For a couple of days after that Philip enjoyed the ecstasy which succeeds the removal of some haunting terror. Basking in the sunshine of security, he could look down on the dark clouds through which he had passed, and feel with thankfulness how completely (though narrowly) he had escaped the misty fringe of some trouble of the brain, the claws and teeth and pincers of a fixed idea. The simple expedient of throwing the razor-blade into the stream had entirely dispersed those clouds, and till then he had never known the sweetness and sanity of the sun. Then, with tropical rapidity, the tempest closed in upon him again.
He and Phœbe had driven out in their motor-car one afternoon, and had dismissed it two miles from home in order to have the pleasure of walking back through the flowery lanes. Philip was something of a botanist, and since he was now engaged on thechronicling of the reunion of Eva and Algernon, which unexpectedly took place in a ruined temple near Rome, he wanted to refresh his memory by the sight of the glories of the early English summer, in order to deck the flowery fields in which the ruined temple lay with the utmost possible lavishness of floral tapestry.
“The ruin stands for the trial they have passed through, my dear,” he explained to Phœbe, “and lo, all round Nature breaks into gladness!”
Phœbe gave a deep sigh.
“I think that’s lovely,” she said. “How you embellish my dry skeleton of a tale, darling, covering it with strong muscles and lovely supple skin. Wearehappy, aren’t we? I wonder if Algernon and Eva were really as happy, even at that moment, as we always are!”
They had come near to the stream that flowed by the bottom of the garden, the bank of which was a tangle of flowers.
“Loosestrife, meadow-sweet, marsh-marigold, willow-herb,” said Philip. “Delicious names, are they not?”
The sound of shrill juvenile voices was heard, and turning a bend in the lane, they came opposite the pool where Philip had thrown the razor-blade. There on the bank were half a dozen small boys in various degrees of nudity, and rosy from their bathing.
“Little darlings!” said Phœbe sympathetically. “What a jolly time they have been having in the water!”
“Willow-herb, marsh-marigold,” murmured Philip mechanically, looking round for the traces of blood on the stream-bank....
He took a firm hold of himself, and managed to walk across the wooden bridge that led to the bottom of the garden with some show of steadiness. But he almost reeled and fell when, looking into the pool, he saw the razor-blade, its encompassing envelope having been destroyed by the water, shining on the pebbly bottom of the stream like tragic Rhinegold.
When they had had tea, he made some lame excuse of studying flowers a little longer and slipped down again to the stream. The boys had gone, and taking off his shoes and socks, and rolling his trousers up to the knee, he waded out over the sharp pebbles to where his doom flickered in the sunshine. With the aid of his stick he propelled it into shallower waters and picked it up. Then, shivering from the brisk water, and tearing his socks as he pulled them over his wet feet, he returned with it to the house in a state of more miserable dejection than Algernon had ever been, even when he sat down on the ruins of the Roman temple, unaware that Eva was just about to come round the corner with April in her eyes.
For the next week Philip carried the razor-blade about with him in a stud-box that during the day never left his pocket, and at night reposed under his pillow. He made several attempts to get rid of it in a way that commended itself to his conscience, which seethed with scruples and imaginary terrors, burying it once in the garden, and at another time throwing it into the ash-bin. But the sight of his terrier digging in the potato patch for a suitable hiding place for his bone, caused him to disinter it from the first of these, and the second entailed a dismal midnight visit to the dust-bin, when, one evening, Phœbe casually alluded to the dustman’s approaching visit.
On another occasion he was fired with the original notion of embedding it in the interstices of the rough bark of the ilex at the end of the garden, well out of reach of curious fingers, and with the stud-box in his pocket, climbed with infinite difficulty up into its lower branches. But while wedging it into a suitable crevice the bough on which his weight rested suddenly gave way, and he fell heavily to the ground, while the blade flashed through the air like Excalibur and plunged into a bramble-bush. It was, of course, necessary to get it out, and this prickly business, combined with a sprained ankle, brought him almost aground in the shoals of despair. He began contemplating enlisting as a private in the British army, though well over the military age and of obese figure.Perhaps he would find some opportunity in Flanders of throwing it, suitably weighted, into a German trench. Only the thought of Phœbe left alone and making up interminable plots, with no one to turn them into narrative for her, kept him from this desperate step.
Meantime his work halted and languished, for sleepless nights and nightmare days miserably affected his power of composition, his style and even such matters as punctuation and spelling. Phœbe grew anxious about him, and recommended a holiday, but he had the wisdom to know that the only thing that kept him on the safe side of the frontier between sanity and madness was determined application to work, however poor the output was. He felt that he might just as well pack his boxes and go straight to Bedlam instead of making a circuitous journey thereviathe Malvern Hills.
It was when his condition was at its worst that there gleamed a light through the tunnel of his despair. The editor of theYorkshire Telegraph, who wanted another story by the Partingtons, with the shortest possible delay, wrote to him suggesting in the most delicate manner that life in New York would present an admirable setting for a tale, especially since the United States had come into the war, and offering to pay his passage to that salubrious city if he would favourably consider this proposal. And all at once Philip remembered having read in some book ofphysical geography, studied by him in happier boyish days, that the Atlantic in certain places was not less than seven miles deep....
He read this amiable epistle to his wife.
“Upon my word, it sounds a very good plan,” he said brightly. “What do you say, Phœbe? It will give me the holiday of which you think I stand in need.”
Phœbe shook her head.
“Do you propose that I should come with you?” she asked. “Why should a holiday among the submarines do you more good than the Malvern Hills?”
The thought of the deep holes in the Atlantic grew ever more rosy to Philip’s mind. Even the hideous notion of being torpedoed failed to take the colour out of it.
“My dear, these are days in which a man must not mind taking risks,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“I know your fearless nature, darling,” she said; “but what is the point of running unnecessary risks?”
“Local colour. There is a great deal in Mr. Etherington’s remarks.”
“I don’t agree. I should think with our experience we ought to be able to describe New York without going there. We didn’t find it necessary to go to Athens, or Khartoum, or Mexico.”
“True,” said he; “but perhaps my descriptions might have gained in veracity if we had. That was a tiresome letter to theYorkshire Telegraphabout the spires on the Acropolis. If we had been there, we should have known that there weren’t any.”
He fingered the stud-box in his pocket for a moment, and his fingers itched to drop it over a ship’s side.
“My part of our joint work might gain in true artistic feeling,” he said, “if I described what I had actually seen. Art holds the mirror up to nature, you know.”
“Yes, darling; but do you think Shakespeare meant that Art must hold the mirror up to New York?” asked she. “I fancy there is very little nature in New York.”
He took a turn or two up and down the room, while the box positively burned his finger-tips.
“I can’t help feeling as I do about it,” he said. “And, Phœbe, one of our earliest vows to each other was that each of us should respect the other’s literary conscience!”
She got up.
“You disarm me, dear,” she said. “Apply for your passport, and if they give it you, go. I only ask you to respect my feminine weakness and not make me come with you among all those horrid submarines.”
They sealed their compact with a kiss.
By the time Phœbe had interviewed her cook, her husband had already written his letter applying for his passport, on the grounds of artistic necessity in his profession. She read it through with high approval.
“Very dignified and proper,” she said. “By the way, dear, there will be no work for us this morning. We are going over the factory for explosives with kind Captain Traill. You and I must observe the processes very carefully, as we want all the information we can get for ‘The Hero of Ypres.’”
He jumped up with something of his old alacrity.
“Aha, there speaks your artistic conscience,” he said. “And don’t let me see too many soft glances between you and kind Captain Traill.”
Phœbe looked hugely delighted and returned the compliment.
“And there are some very pretty girls working there,” she observed slyly.
An hour afterwards they were padding in felt slippers round the room where bombs were packed with a fatal grey treacle, one spoonful of which was sufficient to blow them and the whole building into a million fragments. A new type of bomb was being made there, consisting of a cast-iron shell fitted with a hole through which the grey treacle was poured;an iron stopper was then screwed into the hole. There were hundreds of those empty shells, which slid along grooved ways to where the treacle was put into them, and they then were passed on to the girls, who fixed their stoppers. It was all soft, silent, deadly work, and Philip recorded a hundred impressions on his retentive memory.
Phœbe and Captain Traill were walking just ahead of him, when suddenly a great light broke, so vividly illuminating his brain that he almost thought some terrific explosion, seen and not heard, had occurred. Stealthily he drew from his pocket the stud-case, stealthily he opened it and took out the razor-blade. Then, bending over an empty bomb-case as if to examine it, he dropped the blade into it. It fell inside with a slight chink, which nobody noticed.
A couple of minutes afterwards the bomb-case had passed through the hands of the dispenser of treacle, and had its stopper screwed in.
“And where are all those little surprise packets going?” asked Philip airily.
“To aeroplanes on the west front,” said kind Captain Traill. “We’re sending off a lot to-night. Perhaps that one”—and he pointed to the identical bomb which Philip had had a hand in filling—“will make a mess in Mannheim next week.”
“I hope so,” said Philip fervently.
The only thing, now that Philip had disposed ofthe razor-blade, that clouded his complete content was the fear that his passport would be granted him, and that he would have to make a journey to America. Happily no such unnerving calamity occurred, for a week later he received a polite intimation from the passport office that the object for which he wanted to go there did not seem of sufficient importance to warrant the granting of a permit; so, wreathed in smiles, he passed this letter over to Phœbe.
“There’s the end of that,” he said.
“Philistines! Barbarians!” she said indignantly.
“I suppose they are acting to the best of their judgment,” said he. “I dare say they have never heard of me.”
“My dear, don’t be so cynical,” said Phœbe.
“Well, well! Certainly I am bitterly disappointed.”
He took up the morning paper.
“Bitterly!” he said again. “Hallo! Our airmen bombed Mannheim two nights ago, and dropped three tons of high explosives. Well, that is very interesting. Captain Traill said that perhaps some of those bombs which we saw being filled would make a mess in Mannheim. I hope they were those actual ones.”
“So do I,” said Phœbe. “Was there much damage done?”
“The German account says that there was hardly any, but of course that is the German account. A few people were wounded and cut by fragments of the bombs. Cut!”
He got up and could hardly refrain from dancing round the table among the rushes.
“Some deep cuts, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said.