The House of Baltazar

by William John Locke

“Ah!” she sighed.

He took a pace or two towards the door, halted, turned and looked at her as she sat by the tea-table, and the pain in her eyes and the piteous twist of her lips smote him with remorse. A remarkable idea entered his head. He clinched the entrance by smiting his left palm with his right fist. Naturally any idea coming into Baltazar’s head could not fail to be correct. He went behind her chair and laid his finger-tips on her shoulder.

“My dear,” said he tenderly, “forgive me. I ought to have thought of it before. A beautiful and accomplished woman——”

She swerved round. “Oh, don’t! You mean that there may have been someone else—since——? Well, there hasn’t. I’ve been far too busy.” And seeing him incredulous of the fallibility of his idea, she added with a touch of petulance: “If there had been anybody, I should have told you so at once.”

For the moment she wished there had been an intervening lover whose memory she could use as a rampart, for again she felt defenceless. If only Godfrey would come! He had promised to call for her on his way back from London, whither he had been summoned by a Medical Board. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Godfrey’s train would not arrive for another hour. With some apprehension she watched Baltazar, who was moving about the room in a restless, puzzled way.

“Don’t you see you’re spoiling it all?” she said. “And I haven’t even finished my tea.”

Laughter like quick sunshine lit his face. “A thousand pardons, Marcelle. I of all people to outrage the etiquette of tea-drinking!” He sat down. “Another cup, please. I shall get used to it soon. The Ceylon tea, I mean—not being with you.”

She breathed again, rather wondering at the power of a light word. Of course she had learned the way of tactful dealing with querulous or obstinate patients. Had she instinctively applied the method to Baltazar? A flush crept into her cheek. Perhaps those were right who proclaimed that man sick or man sound was the same overgrown child. Hitherto she had regarded man sick with maternal indulgence. Was she to regard man sound, in the person of John Baltazar, from the same maternal point of view? It would be a change from the old one. For twenty years she had looked on the John Baltazar of thirty with the eyes of the girl of eighteen; and she had beheld him as a god. Now she looked upon the man of fifty with the eyes of the woman of thirty-eight. It was not that either of them had grown wondrously old. On the contrary, he appeared to have changed absurdly little, for his face had ever been eager and marked with the lines of thought which time had but accentuated; his figure had retained its athletic suggestion of strength and activity; and his manner had the fire and vehemence of youth. And she herself had received assurance from an anxiously consulted mirror, of beauty that endured, and physically she rejoiced in the consciousness of splendid health, enabling her to work untiringly at tasks that had all but prostrated her fifteen years ago; in which respect she was younger than ever. No, it was not that he was an old man and she an old woman between whom the revival of romance would have been pathetically ludicrous. It wasn’t that at all. . . . After she had handed him the cup of tea, she took up the long abandoned bit of toast which she had dropped into the saucer. Laughing, he leaned forward and whipped from her fingers the cold and forlorn morsel, which he threw into the fire, and sprang to hand her the covered china dish from the warming hob.

“Not that unsacramental bit of bread,” he cried.

It was not done rudely or bearishly; it was done in the most charming way in the world; done with a cavalier, conquering lightness, what the French call “panache,” characteristic of the bright creature who had overpowered and overmastered her in her impressionable girlhood. She helped herself from the hot pile of toast, and her smile of thanks was not without a curl of ironic indulgence. The masterfulness of the proceeding in no way offended her, its manner being so perfect, but it did not strike the old romantic chord. Its symbolism flashed illuminatingly upon her. The god of the girl of eighteen to the woman of thirty-eight appeared merely as a self-willed, erratic and vehement man. The glamour that had invested him faded like the colours of dawn, and the sunshine beat on him in a hard, mistless air. He stood before her in the full light. While she listened to his pleasant talk, her feminine subconsciousness observed him in clear definition. It admitted his many virile and admirable qualities; he was a man out of the common mould; he was ruthless in the prosecution of the lines of conduct which he laid down for himself—and these same lines had been inspired by high moral or spiritual ideals; in his egotism he might unthinkingly trample over your body in order to reach his ends, but at your cry of pain he would be back in a flash, tearing himself to bits with remorse, overwhelming you with tenderness; a man, too, of great intellect—in his own sphere, of genius; a contradictory being, a hectoring giant, a wayward child, a helpless sentimentalist; possibly, with all that, the overgrown baby of the nurses’ tradition; a man, possessing all the defects of his masculine qualities. Not a god. Nothing like a god. Just a man. Just an interesting, forceful, even fascinating man whom she was meeting for the first time. A brilliant stranger. She gasped at a swift realization, even while she smiled at his description of what passed for a hospital at Chen Chow, the scene of Quong Ho’s prim and passionless amours. A stranger. Yet memory had made familiar every gesture, every intonation. He had not changed. It was she who had changed. The fault lay in herself, baffling attempts at explanation. She began to accuse herself of callousness, deadness of soul, and at last conscience impelled her to make some sort of amends.