on godfrey’s transference from godalming, baltazar, with characteristic suddenness, moved into a furnished house in london. the reasons for his sojourn at the inn existed no longer. besides, books and other belongings were quickly usurping the cubic space at his disposal. marcelle, urgently invited to a consultation, advised, according to her practical mind, a flat or a small house which he could furnish for himself; and she offered such aid as her duties would allow. he ruled out her suggestion. there must be rooms for godfrey and quong ho whenever they should be in town; rooms for servants; decent living rooms, so that the inhabitants should not have to herd higgledy-piggledy together; also ample accommodation for marcelle, should she care to change her mind. nothing but a large house would suit him. as for waiting until painters, decorators, paper-hangers, curtain-makers, carpet-layers, electric-light fitters and suchlike war-attenuated tribes had completed their business, it was out of the question. it would take months. he wanted to establish himself in a ready-made home right now, and get on with the war. such a home his friend mrs. jackman had suggested. the owner, poor fellow, killed in the war; the wife and a boy of thirteen left ill-provided for. as she could not afford to live in the house, and yet shrank from selling it and its precious contents, the boy’s heritage, she would be content to let it furnished for an indefinite period. there it was—sussex gardens—near the park—admirable in every way. he was accustomed to spacious habitations. his house in chen-chow covered nearly an acre. in his exile at spendale farm he had room to breathe. the godalming inn was charming in its way, but now and then he had mad impulses to attack the walls of his sitting-room with his nails and tear them down. what was wrong with sussex gardens?
“it’s extravagant, trouble-shirking, and generally manlike.”
“marry me,” said he, “and you shall have a house economical, trouble-inviting and generally woman-like. any kind of old house you consider ideal.”
“you’ll want four or five servants to run it,” she objected, ignoring his proposition. “where are you going to get them from in these war times?”
“they’re already there. a cook who’ll act as housekeeper——”
“you’ll be robbed right and left.”
“come and save me,” said baltazar.
she laughed. “i’m tempted to do so, just out of pity for you.”
“pity won’t do, my dear,” said he.
“then you must go your own way.”
“i’m going it,” said baltazar. “perhaps you’ll come to sussex gardens now and then to see godfrey. possibly quong ho?”
“i might even come to see john baltazar,” said marcelle.
so baltazar settled down in the big house and gave himself up to the infinite interests of war-racked london. the weeks and the months passed. quong ho at cambridge, under the benign tutelage of dr. sheepshanks, began the study of greek for his little go, and wrote to his patron curious impressions of the university. “i have the option,” said he, “of taking up for this examination either an infant’s primer on logic compiled by an illustrious thinker of a bygone age, called jevons, or a humorous work on the evidence of christianity, by the divine paley, who seems to have been one of the patriarchs of the anglican church. as the latter seems the more entertaining, seeing that it tends to destroy in the mind of the reasoning believer all faith in the historical truth of the christian religion, i am studying it with a deep interest based on the analogy between english and chinese academic conservatism. on the other hand, dear sir and most venerated master, if you could suggest a course in theology more in consonance with modern philosophical thought, i should derive from it much instruction and recreation.” baltazar bade him get on with his greek, so that if he wanted light reading, he could soothe his leisure hours with aristotle and thucydides. “i am working at greek, like stags,” wrote quong ho later; “with all the more zeal because i find i have completed already the mathematical course required for my tripos.” some time afterwards he wrote again: “if you, most honoured sir, would permit me, i should esteem it a privilege to read for the science tripos as well as the mathematical. i should enjoy the possibility of the application of my sound mathematical equipment to the higher branches of physics.” “do what you like, my dear fellow,” replied baltazar. “suck the old place dry.” quong ho delighted him. sheepshanks wrote enthusiastically of the rare bird. “he will be a monument,” said he, “to your sound and masterly teaching. i wish you would come back to us.” but baltazar had other things to do. having set his house in order, established quong ho at cambridge, seen godfrey accept his filial position and cemented relations, such as they were, with marcelle, he plunged head foremost into the war. others floundered about in it, tired after two strenuous years of buffeting. he came to it fresh, with new zeal and unimpaired strength of mind and body. with a new, keen judgment, too, being in the unique position of one with historical perspective. others had lived through the fateful years and could not clear their brains of the myraid cross-currents that had swirled through them day by day, almost hour by hour, and had systematized themselves into their mental being, so that, with all their passionate patriotism, they could not see the main course. baltazar brought an untroubled and vigorous intellect to bear on an accurately studied situation.
“we’re all at sixes and sevens,” cried weatherley one day in despair, when they were discussing the new weekly review of the far eastern policy which he had asked baltazar to control. “unless we’re careful, the project will drop to pieces. russell now declines to edit it unless we give him an autocratic hand. but russell’s mad on slovenes and ruthenes and croats. clever as he is, he has no sense of proportion. i don’t know what the devil we’re going to do. there’s no one else can give the time. for the review to be any good, a man must throw his whole soul into it.”
baltazar had one of his flashes. “if you like, i’ll edit the damned thing. you’ve all been fiddling about for a title. i’ve got one. ‘the new universe.’ i’ll undertake to make a living thing of it, wipe out all the dreary, weary old weekly and monthly respectabilities. we won’t have a second-rater writing for it. we’ll appeal to ‘longleat’s towers’ and ‘mendip’s sunless caves.’ we’ll make it the one thing that matters in this quill-driven country. we’ll have it translated into all known languages and circulate it over the civilized earth. it’ll be the only publication that’ll give everybody the truth about everything.”
he went on in his vehement way. when weatherley asked him where the money for so gigantic a scheme was to come from, he quoted the tichborne claimant.
“some has money and no brains and some has brains and no money. if those with no money can’t get money from those with no brains, god help them.”
and it came to pass, a few days afterwards, at a meeting of the committee of the new review, that baltazar had his way. as he looked with even vision on ruthenes, slovenes, belgians, hereros, jugo-slavs, british miners, samoans, the staff of the foreign office, indian princes, mrs. annie besant, the denizens of arkansas, the southern chinese, the gilded adorners of newport, the women’s emergency league, the wilhelmstrasse, armenians, and the young men’s christian association, a fact elicited by lengthy discussion of the multitudinous phases of world politics, and as he succeeded in convincing all the several zealots of particular interests, that their impassioned aims were an integral part of his far-reaching scheme, they came unanimously to the conclusion that no one but he had the universality to edit the new universe, and passed a resolution promising him their loyal co-operation.
“i’m going to make this darned thing hum,” said baltazar to weatherley.
money was the first object. brains he could command in plenty. he envisaged london as his el dorado. the history of his exploitation of the capitalist and landowner would, if it were published, become a text-book on the science and remain forever a classic. he forced wealth-guarding doors of whose existence he had been ignorant six months before; by a stroke of the genius which had brought him his position in china, he secured the support, financial and moral, without the control of an important group of newspapers; he enlisted the aid of every possible unit in his rapidly increasing circle of acquaintance. the scope of the weekly had extended far beyond the modest bounds of its conception. originally it was to be an appeal to the thinkers of all nations. “damn thinkers,” said baltazar. “they’re as scarce as angels and about as useful. we want to put thoughts into the heads of those that don’t think. it’s the doers we want to get hold of. a thing academic is a thing dead. this is going to live.” some of the superior smiled at his enthusiasm; but baltazar damned them and went his way. this was going to be the great teaching crusade of the war, the most far-sweeping instrument of propaganda known to journalism. he pulled all strings, brought in all parties. a high dignitary of the labour world and a tory duke of unimpeachable integrity found themselves appointed as trustees of the new universe publication fund. money flowed in.
one day he ran across pillivant, in st. james’s street, pillivant mainly individualized by a sable fur coat and a lustrous silk hat and a monstrous cigar cutting his red face like a fifteen-inch gun cutting the deck of a battleship. baltazar greeted him as a long-lost brother and haled him off to lunch at his club. mellowed by the club’s famous chambertin and 1870 port, he took a rosy view of all kinds of worlds including the new universe, as presented by his host. it was a great scheme, he agreed. he was sick of all newspapers, no matter of what shades of opinion. they were all the same. honesty was not in them. nor was there honesty in any government. men with not a quarter of what he had done for the country to their credit, were being rewarded with peerages and baronetcies. in the new year’s honours list he had not been mentioned. not even offered a beastly knighthood. but it didn’t matter. he was a patriot. and it was very fine old brandy, and he didn’t mind if he did have another glass. still, if a man put down a thousand pounds for a thing, it was only business prudence to know where he stood.
“you’ll stand here,” cried baltazar, spreading before his eyes a printed list of the general committee, a galaxy of dazzling names. “you’ll take rank in the forefront of the biggest patriotic crusade that ever was. your light will no longer be under a bushel. it will shine before men. what’s the good of your name being lost in a close-printed subscription list? this is a totally different thing. your appearance here will give you position. look at the people. have you ever stood in with a crowd like this before?”
baltazar held the mellowed profiteer with his compelling eyes.
“i can’t say that i have,” replied pillivant. “but all the same——”
“but all the same,” baltazar interrupted, “you’ve been at loggerheads with the war office. there was that question asked in the house over the aerodrome contract. you told me about it yourself. now listen to me carefully”—baltazar played a gambler’s card—“your coming in with us will be a guarantee of integrity. it’s obvious that no one on this list could do otherwise than run straight. the worry it would save you!” he looked at his watch and jumped up. “by george! i’ve got an appointment with our treasurer, lord beldon. would you like to come along and hear more about the scheme? waiter! ask them to get me a taxi. we’ll find our hats and coats round here.”
he drove a gratified pillivant to chesterfield gardens and introduced him to lord beldon (with whom he had no appointment whatever) as an enthusiastic believer in the new universe, ready to finance it to the extent of two or three thousand pounds. “three thousand, wasn’t it?”
“i said between two and three thousand,” replied pillivant, flattered at his reception by the powerful old peer, and not daring to fall back on the original one thousand that had been vaguely suggested. a bluff, of course, for which he admired baltazar, although he cursed him in his heart; but was it worth while calling it? he could buy up this old blighter of a lord twice over. he would show him that he had the money. “i was thinking of two thousand five hundred,” he continued. “but what’s a miserable five hundred? yes. you can put me down for three thousand. in fact”—with a flourish he drew a cheque-book from his pocket—“i’ll write you the cheque now, payable, i presume, to the right honourable the earl of beldon.”
“or the new universe. as you please.”
“better be personal,” said pillivant, enjoying the inscription of the rolling title and the prospect of the elevated eyebrows of the bank clerk who should debit the sum to his account.
“that’s exceedingly generous of you, mr. pillivant,” said lord beldon, putting the cheque into a drawer of his writing-table.
“just patriotic, your lordship,” replied pillivant, with a profiteering wave of the hand.
“i think,” said baltazar, “that the contributor of such an important sum ought to be offered some practical interest in the scheme. mr. pillivant’s name will appear on the general committee. but that’s more or less honorary. the sub-committees will do the real business. we’re going to deal with every phase of the war, pillivant, and the various sub-committees—their names will be published large as life and twice as natural—will supply the editorial department with indisputable facts. now,” he turned to lord beldon, “if mr. pillivant will serve on the purity of contracts sub-committee, he’ll be bringing us a tremendous and invaluable business experience.”
“that’s a most happy suggestion,” smiled lord beldon.
“i think so, too. i’ll get a run for my money,” said pillivant.
when he had gone, lord beldon turned a puzzled brow on baltazar.
“isn’t that the chap about whom some nasty things were said a few months ago?”
baltazar grinned. “it is,” said he. “we’ve made him disgorge some of his ill-gotten gains, and, by putting him on the sub-committee we’ll make him pretty careful about getting them ill in the future.”
thus, with ruthless pertinacity he gathered in a great sum of money, and finally in a splendour of publicity the first number of the new universe appeared, and from the first day of its appearance baltazar felt himself to be a power in the land.
another reputation in certain circles had meanwhile been made by his trenchant article on chinese affairs in the imperial review. it led to an interview with the chinese ambassador, who professed agreeable astonishment at finding the famous but somewhat mysterious anglo-chinaman of chen-chow and the writer of the article one and the same person. after which he spent many pleasant hours at the embassy, discussing chinese art and philosophy and the prospects of the career of his prodigious pupil, quong ho. in course of time, the foreign office discreetly beckoned to him. it had heard from authoritative sources—it smiled—that mr. baltazar’s knowledge of china was unique, for though many other men were intimately acquainted with the country from the point of view of the official, the missionary, the merchant and the traveller, it had never heard of a man of his attainments who had divorced himself from all european influence and had attained a high position in the social and political life of non-cosmopolitan china. if mr. baltazar would from time to time put his esoteric knowledge at the service of the foreign office, the foreign office would be grateful. at last, after various interviews with various high personages, for all this was not conveyed to him in a quarter of an hour, it not being the way of the foreign office to fall on a stranger’s neck and open its heart to him, he received a proposal practically identical with weatherley’s suggestion which he had so furiously flouted. the secret service—the intelligence department—had been crying out for years for a man like him, who should go among the chinese as a chinaman, thoroughly in their confidence. “a spy?” asked baltazar bluntly. the foreign office smiled a bland smile and held out deprecating fingers. of course not. an agent, acting for the allies, counteracting german influence, working in his own way, responsible to no one but the powers at whitehall, but yet, with necessary secrecy, towards china’s longed-for declaration of war against germany.
“china will come in on our side before the year’s out,” said baltazar.
how did he know it? why, it was obvious to any student of the science of political forces. it was as supererogatory for a man to go out to china to persuade her to join the allies as to stir up a bomb whose fuse was alight, in order to make it explode. the foreign office protested against argument by analogy. the forthcoming entry of china into the war was naturally not hidden from its omniscience. but that did not lessen the vital need of secret and skilful propaganda before, during and after the period that china might be at war. there were the eternal german ramifications to be watched; the possible japanese influences—it spoke under the seal of the most absolute confidence—which, without any thought of disloyalty on the part of japan, might, not accord with western interests; there were also the bewildering cross-currents of internal chinese politics. there were thousands of phases of invaluable information which could not be viewed by the embassy; thousands of strings to be pulled which could not be pulled from pekin. “we could not, like germany and austria in america, outrage those international principles upon which the ambassadorial system had been based for centuries. at the same time——”
“you’re not above using a spy,” said baltazar.
again the foreign office deprecated the suggestion. it wouldn’t dream of asking mr. baltazar to take such a position.
“then,” said baltazar, “what are you driving at?”
the foreign office looked at him rather puzzled. as a matter of fact, it did not quite know. having baltazar’s dossier pretty completely before it, it had gradually been compelled to the recognition of baltazar as a man of supreme importance in chinese affairs. he must be used somehow, but on the way to use him it was characteristically vague and hesitating. it knew a lot about the ming dynasty being a connoisseur in porcelain—but the ming dynasty, and all that it connoted, had come to an end a devil of a long time ago; which was a pity, for it only knew the little about modern china which it gleaned from the epigrammatic and uninspired précis of official reports. to attach baltazar in any way to the embassy was out of the question. the idea would have sent a shiver down its spine to the very last vertebra of the most ancient messenger whose father had run on devious errands for lord palmerston. on the other hand, baltazar was not of the type which could be sent out on a secret errand. that fact he had made almost brutally obvious. so, after looking at him for a puzzled second or two, it smiled invitingly. really, it waited for him to make a proposition.
this he did.
“offer me a square and above-board mission as the duly accredited agent of the british government—to perform whatever duties you prescribe for me, and i’ll consider it. at any rate, i’ll regard the offer as an honour. but to go back to my friends as chi wu ting——”
“ah!” interrupted the foreign office, turning over a page or two of type-script. “that’s interesting. we wanted to ask you. how did you get that name in china? you started there, after your abandonment of your brilliant cambridge career—you see we know all about you, mr. baltazar—as james burden.”
“phonetic,” said baltazar, impatiently. “it’s as impossible for an ordinary chinaman to say james burden, as for you to pronounce a word with the zulu click in it. it’s the nearest they could get. it’s good chinese. so i adopted it. i’m known by it all through southern china. let me get on with what i was saying. to go back to my friends as chi wu ting and pretend i was acting in their interests, while all the time i was acting in the interests of the british government—well, i’m damned if i would entertain the idea for a second.”
the foreign office winced at the oath, although it damned lustily in private.
“but if chi wu ting goes back, as you say, accredited——?”
“that’s a different matter altogether.”
“there’s still the question of—of remuneration,” said the foreign office.
“i’m by way of being a rich man,” said baltazar. “i didn’t spend the eighteen golden years of my life in the interior of china for my health.”
the foreign office beamed. “that simplifies things enormously.”
“it generally does,” replied baltazar.
a month later the foreign office made him the offer which his sense of personal dignity demanded from them; and, honour being satisfied, he declined it. he could do better work for his country in london, said he, than in again burying himself alive for an indefinite number of years in china. the foreign office regretted his decision; but it gave him to understand that the offer would always remain open. they parted on terms of the most cordial politeness; but if the foreign office had heard the things baltazar said of it, its upstanding hair would have raised its own roof off.
“three months,” he cried to marcelle, “playing the fool, wasting their time and mine, when the whole thing could have been done in five minutes.”
“but i can’t quite see,” she objected, “why you went on when you had made up your mind from the start not to go back to china.”
“can’t you?” said he. “i’ll explain. i’ve sworn that there’ll be no more idiocy on the part of john baltazar to prevent him coming into his own. he is coming into it. that the f.o. should recognize his position was an essential factor of his own. when a man can dictate terms, he has established himself. see? i suppose,” said he, halting in his abrupt way, and thrusting his hands deep in his trousers pockets, “you think this is just childish vanity. come, say it.”
she met his bright eyes and smiled up at him. “if i do, you won’t bite my head off?”
“no. i’ll convince you that it isn’t. vanity, as its name implies, is emptiness. negative. this isn’t vanity, it’s pride. something positive. my pet deadly sin. if you’ve got that strong, you can tell the six others to go back to hell. if i hadn’t got it, the others would have torn me to bits long ago. if i were a mongrel and thought myself a prize bull-pup—that would be vanity. but i know, hang it all, that i’m a prize bull-pup, and when i take leave to remind myself, and people like the f.o. of the fact, that’s pride. and when i say i’ve sworn to fulfil the destiny of the prize pup, john baltazar, and be one of the intellectual forces that’ll carry the empire along to victory—that’s not vanity. where’s the emptiness? it’s pride—reckoned first of the seven deadly sins. if i glory in it—well—according to the theologians, it’s my damnation: according to me, it’s the other way about. look. there’s another way of putting it——”
suddenly she was smitten with the memory of godfrey’s words five or six months ago, when he fumed at the bear-leading of quong ho—“those infernal dancing eyes of his—and behind them something so pathetic and appealing.” the boy was right. she met just that pathetic appeal. he was so anxious to put himself right with her. he went on:
“if i were in the habit of vowing to perform impossible extravagances, that would be the sign of a vain man. but—apart from the acts of god—and i suppose technically we must classify the wiping out of my life’s work under that heading—i have carried out every wild-cat scheme i’ve deliberately set my mind to. so when i say i’m coming into john baltazar’s own, i know what i’m talking about, and that’s the sign of a proud man. and, my dear,” said he after a pause, occupied in filling and lighting his pipe, “i think this jolly old sin of mine keeps me from making an ass of myself in all sorts of other ways.”
swiftly she applied these last words to the relations between them and confessed their truth. a vain man would have pestered the life out of her, confident in attaining his ends—ends as beautiful and spiritual as you please—until through sheer weariness she yielded. such a one would enunciate and firmly believe in the proposition—she had not spent twenty years among men in angelic ignorance of their idiosyncrasies—that just hammer, hammer hard enough, and a woman will be bound to love you in the end. but there were others, with a deadly, sinful pride like baltazar, who, scorning the vain, maintained the dignified attitude of the late lamented king canute. he would not claim the impossible.
but this was a far cry from the imperial government mission to the far east. she asked, by way of escape from personal argument:
“after all, this chinese proposition is a first-rate thing. is it so very repugnant to you to go back?”
he stood over her with his clenched fists in the air.
“my dear,” said he, “you talked last year some silly rot about a locust. i know the beast better than you do. it ate all those precious years i spent in that infernal country. the best years of my life. i’m starting now at fifty-one where i ought to have started at thirty. that damned chinese locust has robbed me of everything. you, godfrey, the vital life of england, and a brilliant career with heaven knows what kind of power for good. i hold the country in the most deadly detestation. nothing in this wide world would induce me to go back—not even if they wanted to make me an emperor. i’ve finished with it for ever and ever. i swear it.”
“you needn’t look as if i were urging you to it,” she laughed. “i’m sure i don’t want to lose you.”
“all right then,” said baltazar. “let us talk of something else.”
in these early months of struggle to enter his kingdom, baltazar came nearer happiness than he had ever done before. a man younger, or more habitually dependent on women, would have counted the one thing wanting as the one prime essential and would have regarded everything else as naught. but baltazar, although wistfully recognizing the one missing element, was far too full of the lust of others to sit down and make moan. marcelle gave him all she could, a devoted friendship, a tender intimacy, a sympathetic understanding. he wanted infinitely more, his man’s nature clamoured for the whole of her. but what she gave was of enormous comfort. it was a question of taking it or leaving it. perhaps had his love been less, he would have left it. love me all in all or not at all, and be hanged to you! that might have been his attitude. besides, he knew that by the high-handed proceeding of the primitive man he could at any moment carry her off to the cave in sussex gardens. in a way, it was his own choice to live celibate. sooner accept the graciousness she could give freely than take by force what she would yield grudgingly. let him be happy with what he had.
for he had much.
godfrey, learning to walk on his artificial foot, a miracle of running contrivance, and allowed, as it seemed, almost indefinite leave until he should reach perfection of movement, took up his quarters in his house, at first almost angrily, compelled against his will by the infernal dancing eyes and the pathetic appeal behind them, and after a short while very contentedly, appreciating his strange father’s almost womanly solicitude for his comfort, his facilities for leading his own young man’s life. far more attractive the well-appointed house, with a snuggery of his own made over for him to have and to hold in perpetuity, with a table always spread for any friends he cared to ask to lunch or dine, with an alert intellect for companion ever ready to give of its best, with opportunities of meeting the odd, fascinating personalities whom the editor of the new universe had gathered round him, with an atmosphere of home all the more pleasant because of its unfamiliarity, than the bleak room at an over-crowded hotel, or the cramped half moon street lodgings which in his boyish experience were the inevitable condition of a lonely young man’s existence in london. once he said:
“i know it’s a delicate point, sir, but i should be awfully glad if you’d let me contribute—pay my way, you know. it’s really embarrassing for me to accept all this—i can’t explain—it’s horrid. but i do wish you would let me, sir.”
this was just after breakfast one morning. baltazar paused in the act of filling his pipe.
“if you like, my boy,” said he, “we can discuss the matter with our housekeeper, mrs. simmons, and agree upon a weekly sum for your board and lodging. i know that you have independent means and can pay anything in reason. rather than not have you here, i should agree to such an arrangement.”
“it would make me feel easier in my mind, sir,” said godfrey. “shall we have her in now and get the thing over?”
“not yet,” said baltazar. “there’s another side of the question. by accepting your father’s house as your natural home, you are giving a very human, though faulty being, the very greatest happiness he has ever known in his life. by refusing, you would destroy something that there is no power in the wide world to replace. i don’t deserve any gratitude for being your father; but, after all, you’re my son—and i’m very proud of it. and all i have, not only in my house but in my heart, is yours.” he lit a match. “just yours,” said he, and the breath of the words blew the match out.
when godfrey next met marcelle, he told her of this.
“what the devil could a fellow do,” said he, “but feel a worm and grovel?”
another thing that added greatly to baltazar’s happiness was godfrey’s attitude towards quong ho during the vacations, when the young chinaman was also a member of the household.
“i like the beggar,” said godfrey. “he’s so tactful; always on tap when one wants him, and never in the way when one doesn’t. and his learning would sink a ship.”
quong ho, for his part, sat at the feet of the young english officer and with pathetic earnestness studied him as a model of english vernacular and deportment, and at the same time sucked in from him the whole theory of the art of modern warfare. he had a genius for assimilating knowledge. with the amused aid of lady edna donnithorpe and burke, he acquired prodigious familiarity with the inter-relationships of the great english families. at baltazar’s dinner-table he absorbed modern political thought like a sponge. it was during the easter vacation that he more especially determined to assume the perfect englishman. dr. sheepshanks, towards the end of term, had made him an astonishing proposition. a mathematician of his calibre, said he, would be wasted in china. why should mr. ho not contemplate, as fellow and professor, identification of himself with cambridge? the war had swept away all possible contemporary rivals. it was in his power to attain in a few years not only a brilliant position in the university, but in the european world of pure science. sheepshanks had also written in the same strain to baltazar. and when quong ho modestly sought his master’s advice, baltazar vehemently supported sheepshanks.
“of course you’ll stay. weren’t those my very words at the hospital at water end? another time perhaps you’ll believe me.”
“for many years have i been convinced of the infallibility of your judgment,” said quong ho. “i shall also never forget,” he added, “that i am merely the clay which you have moulded.”
“i’m beginning to think,” cried baltazar, “that i’m not your friend dr. rewsby’s colossal ass after all.”
baltazar was happy. he went about shouldering his way through the amazing war-world, secure in his grip on all that mattered to him in life. his was a name that, once heard, stuck in men’s memory. gradually it became vaguely familiar to the general public, well known to an expanding circle. his romantic story, at first to his furious indignation, was paragraphed far and wide. the athen?um, under special rule, reinstated him in his membership. the intransigent policy of the new universe brought him into personal contact with the high and mighty at the heads of ministries. invitations to speak by all manners of organizations poured in. as a speaker his dominating personality found its supreme expression. he exalted in his newly found strength. the essential man of action had been trammelled for half a century by the robe of the scholar. the zeppelin bomb had set him naked.
said pillivant, meeting him in the offices of the new universe: “a year ago you didn’t know there was a war on. i took you for the ruddiest freak i had ever come across. now you’ve blossomed out into a ruddy swell, bossing everything. i can’t open a newspaper without seeing your name. how the hell have you managed to do it?”
“profiteering,” said baltazar.
“profiteering?” asked pillivant, puckering up his fat face in perplexity. “what’s your line?”
“brains,” said baltazar.
he turned away delighted. well, it came to that. there was no arrogance about it. he was giving everything in his power to the country. oppressed, at one time, by the sense of physical fitness, and fired by the sudden, urgent demand for man-power, he had, in one of his gordian-knot cutting moods, marched into a recruiting office and vaunted his brawn and muscle. “i’m fifty,” said he, “but i defy anybody to say i’m not physically equal to any boy of twenty-five.” but they had politely laughed at him and sent him away raging furiously. it was then that he followed the despised counsel of the unimaginative burtenshaw, k.c., and joined the special constabulary and the national volunteers.
“what’s the next thing you’re going to take on?” asked marcelle.
“first, my dear,” said he, “the whole running of this war. then the administration of the kingdom of god on earth.”
“what a boy you are!” she laughed.
“a damned fine boy,” said baltazar.
one fine sunday in may she came up to town to lunch with him alone, godfrey being away somewhere or other for the week-end.
“my dear,” he cried, excitedly, as soon as she arrived, “i’ve been dying to see you. it’s going to happen.”
“what?”
she smiled into his eager face. there was nothing so extravagant that it could not happen to baltazar.
“there’s talk of a new ministry—a ministry of propaganda.”
“well?”
“can’t you guess?”
her eyes glistened suddenly.
“you—minister?”
he nodded. “it’s all in the clouds at present. at least these whifflers of cloud-cuckoo-city think it is. but i don’t. they don’t see the star of john baltazar in the ascendant. i do. my dear, there’s not an adverse influence in all the bag of planetary tricks!”
if he could have seen and appreciated what was happening some forty miles off he might have observed in a certain conjunction of planets, to wit, venus and mars, something that would have modified his optimistic prognostication.
