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.

She spoke suddenly. "We'd better be hurrying," she said. "It's getting late. I'm getting hungry, aren't you?"

On the way home Kate kept him busy with the high speed lever, declaring that if they weren't back inside of half an hour she would certainly starve to death. In less than ten minutes Bob had passed the golf links, and in three minutes more they were whizzing through the lodge gates.

Kate felt it the moment they entered the house.

"What is it?" she asked, looking round curiously.

"What's what?" said Bob, as he followed her into the hall.

"It's so beastly quiet--there's something wrong. I wonder where Lionel is," she said.

They passed into the library. Kate pulled a bell, once, twice, and once again. No one answered.

"Perhaps it didn't ring," suggested Bob.

They tried one in the conservatory, and getting no response, they descended to the regions of the kitchen to see what was the matter. With the exception of Martin Luther, fast asleep on a seat by the range, there was not a living soul to be found anywhere.

Bob took out his cigarette case, and Kate seated herself on the dresser, with her feet on a chair.

"We're marooned!" she said; the words came out of a violet smoke-cloud.

"Looks like it," said Bob as he lighted his cigarette from hers.

"I say, can you cook?" asked the voice from the cloud.

"I can make a Welsh rarebit."

"Well, I'll thank you not to." Kate volplaned from her perch on the dresser. "Let's see what there is. There's sure to be something cold, and, if there are eggs enough, I'll make an omelette a mile wide."

There were cold meats of various kinds, also cold boiled potatoes. These Kate cut up and placed in a frying pan, while Bob made a fire in the range, and, under Kate's direction, put the plates and dishes for the omelette and the potatoes in the oven to warm.

When everything was ready, Kate sent Bob upstairs to set the table and ring the gong for luncheon. As he hurried through the servants' corridor he met Mrs. Merle.

"Oh, Mr. Baxter!" she cried. "Did you ever see anything like it! I am just going down to see if I can find anything for lunch."

Bob smiled sweetly as he held the door open and ushered Mrs. Merle into the kitchen.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Harriet when she had recovered from the first shock of surprise at seeing Kate. "If I'd known sooner I might have been some help. My husband is laying the cloth."

"Splendid!" answered Kate, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Now, Bob, you can help us with the trays."

Bob led the way with a large tray on which were a cold ham and a platter of sliced cold chicken. Kate carried the omelette and a "sweet" she had made at the last minute of fried bread and strawberry jam. Mrs. Merle brought up the rear with the dish of fried potatoes and a jar of potted shrimps.

Horatio had just finished setting the table when the procession of three entered the dining room. His back was turned. He was making a last round, massaging with gentle finger tips the few remaining wrinkles in the white cloth.

In an instantaneous conspiracy of silence they watched him as he slowly circumnavigated the snow and crystal continent. Arrived at the antipodes, Horatio looked up quietly and met the eyes in the doorway. As they looked at him a change came over his face. He stood very straight, looking almost tall. It was happening, the miracle he had prayed for!

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

Perhaps they didn't know it. Perhaps they thought it was all a joke. But he knew better. It was part of the Great Design, just as the departure of the frightened servants were part of the same Design.

Here they came, laughing, joking, but all lending a hand, all serving. Some one was crying: "Hooray for the new butler! Speech! Speech!" It was Lionel Fitz-Brown. Returning from a ramble on the moor at the last minute, he had seen what was up, and, not wishing to be out of it, had dashed into the kitchen garden and returned, the flushed and joyous bearer of an egregious lettuce on a lordly dish.

All tongues were loosed now as they followed each other into the dining room and deposited their viands on the table.

There was a sudden hush. All were seated but Harriet and Horatio. Harriet went quickly to her accustomed place and sat down. Only the Reverend Horatio Merle remained standing. The curate had always said grace at Ipping House, sounding forth the stereotyped words with a certain glib solemnity as if he was repeating a worn out social formula. Now on his lowered face there was a deep reverence, and his clasped hands were joined in real supplication.

"For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful." There was a tremor in his voice, but it held out to the end.

With still lowered head Horatio moved to the head of the table, and, standing by the side of Mr. Robert Baxter, lifted the cover from Kate Clendennin's omelette and placed it on the sideboard.