She looked at the young man, so eager, so proven, so like his father in gesture and glance, yet in speech and outlook—she was yet to get to that—but she knew the revolutionary influences of the war, the real war, on those who have faced its terrors and become saturated with its abiding philosophies—so different from the fervid creature, John Baltazar, of the late nineties, who had never dreamed of the possibility of this world convulsion. He had much the same frank charm of manner, the direct simplicity of utterance; but the mouth was weaker; the eyes were blue, the eyes of a shrewish blonde—not the compelling, laughing, steel-grey eyes with a queer sparkle in the iris of John Baltazar. All in the young face that was not John Baltazar’s was the mother’s. She hated the mother dead, as she had loathed her living. Only once had she seen her, a blonde shrew-mouse of a woman. Just a passing by on the Newnham road, when a companion had pointed her out as Mrs. Baltazar. The little bitter mouth had bitten into her memory: the hard little blue eyes had haunted her for eighteen years. The mouth and eyes were there, before her, now. The rest, all that was noble in the boy, was John Baltazar.
“Who has told you the little you do know about him?” she asked.
“My uncle. My mother’s brother. I don’t think I have any relations living on my father’s side. At any rate, I’ve not heard of them. We’re of old Huguenot stock—Revocation of Edict of Nantes refugees—God knows what we were before. Long ago I happened upon a copy somewhere of the Annuaire Militaire de l’Armée Française—and I found a Baltazar in the list. I had an idea of writing him; but I didn’t, of course. Now I suppose the poor devil’s killed. Anyhow, that’s nothing to do with your question. My uncle—Sir Richard Woodcott—they knighted him for manufacturing easily broken hardware round about Birmingham, or for going to chapel, or something—you know the type——”
Again she rebuked him: “I thought you said your uncle brought you up.”
“On my mother’s fortune—he was my guardian and trustee. But he never let me forget that I was the son of John Baltazar. There was no question of affection from either of them—himself or his wife. Anything I did wrong—it was my scoundrel of a father coming out in me. After passing through a childish phase of looking on him as a kind of devil who had blasted my young life, I began to have a sneaking regard for him. You see, don’t you? If he was the antithesis of Uncle Richard, he must be somebody I could sympathize with, perhaps rather somebody who could sympathize with me. They drew me into the arms of his memory, so to speak. Odd, isn’t it?”
“What specifically did they accuse him of?”
“Oh, everything,” he replied, with a careless laugh. “Every depravity under the sun. Colossal egotism and heartlessness the mildest. And of course he drank——”
A sudden red spot flamed in the Sister’s cheek and her tired eyes flashed. “That’s a lie! And so is the other. How dare they?”
“Oh, a pacifist Knight who is making his fortune out of the war will dare anything. Then, of course, there’s what they say about any man who runs away from his wife——”
“To be explicit——?” She leaned an elbow on the table, a cheek on hand, and looked at him steadily.