CHAPTER XIII

FIRST AID TO THE INJURED

As regards the gray lady whose seeming apparition had spread such wide alarm, anyone curious to know something of the ghostly Ladye Ysobel Ippynge (she was believed to have been poisoned by her husband, Sir Gyles Ippynge, Knight, and first earl of Ippingford in the early part of the twelfth century) will find a true account of her pious life and tragic death in a volume entitled, "Kronicon Uxorium," in the Bodleian library of Oxford, written by the monk Abel of Ipswich and printed in London in 1529.

The pious Lady Ysobel would have been sore distressed had she known what a fearful pother her counterfeit presentment (by Hester Storm) would one day cause. What had really happened was perfectly simple, although the consequences were complicated and far-reaching. When Hester came to the bottom of the stairs she had turned out of her way in the darkness and passed close to a pedestal supporting a suit of armor that kept impressive guard there in the ancestral hall. So close had she passed that the cord of her electric lamp had caught on one of the links in the coat of mail, whereupon, in her plunge away from this ghostly restraint, she had toppled over the grim warrior, pedestal and all, with a crash and rattle of his various resounding parts that had alarmed the entire establishment. And this uproar had terrified Mrs. Baxter all the more because she was already quivering with superstitious dread after reading that creepy tale of Bulwer Lytton's, "A Strange Story"; in fact, it was to seek relief from this obsession that the agitated lady had gone downstairs for some sulphonal sleeping tablets that she had left in the conservatory. And the silent, silver-draped apparition, looming suddenly in the shadows, had done the rest.

For the Storm girl it was an incredibly narrow escape. A mere matter of seconds decided her fate. If young Baxter had carried a candle she would have been discovered. If Mrs. Baxter's candle had not been extinguished by that lady's fall she would also have been discovered. As it was, Hester had time to flee across the dark conservatory and out into the park (by the unlocked door) before Bob, blundering and stumbling through the hall and library, had reached his fainting mother.

It may be added that Hester's quick impersonation of the gray lady was not entirely inspirational. She had heard old Mrs. Pottle refer to the specter that haunted Ipping House that very evening; and, while she watched at the lodge for the Baxter automobile, her thoughts had turned to the shivery legend when she heard An Petronia, with motherly tenderness, putting to bed the four "Pottles" (who seemed wakeful) and assuring them that "the dray lady would tum and det them," if they didn't go to sleep.

It must not be supposed, however, that either the gray lady or her understudy, Hester Storm, was responsible for the series of happenings at Ipping House that ended in converting that comfortably appointed English home into as uncompromising a wilderness, as far as the relatives were concerned, as the most resourceful Swiss Family Robinson could hope to be wrecked upon. There was another agency at work; to-wit, Parker.

Parker, at this particular time, was the only indoors man at Ipping House, his rank being that of butler, footman, and valet combined. For sympathetic and politic reasons, Parker had given notice on the very same day that Mrs. Edge had received her congé from Mr. Baxter.

In appearance Parker was of the candle-complexioned, patent-leather-haired type that nature seems to have distributed impartially between the pulpits and pantries of Great Britain. Parker's greatest personal asset was a subtle fluidity of temperament which caused visitors at a house where he had been engaged only the week before to believe that he was an old family retainer. It was to this priceless gift that Parker owed his success in New York, where he had spent ten profitable years and adorned many expensive houses, seldom staying long in any one place as new accessories to social elegance outbid each other for his services. It was in New York that Parker's face took on its expression of impeccable superiority, the envy of more than one bishop, an expression acquired through his practice of combining with his office of butler (for an extra charge, of course) that of private tutor of social usages to his employers.

In the eyes of Mrs. Edge, and to quote her own words, Parker was the "cream of gentlemen." Between Mrs. Edge and the "cream of gentlemen" there was an understanding. When the Baxters returned to New York in the autumn and the house would be closed for the winter, a small but desirable hotel at Inwich (the next village beyond Millbrook) would be reopened under the management of Mr. and Mrs. Parker.

Hiram Baxter, in spite of his homely American speech, which grated painfully on the butler's fine cockney ear, somehow commanded the respect of this "cream of gentlemen," who felt that there was good material in him. He would like to have taken Baxter in hand. He longed to tell him that detachable cuffs and collars were not permissible; that a black bow tie, if one must wear such a thing in the daytime, should not have its ends tucked under the flaps of the collar. Twice Parker had deliberately hidden the silver clasps with which Hiram suspended his serviette to the lapels of his coat.

"It's fortunate they don't have no English visitors, leastways none that matters," had been Parker's reflection. Had it been otherwise his sense of fastidious shame would have compelled him to give notice. Not even that '66 brandy, upon the question of whose merits Parker and Anton were in such perfect accord, could have induced him to stay.

And now he was turning his back on these liquid joys and two months' wages into the bargain. To be separated from Mrs. Edge was out of the question. She was his fiancée, also the lease of the "Golden Horseshoe" was in her name. The wily Parker, however, saw in the ghost incident a way of visiting his resentment on the Baxter household, and he set about it at once.

At the time of the night alarm Parker had been the first to reach the hall from the servants' wing, and, striking a match, had discovered the figure in armor lying on its face. With an instinctive alacrity, born of former kindly and remunerative ministrations to elderly gentlemen who had "dined," Parker lifted the helpless dummy to his feet and replaced the helmet, which had rolled some distance along the oak floor.

A moment later, when Bob appeared, supporting his mother to the stairs, the butler heard Mrs. Baxter exclaim with hysterical triumph: "There, you can see for yourself, Bob, it wasn't the armor; it's standing up—it never fell down at all——"

Bob raised his candle to inspect the warrior. "Did you pick up the armor, Parker?" he asked.

"No, Mr. Robert; it was standing up just like it is now, sir."

"You can go back to bed, Parker. I'll take a turn round the house myself. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir; thank you, sir."

The next day at noon the cook and the first and second housemaids gave three days' notice. It was thought advisable not to tell Eleanor, and, after a consultation with Hiram, Betty engaged a new cook and one housemaid by telephone from a London agency.

That afternoon the cook confided to the laundress, in a frightened whisper, that she had been told in strict secrecy by Parker, who got it from Gibson, Mrs. Baxter's maid, that Mrs. Baxter had a white mark on her forehead she would carry to her grave, made by the icy fingers of the Gray Lady. The story spread among the servants like an epidemic.

As night came on the last remnant of courage accumulated in the daylight oozed away, the frightened females refused to be separated and passed the night on sofas and chairs in the servants' parlor.

As for Mrs. Baxter, the shock she had received was no mean tribute to Hester's histrionic power. Nothing could remove from Eleanor's mind the conviction that she had actually beheld the supernatural shape of Lady Ysobel Ippynge, dead and buried these hundreds of years.

Mingled with her physical distress, there was a childish sense of outrage in that, having survived a unique and painful adventure, she should, by its belittlement, be robbed of the distinction she felt to be her due.

"If," reasoned the aggrieved lady, "the shock to my nerves isn't proof enough that I have really seen a ghost, then it is because of my great self-control; and all the thanks you get for self-control is to be told that you have nothing the matter with you."

Very well, she would cease to cast this pearl of self-control before the swine of unsympathy. She would let them know how really ill she was. And so, aggravated by the well-meant but irritating optimism of her family, Eleanor Baxter's "nerves" grew daily worse until, on the afternoon of her third day in bed, Hiram telephoned to a nerve specialist in London, who took the first train for Ippingford and informed the suffering lady, after a careful examination, that she was on the verge of complete nervous prostration. This was the first sensible remark Eleanor had heard for a week.

"Don't give yourself a moment's worry, Mr. Baxter," said the doctor, as Hiram put him aboard the train. "All your wife really needs is a change of air. Better take her down to Brighton."

"Hm! Brighton! Swell place by the sea, ain't it?"

"It's quite a fashionable resort, just what Mrs. Baxter needs."

"No ghosts there?" chuckled the big fellow.

"No ghosts," laughed the doctor, as he waved farewell.

Hiram sent Bob back in the automobile and walked home. With this mention of Brighton there had come to him an idea that he wanted to work out, an idea having to do with his general plan of reducing expenses. If a stay at the seashore was what Eleanor needed, why not give her enough of it, say a fortnight or a month? And, if they were going to be away a month, why not close Ipping House and get rid of a raft of servants? And why not—— then frowning he thought of his relatives and of his favorite purpose regarding them as he had outlined it to the Bishop of Bunchester, and then he thought apprehensively of Eleanor.

"Holy cats!" he muttered. "It's goin' to be a job, but I'll do it."

That evening, after dinner, he went to his wife's room and asked her carelessly how she would like to go down to Brighton for a week or two. Eleanor beamed. She would love it. Was he really going to take her? How soon? Could they stay a whole fortnight in Brighton?

Hiram assured her most considerately that they could stay a whole month in Brighton, if she wished. And they would start the next day. She had been through a great strain. It was no joke to see a ghost, he understood that. They ought to have known better than to take a house that had a ghost in it. And then, as tactfully as he could, the old boy came around to his point that it might be just as well to close Ipping House and—and give the ghost a rest.

Eleanor's eyes narrowed dangerously as she watched him from her lace pillow.

"Close Ipping House?" she repeated in a cold, even tone. "Do you realize what you are saying?"

Hiram took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief, first blowing on them deliberately.

"Sure I do; that's why I'm sayin' it. If we shut this house we can fire the servants, all of 'em; then, when we come back we can get new ones, half as many and twice as good. Don't look at me that way, dearie. I hate like everything to disappoint you, but——" he reached over and stroked her white hand tenderly, "you know what I said about expenses? Well, I meant it then and I mean it now. We've got to economize."

"What about my relatives? Our guests?" the wife demanded angrily.

"I guess your relatives'll have to take their chances in a new deal, Eleanor. I'm goin' to have a little talk with 'em to-morrow morning. I told 'em at dinner. Don't worry, I ain't goin' to say a thing but what's for their good. Bet ye three dollars and a half, when ye hear my little speech—

"Hear your speech?" she blazed. "Do you think anything could induce me to be present while you humiliate members of my family? I think it's abominable."

"Hold on! There ain't anything humiliating in a little honest work."

"Work?" she gasped. "Hiram, you don't mean—you're not going to put my relatives—to work?"

Hiram shifted his legs with exasperating calmness, pulled at his short, gray mustache, and was about to reply, when Robert strolled in cheerily and went at once to Eleanor's bedside.

"How's the little mother to-night?" he asked affectionately. Whereupon, to his surprise and to Hiram's great discomfiture, the lady burst into a flood of tears.

"I'm so unhappy," she wailed. "Your father is treating me most—unkindly and—and——" her words were lost in hysterical sobbing.

Whereupon Baxter stalked out of the room like a rumpled Newfoundland dog, leaving Bob to administer filial comfort and smelling salts, the result being that Eleanor was presently able to give her a son a tearful version of Hiram's iconoclastic purposes. Bob listened with an amused and incredulous smile.

"Don't you know, Mother," he reasoned, "that Dad's bark is always worse than his bite? He won't close Ipping House! not a bit of it. I'll talk to him and—what you need is sleep, especially if you're going to Brighton to-morrow."

"I suppose you're right," sighed Eleanor. "You're a dear boy, Bob. Send Gibson here. Tell her to bring a hot water bag and my sulphonal tablets. And do speak to your father. Tell him I can't bear it if he closes Ipping House."

"I'll tell him. Good-night, little Mother. There! It's going to be all right." He kissed her lovingly and stole out of the room.

A few moments later young Baxter joined his father in the library, where the old man was frowning over important papers that he had brought up from town with him that evening. Things were going badly, the news from America was most unsatisfactory, and the father and son, weary and troubled, sat discussing it until long after midnight.

"There's some deviltry behind all this," declared the grizzled old fellow, pounding his fist on the table. "There's crooked work in this copper campaign. Why, that Henderson outfit seems to know what we're doing every day, just as if they had eyes in this room. I tell you there's a leak, Bob, but——" he glowered about the spacious walls under his heavy, black brows.

"Are you sure of this new secretary?" whispered the son.

Hiram's eyes softened, as they rested on the winding stair. "Am I sure of her? Sure of her?" Then with a chuckle: "Say, what do you think of my new secretary?"

Bob answered quite seriously: "She seems to be a nice girl, but she's too pretty."

"Think so?"

"I don't believe in very pretty girls for business positions."

"Don't, eh? Well, you can take it from me, my boy, that this partic'lar pretty girl is all right."

Bob glanced at his watch, then rose and stretched himself.

"Half-past two! We can't do any more to-night, Dad. By the way," he suddenly remembered his promise to his mother, "you're not thinking of closing Ipping House?"

Hiram was silent a moment, then, slipping his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, he spoke with a wise drawl.

"Bob, after you've been married a while you'll find that a man thinks a lot o' things and then, when his wife gets at him with the water-works, why he just takes it out in thinkin'."

"Then Ipping House stays open—just as it is."

"There may be some modifications in the 'just as it is' part of it, but—well, yes, Ipping House stays open."

"I'm glad of that. And the relatives? You're not really going to put the relatives to work, are you?"

Hiram closed his jaws with a vigorous snap. "Am I? You just show up in this library to-morrow morning right after breakfast and watch me give the English aristocracy a little of Hiram Baxter's first aid to the injured. Good-night, Son."

CHAPTER XIV

THE PARABLE OF THE COCOANUT PIE

There was fluttering anticipation among the relatives as they gathered in the breakfast room the next morning and dallied with broiled kidneys and anchovy toast while awaiting Baxter's summons. Which came presently when Hiram, red-faced and genial of visage, opened the door.

"If you folks don't mind," he said, "I wish you'd join me in the library for a little friendly talk."

At last the great moment had come, and, one by one, the relatives passed through the hall into the room beyond, each showing in face and manner an overbubbling delight at the thought of the benefits they expected to receive from Cousin Hiram. And, one by one, they seated themselves in the stiff, high-backed chairs that were ranged along the wall. Baxter settled himself on the corner of the davenport and faced them. His eyes were cheerful, his smile was cordial; there was not the least indication of what was coming.

"Make yourselves comfortable, friends," began Hiram. "I've got a few things to say, and ye might as well take it easy."

There was a shifting of positions, a little expectant coughing, and then, just as Baxter was about to begin, Harriet Merle prodded Horatio, who was staring absentmindedly before him.

"Horatio!" she whispered.

The curate came to himself with a start, blinked rapidly behind his glasses, and then, remembering the duty his wife had put upon him, rose solemnly to his feet and, in his most clerical manner, addressed Hiram Baxter.

"Ahem! Mr. Baxter! In the name of the relatives gathered here, allow me to extend to you our most cordial welcome on this occasion of your return to England, together with the expression of our gratitude for your large and unfailing generosity in the past and—er—ahem!"

"Hear, hear!" applauded Lionel.

But Hiram lifted a hand for silence. "One moment, Brother Horatio," he drawled. "Before ye wind up yer speech, ye'd better let me make a few remarks. Ye may want to change yer peroration."

"How delightful!" murmured Harriet.

"Go on, Cousin Hiram," urged Kate.

"Hear, hear!" repeated Lionel.

"Ahem!" coughed the curate and sat down.

"I've called you people in here," continued Baxter, "to tell ye something that I've been thinkin' about fer quite a while. We're goin' to Brighton to-day, Eleanor and me, fer a couple o' weeks—this ghost business has broke Eleanor up a good deal—and I want to get this thing off my chest before I leave. Yer all good friends o' mine and yer all more or less in hard luck. Seems like things naturally go wrong with ye—it's been so fer years, ever since I've had the honor o' belongin' to this family. Well, a man hates to see his wife's relations suffer and I've tried to do what I could, but—I'm here to tell ye now that I don't feel as if I've ever done the right thing by ye. No, sir. All these years I've tried to help ye out of yer troubles, but I've never turned the trick."

"Oh, I say!" protested Lionel.

"You've been splendid," Kate declared.

"We wouldn't have you any different, dear Cousin Hiram," beamed Harriet.

Baxter paused a moment and adjusted his spectacles. "Think I'm a pretty good feller, don't ye? Well, yer wrong. Look at my friend, Fitz-Brown, my wife's second cousin once removed. Up to his ears in debt—always has been. Ain't that a shame! My wife's second cousin once removed!"

The old boy leaned forward earnestly, his big, strong chin on his big, strong hand and in his kindly, homely way addressed the gentleman in question who was pulling fiercely at his yellow mustache.

"Now, friend Lionel, I'm goin' to show ye how ye can always have money enough and never have any more debts or bother."

This roused the monocled one to genuine enthusiasm. "I say, I'll be awfully pleased," he responded.

"I'll do it. And I'm goin' to show you," Hiram Baxter turned sharply to the curate, "how you can cure that tired feelin' and hold a preachin' job for more'n five consecutive minutes."

"Oh, thank you, sir," murmured Horatio.

"And I'm goin' to show you ladies how to be happy. Yes, sir. Trouble with you is yer bored to death. That's why ye want to go kitin' around to Monte Carlo and Jerusalem. I'll fix it so ye can't ever be bored."

"I wish you could," laughed Kate.

"My dear Countess," reproved Harriet, "if Cousin Hiram agrees to do a thing you can depend upon him absolutely."

"It ain't necessary to go into details, but each one of you knows what ye've had from me straight and regular every year for the last five years. It makes quite a total, ten thousand pounds or more, fifty thousand dollars that I've spent tryin' to get you people on yer feet, and I ain't ever been able to do it. Each year yer in worse'n the year before, and it's all my fault. Want to know why? Because I've been tryin' to help ye on the European plan, which ain't worth shucks; but I've had my eyes opened, and now I'm goin' to change and help ye on the good old-fashioned American plan, warranted never to fail."

"Yes?"

"Tell us!"

"Please tell us!"

"Hear, hear!" buzzed the eager chorus.

Then came the first intimation of the truth, slowly and smilingly delivered, but bringing shattering disillusion, nevertheless, to the trusting relatives: "The American plan of helpin' people consists in showin' 'em how they can help themselves."

The effect came gradually in a movement of general surprise and consternation.

"Oh, I say!"

"But——"

"You don't mean—you surely don't mean——"

"Tell ye exactly what I mean. Yer all nice people, but ye've been trained wrong. Your idea is to sit in the sunshine and let somebody shake plums into yer lap, which is all right if ye can find a feller to do it, but I'm tired o' shakin' plums and the tree's pretty well skinned, so——" Here he turned to the countess and Harriet with his most ingratiating smile: "Ladies, I want to ask you a question. Suppose you were on a desert island and were gettin' terribly hungry, and suppose ye looked up and saw some nice, ripe cocoanuts waitin' to be picked. You'd say to yourselves: 'Them cocoanuts look awful good,' and ye'd ring like fury for the butler and the maid to come and pick 'em and make 'em into cocoanut pies. But the butler and the maid wouldn't show up, because yer on a desert island—uninhabited. See? So after a while ye'd get tired o' ringin' and ye'd say to the countess——" here he beamed on Mrs. Merle, "'Countess,' ye'd say, 'it ain't according to Hoyle fer ladies to climb cocoanut trees, but this is a case of hustle or starve, so we'll flip up a cent to see which one of us boosts the other into them branches.'"

"Never," declared the curate's wife, scandalized.

"Yes, ye would!" pursued Hiram. "And before night ye'd be eatin' the finest cocoanut pie ye ever tasted, for——" he paused and then added with his most impressive drawl: "Take it from me, ladies, there ain't no pie in the world like a self-made pie."

This statement was received in silence, in thin-lipped, despairing silence. Slowly but surely the relatives were beginning to get dear Cousin Hiram's idea.

"Ahem! Mr. Baxter!" coughed Horatio, rising again. "In the name of the relatives gathered here, allow me to thank you for the beautiful—shall I say touching—parable of the cocoanut pie. I think, however, that I voice the desire of the relatives gathered here in asking you to make your ideas a little clearer in their—shall I say in their immediate application?"

"All right, Brother Horatio," smiled Hiram, as the curate resumed his seat. "I'll come down to cases. We're members o' the same family and we've got to stand together."

"Ah!" approved Harriet.

"Just now it happens that I need your help. I've got big resources, but I'm in a hard campaign. I've got my back to the wall fighting for my life and—well, we'll come through all right and you'll benefit with me, but for a while we've got to cut down on expenses and—er—you people'll have to—er——"

The bolt was about to fall, the words were on Hiram's lips: "You people'll have to do some work," but as he looked into the faces before him, pathetic, incredulous, the old fellow weakened. "You people'll have to—er—give this thing your—er—serious consideration," he substituted.

But the countess understood, and, with a little laugh and a shrug of her shapely shoulders, she came straight to the point. "You mean we'll have to—have to—work?"

Hiram nodded slowly.

"Understand, there's no hurry about this. I want to treat ye right. I want to help ye. I want to see yer faces bright and yer needs provided for, but I can tell ye this, from a long experience, that the thing in my life that's made me happiest is the honest work I've done. Remember, things go on here in Ipping House just the same, whatever you folks decide. If ye can't think of anything practical to do, why, never mind. I'll stand by ye as well as I can; but if ye could think o' something that yer fitted to do and could put yer heart in, why it would solve your problems and it'd help solve mine. You'll be sore on me for a while, like the kid that sputters and kicks and swallers a quart of water when you chuck him in a pond to learn him to swim."

Harriet's face was a study in horror. "Good heavens, you're not going to——"

"Chuck us in a pond? Eh, what?" gasped Lionel.

"No, no. I mean work is like swimmin'. Ye hate it until ye learn how and then yer crazy about it. Why, you people'll feel just fine when ye've cut out this bluff and fake business. Do ye know what a little useful work'll do? It'll make men and women of ye."

"But what work can we do?" protested the countess.

"Jolly good point, that," echoed Lionel.

Hiram reflected a moment.

"I suppose there are things you folks could do, if ye had to, plenty o' things. Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe it's a crazy idea, but——"

Here suddenly the curate spoke. "I think Mr. Baxter is quite right," he began in a low tone vibrant with feeling.

"Horatio!" glared Mrs. Merle, but the little man faced her calmly.

"My dear, I beg you not to interrupt." Then, turning to the master of the house: "Speaking for myself," he continued, "and not for the relatives gathered here, I wish to say that, in view of your great past kindness, my dear Mr. Baxter, I feel that you are justified, fully justified, in asking us to help you meet the serious and, let us hope, temporary difficulties that beset you. And I would remind the relatives gathered here of King Solomon's beautiful and impressive words: 'Whoso keepeth the fig trees shall eat the fruit thereof, and whoso waiteth on his master shall be honored.'"

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Disapproving as they were, and bitterly disappointed, the relatives, in spite of themselves, were impressed by a certain unsuspected moral strength in this gentle utterance.

"King Solomon cert'ly knew his business," approved Hiram, as much surprised as the others at this turn of affairs.

"And I beg to suggest," proceeded Merle, appealing to the astonished group, "as the least important and the least worthy person here, yet one who has sincerely at heart the welfare of all, I venture to suggest that, before any hasty words are spoken or any irrevocable action is taken by the relatives gathered here, I would suggest, I say, that the relatives withdraw to their rooms or elsewhere for a little—er—thought and—shall I say self-examination?"

"Good idea! Fine idea!" nodded Baxter, and a moment later, with a quizzical look in his cheery blue eyes, he watched the relatives file out silently, one by one, a mighty sore bunch, he reflected, mouths down and noses up, Horatio going last and bowing respectfully to Hiram as he closed the door behind him.

For some moments the old man sat in the corner of the davenport, smiling at this latest development. Who would have thought of it? The Reverend Merle a champion of honest labor! Standin' up like a little bantam rooster against them relatives!

Presently Bob entered, eager for news.

"Well?" inquired the son.

"Bob," drawled the big fellow, "I'll bet ye four dollars and a quarter King Solomon wrote them proverbs o' his after he'd been worked by relatives. Say, with a thousand wives he must have had an everlasting lot of 'em!"

An hour later the luggage cart appeared for the three large boxes, the two steamer trunks and the assortment of Gladstone bags, hold-alls, and dress-suit cases that Eleanor had caused to be packed for their brief and simple sojourn in Brighton. Some of these things, it is true, belonged to Betty, whose services were required by Mr. Baxter, and who now appeared, ready for the journey, a radiant summer vision all in white except for a bunch of pansies at her waist and a graceful, pale-blue plume in the wide-brimmed straw hat that becomingly shaded her eyes.

The car drew up at the door, coughing and sputtering, with Bob Baxter at the wheel. Hiram sat in front beside his son, Eleanor and Betty on the seat behind. And, just as they were starting, Kate Clendennin tripped down the steps and, declining to squeeze in among the bags and bundles, leaped lightly upon the footboard at Bob's side and remained there, despite Eleanor's protest, all the way to the station.

Poor Betty! There was a moment's delay in starting the train, after the guard had given the signal and slammed the doors, and the banished secretary, looking backward through the window, caught a glimpse of the departing motor as it rounded the nasturtium bed. Kate was on the front seat next to Bob, and they both looked back, the countess laughing and waving her hand. Then the car turned a wooded corner, and that was the last picture—Kate and Bob together, close together, gliding swiftly, perhaps slowly, through those leaf-arched lanes and delicious lonesome glades of the forest. They had taken the longer way home, but there was time enough—there was not the slightest need for Kate and Bob to hurry.

CHAPTER XV

THE FOUR POTTLES

Kate and Harriet went straight to their bedrooms, Harriet to rehearse her part in the forthcoming scene with Horatio; Kate, in an angry fever, to ring for Gibson to pack her boxes without a moment's delay. She rang several times before a housemaid appeared and informed her ladyship that Gibson was nowhere to be found. There was a suppressed eagerness about the girl, as if she had something further to disclose, something unusual, but Kate did not question her, and she left the room, closing the door reluctantly behind her.

On the table near the bed lay a yellow, paper-backed book, open and face downward, in unseemly straddle, as Kate had left it the day before to keep the place. It was a collection of stories by a new French author. She picked it up and began slowly turning the pages.

Still reading, she sat down on the bed. In a little while she lifted her feet and lay back without taking her eyes from the book. Half an hour later the yellow book lay on the floor where Kate had flung it. How could anyone write such trash!

Alone in her room Harriet waited for Horatio. Since the tragedy of the afternoon before, the husband and wife had scarcely spoken, and Harriet welcomed a storm to relieve the charged atmosphere. She was ready with her opening speech and she knew what Horatio must inevitably reply, and she had prepared a crushing rejoinder. But Horatio did not come.

In the mournful exodus from the library the gentle curate had been the last, holding the door open for the others, and, after softly closing it behind him, without lifting his eyes from the ground, he had passed, unseeing and unseen, through the hall and out into the sunlit garden.

Scarcely noticing and caring not at all where he went, Horatio found himself in the lane, and now, while Harriet listened in vain for his shuffling steps on the stair, the curate was a good mile and a half away in the very heart of the Millbrook woods. He had followed at random any path that offered; if there were a choice, taking the one with the darkling look that might lead to the witches' hut or the cave of the gnomes.

And now, when he was beginning to feel the creepy joy of being lost, that he had never quite outgrown, the curate came suddenly upon a bright grassy hollow among the dark trees, guarded from view on all sides by high ferns. The dark old beeches gathered round it and stretched their great elbows over it as if to keep its existence secret from all the world but one little girl. Even the sun, who was invited everywhere, was only allowed to take furtive peeps through the green fingers of the jealous old beeches. It was as if they said: "Go away! This little golden maid is all the sunshine we need, thank you!" For there, in a green velvet chair formed by the twisting mossy root of an immense beech tree, sat An Petronia.

The curate stood still in the shadow among the tall ferns, fearing to startle her. She was listening with shut eyes and parted lips. Twice through the green solitude sounded the long, intensely solemn note of a wood thrush, then it was gone, leaving behind it an echo-haunted stillness.

An Petronia opened her eyes and caught sight of the curate.

"Daddy Merle!" she called to him. "Did you hear the thrush? I wonder what he said, Daddy Merle?"

"He said, 'I wonder who that little girl is that sits all alone by herself in my private wood?'" intoned the curate. "Aren't you afraid of getting lost?" he said, as he descended the ferny slope to where she sat.

"I isn't losted. I tan't det losted. I has four Pottles."

She pointed to four dolls, in various stages of dilapidation, sitting stiffly in a row in front of her, their eight feet immersed in a trickle of water that seemed to come from nowhere and disappeared magically among the ferns, chuckling to itself at the success of its vanishing trick.

"Dear me," said Merle, inspecting the dolls with a profound show of interest, "I had no idea you had so many children. What are their names?" he inquired.

"They're not children," said An Petronia, "they're Pottles. Their names are Maffew, Mart, Loot, and this one," she picked up the least favored in appearance of the four, "this one is Don." She caressed him tenderly. It was plain that Don was the one she loved best, perhaps because of his great misfortune. Don was headless.

"He had real hair once, but I losted his head," An Petronia sighed deeply. "I wish I had all the Pottles, Daddy Merle."

"Then there are more?" asked the curate, wondering whither the child's strange fancy was leading her.

"Of torse there is. I had a picture of them. Don't you know the twelve Pottles, Daddy Merle?" She opened her blue eyes in pained surprise at the woeful ignorance of this otherwise perfect old gentleman.

Then a great light burst upon Horatio Merle. "Why, to be sure, my dear! Of course I know the twelve apos—I should say Pottles. I have known the twelve Pottles ever since I can remember, my child. Dear me! dear me!" His face fairly beamed with pleasure at this lucky intuition. The curate's happiness at having reinstated himself in the estimation of his little friend was only equaled by An Petronia's joy at the recovery of her so nearly lost ideal.

"I just knew you knew, Daddy Merle!" she cried, and pressed her little palms together in an ecstasy of childish delight.

"But aren't you afraid they'll catch cold?" said the curate presently, in a tone of proper concern, as An Petronia was returning the headless John to his place beside Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who still sat stoically with their feet in the water.

She shook her head gravely, almost reprovingly. "Oh, no! The Pottles is having their feet washed. They tan't tach told." Then, after a moment of pondering: "Would you like to see the picture, Daddy Merle?"

Before he could answer she had jumped up and disappeared behind the great beech tree. She had only been gone a moment when out of the stillness came a small voice: "Tum and see my little house, Daddy Merle!" It was the voice of An Petronia, but strangely muffled and far away.

Full of curiosity, Merle scrambled to his feet and peered round the tree. An Petronia was nowhere to be seen. What had become of her? Another step and the mystery was explained.

Between two of the buttresslike roots on the other side of the ancient beech was a dark fissure extending from the ground upward for three or four feet and just wide enough to form a doorway for little An Petronia. A practical woodman viewing the hollow tree that An Petronia called her "little house" would have had no thought beyond the loss of so many cubic feet of good timber and whether the tree was worth chopping down. To the gentle curate waiting in the green silence, here was a magic door through which at any moment might issue a laughing faun or a wistful dryad. As for Brother Beech, after all the only one vitally concerned, there was no tree specialist to tell him (for a substantial consideration) that he had only a very few years more to live and must avoid strong sunshine as much as possible and give up rain in excess, and above all be careful not to expose himself unnecessarily to the September blasts. And so the reckless little leaves in their gold-green finery laughed and sang and danced and feasted summer after summer just as if they were going to live forever and there were no such things as September gales.

From the inside of the tree came small, whispery, squirrel-like noises, and presently through the moss-rimmed opening stretched the hand of An Petronia, holding out a faded green, oblong package, bulging with papers and tied with white tape.

"Please, Daddy Merle, will you hold it for me?"

Relieved of their burden, the hands disappeared. Merle examined the package with interest. It was the back of an old exercise book converted into a portfolio and was full of papers. He turned it over curiously. On the other side was a white label. The curate smiled as he read the inscription in childish capitals, "The Misforchins of Reginal," by An Petronia Pottle.

An Petronia's novel! It so happened that this was the first time Merle had beheld the little novelist's autograph. "What a funny way to spell Anne!" he said half-aloud.

"That's the way I always spell it, Daddy Merle." He started at the sound of An Petronia's voice. He had not heard her as she slipped out of the tree. Now she was standing close beside him and in her hands was something small wrapped in white tissue paper.

There was a timid challenge in the child's voice, the first hint of the future conflict between artist and critic.

"'An' is the very first word in my spelling-book," she hurried on, "A N—an. It's the same name, Daddy Merle, only in the speller it's An Apple and I'm An Pottle."

There was no disputing such logic as this, accompanied as it was by a rainy look that must be instantly kissed away from An Petronia's wide blue eyes.

"My dear," he said, and if the truth must be told there was a hint of rain in the curate's own eyes, "An is your very own name and the way you spell it is the sweetest and dearest way in all the world, and you must never spell it any other way," which was the first, last and only concession to the "Dire Heresy of Spelling Reform" ever made by the Reverend Horatio Merle.

They were seated once more on the soft moss by the side of the four evangelists, who greeted them with undiminished apostolic serenity. An Petronia had undone the tape that bound her portfolio and was turning over the contents, pieces of paper in various sizes, from half sheets of note to torn scraps of wrapping paper, covered on both sides with the large, irregular handwriting of the budding novelist. By her side sat the curate, his gray head bent over the picture which An Petronia, after unfolding its tissue paper wrappings, had with heroically suppressed misgivings intrusted to his hands. It was her most precious possession, a photograph in a tarnished gilt frame from a painting of Christ washing the feet of the apostles. Below the picture was printed a text from the Gospel of Saint John, xiii., 15:

FOR I HAVE GIVEN YOU AN
EXAMPLE, THAT YE SHOULD
DO AS I HAVE DONE TO
YOU.

The curate stared at the familiar words. Once he had preached a sermon from that very text. He smiled sadly as he recalled that sermon.

"What do these words mean?" he had asked. "Could it be possible they were ever meant to be obeyed literally? Was it not rather a piece of oriental symbolism, a parable without words teaching the lesson of humility............" If only he had ended his discourse there. If some angel of discretion had barred the way to that fateful peroration; "Not the mock humility of the imperial blasphemer who once a year descends from his throne to wash the feet of twelve disinfected beggars......." How should he, Horatio Merle, have known that the crotchety old Rector of Deepmold not only had decided views on the sanctity of kings, but was a relation by marriage of a certain quasi-ecclesiastical person in high favor in the Austrian Emperor's household?

"You would have said it just the same, Horatio!" Harriet had declared in a burst of indignant tears as she crumpled up the rector's letter accepting Horatio's resignation. Perhaps he would—who knows?

Merle sighed regretfully as he thought of that cosy little cottage at Deepmold—the little terrace with the mossy steps—his rose garden, where he used to smoke his pipe (smoking destroyed the pernicious aphidas) and think about his sermon. There was an old sundial on the terrace and round its stone dial Horatio had chiselled with his own hands a verse of Omar Khayyam:

"The moving finger writes and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

Somewhere deep down in Horatio Merle was a soul stratum of fatalism, not the wine-instilled bravado of Omar; rather the inspired fatalism of one who said: "Take no thought of the morrow."

And now, in the afternoon silence of the woods, the curate pondered on the fate that had seemed to shape his ends so unprofitably. Was there ever anyone in the world less fitted to be a clergyman than he?

Why has the silence of the summer woods been so often likened to the silence of a cathedral? They have nothing in common. The silence of the cathedral is the silence of great stones frozen together by Fear. The silence of the woods is the stillness of innumerable sounds blended, as all the colors of the rainbow are blended, into the white light which is invisible.

"Daddy Merle, how do you spell enjoyed?" An Petronia looked up from her writing.

He spelled it for her slowly and she said it after him.

"Thank you, Daddy Merle."

Again he found himself staring at the picture of the apostles. It fascinated him. It seemed to Merle as if the painter's self were speaking to him across the centuries.

"Do they look as if they were acting a play, these holy men that I have painted? Has the spirit of Christianity so changed that the sacred commands of the Master must be explained away with strange words? Has the flock strayed so far that the shepherd's crook has come to be only a symbol and the shears of the shearer a metaphor and the sheepfold a figure of speech? Have I painted my picture in vain?"

And now the printed words of the text before him seemed to speak aloud, to call to him:

"For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."

There was no mistake about the meaning. It was a command, a command to be obeyed literally. If the church thought otherwise, then he must part company with the church. He could not serve two masters. He had made his choice, he would obey the call. The humbler the service he found to do, the more gladly would he do it. Was not that what Hiram Baxter himself had tried to tell them in his homely way? "It will make men and women of you," that's what he had said. Hiram Baxter was right.

And then a great resolve formed itself in the heart of Horatio Merle. He would take Hiram Baxter at his word, he would tell him he wanted to work. He was willing to do anything so long as it was work, so long as it was helpful. He had been blind, and in his blindness he had tried to lead others as blind as himself.

"I have lost my way," he said aloud. He had risen to his feet and stood with head bowed and hands extended in an attitude that would have been theatrical if it had not been so utterly unconscious.

"You isn't losted, Daddy Merle." He felt the clasp of her little hand. "Tum with me, I know the way."

Together they walked through the high ferns, in some places over An Petronia's head, and through dim, winding woodland passages and secret stairways of mossy rocks behind the tapestry of ivy and convolvulus known only to An Petronia, until they came out on the Millbrook lane just in time to see the last flicker of sunlight through the hawthorn hedge.

CHAPTER XVI

THE DESERT ISLAND

The night before the departure of the Baxters for Brighton the spectacle of a huge pile of packed boxes and the report that the family were fleeing from the doomed mansion, never to return, had caused a fresh outbreak of hysterical panic among the remaining servants. And scarcely was the car out of sight bearing the Baxter party to the station when a deputation from the servants' hall, hatted, coated and handbagged and headed by Parker, waited on Mrs. Merle, as the senior representative of the family, and told her that they were very sorry, but nothing would induce them to spend another hour in the house. Only out of consideration for poor Mrs. Baxter had they remained until her departure.

For the first time in her life Harriet, confronted by an emergency, totally lost the power of speech. When at length she recovered her breath and words were ready to flow, she found herself alone; the deputation had left the room, closing the door quietly behind itself.

Half an hour later the station-master at Ippingford telephoned to say that two servants who had arrived on the early train from London, on learning, at the station, the cause of the vacancy they were required to fill, had taken the first train back to town.

As Harriet put up the receiver, she heard the diminishing hish of wheels on the damp gravel outside. The sound died away and a sudden quiet came upon Ipping House, a stillness that smote Harriet's nerves like the stillness that awakens the passengers on an ocean liner when the engines stop working in the night. To tell the truth, the situation was much the same, for with the exception of Anton, the chauffeur, Hester, the new sewing girl, and Mrs. Pottle at the lodge, there was not a single servant left at Ipping House.

"What will Horatio say?" thought Harriet.

To Harriet's utter amazement, Horatio, when told what had happened, remained perfectly calm; he even smiled. She stared at him open-mouthed.

"Horatio! Have you heard a single word I've been telling you?"

"Yes, my dear."

"Is that all you have to say?" She spoke sharply.

Horatio was removing his galoshes, muddy from a long walk. This operation had to be performed standing, as the only two chairs in the room were occupied, one by the agitated Harriet, the other by the slumbering Martin Luther.

As the curate looked up, clasping one foot in his two hands and hopping absurdly on the other to keep his balance, he resembled some fantastic bird of the crane family. At any other time Harriet might have smiled; now she was too angry. Her white pompadour bristled and her eyes blinked rapidly as if making ready to leap at him.

"It is incomprehensible," he said at length, after depositing the galoshes neatly beneath Martin Luther's chair. "It is incomprehensible, my dear, in this age of aeroplanes and cinematographs and popular education, that anyone should still believe in supernatural phenomena."

Only by shutting her lips tightly and gripping the arms of her chair did Harriet restrain herself from violent interruption. When she spoke it was an explosion.

"Horatio! are you crazy? Don't you understand? There isn't a servant in this house. There's no one to cook our luncheon, and, if there were, there is no one to serve it, no one to do anything, and you stand there and talk about aeroplanes!"

There was a quiet about Horatio that, exasperating as it was, somehow disconcerted Harriet. She watched him silently, resentfully, as he picked up the cushion on which Martin Luther was reposing and deposited it carefully on the floor without waking the cat. Sleepily conscious of the proximity of a sympathetic hand, Martin Luther stretched his paws and extended his neck to be scratched, then curled up to sleep again without having once opened his eyes.

Seating himself in the cushionless chair, Horatio leaned his head against its tall straight back. "No one to serve, no one to do anything." He was echoing Harriet's words; his eyes were resting on hers, yet his thoughts were far away, fixed on something invisible to Harriet, a faded picture in a tarnished gilt frame.

A dim, arched room, a group of uncouth, dark-haired men seated sideways about a long table on which were strangely fashioned tankards and curious goblets. At the feet of one of these men was One who kneeled upon the stone floor. His eyes were sorrowful, His smooth hair fell heavily about his bent shoulders and, above His bowed head, there wavered a thin pale circle of blue-white light. And this One who kneeled upon the stone floor was washing the feet of that other who was seated at the table.

There was a look in her husband's face that carried Harriet's thoughts far away from the present, back to the first time she had seen that look and believed that Horatio was different from any other man, believed that, with her at his side, he was destined to do great things and to help make the world a wonderful place. And what had he done? What had she done? Who was to blame for the failure, for the poverty, for the pitiful dependence? She wondered what was to become of them. How could they stay on here after the way Cousin Hiram had talked? To be sure, Cousin Eleanor had been kindness itself. She had kissed her quite tearfully that morning and hoped she and Horatio would stay with them as long as they kept the house open. She had even hinted at their visiting them in New York.

The sound of a motor below coming round the drive brought Harriet to her feet. She ran to the window.

"It's Cousin Robert and Kate Clendennin," she exclaimed. "They ought to have been back hours ago. Robert will make everything all right. I will speak to him at once about getting servants."

She moved quickly and was already half out of the room when the sound of Horatio's voice halted her like an electric shock.

"Harriet!"

There was a tone in Horatio's voice that drew Harriet back into the room as if by physical force.

"What is it, Horatio? You frightened me." She pressed the palm of her hand against her side.

He was standing before her; and the pinkness had gone out of his face. He took her hand and led her gently back to the chair.

"Sit down, Harriet." He seated himself in the other chair. "I'm sorry I frightened you, love, but you must not speak to Robert Baxter about the servants."

"Why not, Horatio?"

"Because—because——" He looked at her dumbly, his underlip shook and tears came into his eyes. Harriet began to be really frightened. What had happened? Why didn't he speak?

"Harriet," he went on at last, "I implore you not to speak to Mr. Baxter. I beseech you to do nothing in this matter."

"But Horatio!"

"I mean it, Harriet. What has happened in this house to-day is an answer to my prayer."

"You're going mad, Horatio!" She tried to rise, but he drew her gently back.

"If you do anything, Harriet, if you do not leave things as they are now in this house, it will be as if Christ came to the door and you slammed the door in His face."

He was terribly in earnest, his voice was steady and his blue eyes met hers calmly; in them shone a light she had loved him for in the long gone days—a light that rarely visited them now.

"Do you mean," she asked at length, "that you want us to do without any servants?"

He put his answer in the form of a question.

"Harriet, do you remember the happiest year of our life, when we had no servant at all except the charwoman who came once a week, when you made the beds and the bread and washed the dishes and I dried them, when you were the cook and four housemaids in one and I was the butler and the footman and the man of all work? I opened the bottle of wine when we had one; I made the fires, except when the coal bill was overdue and there weren't any fires to make; I was the boots, too, and I cleaned the knives and polished our two or three bits of silver. And, when I'd nothing else to do, I wrote my sermons."

The color came into Harriet's face and her eyes shone at the recollection.

"You generally composed your sermon on the way to church. How you used to frighten me, Horatio! I thought every service would be your last! Do you remember the first time I locked you up on a Saturday morning to write your sermon?" she added, smiling.

"You can laugh about it now, but it was no laughing matter at the time," said Horatio. "I made up my mind I would open the Bible at random and take the first text my eye fell upon—and what a text it was! 'Can'st thou draw out leviathan with an hook?' Do you remember?"

"It was the best sermon you ever wrote," said Harriet, warming to the remembrance, "though perhaps, dear, it was a mistake to dwell on the impossibility of a whale's swallowing anything larger than a sardine."

"Well, it is true, isn't it?" argued Horatio.

"That's what you told the vicar when he took you to task for it after the service," laughed Harriet, "and what was it he said?"

Horatio puckered his face into a frown. "He informed me, Harriet, that it was the business of a curate to preach the Gospel and not to lecture on natural history."

The curate rose and held out his hand. "Come on, Harriet." He drew her to him and put his arm round her affectionately. "Let's play we're back in the old stone cottage at Chale, and you go down into the larder and see if there's anything for lunch and I'll go into the dining-room and lay the cloth."

For answer Harriet, conscious of the moisture in her eyes, gave Horatio a swift sidelong peck which was to a kiss what the shorthand symbol is to a written word, and, together, they descended the echoing stairs of the deserted house.

In the meantime Robert Baxter and Kate Clendennin, returning from the railway station by what the Reverend Horatio Merle might have called a short cut of about twenty miles, took no account of the flight of time. Now they raced madly down a narrow lane whose hawthorn hedges interlaced thickly overhead. Now, as the road passed between thrush-haunted woods, they went very slowly, sometimes standing still for minutes at a time to listen to the notes of the wood birds. Once when a spotted fawn trotted out of the thicket and ambled in front of the motor, they went at half speed for nearly a mile before the frightened creature decided to take to the woods again.

In the last four or five days Kate had seen a good deal of Bob, since her confession to Lionel on the Millbrook links, and she had not over-estimated her powers. Each day he sought her company more eagerly, and while at first she had, without appearing to do so, given him opportunities, now, as far as could be, with a young man who had to give a part of his time to business in London, his movements had come to be coincidental with her own.

But Kate knew that the time had come when she must, to put it baldly, either take him or leave him. She had told Lionel that she was going to marry Robert Baxter. That, however, was several days ago. Then her decision was not irrevocable. Now, as she sat beside Robert Baxter in the motor, Kate realized that any day, any hour, any moment it might become irrevocable.