Baltazar

“ Ills must new Ills beget.
Enter Malateste and Baltazar.
Bal. Now! what hot poyson'd Custard must I put my Spoone into now?
Queen. None, for mine honour now is thy protection.
Mal. Which, Noble Souldier, she will pawn for thee But never forfeit.
Bal. 'Tis a faire gage; keepe it.
Queen. Oh, Baltazar, I am thy friend, and mark'd thee
When the King sentenc'd thee to banishment:
Fire sparkled from thine eyes of rage and griefe;
Rage to be doom'd so for a Groome so base,
And griefe to lose thy country. Thou hast kill'd none:
The Milke-sop is but wounded, thou art not banish'd. ”

“ On the threshold appeared a young Chinaman, of smiling but dignified demeanour, wearing Chinese dress.
“Dinner is served, sir,” he said, making way respectfully for Baltazar to pass.
“So Brutus has just informed me, Quong Ho.”
“I sent him to tell you, sir. He is possessed of almost human understanding.”
“It is always good,” said Baltazar, “to associate with intelligent beings.” ”

“ Why should not he, John Baltazar, rise to higher power and guide the civilized world to victory and to triumphant peace?
The man had dreamed many dreams. What great man does not? Never yet has the human being whose day’s vision is blackened by the curtain of the night reached the shadow of achievement. Then again: was it of England or of John Baltazar that he dreamed? Who can tell? Can any man of noble ambitions, of deep conviction of his own powers, strip himself naked before his God and tell? ”

“ It was the end of John Baltazar—the John Baltazar in whom he had always believed, at the moment of proof positive of the justification of his faith. To Godfrey he had not boasted unduly. A year ago he had awakened, a new Rip Van Winkle, to a world for two years at war. In a few months, God knows how, save through his resistless energy, his new-born and flaming patriotism and his keen brain, he had established himself in England as a driving force compelling recognition and application to the country’s needs. He had won his position by sheer strength of personality. ”

“ Please let me have a look at it.”
“You can do that afterwards,” said Baltazar. “For God’s sake let us go.”
“You’re not fit to go. I won’t allow you to,” replied Dr. Rewsby with suave firmness.
Said Baltazar, with the hard gleam in his eyes, “I’m going. It’s my responsibility, not yours. I don’t care what happens to me. But I swear to God I neither wash nor eat nor drink until my friend Quong Ho is brought back, alive or dead. And it’s much better I should go with you than remain here and frighten your excellent wife, Mr. Pillivant, out of her wits.” ”

“ To prove the expenditure of fortune he seized a fresh bottle of Bollinger which the butler had just opened and filled Baltazar’s glass and his own.
“If you don’t drink, you’re a pro-German. To hell with the Kaiser.”
Baltazar drank the toast politely and patriotically; the merest sip of champagne; for beyond the first brandy and soda which had been poured down his parched and exhausted throat, he had kept his vow of abstinence, in spite of his host’s continued pressure. He felt sure of himself now; wondered how he could ever have brought himself to the present Pillivant condition. ”

“ But the impression they made was effaced by that of youth: youth pervaded the place; youth whole and gloriously insolent; youth maimed and defiant; youth predominating, too, among the women, with its eyes alight and cheeks aglow; youth nerved to war, taking it as the daily round, the common task. It was some new planet in which Baltazar found himself, peopled with beings of dimly conjectured interests and habits of thought.
After dinner, the loneliest soul in London, he took his hat and thought to go for a stroll. ”

“ I too am here for the same purpose.”
“You?” cried Baltazar. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I want to eradicate from my mind the soul-destroying associations of the daughter of the gardener Fung Yu.”
Then Baltazar laughed aloud and clapped the young Chinaman on the shoulder, an unprecedented act of hearty familiarity.
“My son,” said he, “this is a discipline that will bring us both, me old, you young, to the greater wisdom. In the meanwhile, it’s a happy discipline, isn’t it? We’ve got all that mortal man—under discipline, mark you—all that mortal man can want. ”

“ A foul, sickly smell tainted the still air. Mingled with the sour odour of the charred and sodden mess inside the dwelling, rose the miasma of corruption. Baltazar made a grimace of disgust. Before any salvage could be done the latter causes of offence must be removed. He summoned the men and gave his directions. They found the old mare’s head and the dog and fragments of the goats, alive with the infinite horror of flies and other abominable life. There was a cesspool handy. ”

“ John Baltazar leaned over the gate and, smoking his cherry-wood pipe, gazed with the outer eye on the familiar scene of desolate beauty. Within his horizon he was the only visible human being, his the only human habitation. All around him spread the rolling landscape of granite and heather and wind-torn shrub. The granite hills, some surmounted by gigantic and shapeless masses of rock left freakishly behind in glacial movements of unknown times, glowed amethyst and pale coral ”

“ Baltazar smiled grimly. “I can’t afford the time to fool about in a state of unconsciousness, when I have two years’ arrears of European history to make up.”
“Never mind European history,” said the doctor. “Let us see how this head of yours is getting on.”
The dressing completed, he said to Baltazar:
“Now you’ll lie quiet and not worry about the war, Quong Ho, or anything.”
“And grow wings and order a halo and work out the quadrature of the circle and discover the formula for the Deity in terms of the Ultimate Function of Energy. . . . Man alive!” ”

“ Baltazar was waiting for her outside the hotel. Thus one little fear was sent packing. As a nurse she would have gone to Hell Gates to enquire for a man. She had done it many a time in France. As Marcelle Baring she was restrained by futile hesitancies. As Marcelle Baring, a woman with her own life to lead, she was unfamiliar to herself. She had shrunk from entering the inn alone and asking for Mr. Baltazar. But there he was awaiting her on the pavement, and no sooner had the car stopped than he had opened the door and helped her to alight. ”

“ Baltazar, with bloodshot eyes, a splitting headache and tousled raiment, sitting on the bed, and Quong Ho, impeccably vested in Chinese attire, standing before him. “He has not been honourably blessed with sons, and therefore will receive from you the devotedness that is due to a parent. ”

“ Quong Ho, impeccably attired in a dark suit and a high stiff collar, replied that he did not feel the heat.
“I believe it would hurt you not to be prim and precise,” said Baltazar. “I wonder what would happen if you really ever let yourself go?”
Quong Ho smiled blandly. “I have been taught, sir, that self-discipline is the foundation of all virtue.”
Baltazar laughed. “You’re young. Stick to it. I’ve had as much as is good for me at my time of life. I’m going to end my days, thank God, in delightful lack of restraint. ”

“ She, Lady Edna Donnithorpe, to carry on an intrigue with John Baltazar—the insult of it!
The next day brought a short but fierce encounter.
“You pretend to be jealous. You’re not. You’re envious. You’re envious of a bigger man than yourself. You’re afraid of him. ”

“ We heard the bombs, but thought they had dropped on the moor. We’d no idea they had got anybody.”
“Zeppelin! Zeppelin!” murmured Baltazar. “I seem to have heard the name——”
“It’s pretty familiar, I should think,” said Mrs. Pillivant. “Don’t you think the best thing to do is to let us put you to bed, until the doctor comes?”
“The doctor must go to Quong Ho, at once. He’s dying,” said Baltazar.
“Then I’m sure I don’t know what to do,” said Mrs. Pillivant.
Baltazar closed his eyes. “I’ll be all right in a minute. It’s the knock on the head, and the long walk on an empty stomach.” ”

“ Nevermore would Spendale Farm be a human habitation. The men conveyed with their shovels the nameless things to the unhallowed resting-place. Baltazar would have liked to give the faithful Brutus, who had obviously rushed out of the house at the heels of Quong Ho and himself, decent burial. But not only had Brutus ceased to be Brutus, but Baltazar knew from experience the toil of digging in that granite-bound earth. ”

“ Baltazar rose from his chair by the long deal table and relit his pipe over the chimney of a lamp.
“You’ve put me out. What the blazes were we talking about?”
“The present world condition,” replied Quong Ho.
“Then I assert,” said Baltazar, “that the present state of the world is rotten. It’s no place for intellectual reformers like you and me. What are the words of Confucius known to every schoolboy? ‘With sincerity and truth unite a desire for self-culture. Lay down your life rather than quit the path of virtue. Enter not a state which is tottering to its fall. ”

“ Godfrey met his gaze with cool politeness. Baltazar wiped a perspiring brow. After a few moments Godfrey broke an awkward situation by offering his cigarette case. The cigarettes lit, Baltazar said suddenly:
“It’s an infernal shame!”
“What?” asked Godfrey, startled.
Baltazar pointed downwards. “That,” said he.
“Oh!” Godfrey laughed. “I’m one of the lucky ones. Far better to have stopped it with my foot than my head.”
“But to limp about on crutches all your life—a fellow like you in the pride of youth and strength. It makes one angry.”
“That’s kind of you, sir,” said Godfrey. ”

“ As Baltazar’s body-servant he refrained from familiar conversation. But Baltazar was in an expansive mood. He went on:
“You cook for me enchantingly. You serve me perfectly. Your attitude, Quong Ho, is one of the most exquisite tact. But if we were the last two persons on the earth, you would see me damned before you would devote yourself to my personal comfort in this unrestricted manner.”
“I think not,” replied Quong Ho. “The truths of religion would not be affected by the annihilation of the human race. ”

“ But it would have been a deeper truth if he had said that the wonder of a man who was his father, was capable of doing it, in order to persuade himself that he kept a black footman. The more we limit the audience to the man himself, the more we love him. The more human does the vivid creature appear to us. If Baltazar played to that audience of one, he had many illustrious colleagues. ”

“ But may one so inferior as myself humbly remind your illustrious greatness that it was you who originally propounded to me a question which I was bound to answer.”
“The fact that I did so,” replied Baltazar, “you may note as an instance of the human fallibility of the sublimest minds. Fear not but that I will profit by your lesson.”
He waved a dismissing hand. Quong Ho bowed with the perfect ceremonial of pupil taking leave of master and retired. Baltazar threw himself into his arm-chair and laughed aloud.
“You’re a joy, Quong Ho. A perfect joy. A museum specimen of a joy.” ”

“ Also Baltazar, for all his patriarchal years, earned his pupil’s respect as a man of marvellous muscle and endurance. During the winter, when the inclemency of the weather forbade agricultural pursuits—and on that moorland waste the weather abandoned itself to every capricious devildom within meteorological possibilities—Baltazar, having ordered a set of gloves from London, gave boxing lessons to his disciple. At first Quong Ho was shocked. How could so contemptible a person as he ever make a pretence of smiting the highly honourable face of his master? ”

“ Ten minutes afterwards Baltazar was speeding eastwards, grimly smiling. By skilful contrivance he had despatched the helpful Quong Ho upstairs to Marcelle at the last moment, and had pitched Godfrey’s kit into the dining-room and had driven off without it. If the infatuated youth would not listen to reason or the lady to the plainest of speech, he should go off to his love in a cottage unromantically destitute of toothbrush and pyjamas. Ridicule kills. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Baltazar rose. “My boy,” said he, “in two or three days’ time they’re going to make me, a man suddenly sprung from nowhere, a Minister of the Crown. That shows I’m not altogether a silly fool.”
In spite of the welter of disillusion and catastrophe in which the boy foundered, he detected in his father’s voice the pathetic, apologetic note which he had never been able to resist, the note conveying his father’s yearning desire to make good in his eyes.
“You know I’m proud of you, sir,” he said. “Which is a lot more,” he added with a break in his voice, “than you can say of me.” ”

“ At first Lady Edna Donnithorpe had thought of inviting a numerous company to meet Baltazar. Her young consciousness of power delighted in the homage of the fine flower of London around her table. Baltazar’s story (heard before she met him) had fascinated her, he himself had impressed her with a sense of his vitality and vast erudition, and after the dinner party she had been haunted by his personality. Here was a great force at a loose end. How could she apply it? People were beginning to talk about him. The new Rip Van Winkle. The Freak of the War. ”