The House of Baltazar

by William John Locke

During her drive from Churton Towers in the motor-cab, foolish trepidations beset her. Although her woman of the world’s sound sense made mock of timidities, yet old-maidish instincts questioned the propriety of her proceeding. She was going to meet her former lover in a private room of an hotel. What about professional decorum? Matron, who kept a hard and unsympathetic eye on flirtatious tendencies in the junior staff, would regard her visit, should she come to know of it, as a horrifying escapade. She had seen her as she ran down the steps, hatted, gloved, prinked to her best, with a betraying flush (lobster colour, she thought) on her cheek; and being within earshot of the Gorgon, she had thrown the mere word “Godalming” at the chauffeur as she entered the car. When she gathered up courage to look at herself in the strip of mirror that faced her, her prejudiced eyes saw herself pale and haggard, smitten with lines which she had not noticed when she put on her hat. And all the time she knew that these feminine preoccupations were but iridescences on the surface of deep, black waters filled with fear, and that she was letting her mind play on them so as not to think of the depths.

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. And following him through the passage and up the narrow staircase, while he talked loud and cheery and confident, as though he defied gossiping tongues, and every minute turned to smile upon her, she remembered with a little pang of remorse for unjust fears, that as now so it had been in the beginning; that there never had been a tryst hard or venturesome for her to keep, never one on which he was not there before her, big, responsible, inspiring confidence. He was singularly unchanged.

Obeying a breezy wave of the hand, she sank into an arm-chair. He shut the door and crossed the room, his face lit with happiness.

“For the first time in our lives we’re together alone within four walls. You and I. Isn’t it strange? We have to talk. Not only now, but often. As often as we can. It would have been monstrous of me to expect you to run up and down to London. Besides, there would have been no privacy. The lounges of the great hotels—I loathe them! A man and woman sit whispering in a corner and at once surround themselves with an atmosphere of intrigue. Horrible! And I couldn’t come every day to Churton Towers—even ostensibly to see Godfrey. There would have been the devil to pay. All sorts of scandal. So I’ve made this my headquarters, in order to be near you.”

The weather had turned raw and cold, and as she had driven in an open car, clad in light coat and skirt, with nothing to warm her but a fur stole, she felt chilly, and welcomed the bright fire in the grate. She smiled, and said it was very cosy. He searched the room for a hassock, and finding one set it beneath her feet.

“We’ll have tea soon, which will make it cosier,” he said. He threw himself into an arm-chair on the other side of the fire. “It’s like a fairy-tale, isn’t it?”

She admitted the strangeness of the circumstances in which they had met, and with instinct of self-defence began to speak of Godfrey, of their suddenly formed friendship, of his manifold excellences. Baltazar let her run on for a while, content merely to let his eyes rest on her and to listen to her voice. At last he rose, irrelevantly, and, striding across to her, held out both his hands. She could not choose but surrender hers.

“Can’t you realize what you’ve been to me? ‘All a wonder and a wild desire!’ ”

She fluttered a frightened glance at him and withdrew her hands. He stood looking down on her, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece.

“Do you remember? That Browning line—it was one of the last things I said to you. Then we lost our heads and broke off a delightful conversation. Why not continue it, starting from where we left off?”