Police-station, DreymarshSIR,According to enquiries made I find that Mr. Hamar Lessinghamarrived at the Hotel this evening in time for dinner. Hisluggage arrived by rail yesterday. It is presumed that he cameby motor-car, but there is no car in the garage, nor any mentionof one. His room was taken for him by Miss Fairclough, ringingup for Lady Cranston about seven o'clock.Respectfully yours,JOHN HAYLOCK.
“Is your note of interest?” Philippa enquired.
“In a sense, yes,” he replied, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket. “I presume we can consider our late subject of conversation finished with?”
“I have nothing more to say,” she pronounced.
“Very well, then,” her husband agreed, “let us select another topic. This time, supposing I choose?”
“You are welcome.”
“Let us converse, then, about Mr. Hamar Lessingham.”
Philippa had taken up her work. Her fingers ceased their labours, but she did not look up.
“About Mr. Hamar Lessingham,” she repeated. “Rather a limited subject, I am afraid.”
“I am not so sure,” he said thoughtfully. “For instance, who is he?”
“I have no idea,” she replied. “Does it matter? He was at college with Richard, and he has been a visitor at Wood Norton. That is all that we know. Surely it is sufficient for us to offer him any reasonable hospitality?”
“I am not disputing it,” Sir Henry assured her. “On the face of it, it seems perfectly reasonable that you should be civil to him. On the other hand, there are one or two rather curious points about his coming here just now.”
“Really?” Philippa murmured indifferently, bending a little lower over her work.
“In the first place,” her husband continued, “how did he arrive here?”
“For all I know,” she replied, “he may have walked.”
“A little unlikely. Still, he didn't come from London by either of the evening trains, and it seems that you didn't take his rooms for him until about seven o'clock, before which time he hadn't been to the hotel. So, you see, one is driven to wonder how the mischief he did get here.”
“I took his rooms?” Philippa repeated, with a sudden little catch at her heart.
“Some one from here rang up, didn't they?” Sir Henry went on carelessly. “I gathered that we were introducing him at the hotel.”
“Where did you hear that?” she demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders, but avoided answering the question.
“I have no doubt,” he continued, “that the whole subject of Mr. Hamar Lessingham is scarcely worth discussing. Yet he does seem to have arrived here under a little halo of coincidence.”
“I am afraid I have scarcely appreciated that,” Philippa remarked; “in fact, his coming here has seemed to me the most ordinary thing in the world. After all, although one scarcely remembers that since the war, this is a health resort, and the man has been ill.”
“Quite right,” Sir Henry agreed. “You are not going to bed, dear?”
Philippa had folded up her work. She stood for a moment upon the hearth-rug. The little hardness which had tightened her mouth had disappeared, her eyes had softened.
“May I say just one word more,” she begged, “about our previous—our only serious subject of conversation? I have tried my best since we were married, Henry, to make you happy.”
“You know quite well,” he assured her, “that you have succeeded.”
“Grant me one favour, then,” she pleaded. “Give up your fishing expedition to-morrow, go back to London by the first train and let me write to Lord Rayton. I am sure he would do something for you.”
“Of course he'd do something!” Her husband groaned. “I should get a censorship in Ireland, or a post as instructor at Portsmouth.”
“Wouldn't you rather take either of those than nothing?” she asked, “than go on living the life you are living now?”
“To be perfectly frank with you, Philippa, I wouldn't,” he declared bluntly. “What on earth use should I be in a land appointment? Why, no one could read my writing, and my nautical science is entirely out of date. Why a cadet at Osborne could floor me in no time.”
“You refuse to let me write, then?” she persisted.
“Absolutely.”
“You intend to go on that fishing expedition with Jimmy Dumble to-morrow?”
“Wouldn't miss it for anything,” he confessed.
Philippa was suddenly white with anger.
“Henry, I've finished,” she declared, holding out her hand to keep him away from her. “I've finished with you entirely. I would rather be married to an enemy who was fighting honourably for his country than to you. What I have said, I mean. Don't come near me. Don't try to touch me.”
She swept past him on her way to the door.
“Not even a good-night kiss?” he asked, stooping down.
She looked him in the eyes.
“I am not a child,” she said scornfully.
He closed the door after her. For a moment he remained as though undecided whether to follow or not. His face had softened with her absence. Finally, however, he turned away with a little shrug of the shoulders, threw himself into his easy-chair and began to smoke furiously.
The telephone bell disturbed his reflection. He rose at once and took up the receiver.
“Yes, this is 19, Dreymarsh. Trunk call? All right, I am here.”
He waited until another voice came to him faintly.
“Cranston?”
“Speaking.”
“That's right. The message is Odino Berry, you understand? O-d-i-n-o b-e-r-r-y.”
“I've got it,” Sir Henry replied. “Good night!” He hung up the receiver, crossed the room to his desk, unlocked one of the drawers, and produced a black memorandum book, secured with a brass lock. He drew a key from his watch chain, opened the book, and ran his fingers down the O's.
“Odino,” he muttered to himself. “Here it is: 'We have trustworthy information from Berlin.' Now Berry.” He turned back. “'You are being watched by an enemy secret service agent.'”
He relocked the cipher book and replaced it in the desk. Then he strolled over to his easy-chair and helped himself to a whisky and soda from the tray which Mills had just arranged upon the sideboard.
“We have trustworthy information from Berlin,” he repeated to himself, “that you are being watched by an enemy secret service agent.”
“Tell me, Mr. Lessingham,” Philippa insisted, “exactly what are you thinking of? You looked so dark and mysterious from the ridge below that I've climbed up on purpose to ask you.”
Lessingham held out his hand to steady her. They were standing on a sharp spur of the cliffs, the north wind blowing in their faces, thrashing into little flecks of white foam the sea below, on which the twilight was already resting. For a moment or two neither of them could speak.
“I was thinking of my country,” he confessed. “I was looking through the shadows there, right across the North Sea.”
“To Germany?”
He shook his head.
“Further away—to Sweden.”
“I forgot,” she murmured. “You looked as though you were posing for a statue of some one in exile,” she observed. “Come, let us go a little lower down—unless you want to stay here and be blown to pieces.”
“I was on my way back to the hotel,” he answered quickly, as he followed her lead, “but to tell you the truth I was feeling a little lonely.”
“That,” she declared, “is your own fault. I asked you to come to Mainsail Haul whenever you felt inclined.”
“As I have felt inclined ever since the evening I arrived,” he remarked with a smile, “you might, perhaps, by this time have had a little too much of me.”
“On the contrary,” she told him, “I quite expected you yesterday afternoon, to tell me how you like the place and what you have been doing. So you were thinking about—over there?” she added, moving her head seawards.
“Over there absorbs a great deal of one's thoughts,” he confessed, “and the rest of them have been playing me queer tricks.”
“Well, I should like to hear about the first half,” she insisted.
“Do you know,” he replied, “there are times when even now this war seems to me like an unreal thing, like something I have been reading about, some wild imagining of Shelley or one of the unrestrainable poets. I can't believe that millions of the flower of Germany's manhood and yours have perished helplessly, hopelessly, cruelly. And France—poor decimated France!”
“Well, Germany started the war, you know,” she reminded him.
“Did she?” he answered. “I sometimes wonder. Even now I fancy, if the official papers of every one of the nations lay side by side, with their own case stated from their own point of view, even you might feel a little confused about that. Still, I am going to be very honest with you. I think myself that Germany wanted war.”
“There you are, then,” she declared triumphantly. “The whole thing is her responsibility.”
“I do not quite go so far as that,” he protested. “You see, the world is governed by great natural laws. As a snowball grows larger with rolling, so it takes up more room. As a child grows out of its infant clothes, it needs the vestments of a youth and then a man. And so with Germany. She grew and grew until the country could not hold her children, until her banks could not contain her money, until she stretched her arms out on every side and felt herself stifled. Germany came late into the world and found it parcelled out, but had she not a right to her place? She made herself great. She needed space.”
“Well,” Philippa observed, “you couldn't suppose that other nations were going to give up what they had, just because she wanted their possessions, could you?”
“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “And yet, you see, the immutable law comes in here. The stronger must possess—not only the stronger by arms, mind, but by intellect, by learning, by proficiency in science, by utilitarianism. The really cruel part, the part I was thinking of then, as I looked out across the sea, is that this crude and miserable resort to arms should be necessary.”
“If only Germans themselves were as broad-minded and reasonable as you,” Philippa sighed, “one feels that there might be some hope for the future!”
“I am not alone,” he assured her, “but, you see, all over Germany there is spread like a spider's web the lay religion of the citizen—devotion to the Government, blind obedience to the Kaiser. Independent thought has made Germany great in science, in political economy, in economics. But independent thought is never turned towards her political destinies. Those are shaped for her. For good or for evil her children have learnt obedience.”
They were descending the hillside now. At their feet lay the little town, black and silent.
“You have helped me to understand a little,” Philippa said. “You put things so gently and yet so clearly. Now tell me, will you not, how it is that you, who are a Swede by birth, are bearing arms for Germany?”
“That is very simple,” he confessed. “My mother was a German, and when she died she bequeathed to me large estates in Bavaria, and a very considerable fortune. These I could never have inherited unless I had chosen to do my military service in Germany. My family is an impoverished one, and I have brothers and sisters dependent upon me. Under the circumstances, hesitation on my part was impossible.”
“But when the war came?” she queried.
He looked at her in surprise.
“What was there left for me then?” he demanded. “Naturally I heard nothing but the voice of those whom I had sworn to obey. I was in that mad rush through Belgium. I was wounded at Maubeuge, or else I should have followed hard on the heels of that wonderful retreat of yours. As it was, I lay for many months in hospital. I joined again—shall I confess it?—almost unwillingly. The bloodthirstiness of it all sickened me. I fought at Ypres, but I think that it was something of the courage of despair, of black misery. I was wounded again and decorated. I suppose I shall never be fit for the front again. I tried to turn to account some of my knowledge of England and English life. Then they sent me here.”
“Here, of all places in the world!” Philippa repeated wonderingly. “Just look at us! We have a single line of railway, a perfectly straightforward system of roads, the ordinary number of soldiers being trained, no mysteries, no industries—nothing. What terrible scheme are you at work upon, Mr. Lessingham?”
He smiled.
“Between you and me,” he confided, “I am not at all sure that I am not here on a fool's errand—at least I thought so when I arrived.”
She glanced up at him.
“And why not now?”
He made no answer, but their eyes met and Philippa looked hurriedly away. There was a moment's queer, strained silence. Before them loomed up the outline of Mainsail Haul.
“You will come in and have some tea, won't you?” she invited.
“If I may. Believe me,” he added, “it has only been a certain diffidence that has kept me away so long.”
She made no reply, and they entered the house together. They found Helen and Nora, with three or four young men from the Depot, having tea in the drawing-room. Lessingham slipped very easily into the pleasant little circle. If a trifle subdued, his quiet manners, and a sense of humour which every now and then displayed itself, were most attractive.
“Wish you'd come and dine with us and meet our colonel, sir,” Harrison asked him. “He was at Magdalen a few years after Major Felstead, and I am sure you'd find plenty to talk about.”
“I am quite sure that we should,” Lessingham replied. “May I come, perhaps, towards the end of next week? I am making most strenuous efforts to lead an absolutely quiet life here.”
“Whenever you like, sir. We sha'n't be able to show you anything very wild in the way of dissipation. Vintage port and a decent cigar are the only changes we can make for guests.”
Philippa drew her visitor on one side presently, and made him sit with her in a distant corner of the room.
“I knew there was something I wanted to say to you,” she began, “but somehow or other I forgot when I met you. My husband was very much struck with Helen's improved spirits. Don't you think that we had better tell him, when he returns, that we had heard from Major Felstead?”
Lessingham agreed.
“Just let him think that your letters came by post in the ordinary way,” he advised. “I shouldn't imagine, from what I have seen of your husband, that he is a suspicious person, but it is just possible that he might have associated them with me if you had mentioned them the other night. When is he coming back?”
“I never know,” Philippa answered with a sigh. “Perhaps to-night, perhaps in a week. It depends upon what sport he is having. You are not smoking.”
Lessingham lit a cigarette.
“I find your husband,” he said quietly, “rather an interesting type. We have no one like that in Germany. He almost puzzles me.”
Philippa glanced up to find her companion's dark eyes fixed upon her.
“There is very little about Henry that need puzzle any one,” she complained bitterly. “He is just an overgrown, spoilt child, devoted to amusements, and following his fancy wherever it leads him. Why do you look at me, Mr. Lessingham, as though you thought I was keeping something back? I am not, I can assure you.”
“Perhaps I was wondering,” he confessed, “how you really felt towards a husband whose outlook was so unnatural.”
She looked down at her intertwined fingers.
“Do you know,” she said softly, “I feel, somehow or other, although we have known one another such a short time, as though we were friends, and yet that is a question which I could not answer. A woman must always have some secrets, you know.”
“A man may try sometimes to preserve his,” he sighed, “but a woman is clever enough, as a rule, to dig them out.”
A faint tinge of colour stole into her cheeks. She welcomed Helen's approach almost eagerly.
“A woman must first feel the will,” she murmured, without glancing at him. “Helen, do you think we dare ask Mr. Lessingham to come and dine?”
“Please do not discourage such a delightful suggestion,” Lessingham begged eagerly.
“I haven't the least idea of doing so,” Helen laughed, “so long as I may have—say just ten minutes to talk about Dick.”
“It is a bargain,” he promised.
“We shall be quite alone,” Philippa warned him, “unless Henry arrives.”
“It is the great attraction of your invitation,” he confessed.
“At eight o'clock, then.”
“Captain Griffiths to see your ladyship.”
Philippa's fingers rested for a moment upon the keyboard of the piano before which she was seated, awaiting Lessingham's arrival. Then she glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to eight.
“You can show him in, Mills, if he wishes to see me.”
Captain Griffiths was ushered into the room—awkward, unwieldly, nervous as usual. He entered as though in a hurry, and there was nothing in his manner to denote that he had spent the last few hours making up his mind to this visit.
“I must apologise for this most untimely call, Lady Cranston,” he said, watching the closing of the door. “I will not take up more than five minutes of your time.”
“We are very pleased to see you at any time, Captain Griffiths,” Philippa said hospitably. “Do sit down, please.”
Captain Griffiths bowed but remained standing.
“It is very near your dinner-time, I know, Lady Cranston,” he continued apologetically. “The fact of it is, however, that as Commandant here it is my duty to examine the bona fides of any strangers in the place. There is a gentleman named Lessingham staying at the hotel, who I understand gave your name as reference.”
Philippa's eyes looked larger than ever, and her face more innocent, as she gazed up at her visitor.
“Why, of course, Captain Griffiths,” she said. “Mr. Lessingham was at college with my brother, and one of his best friends. He has shot down at my father's place in Cheshire.”
“You are speaking of your brother, Major Felstead?”
“My only brother.”
“I am very much obliged to you, Lady Cranston,” Captain Griffiths declared. “I can see that we need not worry any more about Mr. Lessingham.”
Philippa laughed.
“It seems rather old-fashioned to think of you having to worry about any one down here,” she observed. “It really is a very harmless neighbourhood, isn't it?”
“There isn't much going on, certainly,” the Commandant admitted. “Very dull the place seems at times.”
“Now be perfectly frank,” Philippa begged him. “Is there a single fact of importance which could be learnt in this place, worth communicating to the enemy? Is the danger of espionage here worth a moment's consideration?”
“That,” Captain Griffiths replied in somewhat stilted fashion, “is not a question which I should be prepared to answer off-hand.”
Philippa shrugged her shoulders and appealed almost feverishly to Helen, who had just entered the room.
“Helen, do come and listen to Captain Griffiths! He is making me feel quite creepy. There are secrets about, it seems, and he wants to know all about Mr. Lessingham.”
Helen smiled with complete self-possession.
“Well, we can set his mind at rest about Mr. Lessingham, can't we?” she observed, as she shook hands.
“We can do more,” Philippa declared. “We can help him to judge for himself. We are expecting Mr. Lessingham for dinner, Captain Griffiths. Do stay.”
“I couldn't think of taking you by storm like this,” Captain Griffiths replied, with a wistfulness which only made his voice sound hoarser and more unpleasant. “It is most kind of you, Lady Cranston. Perhaps you will give me another opportunity.”
“I sha'n't think of it,” Philippa insisted. “You must stay and dine to-night. We shall be a partie carríe, for Nora goes to bed directly after dinner. I am ringing the bell to tell Mills to set an extra place,” she added.
Captain Griffiths abandoned himself to fate with a little shiver of complacency. He welcomed Lessingham, who was presently announced, with very much less than his usual reserve, and the dinner was in every way a success. Towards its close, Philippa became a little thoughtful. She glanced more than once at Lessingham, who was sitting by her side, almost in admiration. His conversation, gay at times, always polished, was interlarded continually with those little social reminiscences inevitable amongst men moving in a certain circle of English society. Apparently Richard Felstead was not the only one of his college friends with whom he had kept in touch. The last remnants of Captain Griffiths' suspicions seemed to vanish with their second glass of port, although his manner became in no way more genial.
“Don't you think you are almost a little too daring?” Philippa asked her favoured guest as he helped her afterwards to set out a bridge table.
“One adapts one's methods to one's adversary,” he murmured, with a smile, “Your friend Captain Griffiths had only the very conventional suspicions. The mention of a few good English names, acquaintance with the ordinary English sports, is quite sufficient with a man like that.”
Helen and Griffiths were talking at the other end of the room. Philippa raised her eyes to her companion's.
“You become more of a mystery than ever,” she declared. “You are making me even curious. Tell me really why you have paid us this visit from the clouds?”
She was sorry almost as soon as she had asked the question. For a moment the calm insouciance of his manner seemed to have departed. His eyes glowed.
“In search of new things,” he answered.
“Guns? Fortifications?”
“Neither.”
A spirit of mischief possessed her. Lessingham's manner was baffling and yet provocative. For a moment the political possibilities of his presence faded away from her mind. She had an intense desire to break through his reserve.
“Won't you tell me—why you came?”
“I could tell you more easily,” he answered in a low tone, “why it will be the most miserable day of my life when I leave.”
She laughed at him with perfect heartiness.
“How delightful to be flirted with again!” she sighed. “And I thought all German men were so heavy, and paid elaborate, underdone compliments. Still, your secret, sir, please? That is what I want to know.”
“If you will have just a little patience!” he begged, leaning so close to her that their heads almost touched, “I promise that I will not leave this place before I tell it to you.”
Philippa's eyes for the first time dropped before his. She knew perfectly well what she ought to have done and she was singularly indisposed to do it. It was a most piquant adventure, after all, and it almost helped her to forget the trouble which had been sitting so heavily in her heart. Still avoiding his eyes, she called the others.
“We are quite ready for bridge,” she announced.
They played four or five rubbers. Lessingham was by far the most expert player, and he and Philippa in the end were the winners. The two men stood together for a moment or two at the sideboard, helping themselves to whisky and soda. Griffiths had become more taciturn than ever, and even Philippa was forced to admit that the latter part of the evening had scarcely been a success.
“Do you play club bridge in town, Mr. Lessingham?” Griffiths asked.
“Never,” was the calm reply.
“You are head and shoulders above our class down here.”
“Very good of you to say so,” Lessingham replied courteously. “I held good cards to-night.”
“I wonder,” Griffiths went on, dropping his voice a little and keeping his eyes fixed upon his companion, “what the German substitute for bridge is.”
“I wonder,” Lessingham echoed.
“As a nation,” his questioner proceeded, “they probably don't waste as much time on cards as we do.”
Lessingham's interest in the subject appeared to be non-existent. He strolled away from the sideboard towards Philippa. She, for her part, was watching Captain Griffiths.
“So many thanks, Lady Cranston,” Lessingham murmured, “for your hospitality.”
“And what about that secret?” she asked.
“You see, there are two,” he answered, looking down at her. “One I shall most surely tell you before I leave here, because it is the one secret which no man has ever succeeded in keeping to himself. As for the other—”
He hesitated. There was something almost like pain in his face. She broke in hastily.
“I did not call you away to ask about either. I happened to notice Captain Griffiths just now. Do you know that he is watching you very closely?”
“I had an idea of it,” Lessingham admitted indifferently. “He is rather a clumsy person, is he not?”
“You will be careful?” she begged earnestly. “Remember, won't you, that Helen and I are really in a most disgraceful position if anything should come out.”
“Nothing shall,” he promised her. “I think you know, do you not, that, whatever might happen to me, I should find some means to protect you.”
For the second time she felt a curious lack of will to fittingly reprove his boldness. She had even to struggle to keep her tone as careless as her words.
“You really are a delightful person!” she exclaimed. “How long is it since you descended from the clouds?”
“Sometimes I think that I am there still,” he answered, “but I have known you about seventy-six hours.”
“What precision?” she laughed. “It's a national characteristic, isn't it? Captain Griffiths,” she continued, as she observed his approach, “if you really must go, please take Mr. Lessingham with you. He is making fun of me. I don't allow even Dick's friends to do that.”
Lessingham's disclaimer was in quite the correct vein.
“You must both come again very soon,” their hostess concluded, as she shook hands. “I enjoyed our bridge immensely.”
The two men were already on their way to the door when a sudden idea seemed to occur to Captain Griffiths. He turned back.
“By-the-by, Lady Cranston,” he asked, “have you heard anything from your brother?”
Philippa shook her head sadly. Helen, who, unlike her friend, had not had the advantage of a distinguished career upon the amateur dramatic stage, turned away and held a handkerchief to her eyes.
“Not a word,” was Philippa's sorrowful reply.
Captain Griffiths offered a clumsy expression of his sympathy.
“Bad luck!” he said. “I'm so sorry, Lady Cranston. Good night once more.”
This time their departure was uninterrupted. Helen removed her handkerchief from her eyes, and Philippa made a little grimace at the closed door.
“Do you believe,” Helen asked seriously, “that Captain Griffiths has any suspicions?”
Philippa shrugged her shoulders.
“If he has, who cares?” she replied, a little defiantly. “The very idea of a duel of wits between those two men is laughable.”
“Perhaps so,” Helen agreed, with a shade of doubt in her tone.
Philippa and Helen started, a few mornings later, for one of their customary walks. The crystalline October sunshine, in which every distant tree and, seaward, each slowly travelling steamer, seemed to gain a new clearness of outline, lay upon the deep-ploughed fields, the yellowing bracken, and the red-gold of the bending trees, while the west wind, which had strewn the sea with white-flecked waves, brought down the leaves to form a carpet for their feet, and played strange music along the wood-crested slope. In the broken land through which they made their way, a land of trees and moorland, with here and there a cultivated patch, the yellow gorse still glowed in unexpected corners; queer, scentless flowers made splashes of colour in the hedgerows; a rabbit scurried sometimes across their path; a cock pheasant, after a moment's amazed stare, lowered his head and rushed for unnecessary shelter. The longer they looked upwards, the bluer seemed the sky. The grass beneath their feet was as green and soft as in springtime. Driven by the wind, here and there a white-winged gull sailed over their heads,—a cloud of them rested upon a freshly turned little square of ploughed land between two woods. A flight of pigeons, like torn leaves tossed about by the wind, circled and drifted above them. Philippa seated herself upon the trunk of a fallen tree and gazed contentedly about her.
“If I had a looking-glass and a few more hairpins, I should be perfectly happy,” she sighed. “I am sure my hair must look awful.”
Helen glanced at it admiringly.
“I decline to say the correct thing,” she declared. “I will only remind you that there will be no one here to look at it.”
“I am not so sure,” Philippa replied. “These are the woods which the special constables haunt by day and by night. They gaze up every tree trunk for a wireless installation, and they lie behind hedges and watch for mysterious flashes.”
“Are you suggesting that we may meet Mr. Lessingham?” Helen enquired, lazily. “I am perfectly certain that he knows nothing of the equipment of the melodramatic spy. As to Zeppelins, don't you remember he told us that he hated them and was terrified of bombs.”
“My dear,” Philippa remonstrated, “Mr. Lessingham does nothing crude.”
“And yet,—” Helen began.
“Yet I suppose the man has something at the back of his head,” Philippa interrupted. “Sometimes I think that he has, sometimes I believe that Richard must have shown him my picture, and he has come over here to see if I am really like it.”
“He does behave rather like that,” her companion admitted drily.
Phillipa turned and looked at her.
“Helen,” she said severely, “don't be a cat.”
“If I were to express my opinion of your behaviour,” Helen went on, picking up a pine cone and examining it, “I might astonish you.”
“You have an evil mind,” Philippa yawned, producing her cigarette case. “What you really resent is that Mr. Lessingham sometimes forgets to talk about Dick.”
“The poor man doesn't get much chance,” Helen retorted, watching the blue smoke from her cigarette and leaning back with an air of content. “Whatever do you and he find to talk about, Philippa?”
“Literature—English and German,” Philippa murmured demurely. “Mr. Lessingham is remarkably well read, and he knows more about our English poets than any man I have met for years.”
“I forgot that you enjoyed that sort of thing.”
“Once more, don't be a cat,” Philippa enjoined. “If you want me to confess it, I will own up at once. You know what a simple little thing I am. I admire Mr. Lessingham exceedingly, and I find him a most interesting companion.”
“You mean,” her friend observed drily “the Baron Maderstrom.” Philippa looked around and frowned.
“You are most indiscreet, Helen,” she declared. “I have learnt something of the science of espionage lately, and I can assure you that all spoken or written words are dangerous. There is a thoroughly British squirrel in that tree overhead, and I am sure he heard.”
“I suppose the sunshine has got into your head,” Helen groaned.
“If you mean that I am finding it a relief to talk nonsense, you are right,” Philippa assented. “As a matter of fact, I am feeling most depressed. Henry telephoned from somewhere or other before breakfast this morning, to say that he should probably be home to-night or to-morrow. They must have landed somewhere down the coast.”
“You are a most undutiful wife,” Helen pronounced severely. “I am sure Henry is a delightful person, even if he is a little irresponsible, and it is almost pathetic to remember how much you were in love with him, a year or two ago.”
Some of the lightness vanished from Philippa's face.
“That was before the war,” she sighed.
“I still think Henry is a dear, though I don't altogether understand him,” Helen said thoughtfully.
“No doubt,” Philippa assented, “but you'd find the not understanding him a little more galling, if you were his wife. You see, I didn't know that I was marrying a sort of sporting Mr. Skimpole.”
“I wonder,” Helen reflected, “how Henry and Mr. Lessingham will get on when they see more of one another.”
“I really don't care,” Philippa observed indifferently.
“I used to notice sometimes—that was soon after you were married,” Helen continued, “that Henry was just a little inclined to be jealous.”
Philippa withdrew her eyes from the sea. There was a queer little smile upon her lips.
“Well, if he still is,” she said, “I'll give him something to be jealous about.”
“Poor Mr. Lessingham!” Helen murmured.
Philippa's eyebrows were raised.
“Poor Mr. Lessingham?” she repeated. “I don't think you'll find that he'll be in the least sorry for himself.”
“He may be in earnest,” Helen reminded her friend. “You can be horribly attractive when you like, you know, Philippa.”
Philippa smiled sweetly.
“It is just possible,” she said, “that I may be in earnest myself. I've quarrelled pretty desperately with Henry, you know, and I'm a helpless creature without a little admiration.”
Helen rose suddenly to her feet. Her eyes were fixed upon a figure approaching through the wood.
“You really aren't respectable, Philippa,” she declared. “Throw away your cigarette, for heaven's sake, and sit up. Some one is coming.”
Philippa only moved her head lazily. The sunlight, which came down in a thousand little zigzags through the wind-tossed trees, fell straight upon her rather pale, defiant little face, with its unexpressed evasive charm, and seemed to find a new depth of colour in the red-gold of her disordered hair. Her slim, perfect body was stretched almost at full length, one leg drawn a little up, her hands carelessly drooping towards the grass. The cigarette was still burning in the corner of her lips.
“I decline,” she said, “to throw away my cigarette for any one.”
“Least of all, I trust,” a familiar voice interposed, “for me.”
Philippa sat upright at once, smoothed her hair and looked a little resentfully at Lessingham. He was wearing a brown tweed knickerbocker suit, and he carried a gun under his arm.
“Whatever are you doing up here,” she demanded, “and do you know anything about our game laws? You can't come out into the woods here and shoot things just because you feel like it.”
He disposed of his gun and seated himself between them.
“That is quite all right,” he assured her. “Your neighbour, Mr. Windover, to whom these woods apparently belong, asked me to bring my gun out this morning and try and get a woodcock.”
“Gracious! You don't mean that Mr. Windover is here, too?” Philippa demanded, looking around. Lessingham shook his head.
“His car came for him at the other side of the wood,” he explained. “He was wanted to go on the Bench. I elected to walk home.”
“And the woodcock?” she asked. “I adore woodcock.”
He produced one from his pocket, took up her felt hat, which was lying amongst the bracken, and busied himself insinuating the pin feathers under the silk band.
“There,” he said, handing it to her, “the first woodcock of the season. We got four, and I really only accepted one in the hope that you would like it. I shall leave it with the estimable Mills, on my return.”
“You must come and share it,” Philippa insisted. “Those boys of Nora's are coming in to dinner. Your gift shall be the piece de resistance.”
“Then may I dine another night?” he begged. “This place encourages in me the grossest of appetites.”
“Have no fear,” she replied. “You will never see that woodcock again. I shall have it for my luncheon to-morrow. I ordered dinner before I came out, and though it may be a simple feast, I promise that you shall not go away hungry.”
“Will you promise that you will never send me away hungry?” he asked, dropping his voice for a moment.
She turned and studied him. Helen, who had strolled a few yards away, was knee-deep in the golden brown bracken, picking some gorgeously coloured leaves from a solitary bramble bush. Lessingham had thrown his cap onto the ground, and his wind-tossed hair and the unusual colour in his cheeks were both, in their way, becoming. His loose but well-fitting country clothes, his tie and soft collar, were all well-chosen and suitable. She admired his high forehead and his firm, rather proud mouth. His eyes as well as his tone were full of seriousness.
“You know that you ought to be saying that to some Gretchen away across that terrible North Sea,” she laughed.
“There is no Gretchen who has ever made my heart shake as you do,” he whispered.
She picked up her hat and sighed.
“Really,” she said, “I think things are quite complicated enough as they are. I am in a flutter all day long, as it is, about your mission here and your real identity. I simply could not include a flirtation amongst my excitements.”
“I have never flirted,” he assured her gravely.
“Wise man,” she pronounced, rising to her feet. “Come, let us go and help Helen pick leaves. She is scratching her fingers terribly, and I'm sure you have a knife. A dear, economical creature, Helen,” she added, as they strolled along. “I am perfectly certain that those are destined to adorn my dining-table, and, with chrysanthemums at sixpence each, you can't imagine how welcome they are. Come, produce the knife, Mr. Lessingham.”
The knife was forthcoming, and presently they all turned their faces homeward. Philippa arrested both her companions on the outskirts of the wood, and pointed to the red-tiled little town, to the sombre, storm-beaten grey church on the edge of the cliff, to the peaceful fields, the stretch of gorse-sprinkled common, and the rolling stretch of green turf on the crown of the cliffs. Beyond was the foam-flecked blue sea, dotted all over with cargo steamers.
“Would one believe,” she asked satirically, “that there should be scope here in this forgotten little spot for the brains of a—Mr. Lessingham!”
“Remember that I was sent,” he protested. “The error, if error there be, is not mine.”
“And after all,” Helen reminded them both, “think how easily one may be misled by appearances. You couldn't imagine anything more honest than the faces of the villagers and the fishermen one sees about, yet do you know, Mr. Lessingham, that we were visited by burglars last night?”
“Seriously?” he asked.
“Without a doubt. Of course, Mainsail Haul is an invitation to thieves. They could get in anywhere. Last night they chose the French windows and seem to have made themselves at home in the library.”
“I trust,” Lessingham said, “that they did not take anything of value?”
“They took nothing at all,” Philippa sighed. “That is the humiliating part of it. They evidently didn't like our things.”
“How do you know that you had burglars, if they took nothing away?” Lessingham enquired.
“So practical!” Philippa murmured. “As a matter of fact, I heard some one moving about, and I rang the alarm bell. Mills was downstairs almost directly and we heard some one running down the drive. The French windows were open, a chair was overturned in the library, and a drawer in my husband's desk was wide open.”
“The proof,” Lessingham admitted, “is overwhelming. You were visited by a burglar. Does your husband keep anything of value in his desk?”
“Henry hasn't anything of value in the world,” Philippa replied drily, “except his securities, and they are at the bank.”
“Without going so far as to contradict you,” Lessingham observed, with a smile, “I still venture to disagree!”