CHAPTER VI
HESTER OF THE SCARLET CLOAK
Great was the rejoicing in the home of the field mouse on the return of the prodigal. Merle, happy in the success of his mission, watched the little fellow scamper off among the barley stalks and made no attempt to follow his course or intrude upon the welcoming festivities.
His errand of mercy accomplished, the curate's path of duty now led directly back to Ipping House, back to the prison cell where Roget and Cruden and all the police platoon of beetle-colored books and the funereal inkstand and the penholder of evil tasting wood grimly awaited him. A straight and narrow path between the high hedge and cornfields, over the meadow, across the old stone bridge, down the lane to the park gate on the Ippingford road—all to be drearily retraced. In the opposite direction lay a new and untrod path, a woodland way that whispered invitingly with mysterious darknesses and possibilities of adventure.
The process of reasoning by which the Reverend Horatio Merle convinced himself that a woodland path, starting in exactly the opposite direction was a short cut to Ipping House was anything but satisfactory when he afterward attempted to reveal it to Mrs. Merle. Indeed, but for the ready tact of Martin Luther on this occasion, he would have been left entirely without an audience, as, in the middle of his explanation, the door was slammed indignantly by the departing Harriet.
"In any case," he told himself, as he turned his back upon the cornfield, "I can think about Progressive Mothers just as well in this wood as I can shut up in my study."
Strange to relate, that was the last thought on the subject of Progressive Mothers that visited the curate for many hours. It was as if the spirit of the wood had overheard his rash boast and summoned all its forces to teach Horatio a lesson. Never was there such a conspiracy. With one accord birds, trees, flowers, butterflies, and all the creeping things of the wood united to compass the downfall of Horatio Merle. His surrender was complete and, from the moment of his entrance into the wood, the all-important matter of the address passed completely from the clergyman's mind. The Bishop of Bunchester was right when he said that Merle was a born naturalist.
At the end of two hours Horatio sat down to rest on the bank of a rocky brook, tired and happy, without the least idea where he was. His hat was gone, his feet were wet through, owing to the treachery of a moss-covered stone, and his coat was torn and smeared with leaf mold. Earlier in his wanderings the joyful curate had fallen into a deep saw-pit concealed by tall bracken and he bore upon his person the marks of his struggles to extricate himself.
Merle looked at his watch. The hands pointed to a quarter past one, indicating to Horatio that it was exactly five minutes to two. The original walk from Ipping House to the cornfield had taken him fifteen minutes, and this was the short cut home!
What would Harriet think? The thought of what Harriet would think brought Harriet's husband to his feet and approximately to his senses. The first rational idea since his unhappy inspiration of the short cut now came to him. He would follow the brook. "A brook can't go round in a circle, so it must lead somewhere," he reasoned, "and anywhere is better than nowhere."
Comforted by this logic, Horatio followed the course of the brook. If it did not go in a circle, there were times when Merle was not sure whether it was the same brook or another one going in the opposite direction.