. A broad, upstanding fellow, like himself. Fairer—he got that from his mother. A fine, soldierly figure in khaki. But only a boy—just twenty. And he had thrown everything to the winds on the outbreak of war and had been fighting in France—that child—for two years. He drew a sharp breath, as a sudden thought smote him. The boy might have been killed. Apparently he was still alive. Otherwise Sheepshanks would surely have heard. But supposing—supposing. . . . He shivered at the thought of it.
Half an hour, an hour—he was unconscious of time—passed. Then the door opened and Sheepshanks appeared, followed by a short-bearded man in clerical tweeds.
“A bit of luck. I found Crosby in. I’ve told him everything, and he has been kind enough to come along.”
Said Dr. Crosby a while later: “I have brought with me the boy’s last letter—only a week old. Perhaps you would like to see it.”
Baltazar stretched out an impatient hand. This thing so essentially personal, the first objective token of his son’s existence, affected him deeply. The words swam before his eyes. He turned to the end to see the signature. His thumb against it, he held out the paper to Sheepshanks, and said in a shaking voice:
“That’s my handwriting. He has the same trick of the ‘B’ and the ‘z.’ ”
The letter informed the master that he was still at Churton Towers, near Godalming; that the stump obstinately refused to heal completely, owing perhaps to the original gangrene; that he hoped they would not chuck him out of the Army, because, with a brand new foot, he could be useful in hundreds of ways; but that, if they did, he would come up and continue to read for his degree.
“May I keep this, Crosby?” asked Baltazar; and, permission given, he folded it up and put it in his pocket. Then he turned to Sheepshanks. “Why didn’t you tell me at first what had happened?”
“My dear fellow,” said Sheepshanks, “I only heard he had been wounded. I was unaware of details. That’s why I went at once to Crosby. In these days one must be discreet.”
“Yes, no doubt,” said Baltazar, absently. He paced the room for a few moments. Then halting: “I must see this son of mine. But I must see him in my own way. Will you do me a favour not to let him know of my reappearance until I send you word?”
“Certainly,” said Dr. Crosby.
“Thanks,” said he.
He walked to and fro, his head full of the tragedy of this maimed young life. He looked from one unemotional face to the other. Their attitude was incomprehensible. Crosby, before showing him the letter, had spoken of wound and amputation in the most matter-of-fact, unfeeling way. Suddenly he burst out indignantly:
“I wonder if you two people have any idea of what I’m feeling. To-day I learnt the wonderful news that I’ve got a son—a splendid fellow, a man and a scholar. An hour afterwards you tell me that he’s a one-legged cripple. Neither of you seem to care a hang. I haven’t heard a word of sympathy, of pity——”
The white-headed, gold-spectacled senior tutor rushed towards him, in some agitation, with outspread hands.
“My dear J. B., we must observe a sense of proportion. You really ought to go on your knees and thank God that your son is preserved to you. He’s out of that hell for ever.”
“My boy—my only son—was killed last December,” said Dr. Crosby.
Baltazar stared for a moment at the short, bearded man and sought for words, even the most conventional words; but they would not come. Then, memory flashing on him, he stretched out his open hand about three feet from the ground, and said, in a voice which sounded queer in his own ears:
“That little chap?”
“Yes. That little chap,” said Dr. Crosby.
CHAPTER XII
ADAYor two afterwards Godfrey Baltazar, still tied by his maimed leg to Churton Towers, received a letter which caused him to frown and rub his head. It was type-written save for the signature, and was addressed, care of a firm of solicitors in Bedford Row. As soon as Marcelle came to do his morning dressing he handed it to her.
“What do you make of this?”
Before replying, she read it through without remark. It ran:
Dear Sir,I have just been visiting Cambridge after many years’ absence abroad, and have learned that the son of my old college friend, John Baltazar, is lying wounded at Churton Towers Convalescent Home. I am writing to you, therefore, to enquire whether one who was very intimately connected with your father in the old days might venture to run down to Godalming and see you, with the double purpose of making the acquaintance of John Baltazar’s son, of whose brilliant academic beginnings the University authorities have informed me, and of paying a stranger Englishman’s tribute to a gallant fellow who has shed his blood for his country. My time being, at your disposal, I shall be happy to keep any appointment you may care to make.Yours very faithfully,James Burden
Dear Sir,
I have just been visiting Cambridge after many years’ absence abroad, and have learned that the son of my old college friend, John Baltazar, is lying wounded at Churton Towers Convalescent Home. I am writing to you, therefore, to enquire whether one who was very intimately connected with your father in the old days might venture to run down to Godalming and see you, with the double purpose of making the acquaintance of John Baltazar’s son, of whose brilliant academic beginnings the University authorities have informed me, and of paying a stranger Englishman’s tribute to a gallant fellow who has shed his blood for his country. My time being, at your disposal, I shall be happy to keep any appointment you may care to make.
Yours very faithfully,
James Burden
“Seems rather nice of him,” said Marcelle.
“I suppose it is. But who is the old fossil?”
Marcelle smiled. “Probably what he claims to be. An old college friend of your father.”
“He must have been a don of sorts. Not merely an undergraduate friend. Otherwise how could he have got straight to the people who knew all about me? You ever heard of James Burden?”
“No,” replied Marcelle, shaking her head. “How could I know all the fellows of your father’s college? Newnham students in my day were kept far from the madding crowd of dons.”
“Well, what about seeing the sentimental blighter? Oh, of course he’s sentimental. His ‘double purpose’ reeks of it. Rather what before the war we used to call ‘colonial.’ What shall I do? Shall I tell him to come along?”
“Why not? It can do no harm.”
Godfrey reflected for a few moments. Then he said:
“You see, before I met you I would have jumped at the idea of seeing an old friend of my father. But you knew more of him than the whole lot of the others put together. I’ve got my intimate picture of him through you. I’m not so keen to get sidelights, possibly distorting lights, from anybody else. You see what I mean, don’t you?”
“I see,” said Marcelle. “Let us have a look at the foot.”
She plied her nurse’s craft; set him up for the day’s mild activities. When he hobbled an hour later into the hall to attend to his correspondence and resume his study of the late Dr. Routh’sTreatise on Rigid Dynamics, he wrote a polite note to Mr. Burden suggesting an appointment. After all, even in such luxurious quarters as Churton Towers, life was a bit monotonous, and stragglers from the outer world not unwelcome. It was all very well for most of his comrades, who had mothers, fathers, sisters, cousins, girl friends attached and unattached to visit them; but he, Godfrey, had found himself singularly alone. Here and there a representative of the Woodcott crowd had paid him a perfunctory visit. He professed courteous appreciation. But they were not his people. Memories of his pariah boyhood discounted their gush over the one-footed hero with the Military Cross. He was cynical enough to recognize that they took a vast lot of the credit to themselves, to the Family. They went away puffed with pride and promises. He said to Marcelle:
“I’m not taking any.”
A few men friends, chiefly men on leave, wandered down from time to time. But they had the same old tales to tell; of conditions in the sector, of changes in the battalion, of such and such a scrap, of promotions and deaths, a depressing devil of a lot of deaths; the battalion wasn’t what it was when Godfrey left it; he could not imagine the weird creatures in Sam Browne belts that blew in from nowhere, to take command of platoons, things with their mother’s milk wet on their lips, and garters from the Burlington Arcade, their idea of devilry, in their pockets. And the N.C.O.s! My God! Oh, for the good old days of—six months ago!
Godfrey, wise in his generation, laughed at the jeremiads of these callowlaudatores temporis acti, and on probing further, satisfied himself that everything was still for the best in the best of all possible armies. He also found that ginger was still hot in the mouths of these friends of his, and that he had not lived until he had seen Betty or Kitty or Elsie So-and-So, or such and such a Revue.
Frankly and boyishly, his appreciated his friends’ entertaining chatter. But they came and went, with the superficialbonhomieof the modern soldier. They touched no depths. If he had died of his gangrened foot, they would have said “Poor old chap!” and thought no more about him. He did not condemn them, for he himself had said and thought the same of many a comrade who had gone West. It was part of the game which he played as scrupulously and as callously as the others. He craved, however, solicitude deeper and more permanent.
Of course there was Dorothy Mackworth. She did not come to Churton Towers; but she had dutifully attended the Carlton when he had summoned her thither to meet Sister Baring, and put on for his benefit her most adorable clothing and behaviour. The lunch had been a meal of delight. The young man glowed over his guests—the two prettiest women, so he declared, in the room. Marcelle in the much-admired hat, her cheeks slightly flushed and her eyes bright, looked absurdly young. The girl, conscious of angelic dealing, carried off her own absurd youth with a conquering air that bewitched him more than ever. She dropped golden words:
“Oh, let us cut out Leopold! I’ve no use for him.”
She had no use for Leopold Doon, his half-brother and rival. He was to be cut out of their happy thoughts. Also:
“I’m not going to have you creep back into civil life and bury yourself at Cambridge. You’d get a hump there you’d never recover from. There’s lots of jobs on the staff for a brainy fellow like him, aren’t there, Miss Baring? I’ll press father’s button and he’ll do the rest.”
Now Dorothy’s father was a Major-General doing things at Whitehall, whose nature was indicated by mystic capital letters after his name.
“You’ll look splendid in red tabs,” she added.
This profession of interest and this air of proprietorship enraptured him. Under the ban of her displeasure Cambridge faded into a dreary, tumbledown desolation. She had but to touch him with her fairy wand and he would break out all over in red tabs. She spoke with assurance in the future tense.
And again, in a low voice, on their winding way out through the tables of the restaurant, Marcelle preceding them by a yard or two:
“Miss Baring’s a real dear. But don’t fall in love with her, for I swear I’m not going to play gooseberry.”
He had protested in a whisper: “Fall in love with anyone but you?”
And she had replied: “I think I’m nice enough,” and had laughed at him over her shoulder and looked exceedingly desirable.
He had never dared till that inspired moment speak to her of love in plain, bald terms; now he had done it and not only remained unfrozen, but basked in the warmth of her approval.
“I think that’s the most beautiful beano I’ve ever had,” he said to Marcelle, on their journey back to Godalming.
Yes. There was Dorothy. She had promised to participate in a similar beano any time he liked. But such bright occurrences must be rare. He longed to plunge into fervid correspondence. Caution restrained him. Elusive and perplexing, Heaven knew what she might say to a violent declaration of passion. It might ruin a state of things both delicate and delicious. Far better carry on his wooing by word of mouth.
In the meanwhile, the days at Churton Towers were long and life lacked variety. So he looked forward to the visit of Mr. James Burden, compound of fossil and sentimental blighter though he might be.
Punctually at three o’clock, the appointed hour, one afternoon, the maid who attended the door came up to Godfrey Baltazar waiting lonely in the great hall, and announced the visitor. With the aid of the now familiar crutch he rose nimbly. He saw advancing towards him in a brisk, brusque way, a still young-looking man in grey tweeds, rather above medium height, thickset, giving an immediate impression of physical strength.
“Are you Mr. Godfrey Baltazar?”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy courteously.
“My name is Burden. It’s good of you to let me come to see you.”
He grasped Godfrey’s hand in a close grip and looked at him keenly out of bright grey eyes. Not much fossil there, thought the young man. On the contrary, a singularly live personality. There was strength in the heavy though clean-cut face, marked by the deep vertical furrow between the brows; strength in the coarse, though well-trimmed, thatch of brown hair unstreaked by grey; strength in his voice.
“Do sit down,” said Godfrey.
Baltazar sat down and, looking at his son, clutched the arm of his chair. Crosby and Sheepshanks were right. A splendid fellow, the ideal of a soldier, clean run, clear eyes; a touch of distinction and breed about him, manifestation of the indomitable old Huguenot strain. By God! A boy to be proud of; and he saw bits of himself in the boy’s features, expression and gesture. A thrill ran through him as he drank in the new joy of parenthood. Yet through the joy pain stabbed him—fierce resentment against Fate, which had cheated him of the wonderful years of the boy’s growth and development. For the first time in his decisive life he felt tongue-tied and embarrassed. He cursed the craftiness that brought him hither under an assumed name. Yet, had he written as John Baltazar, he would have risked a rebuff. What sentimental regard or respect could this young man have for his unknown and unnatural father? At any rate his primary object had been attained. Here he was in his son’s presence, a courteously welcomed guest. He looked at him with yearning eyes; Godfrey met his gaze with cool politeness. Baltazar wiped a perspiring brow. After a few moments Godfrey broke an awkward situation by offering his cigarette case. The cigarettes lit, Baltazar said suddenly:
“It’s an infernal shame!”
“What?” asked Godfrey, startled.
Baltazar pointed downwards. “That,” said he.
“Oh!” Godfrey laughed. “I’m one of the lucky ones. Far better to have stopped it with my foot than my head.”
“But to limp about on crutches all your life—a fellow like you in the pride of youth and strength. It makes one angry.”
“That’s kind of you, sir,” said Godfrey. “But it doesn’t worry me much. They’re wangling a new foot for me, and as soon as I can stick it on, I’ll throw away my crutches, and no one but myself will be a bit the wiser.”
“You take it bravely,” said Baltazar.
“It’s all in the day’s work. What’s the good of grousing? What’s the point of a real foot, anyway, when a faked one will do as well?”
But though Baltazar admired the young fellow’s careless courage, he still glowered at the maimed leg. He resented fiercely the lost foot. He had been robbed of a bit of this wonderful son.
“How did you come to get hit?” he asked abruptly.
There are many ways of asking a wounded man such a question. Many he loathes. Hence the savagely facetious answers that have been put on record. But there are ways that compel reply. Baltazar’s was one. Godfrey felt strangely affected by the elder man’s earnestness; yet his instinct forbade him to yield at once.
“Getting hit’s as simple as being bowled out at cricket. A jolly sight simpler. Like going out in the rain and getting wet. You just go out without an umbrella and something hits you, and that’s the end of it.”
“But when was it? How was it?” asked Baltazar.
Godfrey, after the way of British subalterns, gave a bald account of his personal adventures in his last fight near Ypres. It might have been a description of a football match. Baltazar wondered. For all his wanderings and experience of life, he had never heard a first-hand account of modern warfare. The psychology of it perplexed and fascinated him. He plied the young man with questions; shrewd, direct questions piercing to the heart of things; and gradually Godfrey’s English reserve melted, and he laid aside his defensive armour and told his intent visitor what he wanted to know. And Baltazar’s swift brain seized the vivid pictures and co-ordinated them until he grew aware of the hells through which this young and debonair gentleman had passed.
“And what did you get that for?”
He pointed to the ribbon of the Military Cross.
“I managed to get away with some machine guns out of a tight corner. It was only when we were scooting back that I discovered we had been left in the air. I thought the battalion was quite up close. If I hadn’t, I should probably have bolted. These things are all flukes.”
“What a proud man your father would have been,” said Baltazar.
“By the way, yes,” said Godfrey. “I was forgetting. You were a friend of my father’s.”
“It’s a great misfortune that he never met you,” said Baltazar.
“He disappeared before I was born,” Godfrey remarked drily.
“I know. That’s why I wrote to you in some diffidence. I had no idea how you regarded your father’s memory. I hope you appreciate my feeling that I might be treading on delicate ground.”
Godfrey waved an indulgent hand. “Oh, that’s all right, sir. My father was a distinguished and romantic person, and I’m rather interested in him than otherwise.”
Baltazar drew a great breath of relief. At any rate he was not execrated by the paragon of sons. “I see,” said he, his features relaxing, for the first time, into a smile. “Like any other ancestor, he’s part of your family history.”
“Something of the sort. Only perhaps a bit nearer.”
“How nearer?”
“People live who knew him in the flesh. You, for instance.”
“Yes,” said Baltazar. “I knew him intimately. We were undergraduates and dons together. I left Cambridge about the same time as he did—when my fellowship lapsed. I went away to the Far East, where I’ve spent my life. I’m just back, you know. Instinct took me to Cambridge, a sort of Rip van Winkle, to see if there were any remains of old friends—and my visit to you is the result of my enquiries.”
“When you wrote to me, I wondered whether you could tell me if my father was alive or dead.”
Baltazar made a little gesture.
“Quien sabe?From what I remember of John Baltazar he was not a man to let himself die easily. He was the most obstinate mule I ever came across. Death would have had a trying time with him. Besides, he was as tough as a rhinoceros.”
“So he still may be in the land of the living?”
“As far as I know.” Baltazar leaned forward on his chair. “You have no feeling of resentment against him?”
“One can’t feel resentment against a shadow,” replied Godfrey.
“Suppose he reappeared, what would be your attitude towards him?”
Godfrey frowned at the touch of impertinence in the question which probed too deeply. He glanced distrustfully at his visitor.
“I’m afraid I’ve never considered the point,” he replied frostily. “Have you any special reason for putting it to me?”
Baltazar winced. “Only as a student of psychology. But I see you would rather continue to regard him as a legendary character?”
“Quite,” said Godfrey.
“You must forgive me, Mr. Baltazar,” said the father, with a smile. “I’m half orientalized and only beginning to attune myself to Western habits of thought. I lived for so many years in the interior of China that I almost lost the Western point of view. Well, there the basis of all religious and philosophic systems is filial piety. The whole moral and political system of the Empire has been reared on it for thousands of years. If you were a Chinaman, you would venerate your father, no matter what grievances you might have against him or how shadowy and legendary he might be.”
“But I’m not a Chinaman,” said Godfrey.
“Precisely. That’s where your typically Western point of view is of great interest to me. I hope, therefore, you see that the question I put to you, although it may be one of curiosity, is of philosophical and not idle curiosity.”
“I see,” replied Godfrey, smiling and mollified. “May I ask you which of the two attitudes you consider the most workable in practical life?”
“I told you just now,” said Baltazar, “that my mind was in process of adjustment.”
There came a slight pause. Godfrey broke it by suggesting politely that Mr. Burden must have found Cambridge greatly changed. Baltazar launched into vivid description of the toga giving way to arms. Eventually came to personalities. The death of Dr. Crosby’s only son.
“Yes. I heard,” said Godfrey. “Fine soldier. Done in by high explosive shell. Not a trace of him or six others left. Not even the heel of a boot.”
“How lightly you all take death nowadays,” Baltazar remarked wonderingly.
“That oughtn’t to surprise you,” said Godfrey. “I’ve been led to believe they don’t worry their heads much about it in China.”
“I thought it one of the points at which East and West could never touch.” He laughed. “More readjustment, you see.”
“In the Army we’ve got either to be fatalists or lunatics. If your number’s up it’s up, and that’s all there is to it.Youcan’t do anything. You can’t even run away.”
“But surely you cling to life—young men like you—with all sorts of golden promises in front of you?”
“We don’t do silly ass things,” said Godfrey. “We don’t stand about like Ajaxes defying the lightning. When shells come we scurry like rabbits into the nearest funk-hole. We’re not a bit brave unless there’s no help for it. But when you see so many people killed around you, you say ‘My turn next,’ and it doesn’t seem to matter. You think ‘Who the blazes are you that you should be so precious?’ . . . No. Going out all in the fraction of a second like Crosby doesn’t matter. Why should it? What does give you a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach is the fear lest you may be utterly messed up and go on living. But death itself is too damned ordinary. At any rate, that’s the way I size it up. Of course it’s pretty cheap and easy for a lucky beggar like me, who’s out of it for ever, to talk hot philosophic air—but all the same, looking back, I think I’ve told you in a vague sort of way what I felt when I was out in France. Sometimes the whole thing seems a nightmare. At others, I want to kick myself for sitting here in luxury when there’s so much to be done out there. I had got my platoon—I was acting first lieutenant—like a high-class orchestra—just the last two months, you know. It was the weirdest feeling. I just had to wave my baton and they did everything I wanted. Once or twice I nearly cried with sheer amazement. And then just when the band was playing its damndest, I got knocked out and fainted like a silly fool, and woke up miles away. When one has sweated one’s guts out over a thing, it’s annoying not to reap the fruit of it. It’s rough luck. It’s—well——”
Suddenly self-consciousness returned. He flushed deeply.
“I’m awfully sorry, sir. I never meant to bore you like this about myself.”
“Bore me!” cried Baltazar. “My dear fellow, you could go on like this for ever and command my most amazed interest. Do go on.”
“It’s very kind of you,” stammered the young man, “but—really——”
He stopped, confused, embarrassed, ashamed of his boasting. Never had he spoken like that to human being of his incomparable platoon. Never had he unveiled to profane eyes his soldier’s Holy of Holies. Certainly not to his comrades. Not to Dorothy. Not even to Marcelle. What on earth must this stranger, whom he didn’t know from Adam, be thinking of him? He lit a cigarette, before, remembering manners, he offered his case to his visitor. The sense of sentimental braggadocio overwhelmed him, burning him red-hot. He longed with sudden fury to get rid of this uncanny guest with his clear, compelling eyes, which even now steadily regarded him with an inscrutable smile and continued the impossible invitation: “Do go on.” He could no more go on than smite him over the head with his crutch (which he was far more inclined to do) for plucking out the heart of his mystery. If only the man would go! But he sat there, strong, urbane, maddeningly kind. He hated him. Yet he felt himself under his influence. From the man seemed to emanate a suggestion of friendship, interest, control, which his sensitive English spirit vehemently repudiated. He heard him say:
“The old French blood in your veins has suddenly come up against the English.”
He started. “What do you know about my French ancestry?”
“Your father was very proud of his Huguenot descent.”
“My father!” cried Godfrey, his nerves on edge. “I’m rather fed up with my father. I wish he had never been born.”
Baltazar rose. “I’m sorry,” said he courteously, “to have distressed you. Believe me, it was far from my intention.”
Godfrey stared at him for a second, and passed his hand across his eyes.
“It’s for me to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been rude. Please don’t go.”
But Baltazar stood smiling, holding out his hand. Now that the man was going Godfrey realized the enormity of his own discourtesy. He looked around as if seeking some outlet for the situation. And then, as if in answer to a prayer, at the end of the hall appeared the passing, grey-clad figure of a guardian angel.
“Sister!” he cried.
Marcelle halted, smiled, and advanced towards him.
“Sister,” said he, “this is Mr. James Burden. You ought to know each other. You both knew my father.”
Baltazar turned. And for a few speechless seconds he and Marcelle stared into each other’s eyes.