The House of Baltazar. William John Locke

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      “Specialized branches of Western Philosophy,” replied Quong Ho.

      “Well, I’m damned!” said the mystified Doubleday. “Anyhow, it’s none of my business.”

      So down went Quong Ho as “student”—the only alien on the register.

      “That’s very interesting,” said the Vicar, during his next chat with Doubleday. “The Chinese are a remarkable race. Their progress should be watched.”

      “I’m afraid it can’t be done, sir. What with being short-handed and overworked as it is——”

      At the Vicar’s explanation the Sergeant mopped his forehead in relief.

      “I’ve a man’s job to keep Christians in order, without shadowing the heathen,” said he.

      “I’m convinced that his master and himself are a pair of harmless eccentrics,” said the Vicar.

      And the Vicar’s word went the round of the district, and eccentrics, or the nearest approach to it that local tongues could manage, the inhabitants of Spendale Farm were finally designated—though what were “eccentrics” remained a matter of pleasant and fruitful conjecture.

      When Quong Ho returned to the farmhouse after his encounter with Sergeant Doubleday, he said nothing about his registration as an alien. Nor did it occur to him to show the paper money which he had received in lieu of the usual gold in exchange for the cheque which he had cashed at the bank; for the disposal of petty cash did not concern John Baltazar, who rightly trusted in the Chinaman’s scrupulous honesty. That, in spite of the most definite orders, he should leave Baltazar uninformed of the various signs and tokens of national unrest which he had observed at Water-End, caused Quong Ho occasional twinges of conscience. He remembered the saying: “To shirk your duty when you see it before you, shows want of moral courage.” But what was his duty? On the other hand, there was the dictum: “To sacrifice to a spirit with which you have nothing to do is mere servility.” What had he to do with this purely English war-spirit that he should servilely sacrifice to it his almost filial obligations? Obviously nothing. Quong Ho therefore continued to purvey no idle gossip, and went about his varied avocations with a serene mind.

      Now, as John Baltazar, who had been dead to the English-speaking world for nearly twenty years, held correspondence with no one save a few necessary tradesmen, mostly booksellers, as he took in no periodical, daily, weekly, monthly or annual of any kind whatever, and as he conversed with no human being except Quong Ho, whose lips he had sealed, he had created for himself an almost perfect barrage through which the news of contemporary happenings could not penetrate.

      “Quong Ho,” he had said, one Spring day, soon after his return from China, when he had come to one of those revolutionary decisions that marked the crises of his life, “I have sworn by the spirits of my ancestors to live the life of a recluse for the space of three years, holding communication with no man or woman and cutting myself off like one that is dead from the interests of the contemporaneous world. My reasons for this determination I will eventually unfold to you, provided you carry out faithfully the contract I am about to propose. If you decline to bind yourself, which as a free man you are at liberty to do, I will pay your passage back to China and give you a sum of money adequate to start you on an honest career. If you accept it, I will honourably perform my part. You have been my servant and my pupil for the last eight years——”

      “You saved this miserable orphan from death at the hands of a tyrannic governor,” interposed Quong Ho—they were speaking his native tongue—“you have taught him the language of England and the philosophies both of East and West, and you are to me as a father to whom I owe filial fidelity and devotion.”

      “That is well said, Quong Ho,” replied Baltazar. “This person appreciates your professions of loyalty.” The scene of this memorable conversation, by the way, was a small bedroom at the top of the Savoy Hotel; Baltazar, with bloodshot eyes, a splitting headache and tousled raiment, sitting on the bed, and Quong Ho, impeccably vested in Chinese attire, standing before him. “He has not been honourably blessed with sons, and therefore will receive from you the devotedness that is due to a parent. But for the space of three years only. There may come a time when exaggerated filial zeal may become embarrassing.”

      And he set forth the contract. In return for the absolute obedience of Quong Ho and his acceptance of the life of a recluse for three years, he undertook to send him back to China as the most accomplished native mathematician in existence—for he had already gauged the young man’s peculiar genius—with a Master of Arts degree, if possible, from some British University, and thus assure him a distinguished position in that New China whose marvellous future had been the subject of so many of their dreams and discussions. And Quong Ho had taken solemn oaths of fealty and with the Chinaman’s singleness of purpose, accepted, a few weeks later, the deadly and enduring solitude of the moorland as an unquestionable condition of existence.

      Secure in the unswerving fidelity of Quong Ho, and in the impregnable seclusion of this God-disclosed hermitage, John Baltazar lived a life according to his ideals. No outer ripple of the maëlstrom in which the world was engulfed lapped, however faintly, against the low granite wall encircling the low-built granite farmhouse. His retirement was absolute, his retreat off the track of the most casual wanderer.

      Six months passed before his eyes rested on a human being other than Quong Ho. It is true that the rate-collector, savagely cursing his luck and the bicycle-destroying track that led from the road to the farmhouse, had appeared one day with a paper showing certain indebtedness; but Quong Ho had received it and, gravely promising a cheque in payment, had dismissed the intruder. No other official came near the place. Quong Ho called weekly at the Post office and railway station, to the great relief of postman and van-driver.

      “Thought and money acutely applied,” remarked Baltazar, “together with freedom from the entanglement of family relationships, are the determining factors of human happiness. A man with these factors at his disposal is a fool if he cannot, fashion for himself whatever kind of existence he pleases.”

      But one day, a cloudless winter morning, when the sunshine kissing the frost-bound earth transmuted the myriad frondage of the heather into a valley of diamonds, Baltazar, on his way from the stable to the front door, came across a stranger leaning over the gate. He was a heavy man with a fat, clean-shaven face, loose lips and little furtive eyes. He wore a new golfing suit exaggerated in cut and aggressive in colour.

      He said with easy familiarity: “Good morning, Mr. Baltazar.”

      “Since you know my name,” replied Baltazar, with an air of courtesy, “it has doubtless struck you that this is my gate.”

      “Of course——”

      “You are leaning on it,” said Baltazar.

      The visitor, perplexed, straightened himself.

      “I’m a sort of neighbour of yours, you know. I live about seven miles off—the big property this side of Water-End: Cedar Chase—and I’ve often thought I’d run over in the Rolls-Royce as far as I could, and walk the rest, and see how you were getting along.”

      “That is most amiable of you,” said Baltazar, advancing to the gate and resting his arm on it with an easy suggestion of proprietorship. “You have run over, you have walked—and now you see.”

      Before Baltazar’s ironical gaze the stranger’s eyelids fluttered in disconcertment.

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