godfrey half rose from his chair, more than puzzled by the mutual recognition.
“you said you didn’t know mr. burden,” he cried.
but neither heeded him. baltazar made a stride forward and with one hand gripped marcelle by the arm and with the other motioned in his imperious way to the open door. still looking at him in wonderment, she allowed him to lead her quickly to the terrace at the head of the steps. godfrey’s astonished gaze followed them till they disappeared. outside, baltazar released her.
“marcelle! what in thunder are you doing here?”
she was too greatly overwhelmed to reply. she could only gasp a few broken and foolish words.
“you? john baltazar? alive?”
“never been less dead. but you! you of all people. my god! although i lost you, i could never lose your face. it has been with me all the time. and there it is, the same as ever. but what are you doing here?”
she made a vague gesture over her costume.
“i’m a professional nurse. sister-in-charge. i’ve been nursing all my life.”
“not when i knew you,” said baltazar.
“my life began after that.”
“married?”
the colour came back into her white cheeks. “no,” she said.
“neither am i.”
he put both hands on her shrinking shoulders and bent on her eyes which she could not meet.
“you at last, after all these years! just the same. just as beautiful. much more.”
“this is rather public,” she managed to say, releasing herself. “there are lots of patients——”
he laughed and, indicating the parapet, invited her to sit.
“you must forgive me,” he said, seating himself by her side. “the sight of you blotted out the world. don’t be frightened. i’m quite tame now. look at me.”
she obeyed him as she had done in her early girlhood, dominated for the moment by his tone.
“how do you think i’m looking? battered by time? a crock to be wrapped up in flannel and set in the chimney-corner to wheeze the rest of his life away?”
“you look very little older,” she said with a wan smile. “and you haven’t a grey hair in your head.”
“that’s good. i’m as young as ever i was. i can sweep away twenty years and begin where i left off.”
“you’re more fortunate than i am,” said marcelle.
“rubbish!” said baltazar.
she glanced at him wistfully and then out over the trees.
“nursing isn’t the road to perpetual youth,” she said. then lest he should catch up her words, she continued swiftly: “but you must tell me where you have been, how you’ve come back to life. you disappeared utterly. you never wrote. if we all thought you dead, was it our fault? when godfrey showed me your letter, i never dreamed who james burden might be.”
“godfrey?” baltazar pounced on the name. “do you call him godfrey? then you must be old friends. hence the miracle of finding you together. have you been mothering him all his life?”
she shook her head. “how you jump at conclusions! no. i met him for the first time when i came here—a month ago.”
“so it’s just chance, fate, destiny, the three of us meeting like this? the hand of god? . . . wait, though. i can’t see quite clearly. you learned he was my son?”
she smiled again:
“do you think we call all young officers here by their christian names?”
“does he know that you knew me?”
“if he didn’t,” she replied, “he wouldn’t have consulted me about mr. burden’s letter. i wish i had been mothering him all his life,” she added after a pause; “but i’ve been doing my best for the last month. i can’t help loving him.”
“what does he know about you and me?”
“i’ve told him everything,” said marcelle.
baltazar started to his feet.
“then when he saw us gaping at each other just now, he must have guessed, or he can’t have any baltazar brains in his head.” he moved away a pace; then turned on her. “you gave me a good character?”
her head was bowed. she did not see the rare laughter in his eyes, but took his question seriously.
“can you doubt it?” she beckoned him nearer, and said in a low voice: “i may have been wrong, but i have given him to understand that it was entirely on my account—you know what i mean——”
“what other reason, in the name of god could i have had?” he exclaimed with a large gesture.
if there had lingered a doubt in her mind, the note of sincerity in the man’s cry would have driven it away for ever. it awoke a harmonic chord of gladness in her heart and her whole being vibrated. although john baltazar’s subsequent career was as yet dark and mysterious, her faith, at least, was justified. she said without looking at him:
“you’ll find that i’ve been loyal.”
he strode towards her and, disregarding the perils of publicity, again took her by the shoulders.
“what kind of a cynical beast do you think i’ve turned into?”
he swept away, leaving her physically conscious of the impress of his fingers in her flesh and her brain reeling.
baltazar marched into the great hall to godfrey, still sitting in his arm-chair, his maimed leg, as usual, supported on the outstretched crutch.
“no, don’t get up.”
he swung the chair which he had previously occupied dose to godfrey’s and sat down.
“by this time you must have guessed who i am,” he said in his direct fashion.
“i suppose you’re my father,” said the young man.
“i am,” replied baltazar. “my extraordinary meeting with miss baring gave me away. didn’t it?”
“i suppose it did. perhaps i ought to have suspected something when you mentioned china. but i didn’t.”
“the assumed name was the one i was known by for eighteen years—ever since i left england. i thought i’d take it up again for the sake of a reconnaissance, like the rich old uncle in the play, to see what kind of a man you were and how you looked upon your unknown father. hence the questions you may have thought impertinent.”
“i quite see,” said godfrey, pulling at his short-cropped moustache.
baltazar threw himself back in his chair. “well, there it is. we’re father and son. miss baring has told you, from her point of view, why i threw over everything and disappeared. her conjecture is absolutely correct. i must, however, say one thing to you, once and for all. i hadn’t the remotest idea that you were coming into the world. if i had, i should have remained and done my duty. i only heard of your existence a week ago—at cambridge.”
“yes?” said godfrey.
“let us come straight to the point then. you either believe me or disbelieve me. if you don’t believe me, nothing i can ever say or do will make you. if you do believe me, we can go ahead. it’s the vital point in our future relations. speak out straight. which is it?”
godfrey looked for a few seconds into the luminous grey eyes—his own were somewhat hard—and then he said very deliberately:
“i certainly believe you. my conversations with sister baring made me take that particular point for granted.”
baltazar drew a long breath.
“that’s all right, then. i think i also ought to assure you that beyond giving cambridge a nine days’ wonder, i have done nothing to discredit the name of baltazar. in china i had a position which no european to my knowledge has attained since marco polo. i left on account of the warring between two ideals—the old china and the new. i belonged to the old. i found i couldn’t find orientation unless i came west for it. i returned to england two years ago.”
“and you only went up to cambridge last week?”
“precisely. the intervening time i spent in a remarkable manner, which i’ll tell you about on another occasion. in the meanwhile we’re face to face with the overwhelming fact that i’ve discovered an unsuspected son, and you a legendary father. i’m fairly well off. so, i presume, are you. if you’re not, my means are yours. it’s well to clear the air, from the very beginning of any possible sordid bogies.”
“i never dreamed of such a thing,” said godfrey.
“all right. that’s settled. we come now to the main point. we’re father and son. what are we going to do about it?”
“it’s a peculiar situation, sir,” said godfrey.
baltazar, who in the impatient interval between sheepshanks’s staggering news and the present interview, had pictured many a dénouement of the inevitable drama, had never pictured one so cold and unemotional as this. the chinese filial ideal he knew to be non-existent in the west; but in his uncompromising way he had imagined extremes. either scornful enmity and repudiation, or a gush of human sentiment. a scene in a silly old french melodrama, a memory of boyhood, had haunted him. “mon fils!”—“mon père!” and the twain had thrown themselves into each other’s arms. but neither of these dramatic situations had arisen. the situation, indeed, was characterized by the cool and thoughtful young man merely as “peculiar.” well, it was an intelligent view. the boy had heard the arguments of the advocates of the devil and the advocates of the angels, and he had formed a sound and favourable judgment. on the angels’ advocacy he had never reckoned. so much was there to the good. he was not condemned. on the other hand, he saw no signs of filial emotion. he himself, with his expansive temperament, would have rejoiced at being able to cry “mon fils!” and clasp to his breast this son of his loins, this splendid continuance of his blood and his brain. but in the calm, collected young soldier he could discover no germ of reciprocated sentiment. he felt disappointed, almost rebuffed. all the pent-up emotion of the lonely man was ready to burst the lock-gates; it had to surge back on itself.
after a long silence, he said: “yes, you’re right. it is a peculiar situation. perhaps circumstances make me take it more—what shall we say—more emotionally than you. after all, i’m a perfect stranger. i’ve never done a hand’s turn for you. i may be a complication in your life—to put it brutally—a damned nuisance. i don’t want to be one, i assure you.”
“of course not,” godfrey answered, with wrinkled forehead. “i quite understand. you must forgive me, sir, if i don’t say much; but you’ll agree that this revelation, or whatever we like to call it, is a bit sudden. if your mind, as you said just now, is in process of adjustment, what do you think mine must be?”
“all right,” said baltazar. “let us leave it at that for the present.”
he rose and marched to the door in search of marcelle. but she had disappeared from the terrace and was nowhere visible to his eye scanning the garden. when he returned to the hall, godfrey was standing.
“i suppose i must give the two of you time to recover from the shock of me. i can quite understand that bouncing in from the dead like this is disconcerting to one’s friends.” he looked at his watch. “i must be catching my train. i shall see you soon again, i hope.”
“i was wondering, sir, whether you would lunch with me in town to-morrow,” said godfrey.
“can you travel about like that?”
“oh, lord! yes. i’m going up to london in any case.”
“then we’ll fix it. only you’ll lunch with me. it seems more fitting. when? where? i have no club. my membership of the athen?um lapsed twenty years ago. and, even if it hadn’t, the megatherium—thackeray’s name for it—is no good for hospitable purposes. shall we say the savoy at one-thirty?”
“that will suit me admirably,” said the young man.
“good-bye.”
they shook hands. godfrey accompanied him to the terrace.
“have you a taxi or cab waiting?”
“i came on the feet which i unworthily possess,” replied baltazar with a smile. “tell sister baring i looked for her and she was gone.”
“i’ll send an orderly to find her, if you like.”
baltazar hesitated for a moment. a quick tenderness checked impetuous impulse.
“no, no!” he answered with a smile. “i’ve worried her sufficiently for to-day. she’ll hear from me soon enough.”
they shook hands again and he ran down the marble stairs, and, waving a farewell, strode away with the elastic tread of youth. after a while godfrey hobbled down, and, passing by the tennis courts and through the japanese garden, arrived at the beech-wood, scene of their first and so many subsequent intimate talks, where he felt sure he should find marcelle. he saw her, before she realized his approach, sitting on a bench; staring in front of her, her hands listless by her side. on the palm of one of them lay a crumpled ball of a handkerchief. she had been crying. as soon as she heard him she started and, looking round, greeted him with a smile.
“i knew i’d get you here,” he said, sitting down by her side. “the long-lost parent has gone. he sent you a message.”
he gave its substance. she nodded.
“he’s quite right. i need a little time to get used to it.”
godfrey said: “shall i clear out and leave you alone? do tell me.”
“no, no!” she said quickly. “i want you. i was just feeling dreadfully alone.”
“defenceless?”
“what makes you say that?” she asked, alarm in her eyes. for she had been frightened, absurdly frightened, by the swift, sudden force that had impinged on her well-ordered way of life. it had set her wits wandering, her nerves jangling, her emotions dancing a grotesque and unintelligible saraband. her shoulders still felt the clutch of irresistible fingers. she was sure they would bear black and blue marks for days. the virginal in her shrank from the possible contemplation of them in her mirror. defenceless was the very word. what uncanny insight had suggested it to godfrey?
in reply, he shrugged his shoulders. then he said:
“that’s how i feel, anyway. and if you want me, i want you. that’s why i’ve ferreted you out. it strikes me we’re more or less in the same boat. what are we going to do?”
“i don’t know,” she replied absently.
the beech foliage was just beginning to turn faint golden. here and there a leaf fell. a brown squirrel scampering up a branch of a tree close in front of them, suddenly halted and watched them, as though wondering why the two humans sat so still and depressed on that mellow autumn afternoon. the sun was slanting warmly through the leaves. the beech-mast, young and tender, provided infinity of food beyond the dreams of gluttony. never an enemy menaced the exquisite demesne. god was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. what in the name of nature was there to worry these two humans? well, it was no business of his, and he had enough business of his own to attend to. he glanced aside, and his quick eyes spotting a field-mouse at the base of a neighbouring tree, he darted off, a streak of brown lightning, in pursuit.
presently godfrey spoke, digging in front of him with his rubber-shod crutch.
“to be interested in a legendary sort of father is one thing. there’s imagination and romance and atmosphere about it. but it’s another thing to have this same father burst on one in flesh and blood—and such a lot of flesh and blood! now a venerable, white-haired old sinner, with a pathetic, intellectual face, might appeal to one’s sentiment. but this new father of mine doesn’t. i may be unnatural, marcelle, but he doesn’t. mind you, i’ve no grouch against him. not a bit. i’m convinced he thought he was doing right to everybody. when he learned that i existed, he was struck all of a heap. he lost no time in tracking me down. he’s actuated by the best motives. . . . all the same, i can’t rise to it. the more he tried to make an appeal, the more antagonistic i grew. it’s beyond explanation.”
“you’ll learn to love him,” said marcelle loyally, yet without conviction. “he’s a splendid man.”
“he’ll want to run me. now i’ve run myself all my life. so i’ll not stand for it. he’ll want to run you too. you know it, marcelle. that’s why you’ve been sitting here feeling lonely and defenceless.”
she laughed ruefully. “i suppose it is.”
“the way he clawed hold of you and dragged you out——”
“that’s the way he clawed hold of himself and dragged himself out, remember,” replied marcelle.
“a queer devil!” said godfrey. “do you know what he suggests to me? a disconnected dynamo.” he laughed. “he ought to be hitched on to the war. he’d buck it up.”
