BALTAZAR and Quong Ho were finishing lunch when Godfrey, flushed and excited, burst in with his news. An enthusiastically sympathetic parent failed to detect an unusual note, almost one of vainglory, in the boy’s speech and manner. He vaunted his success, proclaimed his entry on a brilliant career. He talked wildly. This to be a war to end war? A maudlin visionary’s dream. We might crush the Hun this time and have a sort of peace—a rotten politician’s peace, but the Hun would apply himself to the intensive cultivation of Hate, and in twenty years at the latest would have another go at Frightfulness. And that’s where the modern scientific soldier would come in. That was his career. He saw it all before him. And Baltazar, led away by the boy’s bright promise, clapped both his hands on his shoulders in a powerful grip, and cried: “I’m proud of you! My God, I’m proud of you! You and I will make our name famous again, as it was in the days of Admiral de Coligny. We’ll do things. We’ll make this rocking old Europe hum.” He laughed, and fire leaped into his eyes. “It’s good to be alive these days!”
“It is. It’s glorious!” replied Godfrey.
Quong Ho, smiling, urbane, approached with outstretched hand.
“I hope I may be allowed to offer you my sincere congratulations,” said he. “Although I do not see eye to eye with you in your prognostication of a recrudescence of warfare after the pacification of this present upheaval, yet——”
But Godfrey slapped him on the back, interrupting his eloquence.
“That’s all right, you dear old image. When you get your Fellowship, I’ll say the same to you.”
He cut a hunk from a cake on the table and poured out a whisky and soda.
“My dear boy,” cried Baltazar, darting to the bell, “haven’t you lunched? You must have a proper meal.”
Godfrey restrained him. No. He hadn’t time. He must leave London that afternoon, for a day or two, and the next two or three hours would be a mad rush. A shade of disappointment passed over Baltazar’s face.
“I was hoping we might have a little dinner to-night to celebrate your appointment—just ourselves, with Marcelle—and Lady Edna, if she could come.”
A smile flickered round Godfrey’s lips.
“Dreadfully sorry, sir,” said he. “I’m not my own master. Anyhow, I know Lady Edna’s engaged. But my last night—yes, if you will. I’d love it.”
As soon as he had bolted food and drink, he rushed out. He must throw some things into a bag, said he. Presently he returned and took hurried leave. Baltazar gripped him by the hand and God-blessed him. At the door Godfrey nodded to Quong Ho.
“Just a word, old chap.”
Quong Ho followed him into the hall.
Baltazar went to the open dining-room window, and presently saw Godfrey clamber into his little two-seater. He waved a hand.
“Good luck!”
“See you on Friday, sir.”
The car drove off. Quong Ho returned to the dining-room.
“I think, sir,” said he, “that we have just parted from a happy young man.”
“If a man’s not happy when he gets his heart’s desire at twenty-one,” said Baltazar, “he had better apply for transference to another planet. I threw mine away,” he added in a tone of reminiscence. “Wilfully. I ought to have been Senior Wrangler. But I was a fool. I was always taking false steps. That’s the wonderful thing about Godfrey, Quong Ho, as doubtless you’ve noticed—he always takes the right steps. A marvellously well-balanced mind.” He smiled in a meditative way, thanking Heaven for sparing Godfrey those storms of temperament in which he had so often suffered shipwreck. A steady chap, disciplined, not to be turned out of his course. “Well, well,” said he, “now from refreshment to labour. Come upstairs and let us get on with the work.”
It was the long vacation, and Quong Ho, tireless and devoted, was replacing Baltazar’s secretary absent on a much-needed holiday. A busy afternoon lay before them. That evening the week’s number of The New Universe must go to press; the final proofs be passed, modifying footnotes added to bring statements and arguments up to the hour’s date, so swift were the kaleidoscopic variations in the confused world-condition; and Baltazar’s own editional summary, the dynamo of the powerful periodical, had to be finished.
They sat in Baltazar’s library, at the orderly piled writing-table, very much as they had sat, a year ago, in the scholarly room at Spendale Farm. But now no longer as master and humorously treated pupil. The years of training had borne excellent fruit, and Quong Ho proved himself to be an invaluable colleague; so much so that Baltazar, at times, cursed the University of Cambridge for depriving him, for the greater part of the year, of one of the most subtle brains in the kingdom. Quong Ho could point unerringly to a fallacy in an argument; he seemed to be infallible on questions of fact in war politics; and such a meticulously accurate proof-corrector had never been born. In such a light at least did his rara avis appear to Baltazar. They worked in silence. Baltazar furiously inditing his article, Quong Ho, pen in hand, intent on the proofs. The open window admitted the London sounds of the warm summer afternoon. Presently Baltazar rose and cast off coat and waistcoat, and with a sigh of relief at the coolness of shirt-sleeves, sat down again.
“Why don’t you do the same?”
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. I’m going to let myself go, my friend, over this new job, like a runaway horse. At last I’ve bullied them into giving me a free hand. It’s a change from a year ago, isn’t it?”
“I agree that the change has been most beneficent,” said Quong Ho.
“Yes, by Jove!” cried Baltazar. “Then we were just a couple of grubby bookworms doing nothing for ourselves or our fellow-creatures. Now—here you are dealing with thoughts that shake the world; and I—by Jove!—one of the leading men in England. I should like to see the bomb that would knock us out this time.”
He hitched up his shirt-cuffs and plunged again into his article. He had scarcely written a sentence, when the door opened and Marcelle appeared on the threshold. He pushed back his chair and rose, and advanced to her with both hands outstretched.
“Hello! Hello! What has blown you in at this time of day?”
She looked up at him as she took his hand, and he saw there was trouble in her eyes.
“I know I’m disturbing you, but I can’t help it,” she said quickly. “I must speak to you.”
“Perhaps you would like to speak with Mr. Baltazar in private,” said Quong Ho.
“Indeed I should, Mr. Ho. Please forgive me.”
Quong Ho bowed and retired. Baltazar drew a chair for her. “Now what’s wrong, my dear?”
“Godfrey.”
“My God!” he cried. “Not an accident? He’s not hurt?”
“Oh no, no! Nothing of that sort.” She smiled in wan reassurance.
Baltazar breathed relief. “I believe if anything happened to him now, it would break me,” he said.
“He came round to see me an hour or so ago.”
“After he left here. To tell you of his appointment. Aren’t you glad?”
“Of course I am. But I should be more glad if that had been all.”
“What’s up?” he asked, frowning. “Tell me straight.”
“Ought I to tell you?” she asked rather piteously. “It’s betraying his confidence shamefully. I know I’m to blame. I ought never to have given him my promise. But I can’t see him go and ruin everything without making some sacrifice.”
“My dearest Marcelle, you’re talking in riddles. For Heaven’s sake give me the word of the enigma.”
“It’s Lady Edna Donnithorpe.”
“Well. What about her?”
“I wish he had never set eyes on the woman,” she cried passionately.
“If he’s in love with her, he’ll have to get over it,” said Baltazar. “France will cure him. And, as I told you the other evening, the lady’s perfectly callous. So my dear, go along and don’t worry.”
“You don’t seem to understand me, John dear,” she said urgently. “The woman is in love with him. It has been going on for months. He has told me all about it. She gets up and goes out driving with him in the car at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Silly woman!” growled Baltazar.
“Silly or not, she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t care for him. Not Lady Edna Donnithorpe. They meet whenever they can. He comes to me and pours out everything. I ought to have told you. But I couldn’t break my word. They’re lovers——”
“Lovers? What do you mean?” he asked, bending his heavy brows.
“Not yet. Not in that sense, I’m sure. But they soon will be.” She looked at him anxiously. “I know I’m going to forfeit Godfrey’s affection, and perhaps your respect—but I can’t do otherwise.” She paused, then burst out desperately: “She’s going to run away with him this afternoon.”
“The devil she is!” cried Baltazar. He strode about the room and threw up his hands. “Oh, the damned young fool!” He wheeled round on Marcelle. “Why on earth didn’t you stop it?”
She pleaded helplessness. How could she? Naturally she had used every argument, moral and worldly. As it was, he had dashed off in a fume, calling her unsympathetic and narrow-minded, regretting that he had ever given her his confidence. He had promised long ago to let her know everything. Now that he had kept his word she turned against him. She had been powerless.
“He’s old enough to look after his own morals,” said Baltazar, “and I’m not the silly hypocrite to hold up my hands in horror. But to go and run away with the most notorious society woman in London and play the devil with his career is another matter. Oh, the damned young fool!—That rat Edgar Donnithorpe will get on to it at once. He’s just the man to stick at nothing.—A filthy divorce case.—The boy’ll have to resign, if he doesn’t get chucked—then marry the woman five years older than himself. Where’s the happiness going to be?”
He resumed his striding about the room, in his impetuous way, and Marcelle followed him timidly with her eyes. “Oh, damnation!” said he. He had just been lecturing Quong Ho on Godfrey’s steadiness and balance. Why, he himself had never done such a scatter-brained thing.
“Where are the precious pair going?”
A remote week-end cottage, she said, belonging to a complaisant friend of Lady Edna’s. Five miles from station, post office or shop. A lonely Eden in the wilderness. Whether it was north, east, south or west of London she did not know. An old woman in charge would look after them.
“I suppose they’re well on their way by now,” said he.
“I don’t know. Possibly not. He said he had to rush about town to order his kit. Besides,” she added hopelessly, “what does it matter when they start?”
Baltazar cursed in futile freedom.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t give for it not to have happened,” he exclaimed. “I suppose I was a fool. You warned me. And it was I who, like an ass, encouraged them. I could kick myself!”
“It’s like you, John, dear, not to blame me,” she said humbly.
“Of course I don’t blame you. You thought it boyish folly. . . . What’s the good of talking about it?”
They did talk, however, in a helpless way.
“They had no intention of doing anything desperate,” she said, “until this morning. If he had remained in Londo............