if i 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 took the cambridge university calendar from 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.
