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.
In English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers to blaming the government.
It was not the busy bar, full to overflowing with honest British yeomen–many of them in a similar condition–that Baxter sought. His goal was the genteel dining-room on the first floor, where a bald and shuffling waiter, own cousin to a tortoise, served luncheon to those desiring it. Lack of sleep had reduced Baxter to a condition where the presence and chatter of the house party were insupportable. It was his purpose to lunch at the Emsworth Arms and take a nap in an armchair afterward.
He had relied on having the room to himself, for Market Blandings did not lunch to a great extent; but to his annoyance and disappointment the room was already occupied by a man in brown tweeds.
Occupied is the correct word, for at first sight this man seemed to fill the room. Never since almost forgotten days when he used to frequent circuses and side shows, had Baxter seen a fellow human being so extraordinarily obese. He was a man about fifty years old, gray-haired, of a mauve complexion, and his general appearance suggested joviality.
To Baxter’s chagrin, this person engaged him in conversation directly he took his seat at the table. There was only one table in the room, as is customary in English inns, and it had the disadvantage that it collected those seated at it into one party. It was impossible for Baxter to withdraw into himself and ignore this person’s advances.
It is doubtful whether he could have done it, however, had they been separated by yards of floor, for the fat man was not only naturally talkative but, as appeared from his opening remarks, speech had been dammed up within him for some time by lack of a suitable victim.
“Morning!” he began; “nice day. Good for the farmers. I’ll move up to your end of the table if I may, sir. Waiter, bring my beef to this gentleman’s end of the table.”
He creaked into a chair at Baxter’s side and resumed:
“Infernally quiet place, this, sir. I haven’t found a soul to speak to since I arrived yesterday afternoon except deaf-and-dumb rustics. Are you making a long stay here?”
“I live outside the town.”
“I pity you. Wouldn’t care to do it myself. Had to come here on business and shan’t be sorry when it’s finished. I give you my word I couldn’t sleep a wink last night because of the quiet. I was just dropping off when a beast of a bird outside the window gave a chirrup, and it brought me up with a jerk as though somebody had fired a gun. There’s a damned cat somewhere near my room that mews. I lie in bed waiting for the next mew, all worked up.
“Heaven save me from the country! It may be all right for you, if you’ve got a comfortable home and a pal or two to chat with after dinner; but you’ve no conception what it’s like in this infernal town–I suppose it calls itself a town. What a hole! There’s a church down the street. I’m told it’s Norman or something. Anyway, it’s old. I’m not much of a man for churches as a rule, but I went and took a look at it.