cambridge put baltazar on the track of old acquaintances, so that on his return to london he found himself in contact with people of his own standing who could explain to him the contemporary attitude of mind. there was burtingshaw, k.c., for instance, a member of the inventions committee, and weatherley, a professor of modern history, whom the war had developed into an indefatigable publicist, and jackman, a curious blend of classical scholar and man of business, who had allowed his family mustard-making firm to look after itself while he spent laborious days at the admiralty in uncomfortable naval uniform. all welcomed the elderly prodigal, though in return for fatted calves—these were happy days before rationing—they demanded an account of his adventures. a man can’t make a sensational disappearance from a small social unit and turn up twenty years afterwards, without encountering natural human curiosity. this, over and over again, he had to satisfy, until he began to regard his absurd history with loathing, especially that of the past two years. he went through it, however, grimly, as part of the penalty he must pay for folly. after his first meeting with them at offices and clubs, he received invitations to dinner at their respective homes.
the night before he went to godalming he dined with the jackmans. the family consisted of mrs. jackman, a homely woman, who spent most of her time at a y.m.c.a. canteen on the south side of the river, two young girls and a boy home on leave from france. a few guests had been invited to meet john baltazar; a colonel of artillery on sick leave, a notoriously question-asking conservative member of parliament, a judge, the wives of the two last, and a woman just back from eighteen months’ red cross work on the russian front. a typical war gathering.
as soon as chance enabled him to speak to his host after his entrance into this galaxy of civilization, he said:
“man alive! you shouldn’t have asked all these people. i’ve not been in a european drawing-room for twenty years. my instinct is to wander about, growling, like a bear.”
jackman, a florid, good-natured, clean-shaven man, laughed.
“it’s for your good. the sooner you get into the ways of the world the better.”
“but what the devil shall i talk about?”
“let the other people talk. you listen. i thought that was what you wanted.”
baltazar sat between mrs. jackman and the lady from russia. at first he felt somewhat embarrassed, even dazed. he had not conversed with intelligent women since his flight from england. even in his brave university days, his scholarly habits had precluded him from mingling much in the general society of cambridge. now the broad feminine outlook somewhat mystified him. the vital question which once was referred to in bated breath as the social evil, cropped up, he knew not how. his two neighbours talked across him with a calm frankness that rendered him speechless. he looked around the table, apprehensive lest the two young girls might be overhearing the conversation. their mother did not seem to care in the least. she quoted statistics in a loud, clear voice. the red cross lady sketched conditions in russia. the question was suddenly put to him: what about china? the fifty-year-old child of a forgotten day caught at the opening and talked hurriedly. he had lived in the heart of old china, mainly an agricultural population, a more or less moral, ancestor-fearing and tradition-bound welter of humanity. there was much to be said for old china, in spite of the absence of elementary ideas of sanitation and the ignorance of the new-fangled western science of eugenics. even now girl children’s feet were being bound. the ladies followed his desperate red herring and began a less alarming argument on infant welfare. when pressed for his opinion, he said:
“i don’t think i’ve ever seen a baby at close quarters. i don’t remember ever having touched one. i have it on hearsay that the proper thing to do is to prod a baby’s cheek with the tip of your finger, which you wipe surreptitiously on your trousers. but i haven’t done it. i know nothing at all about ’em. in fact, your proposition that babies are an important part of the body politic has never occurred to me. in prolific china babies spring up like weeds, unregarded. some of them die, some of them live. and the living are for the most part weeds too. one gets used there to an almost animal conception of the phenomena of life and death. i’m learning all sorts of things, getting all sorts of new points of view. just see if i’m right. modern europe isn’t china. even before the war, the birth-rate was a matter of anxiety. now europe, de-populated of her male youth, is in a desperate quandary. every baby is a priceless asset to the race. lord!” said he, pushing spoon and fork abruptly together on his plate, “i never thought of it. i must appear to you like a fellow on a great cunarder, proclaiming his discovery of america. but the discovery is there all the same. the idea never entered my head till this minute. everybody’s got to produce babies as fast as they can, and everybody’s sacred duty is to see that they live and thrive and become potential parents of more healthy babies. that’s the proposition, isn’t it?”
comfortable mrs. jackman smilingly agreed. without doubt that was the proposition. the flower of the world cut off by the war. . . . oh! it staggered imagination to speculate on the number of bright young lives sacrificed! there was so-and-so, and somebody else’s son. too tragic! the talk turned at once to the terrible intimacy of the war. baltazar listened and learned many things.
when the men were left alone, baltazar learned more things about the war; the blunders, the half-heartednesses, the mysterious influences that petrified action. the soldier spoke of the fierce fight of a devoted little set of enthusiasts for an adequate supply of machine guns; the judge of hidden german ramifications against which he, as a mere administrator of written law, was powerless; the conservative member of parliament—his revelations made every particular hair of baltazar’s brown thatch stand on end. jackman talked of labour troubles, mentioned a recent case in which thousands of men making essential munitions of war had downed tools because a drunken pacifist, a workman, had been dismissed from a factory. baltazar, only a month awakened to the fact of war, held the same bewildered view of strikes as had nearly driven him forth at midnight from pillivant’s house. he burst out:
“why don’t they take the traitors and blow them from the cannon’s mouth?”
the member of parliament laughed aloud:
“there’s nothing like a fresh mind on things.”
“well, why don’t they?”
“don’t you think,” said the judge, “that such a course might tend to dishearten the working classes?”
“it wouldn’t dishearten the army,” declared the literal-minded colonel. “the men would be all for it. if any fellows tried to go on strike in the army they’d be shot on sight.”
he was the only one of the company who advocated violent measures. the others seemed to regard strikes as phenomena of nature impeding the war like artillery-arresting mud, or as inevitable accidents like explosions in powder factories. baltazar went away full of undigested knowledge.
on his return from godalming he dined with weatherley, a bachelor, and a small gathering of fellow publicists. here the conversation ran on more intellectual lines. the war was considered from the international standpoint, discussions turned on the subject-races of austria, the inner history of the roumanian campaign, the sinister situation in greece, the failure of allied diplomacy all through eastern europe. baltazar listened eagerly to the good keen talk, and went back to his hotel braced and exhilarated. even if they had all been talking through their hats, it would not matter. premises granted, the logic of it all had been faultless, an intellectual joy. and they had not been talking through their hats. they were men who knew, men who had access to vital information apparently despised by the foreign office.
he had fallen into a universe which seemed to be more and more inextricably jumbled as his outlook widened. but how splendidly interesting! take just the little fraction of it given up to the czecho-slovacs and the jugo-slavs . . . serbs, croats, slovenes. . . . he had hitherto paid as little attention to them as to lepidoptera and coleoptera, and other families of bugs with latin names, to whose history and habits, not being an entomologist, he was perfectly indifferent. he had never thought of them as possible factors in the future of europe. now that he was in touch with his kind again, london ceased to be a city of dreadful night. in his enthusiastic eyes it had almost become a ville lumière.
a week had wrought miraculous changes—that day the most miraculous of all. at the back of his delight, through the evening’s rare entertainment ran a thrill of amazed happiness. a week ago he had floundered here derelict, lost, unwanted, a sick chinaman his only link with humanity. now he was safe on sunny seas, bound once more to life by friends, by a new-found son, in itself an adamantine tie, and, wonder of wonders, by the woman for whose sake he had revolutionized his existence and whose fragrant girlish memory had sanctified his after years.
he might have married well in china. polygamy being recognized, the fact of his having a wife alive in england would not have rendered such a marriage illegal according to chinese law. he had many opportunities, for he held a position there unique for a european; and a delicately nurtured chinese lady can be an exquisite thing in womanhood, more than alluring to a lonely, full-blooded man. but ever between him and a not dishonourable temptation had floated the flower-shape of the english girl with her pink and white face and her light brown hair and her hazel eyes, through which shone her english wit and her english understanding and her english love and her english soul. not that he had eaten out his heart for twenty years for marcelle. he had wiped her as a disturbing element clean out of his existence. his loyalty had been passive rather than active. he had made no attempt to throw open gates and go in search of her. but at hostile approach the gates had been uncompromisingly shut.
the wonder of wonders had happened. in one respect, the wonder of all possible wonders had happened.
there had been no disillusion.
in the gap of twenty years between girl and woman, what devastating life forces might have been at work, wiping bloom from cheek, dulling gleam from eyes, distorting lips, smiting haggard lines on face, hardening or unshapening sweet and beloved contours; hardening, too, the mind, drying up the heart, arresting the development of the soul? as he had never thought to see her in this world again, he had not speculated on such a natural life-change. it was only now, when he had met her in the gracious fullness of her woman’s beauty, that he shivered at the thought of that which might have been and exulted in the knowledge of that which was. he remembered a woman, a friend of his wife, though much older, a lovely dream of a woman of the fair, frail type, who had disappeared from cambridge for two or three years and then returned—suddenly old, as though a withering hand had passed over her face. no such hand had touched marcelle. then he pulled himself up and thought. how old is she? thirty-eight—thirty-nine. twelve years younger than himself. he laughed out loud. a mere child! what could she yet have to do with withering hands? fifty—thirty-eight! the heyday of life. what is fifty when a man feels as young as at twenty-five? novelists and dramatists were responsible for the conventional idea of the decrepitude of man after forty. the brilliant and compelling works of fiction are generally the inspirations of young men who think the thirties are an age of incipient decay. “an old dangling bachelor who was single at fifty!” cries the abusive lady teazle. an old bachelor of fifty! sheridan, of six-and-twenty, thought of sir peter as the lean and slippered pantaloon; and so has dramatic tradition always represented him.
“damn it!” cried baltazar, feeling his muscles as he strode about his bedroom, “i’m as hard as iron.”
satisfied with his youth, he sat down and wrote impulsive pages to marcelle, which he posted in the hotel post-box before going to bed.
he ordered lunch the next day in the great room of the savoy.
“i’m having my son,” he said to the ma?tre-d’hotel, with a thrill at the new and unfamiliar word. “he has been wounded. i want the very best you can do for us.” the ma?tre-d’hotel, pencil and pad in hand, made profuse suggestions. but baltazar had forgotten the terms and indeed the items of european gastronomy. “i leave it in your hands. the best the savoy can do. it’s the first meal i’ve had with my son—since—— and wine. champagne. what do you recommend?”
the ma?tre-d’hotel pointed to a 1904 vintage on the list. there was nothing better, said he. baltazar agreed, suddenly aware that he knew no more of vintage wines than of artillery drill. his ignorance irritated him.
“do you mind if i look at that for a little?”
the ma?tre-d’hotel handed him the wine list, and for half an hour he sat by a table in the great empty restaurant studying the names of the various wines and their vintages. then, having mastered the information, he began long before the appointed hour to pace up and down the vestibule with an eye on every taxi-cab that swung round the rubber-paved courtyard and deposited its fares at the door, as impatient as any young subaltern waiting for his inamorata.
very proudly he conducted godfrey to the reserved table in the middle of the room. he would have liked to proclaim to each group of lunchers as he passed: “this is my son, you know. wounded and decorated for valour.” to those who regarded them with any attention, they were obviously father and son. but this baltazar did not realize.
“my boy,” said he, when the waiter had filled the two glasses, “i hope you like champagne. for myself i am a confirmed teetotaller. but i come from a land of strict ceremonial—and ceremonial ideas have got into my bones. our first meal together—we must drink in wine to what the future has in store for us.”
he smiled and held out his glass across the table. they touched rims. baltazar took a sip, then put his champagne aside and filled a tumbler with mineral water. godfrey was struck by the courtesy and suavity of manner with which his father conducted the little ceremony; also, as the lunch progressed, by his perfect hostship and by his charming conversation. the disconnected dynamo could be, when he chose, a very pleasant gentleman. by his tone and attitude he conveyed a man of the world’s suggestion that this might be the beginning of an agreeable acquaintance. godfrey began to revise his first impression of his father. confidence increasing, he yielded to subtle pressure and spoke in his english objective way about himself; about his schooldays, his ambitions, his entrance scholarship, his brief university career. he explained how his intimacy with sister baring sprang from the unfruitful pages of routh’s rigid dynamics.
“oh! that’s how she spotted you——?”
“that’s how, sir. and then she told me she had read with you—and eventually all the rest came.”
“life is very simple,” said baltazar, “if we would only let it take its own course. it’s when we begin to mess about with it ourselves that the tangles come.”
when the meal was ended and coffee and cigars were brought round, the young man threw off further garments of reserve.
“i wonder whether i may ask you a question, sir?”
“a million,” replied baltazar, “and i’ll do my best to answer every one.”
“it’s only this. you were such a great mathematician when you left cambridge. i’ve been wondering all the time since yesterday what has happened—whether you’ve chucked mathematics or what——”
“my boy,” said baltazar, “you’ve touched on tragedy.”
“i’m sorry,” said godfrey.
“oh, you haven’t been indiscreet. by no means. you’re bound to hear it sooner or later. so why not now? but it will take a little time. what are your engagements?”
“my afternoon is at your disposal, sir.”
“very good,” said baltazar. “i shall now proceed to tell you the amazing story of spendale farm, quong ho, and the zeppelin.”
godfrey laughed. youth that has drunk most of a bottle of perfect champagne can afford to be indulgent.
“that has quite an oriental flavour,” said he.
“a blend,” smiled baltazar.
the waiter, previously summoned, brought the bill. godfrey, shrewd observer, noted with gratification that his father merely glanced at the total, and waved away the waiter with payment and tip all in the fraction of a second. but a little while ago he had lunched, grudgingly dutiful, with his uncle, sir richard woodcott, who, when the bill was presented, had ticked off the items with a gold pencil, comparing the prices with the bill of fare, and had sent for the manager to protest a charge for two portions of potatoes when only one was consumed, he being forbidden potatoes by his medical man. he had raised his voice and made a clatter, and neighbouring parties had smiled derisively and godfrey had reddened and glowered and wished either that the earth would swallow him up or that hell-fire would engulf his millionaire uncle and trustee.
“i see now, sir,” said he, “why i’m always broke to the world.”
baltazar flashed on him. “what do you mean?”
“i don’t look at my bills either,” said he.
baltazar bent his keen gaze on his son. the remark had some significance. at first he was puzzled. then the solution flashed on him.
“you’re thinking of that damned woodcott crowd.”
godfrey gasped. “how on earth do you know that?”
“i’ve lived in a country where unless you guess what the other fellow is thinking of, you may be led astray by what he says. it’s a sort of game.” he let the long ash of his cigar fall into his coffee-cup, and, remembering quong ho, added, with his queer honesty: “i don’t pretend to be an adept, as you will gather from the tale which i propose to relate. perhaps arm-chairs in a corner of the lounge might be more comfortable.”
they rose. the heavily tipped waiter sprang to aid godfrey with his crutches. the boy paused. baltazar waved him courteously on.
“go ahead.”
on their way out they passed by a round table at which a large party were assembled. suddenly a young officer sprang up and laid a hand on godfrey’s shoulder.
“hallo! hallo, dear old chap! it’s years since i’ve seen you.”
“not since we’ve been in uniform.”
“by jove, that’s true!” he pointed to the m.c. ribbon. “splendid, old chap, glorious!”
“glory all right,” laughed godfrey, “but,” pointing downwards, “sic transit——”
“oh, hell!” said the other.
“kinnaird,” said godfrey, “let me introduce you to my father.”
baltazar beamed. his quick eyes gathered curious glances from the luncheon party. it was a proud moment, inaugurating a definite parental position. he wrung the young man’s hand cordially. godfrey explained: “kinnaird and i were at winchester and cambridge together. he’s a classical swell. when the war came it swallowed us up with different mouths.” he turned to his friend. “where have you been all the time?”
“gallipoli. then a soft turn in egypt. and you?”
“flanders and france.”
“i’m off to france next week.”
“let us meet before you go. where are you to be found?”
they exchanged addresses. on leave-taking:
“i’m proud to have met you, sir,” said kinnaird. he turned and sat down at his table. father and son continued their way to the lounge.
“was that last remark of your friend,” asked baltazar, “unusual politeness, or did it mean anything?”
“most of my university friends, sir,” replied godfrey, “know who my father was.”
“oh!” said baltazar, with knit brows. “oh, indeed! anyhow it was very polite. look here, my boy,” he went on, as they halted by a secluded and inviting little table, “i’ve been struck lately by an outward and visible sign of what seems to me to be an inward, invisible grace. when i was your age, having left school and masters behind me, i would have seen anybody damned first before i called them ‘sir’—except royalty, of course. now i come back into the world as an elderly codger, and both of you young chaps ‘sir’ me punctiliously.”
“i suppose the army is teaching us manners,” said godfrey.
“then the war is of some good, after all,” commented baltazar. “and this reversion to an ancient code provides you with a mode of address which saves you, my young friend, from considerable embarrassment.”
godfrey, quick and sensitive, glanced for an instant at the firm lips drawn down in a humorous smile and at the kindly indulgence in the keen eyes, and then broke into a laugh.
“let us be grateful, sir, to the chinoiserie of the eighteenth century.”
baltazar folded his arms and contemplated his son admiringly.
“do you know, i couldn’t have got out of it like that if i had thought for a thousand years. let us sit down.” and when they had settled themselves by the wall on the fringe of the crowded lounge, he went on: “you young men are not the least problem which a cyrano dropped from the peaceful moon like myself has to solve.”
“i’m afraid we don’t quite know what we’re playing at ourselves,” said godfrey.
again baltazar felt pleased with the boy’s reply. an understanding fellow; one who could get to the thought behind a few words.
“i wish to god i had known you all your life,” said he.
at the appeal to sentiment, godfrey shied like a horse.
“it wouldn’t have affected what the war has made of me. i should have joined up just the same, and, just the same, i should have had a hell of a time in a perpetual blue funk which i had to hide, and should have come out minus a foot; and just the same too i should have wondered how on earth i’m going to stick the university—if i do go back—with its childish little rules and restrictions—to say nothing of its limited outlook.”
“two or three years ago,” said baltazar, following his son’s lead, “if i heard a fellow of twenty talk about the limited outlook of the university of cambridge, i should have said that his proper sphere was the deepest inferno of insufferable young prigs provided by another ancient seat of learning situated also on the banks of a river. as your tutor, i should have had even nastier and more sarcastic things than that to say to you. but now, in this new and incomprehensible world, i’m perfectly ready to agree with you. what is there of the conduct or meaning of life that our dear old pragmatical drake of a crosby and his train of ducks can teach men like your friend kinnaird and yourself? it’s like a bunch of hares sitting down before an old tortoise and being taught how to run. isn’t that the way of it?”
“i suppose it is,” replied godfrey, laughing. “i don’t want to crab men like the master. nothing can take away their scholarship, which, after all, is vital to human progress—and, of course, as far as that goes, i’m perfectly willing to sit at their feet—but—well—i know you see what i mean, sir. it’s very jolly of you, as one of the elder crowd, and very unusual, to be so sympathetic.”
“i’ll go further than that,” said baltazar. “as one of the elder crowd, i should like to have the benefit of your concentrated experience of modern life, and that is why i propose to tell you my story of spendale farm, quong ho, and the zeppelin. it’s my ancient mariner’s tale, and you cannot choose but hear. but for the lord’s sake tell what you can remember of it to sister baring, for i’m sick to death of it.”
it was nearly five o’clock when he had finished. finding godfrey a sensitive listener, he had expounded with many picturesque and intimate details the story which he had roughly told so often. the reason for his sudden self-condemnation to exile he had glossed over, as he had done when first he had accounted for himself to sheepshanks. oddly enough, no one, not even this son of his, with the quick insight forced to maturity by the hot-house of war, boggled at the reason. all accepted his maniacal proceeding as in keeping with the impulsive eccentricity of his career. besides, the mere fact of a man being able so to eliminate from his surroundings every whisper of the outside world as to live in england and remain in absolute ignorance of the war for a couple of years, staggered credulity and eclipsed minor considerations.
“well,” said baltazar, with a big gesture of both arms, “that’s how it is. to sum up. eighteen years’ blank ignorance of, and indifference to, european history—political, social, moral, artistic, scientific. a week’s dismay and disgust. two years’ seclusion devoted to the consolidation of my life’s work. the whole thing wiped out in a night. awakening to find the world had been at war for two years. myself adrift in a sort of typhoon, with not a human straw to cling to but my adopted son, this extraordinary mathematical genius of a quong ho. i fly to cambridge to try to get some sort of sane attachment to life. i discover your existence. no sooner do i meet you than i’m thrown against the very woman for whose sake, as a young man, i chucked the whole of my career. and here am i, as strong as a horse. feel that”—he tendered his arm and braced his muscle, and godfrey gripping it proclaimed, with wonder, that it was like an iron bar—“and with a first-class working brain, and the country is crying out both for brains and muscle, and i’ll go mad if i don’t give the country my best. but at the same time, i’m just a month-old child. i’m dazed by everything. and i’ve got you and marcelle and quong ho to look after. you’re all inextricably woven into the tapestry of my life. mathematics and chinese scholarship can go to the devil. only the four of you matter——”
“four?” godfrey queried.
“yes. four. you, marcelle, quong ho, and england.”
“that’s a tall order, sir,” smiled godfrey. “but as for me, i’m all right. i can fend for myself. you can cut me out.”
baltazar brought down his hand with a great thump on the little table.
“i’m damned if i do!” and to the waiter who ran up in some alarm: “yes, tea. china tea. gallons of it.”
