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Page 81
* * *
The Efficient Baxter bicycled broodingly to Market Blandings for
tobacco. He brooded for several reasons. He had just seen Aline
Peters and George Emerson in confidential talk on the upper
terrace, and that was one thing which exercised his mind, for he
suspected George Emerson. He suspected him nebulously as a snake
in the grass; as an influence working against the orderly
progress of events concerning the marriage that had been arranged
and would shortly take place between Miss Peters and the
Honorable Frederick Threepwood.
It would be too much to say that he had any idea that George was
putting in such hard and consistent work in his serpentine role;
indeed if he could have overheard the conversation just recorded
it is probable that Rupert Baxter would have had heart failure;
but he had observed the intimacy between the two as he observed
most things in his immediate neighborhood, and he disapproved of
it. It was all very well to say that George Emerson had known
Aline Peters since she was a child. If that was so, then in the
opinion of the Efficient Baxter he had known her quite long
enough and ought to start making the acquaintance of somebody
else.
He blamed the Honorable Freddie. If the Honorable Freddie had
been a more ardent lover he would have spent his time with Aline,
and George Emerson would have taken his proper place as one of
the crowd at the back of the stage. But Freddie's view of the
matter seemed to be that he had done all that could be expected
of a chappie in getting engaged to the girl, and that now he
might consider himself at liberty to drop her for a while.
So Baxter, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco,
brooded on Freddie, Aline Peters and George Emerson. He also
brooded on Mr. Peters and Ashe Marson. Finally he brooded in a
general way, because he had had very little sleep the past week.
The spectacle of a young man doing his duty and enduring
considerable discomforts while doing it is painful; but there is
such uplift in it, it affords so excellent a moral picture, that
I cannot omit a short description of the manner in which Rupert
Baxter had spent the nights which had elapsed since his meeting
with Ashe in the small hours in the hall.
In the gallery which ran above the hall there was a large chair,
situated a few paces from the great staircase. On this, in an
overcoat--for the nights were chilly--and rubber-soled shoes, the
Efficient Baxter had sat, without missing a single night, from
one in the morning until daybreak, waiting, waiting, waiting. It
had been an ordeal to try the stoutest determination. Nature had
never intended Baxter for a night bird. He loved his bed. He knew
that doctors held that insufficient sleep made a man pale and
sallow, and he had always aimed at the peach-bloom complexion
which comes from a sensible eight hours between the sheets.
One of the King Georges of England--I forget which--once said
that a certain number of hours' sleep each night--I cannot recall
at the moment how many--made a man something, which for the time
being has slipped my memory. Baxter agreed with him. It went
against all his instincts to sit up in this fashion; but it was
his duty and he did it.
It troubled him that, as night after night went by and Ashe, the
suspect, did not walk into the trap so carefully laid for him, he
found an increasing difficulty in keeping awake. The first two or
three of his series of vigils he had passed in an unimpeachable
wakefulness, his chin resting on the rail of the gallery and his
ears alert for the slightest sound; but he had not been able to
maintain this standard of excellence.
On several occasions he had caught himself in the act of dropping
off, and the last night he had actually wakened with a start to
find it quite light. As his last recollection before that was of
an inky darkness impenetrable to the eye, dismay gripped him with
a sudden clutch and he ran swiftly down to the museum. His
relief on finding that the scarab was still there had been
tempered by thoughts of what might have been.
Baxter, then, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco, had
good reason to brood. Having bought his tobacco and observed the
life and thought of the town for half an hour--it was market day
and the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relieved
and brightened by pigs that eluded their keepers, and a bull calf
which caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when he
was tying his shoe lace and lifted him six feet--he made his way
to the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns the
citizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way to
support.
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