“My dear,” said he, “you talked last year some silly rot about a locust. I know the beast better than you do. It ate all those precious years I spent in that infernal country. The best years of my life. I’m starting now at fifty-one where I ought to have started at thirty. That damned Chinese locust has robbed me of everything. You, Godfrey, the vital life of England, and a brilliant career with Heaven knows what kind of power for good. I hold the country in the most deadly detestation. Nothing in this wide world would induce me to go back—not even if they wanted to make me an Emperor. I’ve finished with it for ever and ever. I swear it.”
“You needn’t look as if I were urging you to it,” she laughed. “I’m sure I don’t want to lose you.”
“All right then,” said Baltazar. “Let us talk of something else.”
In these early months of struggle to enter his kingdom, Baltazar came nearer happiness than he had ever done before. A man younger, or more habitually dependent on women, would have counted the one thing wanting as the one prime essential and would have regarded everything else as naught. But Baltazar, although wistfully recognizing the one missing element, was far too full of the lust of others to sit down and make moan. Marcelle gave him all she could, a devoted friendship, a tender intimacy, a sympathetic understanding. He wanted infinitely more, his man’s nature clamoured for the whole of her. But what she gave was of enormous comfort. It was a question of taking it or leaving it. Perhaps had his love been less, he would have left it. Love me all in all or not at all, and be hanged to you! That might have been his attitude. Besides, he knew that by the high-handed proceeding of the primitive man he could at any moment carry her off to the cave in Sussex Gardens. In a way, it was his own choice to live celibate. Sooner accept the graciousness she could give freely than take by force what she would yield grudgingly. Let him be happy with what he had.
For he had much.
Godfrey, learning to walk on his artificial foot, a miracle of running contrivance, and allowed, as it seemed, almost indefinite leave until he should reach perfection of movement, took up his quarters in his house, at first almost angrily, compelled against his will by the infernal dancing eyes and the pathetic appeal behind them, and after a short while very contentedly, appreciating his strange father’s almost womanly solicitude for his comfort, his facilities for leading his own young man’s life. Far more attractive the well-appointed house, with a snuggery of his own made over for him to have and to hold in perpetuity, with a table always spread for any friends he cared to ask to lunch or dine, with an alert intellect for companion ever ready to give of its best, with opportunities of meeting the odd, fascinating personalities whom the editor of The New Universe had gathered round him, with an atmosphere of home all the more pleasant because of its unfamiliarity, than the bleak room at an over-crowded hotel, or the cramped Half Moon Street lodgings which in his boyish experience were the inevitable condition of a lonely young man’s existence in London. Once he said:
“I know it’s a delicate point, sir, but I should be awfully glad if you’d let me contribute—pay my way, you know. It’s really embarrassing for me to accept all this—I can’t explain—it’s horrid. But I do wish you would let me, sir.”
This was just after breakfast one morning. Baltazar paused in the act of filling his pipe.
“If you like, my boy,” said he, “we can discuss the matter with our housekeeper, Mrs. Simmons, and agree upon a weekly sum for your board and lodging. I know that you have independent means and can pay anything in reason. Rather than not have you here, I should agree to such an arrangement.”