of his master with the outlandish name, and himself, in the middle of the moor? Quong Ho was admitted to be a museum-piece of discretion. And as time went on, although his ways were marked by the same perfect courtesy, he lost favour amongst his party, through a bland taciturnity and a polite rejection of conversational advantage.
Now for this taciturnity there were excellent reasons: none other than the commands of John Baltazar. When Quong Ho returned the first time to the farm with the jeering laughter ringing in his ears, he bewailed the impoliteness of the inhabitants of Water-End. Said Baltazar in Chinese:
“Dost thou not know the proverb, Quong Ho, ‘A man must insult himself before others will?’ And again, what saith the Master? ‘Rotten wood cannot be carved, and walls made of dirt and mud cannot be plastered.’ By acting against my orders and striving to plaster the muddy walls of these rustics with ceremonial politeness, you have insulted yourself and therefore exposed yourself to rudeness.”
“Master,” said Quong Ho, “it appears that I have erred grievously.”
“Listen again,” said Baltazar, with a twinkle in his eyes unperceived by the downcast Quong Ho, “to what the Master saith: ‘The failure to cultivate virtue, the failure to examine and analyse what I have learnt, the inability to move towards righteousness after being shown the way, the inability to correct my faults—these are the causes of my grief.’ ”
Quong Ho replied that although his deviation from the path of virtue was glaring to the most myopic vision, he nevertheless was in a dilemma, inasmuch as he had followed the precepts of Western courteous observance, the ceremonial, for instance, of the hat-salutation, laid down for him by his illustrious teacher.
Baltazar, always in Chinese, replied kindly: “O youth of indifferent understanding, is it not written in the Shû King in the Charge to Yüeh: ‘In learning there should be a humble mind and the maintenance of a constant earnestness: in such a case improvement will surely come. When a man’s thoughts from first to last are constantly fixed on learning, his virtuous cultivation comes unperceived’?”
“With those truths am I acquainted,” replied Quong Ho.
“Then, my good fellow,” retorted Baltazar in English, “why the devil don’t you apply them? I’ve absolutely forbidden you to have any intercourse whatever with the people round about. You’re not to talk to them about my concerns or your concerns. You’re not to listen to any of their talk or to bring back to me scraps of their rotten gossip. You’re to go to Water-End on necessary business—unfortunately we can’t live on air or warm ourselves in the winter with bottled sunbeams—but that’s the limit. Outside of that you’re a man deaf and dumb. You’re to go one better than the three Sacred Apes of Japan, who, holding hands respectively before eyes, ears and mouth, signify ‘I see no evil; I hear no evil; and I speak no evil.’ In your case, it’s to be: ‘I see nothing; I hear nothing; I speak nothing.’ ”
“In future,” said Quong Ho, “my eyes shall be blinded, my ears sealed and my mouth locked.”
“If there are any more animated discussions of last week’s thunderstorms, or further Beauteous-Madamizing of young females, I’ll regretfully have to send you straight back to China.”
The unblinking stare in Baltazar’s great grey eyes and the obstinate set of his lips—signs of purpose which Quong Ho for eight years had learned to gauge with infallible precision—caused him to quake excessively. Not only was his servitude to Baltazar a matter of oath, but a return before the completion of the special education which would enable him to take immediate rank in New China, would be the death-blow to his ambitions. So Quong Ho took to heart the precepts of the Humble Mind and swore to outdo the Sacred Apes of Japan, even as his master had ordained.
After this, in the first days of their Thebaïd, master and man held frequent conversations on the relations with the outside world which the former had prescribed. The three years, said Baltazar, which lay before them in the solitude of the wilderness, were for the maceration of the flesh, the pursuit of virtue and the cultivation of the intellect. He illustrated his argument with countless quotations from the Chinese classics.
“In this fashion, Quong Ho,” said he, “you are drinking of the Five Sources of Happiness. To wit: Long Life: for here, in this unpolluted atmosphere, you are acquiring physical health. Riches: they will be yours in no matter what University of Modern China you go as Professor of Mathematics. Soundness of Body and Serenity of Mind: the Latins put the idea into epigrammatic form—Mens sano in corpore sano; what can be more conducive to serenity of mind than this studious solitude, undisturbed by material cares? The Love of Virtue: we have every hour of all our days to acquire it. Fulfilling to the end the WILL; is it not the WILL that has set us here?”
“Indubitably,” said Quong Ho.
“Hearken again,” said Baltazar, “to the Six Extreme Evils. Misfortune shortening the Life: from that no man is exempt—but from it no men are more than we protected. Sickness: likewise—but I have a box of simple remedies, and if the worst comes, there is a man learned in physic at Water-End. Distress of Mind: if our minds in these ideal surroundings are so unstable as to be distressed, we are unworthy of the name of philosophers. Poverty: I have an ample fortune. Wickedness: we, who are Seekers after Truth, have deliberately set ourselves beyond the reach of Temptation. Weakness: that, O Quong Ho, is the only danger. You must be on your guard against it night and day, especially on the days when necessity exposes you to the manifold temptations of that microcosm of Babylon, Pekin and San Francisco which goes by the name of Water-End.”
So it came to pass that when astounding tidings, the most pregnant in the world’s history, came to Water-End and the little townlet blazed with the wildfire of gossip, Quong Ho, scrupulous obeyer of Law, heard without listening and, forbearing to question, always returned to Spendale Farm with a mind rendered, with Oriental deliberation, so profoundly blank as to preclude the possibility of retailing to his master the idle news of the outer world. And gradually, such is the contempt bred by familiarity, Quong Ho lost prestige in Water-End. His weekly appearance in the town, with old grey mare and cart, grew to be one of the commonplace recurrent phenomena such as the Vicar’s Sunday sermon and the Saturday evening orgy and home-convoying of old Jack Bonnithorne, the champion alcoholist of the moorland.
But around Baltazar of the one brief glimpse arose many a legend. He was mad. He was a magician. He was an unspeakable voluptuary; though whence and how arrived the houris who ministered to his voluptuousness, was an insoluble problem. He was a missionary with one convert. The theory, put forward by the farmers, that he was the champion fool on the Moor, gained the most general acceptance. Then someone whispered that he was a German spy. The valiant of the town planned an expedition at dead of night to surprise him at his nefarious practices; but the sarcasms of Police-Sergeant Doubleday, who asked what information useful to the enemy, save the crop of heather per square acre, could be given by a man inhabiting the most desolate spot in the United Kingdom, checked their enterprise. Their ardour, too, was damped by a spell of torrential rain, which robbed of its pleasantness the prospect of a sixteen-mile walk. When the sun came out, the suspicion had faded from their minds, and shortly afterwards most of them found themselves in the King’s uniform in regions far distant from Water-End.
One morning Police-Sergeant Doubleday lay in wait for Quong Ho outside the Bank, and informed him that he must register himself as an alien, under the Defence of the Realm Act. Quong Ho blandly accompanied the Sergeant to the Police Station and complied with the formalities. Full name: Li Quong Ho. Nationality: Chinese. Occupation: Student.
“Eh?” cried Sergeant Doubleday, a vast, red-faced man with a scrubby black moustache. “That won’t do. Aren’t you Mr. Whats-his-name’s man-servant?”
“That
