§ 7
They got their breakfast at an inn near a Post Office a mile or so beyond Offham. Bobby left Sargon dozing in the side-car and went to send a telegram to Dymchurch announcing his coming. There was some delay in the Post Office, as the post-mistress had mislaid her spectacles. Bobby returned to find the breakfast nearly ready and to assist Sargon out of his sack and into the little room of the inn. The landlord was a short, stout man, with a grave observant face. He watched this emergence of Sargon and his progress to a chair behind the little white tablecloth, with silent wonder. Then for a time he hid. Then he came back into the little room where the table was set. For some moments he stood regarding Sargon. “Umph!” he said at last and turned about and went slowly into his kitchen where some sort of wife seemed to be cooking things. “’E’s a rummun”; Bobby heard him remark, and so was prepared for discussion.
The ham and eggs and coffee were served and received with eagerness. The landlord stood over them scrutinizing their reception of his provisions. “Hain’t ’ad no breakfast, then?” he said.
“Having it now,” said Bobby, helping himself to mustard.
“Come far?” said the landlord after a thoughtful pause.
“Fairly,” said Bobby with judgment.
“Going far?” the landlord tried.
“So-so,” said Bobby.
The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We get some rummy customers here at times,” he said.
“You must attract them,” said Bobby.
The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned about and said “Umph”—meaningly.
“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning.
The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. “Hope you enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I don’t know rightly whether it’s a lady or a gentleman you got with you—still——”
Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just then. “It’s hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential whisper and left the landlord with that.
But when they had gone a few miles further he told Sargon he had decided to buy him some socks and a jacket and trousers at the next shop they saw. “As it is,” he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll put that hat and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. I made a mistake.”
Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day wore on. He developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie about a cottage and a fire and how his friend had only escaped with just a few articles of clothing hastily put on. “Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically incinerated.” They were going down to take refuge with a variable relation, a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day progressed the circumstances of the fire became richer and more remarkable and the particulars of the escape more definitely thrilling. Bobby told such lies with great sincerity and gravity; they were a form of freedom—from reality.
Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure was a severer endurance test than Bobby realized at the time. For the most part he was either cramped up and boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and being jolted and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting still in the side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly but perplexingly, and usually quite unnecessarily, explained.