Baxter

“ In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men—and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter. Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare—he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans. ”

“ And almost simultaneously the Efficient Baxter entered the library, clothed and spatted for travel.
“I have come to say good-bye, Lady Constance,” said Baxter coldly and precisely, flashing at his late employer through his spectacles a look of stern reproach. “The car which is taking me to the station is at the door.”
“Oh, Mr. Baxter.” Lady Constance, strong woman though she was, fluttered with distress. “Oh, Mr. Baxter.”
“Good-bye.” He gripped her hand in brief farewell and directed his spectacles for another tense instant upon the sagging figure at the window. “Good-bye, Lord Emsworth.” ”

“ Baxter took no notice, but disappeared into the bookshop.
MR. PETTIGREW handed me my bottle. “One of our characters, that old fellow,” he said. “Quite a poor man, but possesses an extensive library, quite extensive. His learning is at the service of his fellow citizens. He likes to be called the Oracle. Supposing you want to know something about Shakspere, or Julius Cæsar, or Wireless Telegraphy, or Patagonia, you go to Baxter. You press the button and he does the rest. Lives a bit in the clouds, of course: and I wouldn't go so far as to say that his information is always infallible. ”

“ She called up a faint symptom of a smile, in response to his adieux, and relapsed into taciturnity and the shadow of her screen, when he had departed. Mrs. Baxter flitted about the rooms like a perturbed guardian angel; poking the fire that her charge's feet might be warmer; dropping a curtain to shut out a draught from the back of her neck; pushing forward a brioche for her use, and giving her chair a gentle tug nearer the grate, before she essayed verbal consolation. ”

“ I'm sure it's the best picture you've painted."
"I honestly believe it is. Some parts of it," said Baxter, frankly, "are excellent.
"It's obvious. But either those very parts or others are singularly disagreeable. That word isn't criticism, I know; but I pay you for the right to be arbitrary. They are too hard, too strong, of too frank a reality. In a word, your picture frightens me, and if I were Marian I should feel as if you'd done me a certain violence." ”

“ To say that Baxter's heart stood still would be physiologically inexact. The heart does not stand still. Whatever the emotions of its owner, it goes on beating. It would be more accurate to say that Baxter felt like a man taking his first ride in an express elevator, who has outstripped his vital organs by several floors and sees no immediate prospect of their ever catching up with him again. ”

“ It seems all amusing enough while it lasts, but it would make a poor show as an apology and a still poorer as a boast. I found Baxter in Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he grabbed me by the arm and brought me here. I was walking twenty miles a day in the Alps, drinking milk in lonely chalets, sleeping as you sleep, and thinking it was all very good fun; but Baxter told me it would never do, that the Alps were 'damned rot,' that Baden-Baden was 'the cheese,' and that if I knew what was good for me I would come along with him. ”

“ I mean, Baxter, that I can figure things out faster than you can dream them up."
"The Brain picked you," he said coldly, "because it was rigged by the Ancients. And for no other reason."
I nodded. "And the Ancients rigged it to pick the man most likely to succeed in your destruction."
Baxter was suddenly silent. He watched me intently.
I lounged against the wall, waving the muzzle of the collapser up and down slowly. "Let me clue you in to my reasoning, Baxter old man," I grinned. "This is a collapser. It is in working order. You do not fear it. Ergo, you have some protection from it. ”

“ And not as master and servant but as “between man and man,”—wherefore Baxter the Valet became merged and lost in Baxter the Human,—the honest John of the old days,—a gray haired, kindly-eyed, middle-aged cosmopolitan who listened to, and looked at, Young Alcides beside him as if he had indeed been the Master George, of years ago. ”

“ I presume you know what sort of a fellow Baxter is?"
"Well, rather," said Sam dryly.
"He is planning to do you a great deal of harm. Now I think I can save you."
"Then save us," said Tom. "Or untie us, and we will save ourselves."
"You can't save yourselves. Baxter is strong, and that guide is a giant in strength." ”

“ Here I narrated as much of my doings since we had last met as I thought would satisfy his curiosity. My meeting with that mysterious individual at the French restaurant and my suspicions of Baxter particularly amused him.
"What a rum beggar you are, to be sure," was his disconcerting criticism when I had finished. "What earthly reason have you for thinking that this chap, Baxter, has any designs upon your young swell, Beckenham, or whatever his name may be?"
"What makes you stand by to shorten sail when you see a suspicious look about the sky? ”

“ Baxter turned his head and nodded toward the handbag on the desk, "what about her?"
"She was being held conditional to my removing you as a menace," I said. "Consider yourself removed."
Baxter smiled. "And if the Ancients are not satisfied? What if they still desire my death, not simply my imprisonment?" ”

“ Many and many a time I have seen Charles Baxter at work in his carpentry-shop—just working, or talking in his quiet voice, or looking around occasionally through his steel-bowed spectacles, and I have had the feeling that I should like to go over and sit on the bench near him. ”

“ There he laid on the floor, trying to keep back the cries, but it was more than he could manage, and when he seen the people come in—oh, he was in a nice condition: if his tongue warn’t blistered worse than his leg it warn’t his fault. Well, they picked him up, and got him into a chair, and run for the medical man, and one of ‘em was going to pick up the pot, and Baxter, he screams out to let it alone. So he did, but he couldn’t see as there was anything in the pot but a few old brown bones. Then they says "Dr. Lawrence’ll be here in a minute, Mr. Baxter; he’ll soon put you to rights." ”

“ Grasping his fecundity of publication with the engrossing ministry which occupied his chief energies, it must be manifest that Richard Baxter was an extraordinary man. In his physique naturally weak, and tainted from the outset with consumptive tendencies, and later worn and valetudinarian, he so conquered the body, that he did the work of a score of ordinary men as an author alone. Baxter had beyond all dispute a penetrative, almost morbidly acute brain. ”

“ Baxter (rising, turning away in disgust and crossing up L) . Pah!
Devenish. Poor old Baxter! (Puts book of poems down on table and crosses below chair and gathers a daffodil from a large vase down R. and saying "Poor old Baxter!" ad lib. Baxter moves round back of hammock and to R., collides with Devenish and much annoyed goes down between table and tree towards chair down L.) Baxter– (moving to and leaning against tree R.)
Baxter (turning to Devenish crossly) . I wish you wouldn't keep calling me "Baxter." ”

“ We look to you to keep up the credit of the neighbourhood."
Horace painted his barn.
I think Doctor North was fonder of Charles Baxter than of anyone else, save his sister. He hated sham and cant: if a man had a single reality in him the old Doctor found it; and Charles Baxter in many ways exceeds any man I ever knew in the downright quality of genuineness. The Doctor was never tired of telling—and with humour—how he once went to Baxter to have a table made for his office. ”

“ Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night last summer?"
"You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. There's nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it." ”

“ Baxter. If one began to ask oneself what the birds thought of things– (He pauses.)
Devenish. Well, and why shouldn't one ask oneself? It is better than asking oneself what the Stock Exchange thinks of things.
Baxter. Well (looking up at Devenish's extravagant hair) , it's the nesting season. Your hair! (Suddenly.) Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Devenish (hastily smoothing it down) . Really, Baxter, you're vulgar. (He turns away and resumes his promenading, going down R. and then round deck-chair to front of hammock. Suddenly he sees his book on the grass beneath the hammock and makes a dash for it.) ”

“ I stayed back from the desk, keeping my back against the wall beside Clatclit. I didn't want anyone else coming in and sneaking up behind me. Baxter swung slightly about in his chair to face me, then laced his fingers on his knees.
"Now that we're settled," he said, "what can I do for you, Mister Delvin?"
"Baxter," I said, "I just came from seeing one of the Ancients. He and I had a long talk."
Baxter never flickered an eyelash. He just nodded and waited politely for me to continue.
"It seems you are a menace to them. They stand in the way of your ambition, and must be destroyed. ”

“ At the same moment the Efficient Baxter, who, from the shelter of a pillar on the gallery that ran around two-thirds of the hall, had been eyeing the peculiar movements of the distinguished guest with considerable interest for some minutes, began to descend the stairs.
Rupert Baxter, the Earl of Emsworth's indefatigable private secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a vague suspicion of their fellow human beings. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime; he simply suspected them. He prowled through life as we are told the hosts of Midian prowled. ”

“ They were about to start on the return when Tom suddenly plucked his brother by the sleeve.
"Somebody is coming," he whispered. "Let us hide."
They had scarcely time to get behind some brushwood when the Baxters came into view, moving very slowly and gazing sharply around them.
"I don't see a thing, dad," came from Dan Baxter in disgusted tones. "I don't believe they came this way."
"They certainly didn't go back to that old boat," replied Arnold Baxter. "Let us take a walk along the beach."
"I am tired to death. Let us rest first." ”

“ It was an overwrought Baxter who delivered the message to the Honorable Freddie, who, as predicted, was in the smoking-room, lounging in a deep armchair.
There are times when life presses hard on a man, and it pressed hard on Baxter now. ”

“ He must be got up to his room, he couldn’t have the doctor come in there and see all that mess—they must throw a cloth over it—anything—the table-cloth out of the parlour; well, so they did. But that must have been poisonous [129] stuff in that pot, for it was pretty near on two months afore Baxter were about agin. Beg pardon, Master Henry, was you going to say something?”
“Yes, I was,” said the Squire. “I wonder you haven’t told me all this before. However, I was going to say I remember old Lawrence telling me he’d attended Baxter. He was a queer card, he said. ”

“ Baxter.... Is there anyone on earth besides yourself who knew that you had sat out, about ten days ago or so, under some yew trees in your garden at home, and thought of this young girl—that you—"
Laurie looked at him in dumb dismay; some little sound broke from his mouth.
"Well, is that enough, Mr. Baxter?"
Lady Laura slid in a sentence here.
"Dear Mr. Baxter, you need not be in the least alarmed. All that has passed here is, of course, as sacred as in the confessional. We should not dream, without your leave—"
"One moment," gasped the boy. ”

“ But for all this there reigns in Baxter's writings, and not least in "The Saint's Rest," a robust and masculine eloquence; nor do these want from time to time rare and unsought felicity of language, which once heard can scarcely be forgotten. In regard, indeed, of the choice of words, the book might have been written yesterday. There is hardly one which has become obsolete, hardly one which has drifted away from the meaning which it has in his writings. ”

“ They saw Baxter and halted, and their leader stepped forward.
"Sir," he said, "Our detectors reported a collapser being—" his gaze, forgetful of military deportment, took a second to wander bug-eyed over the more truncated sections of the room, "—being used in this vicinity."
"Congratulations," Baxter remarked sarcastically. "Your eyes might give you the selfsame information, corporal. One has been used. I have the situation in hand, however. You may take your men and go."
"Yes, sir," the young man said, obviously fighting an urge to break protocol and ask what the hell happened. ”

“ He had pictured exultingly the shock it would be to her, and trusted a great deal in the fact that the force of the shock would be in his favor.
Finally he decided to send up the name of Dr. Baxter. He had two reasons for the selection,—Dr. Baxter was a noted expert in nervous disorders, a man whom one in her condition would be glad to see, and she had expressed herself as indebted to him for her intrusion upon his time and patience to satisfy her whim. Everything transpired exactly as he had anticipated, and he was soon following a guide to her apartments. ”