CHAPTER XXI
SHEwould read the paper to-morrow, she had said. But on the morrow she awoke with a violent headache and stayed abed, and had only time to scramble into her clothes and attend a twelve o’clock committee meeting in Westminster. And for the remainder of the day, until she went to bed exhausted at midnight, she had not a minute to spare. The next morning she had her early appointment with Godfrey. She went forth into a raw air with a threat of autumn in it, and a slight drizzle from an overcast sky. The two-seater, with damp hood up, was waiting round the corner of the Square. She opened the door and jumped in, almost before he was aware of her approach, and rather hysterically flung her arms about him.
“Oh darling, be good to me! I’m feeling so tired and miserable.”
He proclaimed himself a brute for dragging her out on such a filthy morning. It was super-angelic of her to come, but he had scarcely expected her. Wouldn’t it be better to go back home and rest?
“No, no, dear,” she murmured. “This is my rest. Beside you. Storm or sunshine, what does it matter, so long as we’re together?”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” said he, driving off. “Hell and damnation would be Paradise if I always had you with me.”
And in the same emotional key they talked all the time during their drive through a dank and dismal world. They felt like Paolo and Francesca in Watts’s picture, clinging together alone in comfortless space, remote from War Office and wars and other affairs of men. She wailed:
“Oh, darling, if only I had met you before I made my wretched marriage!”
“Yes, by God!” said Godfrey, setting his teeth and feeling very fierce.
It did not occur to either of them, in their unhumorous mood, that when she married he was a gawky boy of sixteen.
Gradually they came to vital things.
“If I were little Mrs. Tomkins, whom nobody knows, we could get a hidden nest somewhere, you and I. It would be happiness, and it would be hurting or betraying nobody. But I’m Lady Edna Donnithorpe, related to half the peerage, and known by sight to everybody who looks at an illustrated paper.”
“Why not cut everything and make a bolt of it?” asked Godfrey, glaring straight in front of him at the cheerless, almost empty road, his young face set very stem.
“Your career——”
He cursed his career.
“Your soldier’s post. How can you leave it? You’re doing a man’s work for your country.”
“Hell take it!” said he.
“Take what?”
“The whole infernal universe,” he growled, and swerved viciously so as to avoid imminent collision with an indignant motor-bus. Again they came to the bed-rock fact of his soldier’s duty.
On their return journey it rained in torrents.
“You’ll get wet through if you walk,” said he, when they arrived at their trysting spot. “I’ll drive you up to the house and chance it.”
He chanced it, helped her out of the car and stood on the pavement, watching her until she had let herself in with her latchkey. She ran upstairs, to be confronted with her husband at the door of his room which was on the same landing. He was in his dressing-gown, and one side of his face was shaven, the other lathered.
“I thought you went to a canteen in the mornings?”
“So I do,” she replied calmly.
“Does young Baltazar work there too?”
“Young Baltazar very often calls for me, when it rains, on his way to the War Office, and gives me a lift home.”
“You’re seeing far too much of that young man.”
“The last time we discussed the Baltazar family,” she said with a scornful laugh, “you accused me of an intrigue with his father. My dear Edgar, go on with your shaving and don’t be idiotic.” She flung into her room angry and humiliated. After all, Edgar had the right to consider his good name, even though his jealousy could not proceed from betrayed affection. This was the first time he had referred to Godfrey in any way. Uneasiness beset her; so did the eternal question of the deceitful wife: “How much did he know?” They did not meet that day till dinner-time—it was one of the rare occasions on which they dined alone together—when he seemed to be making amends for the morning’s attack by more than usual courteous conversation on current events. They parted amicably.
The next afternoon, arriving home very late, she was surprised at seeing him coming, half dressed for dinner, from her room. He smiled in a friendly way and held up a button-hook.
“Mine’s nowhere to be seen—that confounded new parlourmaid—I hope you don’t mind.”
“We’re getting quite domestic,” she said ironically.
“It’s pleasanter,” said he.
She wondered much at his graciousness for the next few days. He became attentive, manifested dry solicitude as to her health and her social and political interests. She dreaded a recrudescence of the thin sentiment that, on his part, had sanctioned their marriage. The fear tainted the joy of her visits to the mythical canteen. Sooner open hostility than this semblance of conjugal affection.
“I’m sorry, darling, to have been so mouldy,” she said, taking leave of Godfrey one morning, “but the situation is getting on my nerves. I’m fed up.”
A day or two later Edgar Donnithorpe entered her sitting-room, where she was writing letters.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Edna,” said he, “but have you definitely decided to go to Moulsford this next week-end?”
“Certainly. I told you. The Barringtons and Susie Delamere and one or two others are coming.”
“Do you mind if I don’t turn up till Sunday?”
“Of course not,” she replied. He was exceedingly polite.
“Thanks,” said he. “The fact is, I want to ask a dozen men or so to dinner here. Only men, you know.”
She glanced at him rather puzzled, for his proposal was an unprecedented departure from the custom of the house. Hitherto he had given his men’s political dinner parties at his club. There had been no arrangement or understanding between them as to this mode of entertainment, but so had it chanced to be; and he was a creature of routine.
“Of course. Just as you like. But what’s wrong with the only place fit to dine at in London?”
“It’s war time, my dear,” said he, eyeing her shiftily. “War time. All the clubs have gone to the devil.”
“All right. If you’ll tell me how many are coming, I’ll see to it.”
“No, please don’t. Please don’t worry your head about it.” He made a step forward and held up his thin hand in a deprecatory sort of way. “I’ll fix it up. I don’t want it to be the slightest bit of a concern to you. Thanks so much.”
He hurried out. Lady Edna frowned at her half-written letter. A devious man, Edgar. What was in the wind? The cook the next day, however, submitted to her a menu which, with a housewifely modification or so, she passed, and thought no more of the material banquet.
During the week the hint of a rumour reached her, when, at a public meeting, she ran up against the Rt. Hon. Sir Berkeley Prynne, a Member of the Government who had been hostile to her husband for many years and had only given the hatchet superficial burial during the party truce.
“I suppose you know a lot of us are quaking in our shoes?” he said, half banteringly.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I’ve no doubt it’s good for you. What’s the matter?”
“Signs of underground rumblings. Your quick ears have detected nothing?”
“No. Really. Honour bright. Do tell me.”
He shook his head and laughed. “It’ll be a wash-out,” said he, moving away.
Gibe or warning, Sir Berkeley’s words were not devoid of significance. They were aimed at her husband. Underground rumblings meant intrigue. She had long suspected Edgar of half-hearted support of the Government; but passionate devotion to anything was so foreign to his crafty, opportunist nature, that she had not greatly troubled her mind about his loyalty. Here, however, was cause for deeper consideration. The old hacks, as she had said to Godfrey, were being squeezed out as decently as might be, so as to give place to fresher and honester men, and Edgar’s position was daily growing more insecure. But she had thought he was sticking to it desperately. Was the worm about to turn? And had the projected dinner-party anything to do with the turning?
She asked him casually who were coming.
“Men connected with the business of the Ministry,” he replied. “People I must be civil to and who don’t expect us to worry about their women-folk.”
And she had to be contented with the answer.
On the Saturday afternoon, at Moulsford, she was surprised to see Rolliter, the old butler, who she thought was staying the night at Belgrave Square to superintend the dinner party. Why was he here?
“Mr. Donnithorpe’s orders, my lady. He said he could get on quite well without me this evening. I couldn’t insist, my lady, but I didn’t like leaving at all, especially as Lord Trevanion was coming.”
“Lord who?” she cried, for he had mentioned a name that was anathema maranatha in Government circles.
“I think it’s Trevanion, my lady,” said the butler, rather taken aback by her expression of incredulity. He fished a paper from his pocket and consulted it. “Yes, my lady. I saw the list on Mr. Donnithorpe’s table, so I copied it out so as to write the name-cards before I left.”
An idea struck her. “You did this without Mr. Donnithorpe’s orders?”
“Why, yes, my lady. Mr. Donnithorpe being so busy, I thought it might slip his memory.”
“Did you write the cards?”
“No, my lady. When Mr. Donnithorpe told me to come down here, I asked him about the name-cards, and he said he didn’t want them.”
“Let me see the list,” she said, recovering her languid manner.
“Certainly, my lady.” He handed her the paper. “The only reason I mentioned Lord Trevanion,” he continued, “was because I happen to know his lordship is one of the most particular men in England, and I couldn’t bear to have things done anyhow when he was dining at the house.”
She laughed in her charming way. “The blood’s on Mr. Donnithorpe’s head, not yours, Rolliter.”
Rolliter had been in her father’s service before she was born and had followed her, as butler, when she married.
“Thank you, my lady,” said he, retiring and leaving her with the list of guests.
It was an instructive and at the same time bewildering document. It contained the names of representatives of all the disgruntled and pacifist factions in England. No wonder Edgar dared not face the publicity of a club or restaurant dinner! No wonder he had lied to her about his guests. No wonder he had sent Rolliter to the country without writing out the cards. He wanted to hide the identity of his guests even from his butler! At each name a new shiver went down her back. Lord Trevanion, blatant millionaire Little Englander whom even the Radical Government of 1906 had joyfully allowed to purchase a peerage, so as to get him out of the House of Commons. There were Benskin and Pottinger and Atwater, members of a small Parliamentary gang who lost no opportunity of impeding the prosecution of the war. Lady Edna gasped. Finch of the Independent Labour Party. Was Edgar going mad? Samways, M.P. and Professor of History, pessimistic apostle of German efficiency and preacher of the hopelessness of the Allies’ struggle. Editors of pacifist organs—Featherstone, the most brilliant, whose cranky brain had made him the partisan of England’s enemies all through his journalistic career; Fordyce, snaky in his intellectual conceit; Riordan, dark and suspect. . . . There were others, politicians and publicists, self-proclaimed patriots and war-winners, but openly hostile to the Government. Altogether the most amazing crew that ever Minister of the Crown delighted to honour.
That the ultimate object of this gathering was the overthrowal of the Government there could be no doubt. How they were going to manage it was another matter. A rabble like that, thought Lady Edna scornfully, could not upset a nervous old lady. It looked rather like a preliminary meeting, held in secrecy, to start the network in which greater personalities should be enmeshed and involved. At any rate, on the part of Edgar Donnithorpe it was black treachery. The more she scanned the list the more did her soul sicken within her. It seemed intolerable that this pro-German orgy should take place in the house of which she was the mistress, while she remained here, fooled, with her little week-end party. She burned with vengeance against her husband.
It was half-past four. She stood in the drawing-room, which she had entered a few minutes before, leaving her guests on the lawn, in order to give some trivial order, and twisted the accusing paper in her hands, her lips thin, deep in thought. Presently into her eyes crept a smile of malice, and she went out of the French window and crossed the grass and joined her friends. There were only three, Colonel and Mrs. Barrington and Miss Delamere. A couple of men who were to have come down had providentially been detained in London.
“My dear people,” she said, smiling. “The war has spread to Moulsford. There’s nothing in the house for dinner. There’ll be heaps to-morrow, but none to-night.”
“I’ll go down to the river and angle for a roach,” said Colonel Barrington.
“Or else come with me to town and dine at the Carlton. I’ll take you all in the Rolls-Royce. It will be a lovely run back.”
“But, my dear, it’ll be joy-riding!” cried Mrs. Barrington.
“It will be indeed,” said Lady Edna.
“But suppose we’re held up?”
“I’ll say I have to see my husband on important political business.”
“And I’m a soldier on active service,” said Colonel Barrington, “and must be fed.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” asked Lady Edna.
Mind? Not they. What could be pleasanter on a perfect summer night? Besides, they had not tasted the guilty sweets of joy-riding for many months. It would be an adventure.
They started merrily about six o’clock. Lady Edna was in gay spirits, as though enjoying a schoolgirl’s freak. Through the perfumed leafiness of Streatley, Basildon, Pangbourne, they flew at the high speed of the great car, through Reading and Maidenhead and Slough, through Hounslow and Brentford. What was fifty miles? As they approached London Lady Edna said:
“Will you think me funny if I look in at Belgrave Square for a minute?”
She spoke a word to the chauffeur. A while later the car swerved to the right from the direct route to Piccadilly, and at eight o’clock pulled up at the Donnithorpes’ house in Belgrave Square. Lady Edna sprang from the car and tripped up the steps.
“I’ll let myself in with my latchkey,” she cried to the chauffeur who was about to ring the bell.
In the hall she threw off her wraps, gave an instinctive tidying touch to her hair before a mirror, and walked smiling on her errand. She waved aside the hired stranger men-servants busy with plates outside the dining-room door and boldly entered.
For a second or two no one observed her, then one or two guests caught sight of the slender figure stately in her evening gown, and half rose from their chairs. So the attention of all was called to her. Edgar Donnithorpe, sitting at the head of the table with his back to the door, turned and sprang to his feet with a gasp. To stay polite commotion she laughed and held up her hand.
“Please don’t anyone get up.”
Her husband, in white anger, said:
“I thought you were at Moulsford, Edna. Is anything the matter?”
“Only your dinner party,” she replied with derisive graciousness. “I happened to be dining in town, and it occurred to me to look in and see that your guests had everything they wanted—especially”—she scanned the faces deliberately—“as they are all new to the house.”
She bowed and withdrew. Her husband threw down his napkin and followed her. Neither spoke till they reached the hall, when they faced each other.
“I couldn’t make a scene before all those men,” he began.
“Of course you couldn’t. I knew that,” she interrupted.
“But I’ll make one now. By God I will! What do you mean by this outrageous behaviour?”
“To queer your game, my friend. I thought it would be amusing to show all your pretty conspirators that the gaff was blown.”
“I’m free to ask anyone to my own house. I’m master here, and the sooner you learn it the better. Are you aware that you’ve insulted the whole of my guests?”
“I flattered myself I behaved with peculiar courtesy,” said Lady Edna. “It’s you who are being rude to them. You had better go back. Are you coming down to Moulsford to-morrow?”
“No, I’m damned if I am!”
He flung away from her, then turned.
“By God! you shall pay for this.”
“Willingly. It’s worth a lot.”
He glowered at her impotently. What scene could he make other than one of vulgar recrimination? She had caught him in a domestic lie and a public act of treachery. For the moment his wife had all the weapons. So they stood there in the rosy light of the hall, deadly enemies; she triumphant, radiant in her scornful beauty; he small, thin, foxy and malignant. Presently, with a laugh she moved to the front door.
“I never thought you particularly clever, Edgar,” she said. “But in diplomatic crudity you could give lessons to the Wilhelmstrasse.”
With which Parthian shot she opened the door and rejoined her friends in the car.
“Forgive me, dear people,” she said, settling in her place. “I’ve been having the time of my life.”
She returned to town with her guests on Monday morning, but did not see her husband until late in the afternoon, when, on his return from the Ministry, he found her alone in her sitting-room.
“My dear Edna,” said he, in a conciliatory tone, “we owe each other a little mutual understanding. It’s so undignified to quarrel.”
She put the book she was reading pages downward on her knee.
“Most undignified,” she assented.
“You were rather under a misapprehension as to Saturday night.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, “for I was going to ask you a question.”
“What was that?”
“Have you sent in your resignation to the Prime Minister?”
“No, no. Of course not. That’s where your error in judgment, if I may be allowed to say so, comes in. I’m aware I couldn’t be seen publicly with that crowd. I had to manage a secret meeting. But it was in order to get them on our side. I thought a frank discussion with them might produce good results.”
“Has it?”
“I think so,” said he. “Oh yes, I think so. I’m speaking at Bristol to-night. You’ll see from my speech what my position is. I mean to define it unmistakably.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
She turned away, hating him and despising him more than ever. She passed a hideous day, overwhelmed with fears of treason and disaster.
They were justified the following morning when, looking through the newspapers brought to her bedside, she first glanced at and then pored over the leading article in the important daily edited by Fordyce, one of the guests at the amazing dinner-party. It was an attack on the Government’s conduct of the war, based, ostensibly, on the rumours whose inaccuracy Godfrey had begged her to contradict, but, to those with inner knowledge, on the real facts of the plan of the High Command. It was done with diabolical craft. Challenged as to the source of his information, Fordyce could point to the article and defy anyone to prove that he was possessed of any esoteric information at all. It was mere logical deduction from the general trend of the war policy of the Allied Military Authorities. And yet the shivering woman knew that the scheme had been divulged to Fordyce. How? In terror she sprang from her bed and opened the secret drawer of her desk. The sheet of notepaper was there just as she had left it. For a moment or two she stood, her hand on her breast, laughing in a silly way. Edgar was capable of many things; but not of rifling her private papers. He was capable of betraying the Government to Fordyce, but as a Minister, she reflected, he would possibly be aware of the scheme. As the Saturday evening host he had communicated it to Fordyce. Possibly to others. But no. That would have been madness. A man does not blacken himself to a dozen men at once. The others he had assembled so as to prepare them, in his underhand, insinuating way, for this master-stroke. . . . She closed the secret drawer with an impatient snap, and went about the room clenching her hands and uttering futile words.
“The villain! The infernal villain!”
No. Life with him henceforth was impossible. She would break away. . . . She had her house at Moulsford, her own income. As for her London life, she could take a suite at Claridge’s. In the indignant moment she almost forgot Godfrey. Loathing of Edgar overspread all other thoughts. Suddenly she remembered his Bristol speech, and ran through theTimesto find the report. Condensed, it contained nothing but the facile, uninspired claptrap that had characterized his public utterances since the beginning of his career. He was lying to the country which he had set out to betray. . . . Meanwhile—so her excited fancy told her—he was a peril running loose about the world. What could she do? Drive off then and there and denounce him to the Prime Minister? He would certainly ask her why she connected the leader inThe Morning Gazettewith the dinner-party given to her husband’s political opponents. Whence did she derive her knowledge that anything more than conjecture underlay the criticism in Fordyce’s paper? And she would not have a word to say. Once again she opened the drawer and took out Godfrey’s notes. Better destroy them. Her fingers met in the middle of the sheet prepared to tear. Then she paused. No. She thought of Sir Berkeley Prynne—a man of unstained honour in private and public life. She would go to him, this in her hand, tell the whole story and ask his advice. She thrust the paper back into the drawer, rang for her maid and dressed.
A busy woman’s correspondence kept her occupied all the morning. At half-past twelve came a telephone call from Godfrey:
“When and where can I see you? Something most important.”
“Oh, darling, what is it?” Her voice shook. “Where are you?”
“War Office. I can’t tell you anything over the phone. Besides, I haven’t a minute. I’ll be free in about half an hour.”
“Come round here. I shall be alone.”
“Right.”
He switched off, leaving her in throbbing suspense. Naturally he was coming to her aboutThe Morning Gazettearticle. To her excited fancy the whole War Office was in a state of blind ferment like an ant-heap bombed with a drop of kerosene. His tone, too, had been brusque, imperious, that of a man dealing with crisis. She wished she had gone at once in search of Sir Berkeley Prynne, instead of wasting her morning over correspondence. Still, when one is Chairman and Treasurer of practical concerns, their business has to be attended to. She went on with her work, her eyes on the little agate clock in front of her.
The rattle of a car. A moment of horrible waiting. Rolliter at the door.
“Captain Baltazar, my lady.”
They stood for a breathless second until the butler had closed the door behind him. Then he strode up and caught her in his arms. When she could collect herself she looked into dancing, triumphant eyes. A wave of relief swept through her. Suddenly she caught the echo, as it were, of Rolliter’s announcement.
“Captain——?”
“Yes. And more than that. I’m going to France.”
She felt herself grow pale. “My dear——”
“It’s a great stunt,” he said exultantly. “Northby has got an Army Corps. He wants me on his staff. I’m going out as the Brainy One, with a step in rank. Old man Widdowes talked to me as if I were an infant Haig. You could have knocked me down with a bunch of straw.”
“I’m so glad, dear. I’m so glad you’ve got what you want.”
“My God, yes!” said he, all aglow. “It’s the best thing a one-footed cripple has done up to now. The W.O. isn’t the real thing. Out there it is. As soon as I met you, I swore I’d make good. To be worthy of you, if such a thing is possible.”
“I’m a proud woman,” said Lady Edna. “But I don’t understand—General Northby—I never heard——”
“Of course you didn’t. Neither did I. It was all secrecy and suddenness.”
He explained roughly the circumstances.
“And when do you go out?”
“In three days’ time. I’m on leave till then.”
“Three days?” She looked at him aghast. “And then you go away indefinitely?”
She paused, drew a long breath or two, and sank limply into a chair. He looked at her rather wonderingly.
“What about me, Godfrey?”
In the gratification of his wildest boyish ambitions he had forgotten her woman’s point of view. He had expected her to share his elation. Remorseful, he bent quickly over her, reddening and stammering. He was a selfish brute. Did he really matter so much to her? If she would but say the word, he would go straight back and refuse the appointment.
“Don’t talk like a child,” she said. “If you did such a thing, we should despise each other for the rest of our lives. But three days—only three days! And I’m at my wits’ end with unhappiness.”
He sank lover-like by her side and took her hand. What was wrong?
“Have you seenThe Morning Gazette?”
He laughed. “Oh yes! There’s a hell of a hullabaloo! But the beauty of it is, that the whole thing went fut three or four days ago. I can’t tell you why. We’re working out quite a different plan. All the same, there’s loud cursing in the camp.” He looked at her with one of his swift man’s glances. “Of course, dearest—I’m bound to ask—you never breathed a word to anybody of what I told you?”
“Not a word.”
“And you destroyed that paper at once?”
“Of course.”
The lie was out before she realized it. Well, it didn’t matter. The thing was obsolete. She would tear it up. No. She wouldn’t. She still had to wage her war against her husband, with the aid of Sir Berkeley Prynne, and the document would be of great value.
“It was he who gave it away to the editor ofThe Morning Gazette,” she said, vindictively.
“But how the deuce could he have known?” asked Godfrey. “These things are dead secrets. They never go beyond the Army Council.”
“He did know, anyhow. I’ve not seen you since. I’ve a lot to tell you.”
She told him. He scrambled to his feet.
“My God! what a swine! You must leave him.”
“I’m going to. I’m going to hound him out of public life.”
“And then?”
“It’s for you to say.”
An hour later Godfrey ran down the steps of the house in Belgrave Square, his head in a whirl.
CHAPTER XXII
BALTAZARand Quong Ho were finishing lunch when Godfrey, flushed and excited, burst in with his news. An enthusiastically sympathetic parent failed to detect an unusual note, almost one of vainglory, in the boy’s speech and manner. He vaunted his success, proclaimed his entry on a brilliant career. He talked wildly. This to be a war to end war? A maudlin visionary’s dream. We might crush the Hun this time and have a sort of peace—a rotten politician’s peace, but the Hun would apply himself to the intensive cultivation of Hate, and in twenty years at the latest would have another go at Frightfulness. And that’s where the modern scientific soldier would come in. That was his career. He saw it all before him. And Baltazar, led away by the boy’s bright promise, clapped both his hands on his shoulders in a powerful grip, and cried:
“I’m proud of you! My God, I’m proud of you! You and I will make our name famous again, as it was in the days of Admiral de Coligny. We’ll do things. We’ll make this rocking old Europe hum.” He laughed, and fire leaped into his eyes. “It’s good to be alive these days!”
“It is. It’s glorious!” replied Godfrey.
Quong Ho, smiling, urbane, approached with outstretched hand.
“I hope I may be allowed to offer you my sincere congratulations,” said he. “Although I do not see eye to eye with you in your prognostication of a recrudescence of warfare after the pacification of this present upheaval, yet——”
But Godfrey slapped him on the back, interrupting his eloquence.
“That’s all right, you dear old image. When you get your Fellowship, I’ll say the same to you.”
He cut a hunk from a cake on the table and poured out a whisky and soda.
“My dear boy,” cried Baltazar, darting to the bell, “haven’t you lunched? You must have a proper meal.”
Godfrey restrained him. No. He hadn’t time. He must leave London that afternoon, for a day or two, and the next two or three hours would be a mad rush. A shade of disappointment passed over Baltazar’s face.
“I was hoping we might have a little dinner to-night to celebrate your appointment—just ourselves, with Marcelle—and Lady Edna, if she could come.”
A smile flickered round Godfrey’s lips.
“Dreadfully sorry, sir,” said he. “I’m not my own master. Anyhow, I know Lady Edna’s engaged. But my last night—yes, if you will. I’d love it.”
As soon as he had bolted food and drink, he rushed out. He must throw some things into a bag, said he. Presently he returned and took hurried leave. Baltazar gripped him by the hand and God-blessed him. At the door Godfrey nodded to Quong Ho.
“Just a word, old chap.”
Quong Ho followed him into the hall.
Baltazar went to the open dining-room window, and presently saw Godfrey clamber into his little two-seater. He waved a hand.
“Good luck!”
“See you on Friday, sir.”
The car drove off. Quong Ho returned to the dining-room.
“I think, sir,” said he, “that we have just parted from a happy young man.”
“If a man’s not happy when he gets his heart’s desire at twenty-one,” said Baltazar, “he had better apply for transference to another planet. I threw mine away,” he added in a tone of reminiscence. “Wilfully. I ought to have been Senior Wrangler. But I was a fool. I was always taking false steps. That’s the wonderful thing about Godfrey, Quong Ho, as doubtless you’ve noticed—he always takes the right steps. A marvellously well-balanced mind.” He smiled in a meditative way, thanking Heaven for sparing Godfrey those storms of temperament in which he had so often suffered shipwreck. A steady chap, disciplined, not to be turned out of his course. “Well, well,” said he, “now from refreshment to labour. Come upstairs and let us get on with the work.”
It was the long vacation, and Quong Ho, tireless and devoted, was replacing Baltazar’s secretary absent on a much-needed holiday. A busy afternoon lay before them. That evening the week’s number ofThe New Universemust go to press; the final proofs be passed, modifying footnotes added to bring statements and arguments up to the hour’s date, so swift were the kaleidoscopic variations in the confused world-condition; and Baltazar’s own editional summary, the dynamo of the powerful periodical, had to be finished.
They sat in Baltazar’s library, at the orderly piled writing-table, very much as they had sat, a year ago, in the scholarly room at Spendale Farm. But now no longer as master and humorously treated pupil. The years of training had borne excellent fruit, and Quong Ho proved himself to be an invaluable colleague; so much so that Baltazar, at times, cursed the University of Cambridge for depriving him, for the greater part of the year, of one of the most subtle brains in the kingdom. Quong Ho could point unerringly to a fallacy in an argument; he seemed to be infallible on questions of fact in war politics; and such a meticulously accurate proof-corrector had never been born. In such a light at least did hisrara avisappear to Baltazar. They worked in silence. Baltazar furiously inditing his article, Quong Ho, pen in hand, intent on the proofs. The open window admitted the London sounds of the warm summer afternoon. Presently Baltazar rose and cast off coat and waistcoat, and with a sigh of relief at the coolness of shirt-sleeves, sat down again.
“Why don’t you do the same?”
Quong Ho, impeccably attired in a dark suit and a high stiff collar, replied that he did not feel the heat.
“I believe it would hurt you not to be prim and precise,” said Baltazar. “I wonder what would happen if you really ever let yourself go?”
Quong Ho smiled blandly. “I have been taught, sir, that self-discipline is the foundation of all virtue.”
Baltazar laughed. “You’re young. Stick to it. I’ve had as much as is good for me at my time of life. I’m going to end my days, thank God, in delightful lack of restraint. I’m going to let myself go, my friend, over this new job, like a runaway horse. At last I’ve bullied them into giving me a free hand. It’s a change from a year ago, isn’t it?”
“I agree that the change has been most beneficent,” said Quong Ho.
“Yes, by Jove!” cried Baltazar. “Then we were just a couple of grubby bookworms doing nothing for ourselves or our fellow-creatures. Now—here you are dealing with thoughts that shake the world; and I—by Jove!—one of the leading men in England. I should like to see the bomb that would knock us out this time.”
He hitched up his shirt-cuffs and plunged again into his article. He had scarcely written a sentence, when the door opened and Marcelle appeared on the threshold. He pushed back his chair and rose, and advanced to her with both hands outstretched.
“Hello! Hello! What has blown you in at this time of day?”
She looked up at him as she took his hand, and he saw there was trouble in her eyes.
“I know I’m disturbing you, but I can’t help it,” she said quickly. “I must speak to you.”
“Perhaps you would like to speak with Mr. Baltazar in private,” said Quong Ho.
“Indeed I should, Mr. Ho. Please forgive me.”
Quong Ho bowed and retired. Baltazar drew a chair for her. “Now what’s wrong, my dear?”
“Godfrey.”
“My God!” he cried. “Not an accident? He’s not hurt?”
“Oh no, no! Nothing of that sort.” She smiled in wan reassurance.
Baltazar breathed relief. “I believe if anything happened to him now, it would break me,” he said.
“He came round to see me an hour or so ago.”
“After he left here. To tell you of his appointment. Aren’t you glad?”
“Of course I am. But I should be more glad if that had been all.”
“What’s up?” he asked, frowning. “Tell me straight.”
“Ought I to tell you?” she asked rather piteously. “It’s betraying his confidence shamefully. I know I’m to blame. I ought never to have given him my promise. But I can’t see him go and ruin everything without making some sacrifice.”
“My dearest Marcelle, you’re talking in riddles. For Heaven’s sake give me the word of the enigma.”
“It’s Lady Edna Donnithorpe.”
“Well. What about her?”
“I wish he had never set eyes on the woman,” she cried passionately.
“If he’s in love with her, he’ll have to get over it,” said Baltazar. “France will cure him. And, as I told you the other evening, the lady’s perfectly callous. So my dear, go along and don’t worry.”
“You don’t seem to understand me, John dear,” she said urgently. “The woman is in love with him. It has been going on for months. He has told me all about it. She gets up and goes out driving with him in the car at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Silly woman!” growled Baltazar.
“Silly or not, she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t care for him. Not Lady Edna Donnithorpe. They meet whenever they can. He comes to me and pours out everything. I ought to have told you. But I couldn’t break my word. They’re lovers——”
“Lovers? What do you mean?” he asked, bending his heavy brows.
“Not yet. Not in that sense, I’m sure. But they soon will be.” She looked at him anxiously. “I know I’m going to forfeit Godfrey’s affection, and perhaps your respect—but I can’t do otherwise.” She paused, then burst out desperately: “She’s going to run away with him this afternoon.”
“The devil she is!” cried Baltazar. He strode about the room and threw up his hands. “Oh, the damned young fool!” He wheeled round on Marcelle. “Why on earth didn’t you stop it?”
She pleaded helplessness. How could she? Naturally she had used every argument, moral and worldly. As it was, he had dashed off in a fume, calling her unsympathetic and narrow-minded, regretting that he had ever given her his confidence. He had promised long ago to let her know everything. Now that he had kept his word she turned against him. She had been powerless.
“He’s old enough to look after his own morals,” said Baltazar, “and I’m not the silly hypocrite to hold up my hands in horror. But to go and run away with the most notorious society woman in London and play the devil with his career is another matter. Oh, the damned young fool!—That rat Edgar Donnithorpe will get on to it at once. He’s just the man to stick at nothing.—A filthy divorce case.—The boy’ll have to resign, if he doesn’t get chucked—then marry the woman five years older than himself. Where’s the happiness going to be?”
He resumed his striding about the room, in his impetuous way, and Marcelle followed him timidly with her eyes. “Oh, damnation!” said he. He had just been lecturing Quong Ho on Godfrey’s steadiness and balance. Why, he himself had never done such a scatter-brained thing.
“Where are the precious pair going?”
A remote week-end cottage, she said, belonging to a complaisant friend of Lady Edna’s. Five miles from station, post office or shop. A lonely Eden in the wilderness. Whether it was north, east, south or west of London she did not know. An old woman in charge would look after them.
“I suppose they’re well on their way by now,” said he.
“I don’t know. Possibly not. He said he had to rush about town to order his kit. Besides,” she added hopelessly, “what does it matter when they start?”
Baltazar cursed in futile freedom.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t give for it not to have happened,” he exclaimed. “I suppose I was a fool. You warned me. And it was I who, like an ass, encouraged them. I could kick myself!”
“It’s like you, John, dear, not to blame me,” she said humbly.
“Of course I don’t blame you. You thought it boyish folly. . . . What’s the good of talking about it?”
They did talk, however, in a helpless way.
“They had no intention of doing anything desperate,” she said, “until this morning. If he had remained in London, they might have gone on indefinitely. The prospect of endless months in France set the whole thing ablaze. . . . When I put the moral side before him, he retorted with atu quoque.”
“What did he mean?”
“That I was ready, at his age, to run away with a married man.”
“Were you?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” she replied with a weary little smile.
“That was an entirely different affair.”
“Not from the moral point of view.”
“Oh, damn morals,” said he.
She laughed in spite of her distress. It was so characteristic of the man. If anything got in his way, he just damned it, and regarded it as non-existent.
He moved restlessly about; then, catching sight of his discarded coat and waistcoat, plunged savagely into them, as though he were going in pursuit of the erring pair.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, abandoning half-way the furious buttoning of his waistcoat. “That’s the devil of it, there’s nothing to be done.”
At that moment Quong Ho discreetly appeared at the door.
“Will you have particular need of my services for the next hour?”
“Yes, of course I shall. Look there!” Baltazar flung a hand towards the paper-strewn table. “We go to press this evening.”
Quong Ho consulted his watch. “I am sorry then, for I don’t know how I shall proceed. I promised Captain Godfrey to take his bag to the railway station at five o’clock.”
Smiles wreathed Baltazar’s face of annoyance, and he exchanged a quick glance with Marcelle. “What railway station?”
“Waterloo.”
“I thought he had taken his kit with him in the car.”
“He explained, sir, when he called me into the hall before he left, that he couldn’t garage the car at Waterloo station.”
“I see,” said Baltazar.
“Therefore I am to seek it in his bedroom and convey it by taxi to Waterloo.”
Baltazar nodded approvingly, and the humorous light appeared in his eyes which Quong Ho could never interpret.
“It’s very lucky you’ve told me, Quong Ho. I want particularly to say a word or two to Godfrey before he leaves London. I’ll take his bag. You get on with the work. Perhaps you’ll send somebody out for a taxi.”
“I’ll fetch one myself,” said Quong Ho, and bowing as usual politely to Marcelle, left the room.
Baltazar clutched her arms with both hands and lifted her from her seat and, laughing exultantly, kissed her a hearty, unintelligible kiss—the first for twenty years—leaving her utterly bewildered.
“The Lord has delivered them into my hands!” he cried. “The stars in their courses fight for the House of Baltazar.”
“What in the world are you going to do?” she asked.
“Play hell,” said he.
Ten minutes afterwards Baltazar was speeding eastwards, grimly smiling. By skilful contrivance he had despatched the helpful Quong Ho upstairs to Marcelle at the last moment, and had pitched Godfrey’s kit into the dining-room and had driven off without it. If the infatuated youth would not listen to reason or the lady to the plainest of speech, he should go off to his love in a cottage unromantically destitute of toothbrush and pyjamas. Ridicule kills. The boy would hate him for the moment; but would assuredly live to bless him. Once in France, he would have no time for folly. The imperious man’s thoughts flew fast. The lady herself should cure the boy. He would see to that. If he couldn’t break an Edna Donnithorpe, bring her to heel, he was not John Baltazar. In his jealousy for the boy’s honourable career he swept the woman’s possible emotions into the limbo of inconsiderable things. What kind of a woman was she, anyhow, to have married a rat like Donnithorpe? He read her in rough intolerance. Just a freak of thwarted sex. That was it. If nothing was discovered, she would return to her normal life and, sizing up the episode in her cold intellectual way, would discover that the game was not worth the candles supplied by the old woman in the remote cottage, and would send Godfrey packing to any kind of Byronic despair. If the intrigue came out and there was a divorce and subsequent marriage, there would be the devil to pay.
The taxi clattered through the gloomy archway approaches at Waterloo and drew up at the end of the long line of cabs at the entrance to the station. The summer exodus from London was just beginning, and the outside platform was a-bustle with porters, trucks, passengers and luggage. Baltazar, after paying his fare, lingered for a moment at the great door of the Booking Hall, and then entered and passed through it into the hurrying station. A queue stood at the suburban ticket office. He scanned it, but no Godfrey. He walked the length of the platform entrances, through the crowds of passengers and their dumps of luggage and knots of soldiers, some about to entrain, sitting on the ground with their packs around them, others, newly arrived on leave: Australians with their soft hats, wiry Cockneys still encased in the clay of the trenches, officers of all grades and of all arms. Presently at the central bookstall, turning away, his arms full of periodicals, Godfrey came into view. Baltazar approached smiling. His son’s face darkened. “I didn’t expect to see you here, sir.”
“If you want to study the ways of a country, there’s nothing like its great railway stations. They’re a favourite haunt of mine.”
“It’s rather stuffy under this glass roof, don’t you think?” said Godfrey.
“I don’t mind it, my boy,” replied Baltazar cheerfully. “But it’s lucky I hit upon Waterloo. I shall be able to see you off. By the way, where are you going?”
“Somewhere Southampton way, sir,” said Godfrey stiffly.
“Lot of light literature,” remarked Baltazar, motioning to the periodicals.
“Quite a debauch,” said Godfrey.
Baltazar’s quick eyes picked out the board by the Southampton platform.
“Your train, I see, goes at 5.45. You’re a bit early.”
“Yes, sir. It’s such a long time till the train starts that I couldn’t think of asking you to wait.”
“That doesn’t matter a bit, my dear boy. Time is no object.”
“I’m very sorry to be rude, sir—but as a matter of fact I have an appointment,” said Godfrey desperately. “An important appointment.”
“Oh!” said Baltazar.
“And, if you don’t mind, I must wait outside the station. Quong Ho is bringing my suit-case. I shouldn’t like to miss him.”
He made a step forward, but an ironic glitter in his father’s searching eyes arrested the movement.
“Quong Ho isn’t bringing your suit-case. I’ve come instead.”
Godfrey drew himself up haughtily. “I don’t understand. Have you been kind enough to bring my luggage?”
“No,” replied Baltazar calmly. “It’s on the floor of the dining-room.”
“Your interference with my arrangements, sir, is unwarrantable,” said the boy, pale with anger.
“Possibly. Unless we adopt the Jesuitical principle of the end justifying the means.”
“And what is the end, might I ask?”
“To prevent you from making an infernal fool of yourself.”
The young man regarded him inimically. Baltazar felt a throb of pride in his attitude. A lad of spirit.
“I suppose Marcelle came straight to you with my confidence. In giving it to her I made a fool of myself, I admit. As for what I propose to do, I fail to see that it’s any concern of yours.”
Baltazar’s heart yearned over the boy. He said in a softened tone: “It is ruin to your career and a mess up of your whole life. And your future means so much to me that I’d sacrifice anything—honour, decency, even your affection which I thought I had gained—to see you off at any rate to France with a clean sheet.”
But Godfrey in cold wrath did not heed the pleading note. He had been betrayed and tricked. Only his soldier’s training kept him outwardly calm. To the casual glances of the preoccupied crowd passing by them nothing in the demeanour of either man gave occasion for special interest. They stood, too, in a little islet of space apart from the general stream of traffic. Baltazar went on with his parable. He had not the heart to hint his projected gibe at the unromantic lack of tooth-brushes. Things ran too deep.
“I admit none of your arguments,” said Godfrey at last. “Besides, I am my own master. I owe you a debt for many kindnesses; your affection—I don’t undervalue it. But there things end. After all, we met a year ago as strangers. I’ve run my life as I chose, and I mean to run it as I choose. I expect Lady Edna to arrive at any minute. In common delicacy I must ask you to let me go my own ways.”
“All right, go,” said Baltazar. “But I’ll go with you.”
Godfrey’s eyes flamed.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“My dear fellow,” said Baltazar, “I don’t think there’s a damned thing in the world that I wouldn’t dare. Haven’t you found that out?”
So they stood there for a while longer, talking in their islet beneath the glass roof of the busy station, and the boy’s heart was filled with anger and wild hatred of the thick-shouldered, smiling man, with the powerful face and infernal dancing eyes.
Then suddenly Baltazar strode away at a great pace, and Godfrey, turning, saw that he was cutting off Lady Edna, who had entered, preceded by a porter wheeling her luggage. Before he had time to overtake him, Baltazar was already taking off his hat to an amazed lady and had imperiously checked the porter.
“Lady Edna,” said he, “I’m here to prevent Godfrey and yourself from committing the insanity of your lives.”
She said, mistress of herself, “I don’t understand you, Mr. Baltazar. You seem to be taking an outrageous liberty. I am going to stay at the house of a friend who has asked Godfrey to be my fellow-guest.”
Before Baltazar could reply, Godfrey came hurrying up with his slight limp and plunged into angry explanations. She looked at the clock.
“If you telephone home now,” she said coolly, “a servant will have ample time to bring your things.”
“By God, yes!” said Godfrey, angrily depositing the sheaf of periodicals on her luggage.
“Have you got the tickets?”
“Of course.”
He marched away across the station.
“Porter——” said Lady Edna.
But no porter was there, for, unperceived by either of the lovers, Baltazar had slipped five shillings into the man’s hand and told him to come back later.
“There’s heaps of time,” said Baltazar. “Now, my dearest lady, what is the good of make-believe? Cards on the table. You’re going to make a bolt with Godfrey and throw your cap over the windmills. There’s a nice little cottage in a wood—in the depths of the New Forest, I presume, lent you by a friend who is represented by one solitary old woman.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, her soft eyes hardening in their characteristic way. “Godfrey has surely not been such a——“—she paused for a word—“well—such an imbecile as to tell you?”
“Godfrey has told me nothing. You may be certain of that. His fury against me is sufficiently obvious.”
“Then how do you know?”
“That’s my affair,” smiled Baltazar. “Lady Edna,” said he, “don’t you think that my coming the heavy father like this puts you into rather an absurd position?”
She replied, white-lipped: “I’ll never forgive you till I’m dead!”
“I’ve naturally counted on the consequences of your resentment,” said Baltazar.
“What do you propose to do?”
“If you persist, to thrust upon you the displeasure of my company, without luggage—just like Godfrey.”
“You——” she began indignantly. And then suddenly: “Oh, my God!” and clutched him by the arm.
He followed her stare across the station, and there, in the archway of the Booking Hall, peering from right to left in his rat-like way, stood Edgar Donnithorpe.