“Hm!” he observed. “Has he been here often while I’ve been away?”
“As often as he chose,” Philippa replied. “He has become very popular in the neighbourhood already, and he is an exceedingly welcome guest here at any time.”
“Takes advantage of your hospitality pretty often, doesn’t he?”
“He is here most days. We are always rather disappointed when he doesn’t come.”
Sir Henry’s frown grew a little deeper.
“What’s the attraction?” he demanded.
Philippa smiled. It was the smile which those who knew her best, feared.
“Well,” she confided, “I used to imagine that it was Helen, but I think that he has become a little bored, talking about nothing but Dick and their college days. I am rather inclined to fancy that it must be me.”
“You, indeed!” he grunted. “Are you aware that you are a married woman?”
Philippa glanced up from her work. Her eyebrows were raised, and her expression was one of mild surprise.
“How queer that you should remind me of it!” she murmured. “I am afraid that the sea air disturbs your memory.”
Sir Henry rose abruptly to his feet.
“Oh, damn!” he exclaimed.
He walked to the door. His guests were still lingering over their wine. He could hear their voices more distinctly than ever. Then he came back to the sofa and stood by Philippa’s side.
“Philippa, old girl,” he pleaded, “don’t let us quarrel. I have had such a hard fortnight, a nor’easter blowing all the time, and the dirtiest seas I’ve ever known at this time of the year. For five days I hadn’t a dry stitch on me, and it was touch and go more than once. We were all in the water together, and there was a nasty green wave that looked like a mountain overhead, and the side of our own boat bending over us as though it meant to squeeze our ribs in. It looked like ten to one against us, Phil, and I got a worse chill than the sea ever gave me when I thought that I shouldn’t see you again.”
Philippa laid down her knitting. She looked searchingly into her husband’s face. She was very far from indifferent to his altered tone.
“Henry,” she said, “that sounds very terrible, but why do you run such risks—unworthily? Do you think that I couldn’t give you all that you want, all that I have to give, if you came home to me with a story like this and I knew that you had been facing death righteously and honourably for your country’s sake? Why, Henry, there isn’t a man in the world could have such a welcome as I could give you. Do you think I am cold? Of course you don’t! Do you think I want to feel as I have done this last fortnight towards you? Why, it’s misery! It makes me feel inclined to commit any folly, any madness, to get rid of it all.”
Her husband hesitated. A frown had darkened his face. He had the air of one who is on the eve of a confession.
“Philippa,” he began, “you know that when I go out on these fishing expeditions, I also put in some work at the new chart which I am so anxious to prepare for the fishermen.”
Philippa shook her head impatiently.
“Don’t talk to me about your fishermen, Henry! I’m as sick with them as I am with you. You can see twenty or thirty of them any morning, lounging about the quay, strapping young fellows who shelter themselves behind the plea of privileged employment. We are notorious down here for our skulkers, and you—you who should be the one man to set them an example, are as bad as they are. You deliberately encourage them.”
Sir Henry abandoned his position by his wife’s side, His face darkened and his eyes flashed.
“Skulkers?” he repeated furiously.
Philippa looked at him without flinching.
“Yes! Don’t you like the word?”
The angry flush faded from his cheeks as quickly as it had come. He laughed a little unnaturally, took up a cigarette from an open box, and lit it.
“It isn’t a pleasant one, is it, Philippa?” he observed, thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets strolling away. “If one doesn’t feel the call—well, there you are, you see. Jove, that’s a fine fish.”
He stood admiring the codling upon the scales. Philippa continued her work.
“If you intend to spend the rest of the evening with us,” she told him calmly, “please let me remind you again that we have guests for dinner. Your present attire may be comfortable but it is scarcely becoming.”
He turned away and came back towards her. As he passed the lamp, she started.
“Why, you’re wet,” she exclaimed, “wet through!”
“Of course I am,” he admitted, feeling his sleeve, “but to tell you the truth, in the interest of our conversation I had quite forgotten it. Here come our guests, before I have had time to escape. I can hear your friend Lessingham’s voice.”
CHAPTER XII
Table of Contents
The three dinner guests entered together, Lessingham in the middle. Sir Henry’s presence was obviously a surprise to all of them.
“No idea that you were back, sir,” Harrison observed, shaking hands.
Sir Henry greeted them all good-humouredly. “I turned up about three quarters of an hour ago,” he explained, “just too late to join you at dinner.”
“Bad luck, sir,” Sinclair remarked. “I hope that you had good sport?”
“Not so bad,” Sir Henry admitted. “We had to go far enough for it, though. What do you think of that for an October codling?”
They all approached the scales and admired the fish. Sir Henry stood with his hands in his pockets, listening to their comments.
“You are enjoying your stay here, I hope, Mr. Lessingham?” he enquired.
“One could scarcely fail to enjoy even the briefest holiday in so delightfully hospitable a place,” was the somewhat measured reply.
“You’re by way of being a fisherman yourself, I hear?” Sir Henry continued.
“In a very small way,” Lessingham acknowledged. “I have been out once or twice.”
“With Ben Oates, eh?”
“I believe that was the man’s name.”
Philippa glanced up from her work with a little exclamation of surprise.
“I had no idea of that, Mr. Lessingham. Whatever made you choose Ben Oates? He is a most disgraceful person.”
“It was entirely by accident,” Lessingham explained. “I met him on the front. It happened to be a fine morning, and he was rather pressing in his invitation.”
“I’m afraid he didn’t show you much sport,” Sir Henry observed. “From what Jimmy Dumble’s brother told him, he seems to have taken you in entirely the wrong direction, and on the wrong tide.”
“We had a small catch,” Lessingham replied. “I really went more for the sail than the sport, so I was not disappointed.”
“The coast itself,” Sir Henry remarked, “is rather an interesting one.”
“I should imagine so,” Lessingham assented. “Mr. Ben Oates, indeed, told me some wonderful stories about it. He spoke of broad channels down which a dreadnought could approach within a hundred yards of the land.”
“He is quite right, too,” his host agreed.
“There’s a lot of deep water about here. The whole of the coast is very curious in that way. What the—what the dickens is this?”
Sir Henry, who had been strolling about the room, picked up a Homburg hat from the far side of a table of curios. Philippa glanced up at his exclamation.
“That’s Nora’s trophy,” she explained. “I told her to take it up to her own room, but she’s always wanting to show it to her friends.”
“Nora’s trophy?” Sir Henry repeated. “Why, it’s nothing but an ordinary man’s hat.”
“Nevertheless, it’s a very travelled one, sir,” Harrison pointed out. “Miss Nora picked it up on Dutchman’s Common, the morning after the observation car was found there.”
Sir Henry held out the hat.
“But Nora doesn’t seriously suppose that the Germans come over in this sort of headgear, does
she?” he demanded.
“If you’ll just look inside the lining, sir,” Sinclair suggested.
Sir Henry turned it up and whistled softly. “By Jove, it’s a German hat, all right!” he exclaimed. “Doesn’t look a bad shape, either.”
He tried it on. There was a little peal of laughter from the men. Philippa had ceased her knitting and was watching from the couch. Sir Henry looked at himself in the looking-glass.
“Well, that’s funny,” he observed. “I shouldn’t have thought it would have been so much too small for me. Here, just try how you’d look in it, Mr. Lessingham,” he added, handing it across to him.
Lessingham accepted the situation quite coolly, and placed the hat carefully on his head.
“It doesn’t feel particularly comfortable,” he remarked.
“That may be,” Sir Henry suggested, “because you have it on wrong side foremost. If you’d just turn it round, I believe you would find it a very good fit.”
Lessingham at once obeyed. Sir Henry regarded him with admiration.
“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Look at that, Philippa. Might have been made for him, eh?”
Lessingham looked at himself in the glass and removed the hat from his head with, some casual observation. He was entirely at his ease. His host turned towards the door, which Mills was holding open.
“Captain Griffiths, sir,” the latter announced.
Sir Henry greeted his visitor briefly.
“How are you, Griffiths?” he said. “Glad to see you. Excuse my costume, but I am just back from a fishing expedition. We are all admiring Mr. Lessingham in his magic hat.”
Captain Griffiths shook hands with Philippa, nodded to the others, and turned towards Lessingham.
“Put it on again, there’s a good fellow, Lessingham,” Sir Henry begged. “You see, we have found a modern version of Cinderella’s slipper. The hat which fell from the Zeppelin on to Dutchman’s Common fits our friend like a glove. I never thought the Germans made such good hats, did you, Griffiths?”
“I always thought they imported their felt hats,” Captain Griffiths acknowledged. “Is that really the one with the German name inside, which Miss Nora brought home?”
“This is the genuine article,” Lessingham assented, taking it from his head and passing it on to the newcomer. “Notwithstanding the name inside, I should still believe that it was an English hat. It feels too comfortable for anything else.”
The Commandant took the hat to a lamp and examined it carefully. He drew out the lining and looked all the way round. Suddenly he gave vent to a little exclamation.
“Here are the owner’s initials,” he declared, “rather faint but still distinguishable,—B. M. Hm! There’s no doubt about its being a German hat.”
“B. M.,” Sir Henry muttered, looking over his shoulder. “How very interesting! B. M.,” he repeated, turning to Philippa, who had recommenced her knitting. “Is it my fancy, or is there something a little familiar about that?”
“I am sure that I have no idea,” Philippa replied. “It conveys nothing to me.”
There was a brief but apparently pointless silence. Philippa’s needles flashed through her wool with easy regularity. Lessingham appeared to be sharing the mild curiosity which the others showed concerning the hat. Sir Henry was standing with knitted brows, in the obvious attitude of a man seeking to remember something.
“B. M.,” he murmured softly to himself. “There was some one I’ve known or heard of in England—What’s that, Mills?”
“Your dinner is served, sir,” Mills, who had made a silent entrance, announced.
Sir Henry apparently thought no more of the hat or its possible owner. He threw it upon a neighbouring table, and his face expressed a new interest in life.
“Jove, I’m ravenous!” he confessed. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you? Mills, see that these gentlemen have cigars and cigarettes—in the billiard room, I should think. You’ll find the young people there. I’ll come in and have a game of pills later.”
The two young soldiers, with Captain Griffiths, followed Sir Henry at once from the room. Lessingham, however, lingered. He stood with his hands behind him, looking at the closed door.
“Are you going to stay and talk nonsense with me, Mr. Lessingham?” Philippa asked.
“If I may,” he answered, without changing his position.
Philippa looked at him curiously.
“Do you see ghosts through that door?”
He shook his head.
“Do you know,” he said, as he seated himself by her side, “there are times when I find your husband quite interesting.”
CHAPTER XIII
Table of Contents
Philippa leaned back in her place.
“Exactly what do you mean by that, Mr. Lessingham?” she demanded.
He shook himself free from a curious sense of unreality, and turned towards her.
“I must confess,” he said, “that sometimes your husband puzzles me.”
“Not nearly so much as he puzzles me,” Philippa retorted, a little bitterly.
“Has he always been so desperately interested in deep-sea fishing?”
Philippa shrugged her shoulders.
“More or less, but never quite to this extent. The thing has become an obsession with him lately. If you are really going to stay and talk with me, do you mind if we don’t discuss my husband? Just now the subject is rather a painful one with me.”
“I can quite understand that,” Lessingham murmured sympathetically.
“What do you think of Captain Griffiths?” she asked, a little abruptly.
“I have thought nothing more about him. Should I? Is he of any real importance?”
“He is military commandant here.”
Lessingham nodded thoughtfully.
“I suppose that means that he is the man who ought to be on my track,” he observed.
“I shouldn’t be in the least surprised to hear that he was,” Philippa said drily. “I have told you that he came and asked about you the other night, when he dined here. He seemed perfectly satisfied then, but he is here again to-night to see Henry, and he never visits anywhere in an ordinary way.”
“Are you uneasy about me?” Lessingham enquired.
“I am not sure,” she answered frankly. “Sometimes I am almost terrified and would give anything to hear that you were on your way home. And at other times I realise that you are really very clever, that nothing is likely to happen to you, and that the place will seem duller than ever when you do go.”
“That is very kind of you,” he said. “In any case, I fear that my holiday will soon be coming to an end.”
“Your holiday?” she repeated. “Is that what you call it?”
“It has been little else,” he replied indifferently. “There is nothing to be learnt here of the slightest military significance.”
“We told you that when you arrived,” Philippa reminded him.
“I was perhaps foolish not to believe you,” he acknowledged.
“So your very exciting journey through the clouds has ended in failure, after all!” she went on, a moment or two later.
“Failure? No, I should not call it failure.”
“You have really made some discoveries, then?” she enquired dubiously.
“I have made the greatest discovery in the world.”
Her eyebrows were gently raised, the corners of her mouth quivered, her eyes fell.
“Dear me! In this quiet spot?” she sighed.
“Yes!”
“Is it Helen or me?”
“Philippa!” he protested.
Her eyebrows were more raised than ever. Her mouth had lost its alluring curve.
“Really, Mr. Lessingham!” she exclaimed. “Have I ever given you the right to call me by my Christian name?”
“In my country,” he answered, “we do not wait to ask. We take.”
“Rank Prussianism,” she murmured. “I really think you had better go back
there. You are adopting their methods.”
“I may have to at any moment,” he admitted, “or to some more distant country still. I want something to take back with me.”
“You want a keepsake, of course,” Philippa declared, looking around the room. “You can have my photograph—the one over there. Helen will give you one of hers, too, I am sure, if you ask her. She is just as grateful to you about Richard as I am.”
“But from you,” he said earnestly, “I want more than gratitude.”
“Dear me, how persistent you are!” Philippa murmured. “Are you really determined to make love to me?”
“Ah, don’t mock me!” he begged. “What I am saying to you comes from my heart.”
Philippa laughed at him quietly. There was just a little break in her voice, however.
“Don’t be absurd!”
“There is nothing absurd about it,” he replied, with a note of sadness in his tone. “I felt it from the moment we met. I struggled against it, but I have felt it growing day by day. I came here with my mind filled with different purposes. I had no thought of amusing myself, no thought of seeking here the happiness which up till now I seem to have missed. I came as a servant because I was sent, a mechanical being. You have changed everything. For you I feel what I have never felt for any woman before. I place before you my career, my freedom, my honour.”
Philippa sighed very softly.
“Do you mind ringing the bell?” she begged.
“The bell?” he repeated. “What for?”
“I want Helen to hear you,” she confided, with a wonderful little smile.
“Philippa, don’t mock me,” he pleaded. “If this is only amusement to you, tell me so and let me go away. It is the first time in my life that a woman has come between me and my work. I am no longer master of myself. I am obsessed with you. I want nothing else in life but your love.”
There was an almost startling change in Philippa’s face. The banter which had served her with so much effect, which she had relied upon as her defensive weapon, was suddenly useless. Lessingham had created an atmosphere around him, an atmosphere of sincerity.
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