Mrs. Baxter

“ Baxter, are you still of the same idea regarding Woman Suffrage?
Mrs. Baxter. I still maintain what I have told you over and over again. A woman's place is in her home. (Yawns) To be candid, it would, indeed, bore me to have to vote, and broaden my mind, as you say. I have so many social affairs to attend I really find no time for your clubs.
Mary. You are too lazy. All you are good for is to——
Mrs. Baxter (stamps foot) . How dare you insult me like that. I am my own mistress, and I can do as I please. What do you do? ”

“ Baxter fiercely.
“My dear lady, you shall enter and seek them. They shall do just as they think fit,” he said mildly.
Mrs. Baxter seemed afraid to step over the threshold of such a den of iniquity, but her husband’s presence encouraged her, and she entered. “Second on the right, and the kitchen,” he directed them. He remained to close the door, when something white in the dim-lit passage caught his attention. He knew it. She was hanging about, anxious for the rescue of the lambs.
“Oh, Miss Delia, Miss Delia!” he called out softly. “And I thought you believed in me. ”

“ Baxter!"
"My dear husband's grandfather bought the place," observed the mistress plaintively. "We have always found it very soothing and pleasant."
"How right you are! And—and have you had any experiences here?" Mrs. Baxter eyed her in alarm. Maggie had an irrepressible burst of internal laughter, which, however, gave no hint of its presence in her steady features. She glanced at Laurie, who was eating mutton with a depressed air.
"I was talking to Mr. Vincent, the great spiritualist," went on the other vivaciously, "only last week. You have heard of him, Mrs. Baxter? ”

“ Baxter, with pallid face and haunted eyes, gone down those stairs? She must be searching for something that she needed very much. Strange, that there should be two women in this house searching for something that they needed very much! And, suddenly, Hester realized that here was her chance to look into Mrs. Baxter's bedroom. The door was ajar, the light was still burning. One quick glance would tell her what she so much wanted to know.
There! The door opened noiselessly as she pressed it back. Not a sound from below. Now, then! The girl stepped into the chamber and looked about her. ”

“ Mrs. Baxter sat in a chair on the lawn and discoursed wisdom to May Gaston and Morewood. The rest of the party had gone for a walk to the top of what Lady Richard called "Duty Hill"; it was the excursion obligatory on all guests.
"The real reason," remarked Mrs. Baxter, who was making a garment—she was under spiritual contract to make two a month—"why the Dean hasn't risen higher is because he always has some whimsy-whamsy in his head."
"What are they? I never have 'em," said Morewood, relighting his pipe.
"You never have anything else," said Mrs. Baxter in a brief but sufficient aside. ”

“ That is the way Lydia got him to consent to a divorce."
Not being so clever as some women, Mrs. Baxter looked puzzled. "I don't think I quite understand."
Mrs. Cole, who was enjoying thoroughly the gradual climax, sat upright, and facing her companion laid her hand on Mrs. Baxter's arm.
"Rachel," she said, "Lydia has sold Guendolen to her husband for two million dollars!"
Mrs. Baxter gave a gasp and a smothered shriek. "Two million dollars! The poor, dear child!" ”

“ Rupert Baxter, as he stood before the barred door of Blandings Castle, was very far from imitating this admirable philosopher. To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-past two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men. ”

“ Yet on one thing her will kept steady hold, and that was that Mrs. Baxter must not be consulted. No conceivable good could result, and there might even be harm: either the old lady would be too much or not enough concerned: she might insist on Laurie's return to Stantons, or might write him a cheering letter encouraging him to amuse himself in any direction that he pleased. So Maggie passed the evening in fits of alternate silence and small conversation, and succeeded in making Mrs. Baxter recommend a good long night. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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.” ”

“ In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. ”

“ Baxter, if she is as ugly as the queen of the cannibal islands. So don’t say any more about her. I suppose she is elderly, and fat. These dread-fully prosperous people are always fat. They can’t help it, I suppose.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Geoffrey, listlessly. “Oh yes, by-the-by, I remember some one at the office saying Mrs. Baxter was much younger than her husband. An heiress too, I believe. That’s always the way.”
“He looked weary and dispirited, and Marion felt remorseful for having caused it. ”

“ Baxter. "Not that I pity him—only her."
"They talked till two. I sat up, looking plainer and plainer every minute."
"Who was talking?"
"Oh, the Dean and Dick." She paused and added, "And later on Mr. Quisanté."
"Quisanté grows more and more anomalous every day. It's monstrous of a man to defy one's power of judgment as he does."
"Does he defy yours?"
"Absolutely. And I hate it."
"I rather like it. You know so well what most people are like in half-an-hour."
"I'm splendidly forward," remarked Mrs. Baxter, "This isn't an April one. I've done them, and this is my first May." ”

“ Straightening his spectacles on his nose, he girded up his pyjamas and galloped out into the night.
The smooth terrace slept under the stars. To a more poetic man than Baxter it would have seemed to wear that faintly reproachful air which a garden always assumes when invaded at unseemly hours by people who ought to be in bed. Baxter, never fanciful, was blind to this. He was thinking, thinking. That shaking-up on the stairs had churned into activity the very depths of his brain and he was at the fever-point of his reasoning powers. ”

“ He was an officer who had deserted his pretty little wife for another woman—or so rumor had it; and her mother had died, a flower stricken by a frost. The daughter had been taken by a relative, the owner of a lonely mill, and for six years had lived in solitude, her horizon of life limited to the adjacent village, her knowledge of women gained from the memory of a sad, yearning face, paler than the pillow on which it rested, and an occasional visit to the curé's sister. Of men she knew only her uncle and the few villagers that had not gone to fight for La Belle France. ”

“ Baxter's gratified maternal longings. It was the thought how the light imprisoned in Eunice Kirke's berylline eyes, would break up to the surface in the golden glints he had seen, at infrequent intervals, dash their placid darkness; how her slow, bright smile would greet his unexpected appearance, and applaud his vivacious sallies; the sweet monotone, many a queen of fashion would give her costliest jewels to imitate successfully, reply to his questioning. ”

“ Baxter.
She was a small, delicate-looking old lady, very true to type indeed, with the silvery hair of the devout widow crowned with an exquisite lace cap, in a filmy black dress, with a complexion of precious china, kind shortsighted blue eyes, and white blue-veined hands busy now upon needlework. She bore about with her always an atmosphere of piety, humble, tender, and sincere, but as persistent as the gentle sandalwood aroma which breathed from her dress. Her theory of the universe, as the girl who watched her now was beginning to find out, was impregnable and unapproachable. ”

“ At the very moment that Millie was knocking on Peter's door Henry was sitting, a large bump on his forehead, looking at a dirty piece of paper. Only yesterday he had fought Baxter in Piccadilly Circus; now Baxter and everything and every one about him was as far from his consciousness as Heaven was from 1920 London. The Real had departed—the coloured life of the imagination had taken its place. ”

“ The girl's departure, the way the thing was hushed up——"
"It seems fairly clear to me, as I have always told you. Young Guyse pays the girl to keep quiet."
"But why? Why should he do so?"
"Because he didn't want her to talk, of course."
"Then you really think——"
"Mrs. Baxter told me that all the time she was delirious she kept on repeating to herself, 'Lily Guyse, Mrs. Guyse.' There is no doubt that he had promised her marriage, there was a wedding-ring round her neck. All that story of the ayah's about her getting letters from London was concocted. ”

“ He rose in a determined manner and adjusted his helmet.
"Adieu, my Camel!" He took a last survey of the machine. "The kitchen is calling to my appetite; a storm is brewing in the heavens; a pair of dark eyes is urging all the romance within me; so—mill-stream or no mill-stream—mon oncle, I come."
He squared his shoulders and, with the rather absurd long stride and the odd raising of the knee, made for the cottage door, from underneath which a faint glow of light was timidly emerging. ”

“ Patty had a good share of the Baxter temper, not under such control as Waitstill's, and the blood mounted into her face.
“You shall not speak to me so!” she said intrepidly, while keeping a discreet eye on the whip. “I'm not a—a—caterpillar to be stepped on, I'm a married woman, as right as a New Hampshire justice can make me, with a wedding-ring and a certificate to show, if need be. And you shall not call my husband names! Time will tell what he is going to be, and that's a son-in-law any true father would be proud to own!” ”

“ Go up attic and open the hair trunk by the winder; you'll find plenty there to last you for years to come.”
The second Mrs. Baxter visited the attic as commanded, and in turning over the clothes in the old trunk, knew by instinct that they had belonged to her predecessor in office. Some of the dresses were neat, though terribly worn and faded, but all were fortunately far too short and small for a person of her fine proportions. ”

“ Baxter is a genius. But what is a picture, at the best? I've seen nothing but pictures for the last two years, and I havn't seen a single pretty girl."
The young girl stood looking at the portrait in very evident admiration, and, while Baxter talked to the elder lady, Lennox bestowed a long, covert glance upon his fiancée. She had brought her head into almost immediate juxtaposition with that of Marian's image, and, for a moment, the freshness and the strong animation which bloomed upon her features seemed to obliterate the lines and colors on the canvas. ”

“ He was hunted about from one part of the country to another, and for several years he had no settled dwelling-place. "The women," he gently remarks in his 'Life,' "have most of that sort of trouble, but my wife easily bore it all." In the sixth year of his marriage Baxter was brought before the magistrates at Brentford, for holding a conventicle at Acton, and was sentenced by them to be imprisoned in Clerkenwell Gaol. There he was joined by his wife, who affectionately nursed him during his confinement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, Bert Baxter could anticipate his male customer's requirements, objections, moods and buying habits with an almost clairvoyant insight. But give him a woman! He was licked before she opened his catalog.
Women found him attractive enough. His six-foot-four, square-jawed athletic prowess had given him the pick of the class of '29, including the statuesque Rolanda. But to marry a woman and to understand her were different matters: the former ridiculously easy, the latter bewilderingly impossible. ”