“The best day’s work you ever did in your life,” said Baltazar, seating himself at the table and taking up his pen.
The dinner was not quite the success for which Baltazar had hoped, in spite of his efforts to set a tone of light-hearted gaiety. His best champagne flowed to little purpose. Godfrey acknowledged the toast to his promotion and appointment with irreproachable politeness and lamentable lack of fervour. Marcelle confessed afterwards that she had never sat through so unjoyous a meal. To make her peace with Godfrey had been no easy matter. It was but an armistice that she had patched up. Twice that day had he been betrayed by women, and he felt sore against an untrustworthy sex. He had admitted her not an inch further into his confidence. Of the incriminating scrap of paper he told her nothing. She sat at the table puzzled and unhappy. Quong Ho ate philosophically when he was not drinking in the words of wisdom that came from the master’s lips.
They broke up early. Godfrey retired to his room. Quong Ho departed to the printers to correct the proof of the editorial. Baltazar walked home with Marcelle: a somewhat silent and miserable little journey. In vain he assured her that she had been Godfrey’s salvation. She only realized that the boy’s faith in her had gone. Of the extent of the salvation he, like Godfrey, said nothing. The position for the moment was too delicate and grotesque to be told to another person—even to Marcelle, and his forthrightness scorned half confidences. He walked back disappointed, ever so little depressed. Hadn’t he told everybody to put their trust in him and worry their heads no more about the matter? And they were worrying considerably.
At the end of the passage beyond the hall he saw a streak of light signifying that Godfrey’s door was ajar. He went down, opened the door and looked in. There was Godfrey, huddled up on the Chesterfield, his head in his hands, his fingers clutching his crisp fair hair. As he seemed unaware of intrusion, Baltazar closed the door quietly and tiptoed away. No one knew better than he that every man must go through his little Gethsemane alone. But the pity of it! He crept upstairs with an aching heart. Papers by the last post in connection with the new ministry lay on his desk. He sat down and tried to deal with them; but at last abandoned them and sucked a gloomy pipe. Had he saved the boy after all? Would the woman hold her tongue? Was Donnithorpe such a fool as to believe his story? Meanwhile he was the avowed lover of the detested woman and the betrayer of official secrets. And the vindictive little rat held the proofs. What use was he going to make of them?
Yet the situation had a grimly humorous aspect. If he had not seen the boy huddled up in grief and shame downstairs he would have envisaged it with one of his great laughs. . . .
The next day passed quietly. Godfrey was absent till the evening. He had been to the War Office and arranged to leave for France on the morrow by the staff train. An agreeable evening was marred by no reference to Lady Edna or the scrap of paper. They spoke of books and mathematics and the war and the probable scope of Godfrey’s duties.
Only when they shook hands for the night did Godfrey say:
“I think, sir, you’re the best father that ever a man had.”
And Baltazar, with gladness leaping into his eyes and a grin on his face, replied: