The House of Baltazar

by William John Locke

“You cook for me enchantingly. You serve me perfectly. Your attitude, Quong Ho, is one of the most exquisite tact. But if we were the last two persons on the earth, you would see me damned before you would devote yourself to my personal comfort in this unrestricted manner.”

“I think not,” replied Quong Ho. “The truths of religion would not be affected by the annihilation of the human race. To you, who are to me in loco parenti——”

“Parentis, my dear fellow. It’s Latin. Make a note of it.”

“I do so, mentally,” said Quong Ho. “To you, sir, who are to me in the place of a parent, I owe filial obligation, and therefore I should not see you damned before I administered to your wants.”

“Rubbish!” said Baltazar, with a wave of his hand.

“I speak the truth,” said Quong Ho gravely.

Baltazar did not reply, but devoted himself to the cutlets and peas.

Quong Ho performed the sacred rite of the offering of wine. The meal was concluded in its nice formality of conventional life, and after coffee Baltazar lit his pipe and sat down to his usual hour’s mental relaxation. But his mind wandered from The Caxtons, which he had taken down from the shelves, to Quong Ho’s quiet profession of loyalty. For all his intimate knowledge of the Chinese character, this perhaps was the first time that he realized the depth of the young man’s real affection. And suddenly it occurred to him that he also was greatly attached to Quong Ho; not only through habit, or implicit trust, or gratitude for essential co-operation in carrying out his eccentric scheme of life; but by ties very simple and homely. Bacon, speaking of man, says: “If he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.” Baltazar glowed with the thought that he could still act his part as a human being. He had his friend. Indeed, he had had one for all these months, and even years, without knowing it. The loneliness of soul which he had accepted as his portion from the time of his flight from Cambridge, and for the last day or two he had begun to dread, was filled by the incongruous sympathy of the young Chinaman. Hitherto he had accepted his fidelity as a matter of course; he had rewarded it by scrupulous observance of his obligations. But it had been his good pleasure to regard his disciple as a human and intellectual toy, all the more delectable for his lack of the humorous sense. To pull well-known strings and elicit platitudes expressed in the solemnity of his classically learned English had been his mischievous delight. But—“I speak the truth,” Quong Ho had said; and the accent in which he had said it was one of grave conviction, even of rebuke.

He took up his book again and almost immediately let it drop.

“If I lost Quong Ho, what the devil would become of me?” He threw the book on to the floor and leaned back in his arm-chair, pipe in mouth, his hands clasped behind his head. In the whole wide world of hundreds of millions of people, he had not a single friend, save Quong Ho. He had been very dense not to realize before the elementary truth that individual life is not supportable by itself. Newton’s Third Law of Motion—to every action there is always opposed an equal reaction—was a law of life. The incessant reaction on the individual would be death. One other nature at least was needed for the distribution and application of vital forces, and in their mutual action and reaction could alone be found the compensation that was safety, sanity, normal human existence. And the more attuned were the part of the reciprocal human machine, the greater the compensation; this human adjustment had its degrees: understanding, friendship, affection, culminating in love—the perfect state.