“Pillivant,” said Baltazar. “I don’t much like it, but there are doubtless worse.”
“You may have heard it. Pillivant and Co., Timber Merchants. We’ve rather come to the front lately.”
“Your personal initiative, I should imagine,” said Baltazar.
“I don’t say as it isn’t,” replied Mr. Pillivant. “When whacking Government contracts are going, why not get ’em?”
“Why not? Why waste time in doing anything else, all day long, but getting ’em?”
Mr. Pillivant drew from his inner breast pocket a vast gold casket of a cigar-case, opened it and held it out towards his inhospitable host.
“Have a cigar? You needn’t be afraid. They stand me in two hundred and fifty shillings a hundred and I get ’em wholesale. No?” Baltazar declined politely. “You’re missing a good thing.” He bit off the end of the one he had chosen, lit it with a fat wax vesta extracted from a minor gold casket and drew a few puffs. “Funny sort of life you seem to be leading here, Mr. Baltazar. Dam’ funny!”
“I perceive you have a keen sense of humour,” said Baltazar.
Again the mocking stare of his cold, grey eyes abashed the unwelcome visitor, who filled in the ensuing silence by re-biting and re-lighting his half-crown cigar. The operation over:
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” said he.
“So lovely, Mr. Pillivant,” replied Baltazar, “that it would be selfish of me to do otherwise than leave you to the undisturbed enjoyment of it.”
And, with a polite bow, he left Mr. Pillivant and walked, in a dignified way, into the house. Mr. Pillivant, conscious at last of the rejection of his friendly overtures, stared for a while, and then, sticking his cigar at a truculent angle in his mouth, swaggered away across the moor.
“Quong Ho,” said Baltazar, “when next you go to Water-End, it will be your duty to find a powerful and exceedingly nasty-tempered dog.”
A fortnight afterwards Brutus was added to the establishment.
CHAPTER IV
THE life ordained by John Baltazar for Quong Ho and himself was one of unremitting toil, mental and physical. From the time of his uprising at six in the morning, when Quong Ho awakened him with tea (some chests of which he had brought with him from China), until midnight, there were few moments, save the after dinner hour of literary indulgence, that he wasted in idle relaxation. The work of the house, that of steward, butler, valet, cook, parlourmaid, charwoman and laundress, together with the outdoor functions of groom, dairyman and bailiff, Quong Ho executed with the remarkable ease and despatch of the Chinaman accustomed from childhood to menial tasks. The cultivation of the barren land, the painful wheeling of barrow-loads of superficial soil from the moorland, the digging and the planting and the draining and the watering, were all done by John Baltazar himself. The hard exercise, some three or four hours a day, maintained him in the superb health that enabled him to carry out his studious programme. Of his eighteen waking hours he allotted roughly seven to physical things, eleven to intellectual pursuits. For Quong Ho this apportionment of time was inverted. That was the theoretic schedule. As a matter of fact, Quong Ho found more than seven hours a day for mathematical study and other intellectual development.
There was much that Baltazar had set himself to do during his three years. First he must make up in mathematical output the loss of his wander-time in China. Now all the world understands the irresistible force that compels the poet, at last, to give form to long haunting dreams; the need, also, of the astronomer to crystallize the results of his discoveries and formulate his epoch-making theories; but the passion of the mathematician to do the same is not so easily comprehensible. For years Baltazar had dreamed of an exhaustive and monumental treatise on the Theory of Groups which would revolutionize the study of the higher mathematics, a gorgeous vision the mere statement of which must leave the ordinary being cold and the first attempt at explanation petrify him with its icy unintelligibility. The dream was now in process of accomplishment. He had also to put into form fascinating adventures into the analytical geometry of the ghostly and unrealizable space of Four Dimensions. There, he was wont to assert, you entered the true Fairyland of mathematics. To all these labours he brought the enthusiasm of the poet or the astronomer. Another and a totally different sphere of activities absorbed much of his energy. In China he had assimilated a vast store of philosophical learning, with which equipment he prepared to re-edit many European versions of the Chinese classics misconceived through faulty erudition. He had brought from China stacks of rare manuscripts, piles of notes, materials for the life-work of any scholar. And, last, he had thrown himself with impetuous zeal into the intellectual training of Quong Ho.
The mutual attitude of the solitary pair was one of curious delicacy. As master and man they were league-sundered by the gulf of convention. As teacher and pupil they were drawn together into close intellectual intimacy. It was the Chinaman’s exquisite tact that simplified the situation for the direct and masterful Englishman. As a servant he scrupulously observed the decorum of the attendant—there never existed head butler in ducal mansion who could surpass his perfection of manner; but as disciple he subtly raised himself to the plane of social equality, and gauged to a hair’s breadth the shade of familiar address warranted by the position.
“Quong Ho,” said Baltazar one day at dinner, when the Chinaman had gone through the usual solemn farce of offering him Burgundy, “your discretion is beyond the value of rubies. Never once have you remarked on the apparent vanity of this daily proceeding. Yet in your own mind you must have wondered at it.”
“It is not for me to speculate on the reason for your honourable customs,” said Quong Ho.
“Yet why do you think I cause myself to be offered wine every day only to refuse it?”
“I suppose you desire to maintain, in the wilderness, the ceremonial etiquette of the English dinner-table. The wine in the bottle is but an adornment, like the flowers in the bowl.”
“It pleases me that you should have come to such a conclusion,” said Baltazar.
For the ceremony of the wine was linked with the causes that determined his sudden flight into solitude. He had promised Quong Ho to inform him of these causes; but the fulfilment of the promise was hard to make. Sitting dishevelled on the bed in the little room at the top of the Savoy Hotel, he had thought disclosure to his servant to be a fitting part of the punishment he had meted out to himself. Later he repented; especially when he perceived Quong Ho’s blank indifference. Still, a promise was a promise, and Baltazar not the man to shirk his obligations. On this particular occasion he thought it best to get the matter over.
“The conclusion is an honourable one on your part, Quong Ho,” he continued, “but it is incorrect.”
“I own, sir,” replied Quong Ho, “that it is drawn from conjectural premises.”
“It was over-indulgence in wine that made me set to myself this penalty of studious solitude,” said Baltazar in Chinese. “By telling you this I redeem a promise. As to our daily custom, a weak man flies from temptation, a strong man keeps temptation at his elbow in order to defy it.”
“In that way, honourable master, is merit acquired.”
