CHAPTER XVIII

MARTIN LUTHER

All this time Harriet remained in her room, pacing up and down the floor, pausing at every sound to listen at the window. Perched on the window-sill, Martin Luther mewed insistently, his head pressed against the leaded glass. Why did he mew like that?

Suddenly it seemed to Harriet that Martin Luther had been mewing for an infinite period of time. She opened the window, and the cat, half way through, hesitated, as if considering whether it was really advisable to go out, after all. Then, sliding softly downward to the roof of the conservatory he disappeared round the angle of the house.

Where had the cat gone? Harriet had an inherent aversion to cats, her toleration of Martin Luther being a strong testimonial to her love for Horatio, but she had moments of believing, as he did, that cats possess a fearful knowledge not shared by men. Why had Martin Luther acted so strangely? Where had he gone?

It was terribly quiet now, and, as the curate's wife turned away from the window the darkness of the room, deepened by contrast, filled her with sudden panic. She hurried from the house, and her groping flight was like the progress of a nightmare.

Out of doors the dew-cooled air pressed Harriet's forehead like the hand of a nurse. The velvet blending of darkness and light, silence and sound, was infinitely soothing. To and fro she paced the darkening lawn, each time venturing a little further. Behind the lodge it was quite black under the cedars. Out in the lane the shadows were terrifying.

The hours passed.

Some one was coming. Harriet listened fearfully, leaning back against the steep bank among the pungent ferns, her heart beating painfully. As the steps came nearer and she recognized Lionel, her relief from the terror of a strange man turned to despair. Horatio was not with him.

"Lionel, is that you?"

At the sudden apparition of Harriet Lionel stopped short, and, turning at the same instant, almost lost his balance. A small, dark object fell to the ground, something he had been carrying under his arm. Harriet clutched his wrist.

"What's that?"

Without answering Lionel picked up from the ground what seemed like a piece of the darkness.

"You'd better take my arm, Mrs. Merle, the road's quite rough here." He offered his arm with an awkward movement.

"What is it? What have you got there?"

She snatched the thing from under his arm; she needed no one to tell her whose it was, this soft, black felt hat.

"Where did you get it? It's wet--it's dripping wet!"

He felt her nails in his wrist.

"I--I found it--I found it----"

"Where? Where did you find it?" she shrieked.

"By the lake," faltered Lionel.

The curate's wife neither fainted nor lost her head. Her fingers relaxed and she became strangely, terribly calm.

"A lantern--quick! There's one at the lodge."

Lionel had to run to keep pace with her.

They found the little gothic house quite dark and the door locked. Their knocking brought no response. The only sign of life was Martin Luther, whose plaintive cries, louder every second, indicated that he was running to meet them.

"Try the back door," said Harriet. "We must get a lantern."

Lionel plunged through the blackness of the rhododendrons, not stopping to find the path. Harriet, leaning against the door, kept up a ceaseless pounding on the iron knocker. Martin Luther continued to mew.

Never before had the curate's wife heard a cat mew in that way--short, sharp cries, changing to long, mournful wails as he pushed against her in the dark or clawed at her dress. Then his voice died away as with an incredible rushing noise he dashed down the steps and across the gravel, only to return the next moment with the same sound of scrambling feet and flying pebbles.

At last her ear caught the swish of parted bushes and the tread of human feet, and Lionel's voice came from close by.

"It's locked."

"Try the windows."

"They're all fastened. What's that?" he cried.

"It's the cat," gasped Harriet. "He's going mad--we can't wait." Her words seemed to force their way between heartbeats.

Lionel guided her down the scarcely visible steps, and together they started up the drive. Martin Luther trotted between, rubbing against one and the other in turn. His plaintive mew had given place to an excited, cooing tremolo. Suddenly from somewhere at the right came again the sharp, wailing cries they had heard at first.

They stood stock still, and as they harkened the same strange impulse came to them both. Without a word they turned sharply from the gravel, and, mounting the soft turf of the bank, scrambled through the laurel bushes and ran in the direction of the sound.

It was a forlorn hope, but they followed it, followed it desperately. Now the mewing sounded near, now faint and far off. At one time they lost it altogether, then, all at once, it seemed to come from somewhere below their feet.

"I say! Look out!" cried Lionel, catching Harriet's arm. "You nearly went over!"

They were standing close to the edge of a dark declivity, in reality not very steep, yet of sufficient depth to be dangerous to any one coming upon it unawares. This last remnant of the ancient moat, for such it was, lay only a few yards from the oldest wing of the house, yet so artfully was it screened on two sides by dense shrubbery and on the third by a crumbling, ivy-covered wall, once part of the old tower, that its presence was known to only two people at Ipping House--the curate and little An Petronia.

Harriet, straining her ears, became suddenly conscious that Martin Luther had stopped mewing! And, as she listened fearfully there came a faint, pulsating sound, vibrant, velvety, the most comfortable of nature's voices, whose very name is the synonym for curled contentment; Martin Luther was purring!

Whereupon there crept into Harriet's heart the dawn of hope she had thought gone forever. And presently there came, seemingly from the very center of the earth, a familiar voice, faint but lifelike:

"Poor pussy! Poor old puss! Good Martin Luther!"

"Horatio!" she screamed at the top of her voice.

Once more came the voice of Horatio, this time a little louder: "Is that you, my dear?"

"Of course it's me! How can you ask? Where are you, Horatio? What are you doing? Are you hurt? Why don't you speak?"

"I'm all right, my dear," was the faint yet cheerful response, "but I can't get out--the door's locked."

The door? What did he mean? A door out there in the open park?

Harriet was seized by a new terror. Horatio's mind was unhinged. He had always been eccentric, not a bit like other people--and now--now it had come!

In her sudden access of woe Harriet Merle did the nearest thing to fainting she knew. She sat down. That is to say, Harriet started to sit down. The invisible precipice at her feet and the law of gravitation did the rest.

As the curate's wife half slid, half rolled down the steep, grassy incline her ear, keyed to the highest pitch of dreadful expectancy, caught the sound of a scratching match. Lionel was striking a light.

"Wait, Lionel!" she screamed with all the breath she had to spare, and even as she did so her indecorous revolutions ceased gently on the level turf at the bottom of the incline.

In an instant she was on her feet and had shaken her disordered plumage into the hen-like seemliness befitting a curate's wife.

"Now strike a match, Lionel!" she called.

Then it was that Lionel performed a deed of heroism that only an Englishman can appreciate. Unopened in his pocket, just as it had come in that morning's mail, was the last number of a sporting journal known as The Pink Un, so called from the roseate tint of the paper, attributed by the fanciful to an inherent sense of shame in the pages themselves in no wise shared by their editors. This was the only thing in the way of paper Lionel could find in his pockets, and his match box was almost empty.

Without a moment's hesitation he unfolded the precious sheet, and, tearing page after page into remorseless strips, folded them quickly into long spills. Then, striking a match, with the utmost care, he lighted the first of his paper torches.

The flame leaped up, and Harriet saw that she stood in a grassy, bath-shaped hollow, at least two heads higher than herself, but how long it was impossible to say. Lionel quickly joined her, lighting a fresh torch as he came, and giving her the remainder of the precious paper to hold in reserve.

As they moved forward cautiously the darkness in front of them resolved itself into a glistening barrier of ivy extending straight upward into the immense blackness above. This, as Harriet afterward learned, was the other side of the ivy-covered ruin whose forgotten origin had been a perpetual source of speculation to Horatio and herself ever since they came to Ipping House.

"Horatio!" she cried, pressing her face against the damp leaves. She heard his familiar little cough.

"My dear Harriet, there must be a heavy dew. I hope you remembered your galoshes." His voice seemed to come from the depths of the ivy.

Reassuring as it was, the curate's calmness, his very solicitude was indescribably irritating to the overwrought nerves of his wife.

"How can you talk like that," she cried, "after all I've been through, Horatio, thinking you were drowned in the lake--and you sit there like a--like a mole and talk about galoshes!"

Suddenly her hand, pushing through a foot's thickness of ivy, encountered cold stone. Her anger turned instantly to fear.

"Where are you, Horatio? Why don't you come out? You must come out! Oh, I can't bear it!" she sobbed convulsively.

"My dear Harriet," began Horatio--but he got no further. Whatever consolation the gentle curate had to offer was cut short by a joyful shout from Lionel.

"By Jove! I've found the door!" His cry was accompanied by a sound of rustling leaves.

As Lionel forced his way through the ivy tangle his paper torch went out. Lighting a fresh one at the sacrifice of a precious match, he found himself in a low, chimney-like chamber about the width of his outspread arms, half buried in earth and smelling of decayed wood and fungus. The damp stone sides slanted sharply inward to where, scarcely a yard away, gray with mould and studded with rusty iron bolts, loomed the upper half of an ancient wooden door. Only one hinge, huge, rusty, and fantastically wrought, was visible above the earth. Curled close against the door, blinking yellowly and purring like an automobile, sat Martin Luther.

Again the torch went out, but Lionel had seen enough. The door opened inward, that is to say, away from him, and in the grotesque scrollwork of the great hinge were three empty nail holes, leaving only two entire nails.

He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

"Is the ground clear on your side, Mr. Merle? The beastly door opens inward, you know."

"You don't say," came from the curate. "It's pitch dark here. I have a candle, a perfectly splendid candle, but no matches."

"I have some perfectly splendid matches and no candle," laughed Lionel.

Merle joined in the laugh, and Harriet wondered, fearfully, if the two men had gone mad.

A minute later a crash of rending wood and cringing metal caused her heart to stand still. At the same instant came a triumphant shout from Lionel and a sound of Horatio's voice close by, and, before she fully realized what had happened, Harriet Merle was sobbing, laughing, and scolding in her husband's arms.

Lionel had kicked in the door.

Martin Luther led the way back, his tail at the proud perpendicular of conscious rectitude. He had done a good evening's work and that, too, under most trying conditions. Human beings, he reflected, were all very well in their way--unquestionably they had their uses, at times they were even necessary (when one falls into a canal, for instance), but their deplorable ignorance of mewing, beyond such elementary phrases as "Please give me some milk," or "Oblige me by opening this door," was excessively annoying.

Lionel had raced ahead to carry the joyful news to the countess. Tucked safely away in his pocket was a remnant, snatched from the burning of the sinful pink newspaper, not, it is to be feared, the portion least deserving of fiery punishment.

And now Horatio, arriving at the bank which Harriet had descended with such unpremeditated energy a short time before, placed the candle upon the ground to assist his wife up the steep incline. Here his eye fell upon an oblong piece of paper lying on the grass close to the candle-stick and glistening in the yellow light. As he picked it up the word "Reginal" caught his eye. It was a page of An Petronia's novel, the "Misforchins of Reginal." The curate put the paper in his pocket to return to the little girl, and, in another minute, he had forgotten all about it.