Sir Henry stepped back from the scales and eyed the fish which they had been weighing, admiringly.
“You see that, Mills? You see that, Jimmy?” he pointed out. “Six and three-quarter pounds! I was right almost to an ounce. He's a fine fellow!”
“A very extraordinary fish, sir,” the butler observed. “Will you allow me to take your oilskins? Dinner was served nearly an hour ago.”
Sir Henry slipped off his dripping overalls and handed them over.
“That's all right,” he replied. “Listen. Don't say a word about my arrival to your mistress at present. I have some writing to do. Bring me a glass of sherry at once, or mix a cocktail if you can do so without being missed, and take Jimmy away and give him some whisky and soda.”
“But what about your own dinner, sir?”
“I'll have a tray in the gun room,” his master decided, “say in twenty minutes' time. And, Mills, who did you say were dining?”
“Two of the young officers from the Depot, sir—Mr. Harrison and Mr. Sinclair—and Mr. Hamar Lessingham.”
“Lessingham, eh?” Sir Henry repeated, as he seated himself before his writing-table. “Mills,” he added, in a confidential whisper, “what port did you serve?”
The butler's expression was one of conscious rectitude.
“Not the vintage, sir,” he announced with emphasis. “Some very excellent wood port, which we procured for shooting luncheons. The young gentlemen like it.”
“You're a jewel, Mills,” his master declared. “Now you understand—an aperitif for me now, some whisky for Jimmy in your room, and not a word about my being here. Good night, Jimmy. Sorry we were too late for the mackerel, but we had some grand sport, all the same. You'll have a day or two's rest ashore now.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Dumble replied. “We got in just in time. There's something more than a squall coming up nor'ards.”
Sir Henry listened for a moment. The French windows shook, the rain beat against the panes, and a dull booming of wind was clearly audible from outside.
“We timed that excellently,” he agreed. “Come up and have a chat to-morrow, Jimmy, if your wife will spare you.”
“I'll be round before eleven, sir,” the fisherman promised, with a grin.
Sir Henry waited for the closing of the door. Then he leaned forward for several moments. He had scarcely the appearance of a man returned from a week or two of open-air life and indulgence in the sport he loved best. The healthy tan of his complexion was lessened rather than increased. There were black lines under his eyes which seemed to speak of sleepless nights, and a beard of several days' growth was upon his chin. He drank the cocktail which Mills presently brought him, at a gulp, and watched with satisfaction while the mixer was vigorously shaken and a second one poured out.
“We've had a rough time, Mills,” he observed, as he set down the glass. “Until this morning it scarcely left off blowing.”
“I'm sorry to hear it, sir,” was the respectful reply. “If I may be allowed to say so, sir, you're looking tired.”
“I am tired,” Sir Henry admitted. “I think, if I tried, I could go to sleep now for twenty-four hours.”
“You will pardon my reminding you, so far as regards your letters, that there is no post out tonight, sir,” Mills proceeded. “I have prepared a warm bath and laid out your clothes for a change.”
“Capital!” Sir Henry exclaimed. “It isn't a letter that's bothering me, though, Mills. There are just a few geographical notes I want to make. You know, I'm trying to improve the fishermen's chart of the coast round here. That fellow Groocock—Jimmy Dumble's uncle—very nearly lost his motor boat last week through trusting to the old one.”
“Just so, sir,” Mills replied deferentially, placing the empty glass upon his tray. “If you'll excuse me, sir, I must get back to the dining room.”
“Quite right,” his master assented. “They won't be out just yet, will they?”
“Her ladyship will probably be rising in about ten minutes, sir—not before that.”
Sir Henry nodded a little impatiently. Directly the door was closed he rose to his feet, stood for a moment listening by the side of his fishing cabinet, then opened the glass front and touched the spring. With the aid of a little electric torch which he took from his pocket, he studied particularly a certain portion of the giant chart, made some measurements with a pencil, some notes in the margin, and closed it up again with an air of satisfaction. Then he resumed his seat, drew a folded slip of paper from his breast pocket, a chart from another, turned up the lamp and began to write. His face, as he stooped low, escaped the soft shade and was for a moment almost ghastly. Every now and then he turned and made some calculations on the blotting-paper by his side. At last he leaned back with a little sigh of relief. He had barely done so before the door behind him was opened.
“Are we going to stay in here, Mummy, or are we going into the drawing-room?” Nora asked.
“In here, I think,” he heard Philippa reply.
Then they both came in, followed by Helen. Nora was the first to see him and rushed forward with a little cry of surprise.
“Why, here's Dad!” she exclaimed, flinging her arms around his neck. “Daddy, how dare you be sitting here all by yourself whilst we are having dinner! When did you get back? What a fish!”
Sir Henry closed down his desk, embraced his daughter, and came forward to meet his wife.
“Fine fellow, isn't he, Nora!” he agreed. “Well, Philippa, how are you? Pleased to see me, I hope? Another new frock, I believe, and in war time!”
“Fancy your remembering that it was war time!” she answered, standing very still while he leaned over and kissed her.
“Nasty one for me,” Sir Henry observed good-humouredly. “How well you're looking, Helen! Any news of Dick yet?”
Helen attempted an expression of extreme gravity with more or less success.
“Nothing fresh,” she answered.
“Well, well, no news may be good news,” Sir Henry remarked consolingly. “Jove, it's good to feel a roof over one's head again! This morning has been the only patch of decent weather we've had.”
“This morning was lovely,” Helen assented. “Philippa and I went and sat up in the woods.”
Philippa, who was standing by the fire, turned and looked at her husband critically.
“We have some men dining,” she said. “They will be out in a few minutes. Don't you think you had better go and make yourself presentable? You smell of fish, and you look as though you hadn't shaved for a week.”
“Guilty, my dear,” Sir Henry admitted. “Mills is just getting me something to eat in the gun room, and then I am going to have a bath and change my clothes.”
“And shave, Dad,” Nora reminded him.
“And shave, you young pest,” her father agreed, patting her on the shoulder. “Run away and play billiards with Helen. I want to talk to your mother until my dinner's ready.”
Nora acquiesced promptly.
“Come along, Helen, I'll give you twenty-five up. Or perhaps you'd like to play shell out?” she proposed. “Arthur Sinclair says I have improved in my potting more than any one he ever knew.”
Sir Henry opened the door and closed it after them. Then he returned and seated himself on the lounge by Philippa's side. She glanced up at him as though in surprise, and, stretching out her hand towards her work-basket, took up some knitting.
“I really think I should change at once, if I were you,” she suggested.
“Presently. I had a sort of foolish idea that I'd like to have a word or two with you first. I've been away for nearly a fortnight, haven't I?”
“You have,” Philippa assented. “Perhaps that is the reason why I feel that I haven't very much to say to you.”
“That sounds just a trifle hard,” he said slowly.
“I am hard sometimes,” Philippa confessed. “You know that quite well. There are times when I just feel as though I had no heart at all, nor any sympathy; when every sensation I might have had seems shrivelled up inside me.”
“Is that how you are feeling at the present time towards me, Philippa?” he asked.
Her needles flashed through the wool for a moment in silence.
“You had every warning,” she told him. “I tried to make you understand exactly how your behaviour disgusted me before you went away.”
“Yes, I remember,” he admitted. “I'm afraid, dear, you think I am a worthless sort of a fellow.”
Philippa had apparently dropped a stitch. She bent lower still over her knitting. There was a distinct frown upon her forehead, her mouth was unrecognisable.
“Your friend Lessingham is here still, I understand?” her husband remarked presently.
“Yes,” Philippa assented, “he is dining to-night. You will probably see him in a few minutes.”
Sir Henry looked thoughtful, and studied for a moment the toe of a remarkably unprepossessing looking shoe.
“You're so keen about that sort of thing,” he said, “what about Lessingham? He is not soldiering or anything, is he?”
“I have no idea,” Philippa replied. “He walks with a slight limp and admits that he is here as a convalescent, but he hasn't told us very much about himself.”
“I wonder you haven't tackled him,” Sir Henry continued. “You're such an ardent recruiter, you ought to make sure that he is doing his bit of butchery.”
Philippa looked up at her husband for a moment and back at her work.
“Mr. Lessingham,” she said, “is a very delightful friend, whose stay here every one is enjoying very much, but he is a comparative stranger. I feel no responsibility as to his actions.”
“And you do as to mine?”
“Naturally.”
Sir Henry's head was resting on his hand, his elbow on the back of the lounge. He seemed to be listening to the voices in the dining room beyond.
“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.”
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.”
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.
“Are you in earnest?” she faltered.
“God knows I am!” he insisted.
“You—you care for me?”
“So much,” he answered passionately, “that for your sake I would sacrifice my honour, my country, my life.”
“But I've only known you for such a short time,” Philippa protested, “and you're an enemy.”
“I discard my birth. I renounce my adopted country,” he declared fiercely. “You have swept my life clear of every scrap of ambition and patriotism. You have filled it with one thing only—a great, consuming love.”
“Have you forgotten my husband?”
“Do you think that if he had been a different sort of man I should have dared to speak? Ask yourself how you can continue to live with him? You can call him which you will. Both are equally disgraceful. Your heart knows the truth. He is either a coward or a philanderer.”
Philippa's cheeks were suddenly white. Her eyes flashed. His words had stung her to the quick.
“A coward?” she repeated furiously. “You dare to call Henry that?”
Lessingham rose abruptly to his feet. He moved restlessly about the room. His fists were clenched, his tone thick with passion.
“I do!” he pronounced. “Philippa, look at this matter without prejudice. Do you believe that there is a single man of any country, of your husband's age and rank, who would be content to trawl the seas for fish whilst his country's blood is being drained dry? Who would weigh a codling,” he added, pointing scornfully to the scales, “whilst the funeral march of heroes is beating throughout the world? The thing is insensate, impossible!”
Philippa's head drooped. Her hands were nervously intertwined.
“Don't!” she pleaded, “I have suffered so much.”
“Forgive me,” he begged, with a sudden change of voice. “If I am mistaken in your husband—and there is always the chance—I am sorry. I will confess that I myself had a different opinion of him, but I can only judge from what I have seen and from that there is no one in the world who would not agree with me that your husband is unworthy of you.”
“Oh, please stop!” Philippa cried. “Stop at once!”
Lessingham came back to his place by her side. His voice was still shaking, but it had grown very soft.
“Philippa, forgive me,” he repeated. “If you only knew how it hurts to see you like this! Yet I must speak. There is just once in every man's lifetime when he must tell the truth. That time has come with me—I love you.”
“So does my husband,” she murmured.
“I will only remind you, then, that he shows it in strange fashion,” Lessingham continued. “He sets your wishes at defiance. He who should be an example in a small place like this, is only an object of contempt in the neighbourhood. Even I, who have only lived here for so short a time, have caught the burden of what people say.”
Philippa wiped her eyes.
“Please, do you mind,” she begged, “not saying anything more about Henry. You are only reminding me of things which I try all the time to forget.”
“Believe me,” Lessingham answered wistfully, “I am only too content to ignore him, to forget that he exists, to remember only that you are the woman who has changed my life.”
Philippa looked at him in something like dismay, rather like a child who has started an engine which she has no idea how to stop.
“But you must not—you must not talk to me like this!”
His hand closed upon hers. It lay in his grasp, unyielding, cold, yet passive.
“Why not?” he whispered. “I have the one unalterable right, and I am willing to pay the great price.”
“Right?” she faltered.
“The right of loving you—the right of loving you better than any woman in the world.”
There was a queer silence, only partly due, as she was instantly aware, to the emotion of the moment. A door behind them had opened. Philippa's quicker senses had recognised her husband's footsteps. Lessingham rose deliberately to his feet. In his heart he welcomed the interruption. This might, perhaps, be the decisive moment. Sir Henry was strolling towards them. His manner and his tone, however, were alike good-natured.
“I was to order you into the billiard room, Mr. Lessingham,” he announced. “Sinclair has been sent for—a night route march, or some such horror—and they want you to make a four.”
Lessingham hesitated. He had a passionate inclination to face the situation, to tell this man the truth. Sir Henry's courteous indifference, however, was like a harrier. He recognised the inevitable.
“I am afraid I am rather out of practice,” he said, “but I shall be delighted to do my best.”
Sir Henry was obviously not in the best of tempers. For a mild-mannered and easy-going man, his expression was scarcely normal.
“That fellow was making love to you,” he said bluntly, as soon as the door was closed behind Lessingham.
Philippa looked up at her husband with an air of pleasant candour.
“He was doing it very nicely, too,” she admitted.
“You mean to say that you let him?”
“I listened to what he had to say,” she confessed. “It didn't occur to you, I suppose,” her husband remarked, with somewhat strained sarcasm, “that you were another man's wife?”
“I am doing my best to forget that fact,” Philippa reminded him.
“I see! And he is to help you?”
“Possibly.”
Sir Henry's irritation was fast merging into anger.
“I shall turn the fellow out of the house,” he declared.
Philippa shrugged her shoulders.
“Why don't you?”
He seated himself on the couch by his wife's side. “Look here, Philippa, don't let's wrangle,” he begged. “I'm afraid you'll have to make up your mind to see a good deal less of your friend Lessingham, anyway.”
Philippa's brows were knitted. She was conscious of a vague uneasiness.
“Really? And why?”
“For one thing,” her husband explained, “because I don't intend to have him hanging about my house during my absence.”
“The best way to prevent that would be not to go away,” Philippa suggested.
“Well, in all probability,” he announced guardedly, “I am not going away again—at least not just yet.”
Philippa's manner suddenly changed. She laid down her work. Her hand rested lightly upon her husband's shoulder.
“You mean that you are going to give up those horrible fishing excursions of yours?”
“For the present I am,” he assured her.
“And are you going to do something—some work, I mean?” she asked breathlessly.
“For the immediate present I am going to stay at home and look after you,” he replied.
Philippa's face fell. Her manner became notably colder.
“You are very wise,” she declared. “Mr. Lessingham is a most fascinating person. We are all half in love with him—even Helen.”
“The fellow must have a way with him,” Sir Henry conceded grudgingly. “As a rule the people here are not over-keen on strangers, unless they have immediate connections in the neighbourhood. Even Griffiths, who since they made him Commandant, is a man of many suspicions, seems inclined to accept him.”
“Captain Griffiths dined here the other night,” Philippa remarked, “and I noticed that he and Mr. Lessingham seemed to get on very well.”
“The fellow's all right in his way, no doubt,” Sir Henry began.
“Of course he is,” Philippa interrupted. “Helen likes him quite as much as I do.”
“Does he make love to Helen, too?” Sir Henry ventured.
“Don't talk nonsense!” Philippa retorted. “He isn't that sort of a man at all. If he has made love to me, he has done so because I have encouraged him, and if I have encouraged him, it is your fault.”
Sir Henry, with an impatient exclamation, rose from his place and took a cigarette from an open box.
“Quite time I stayed at home, I can see. All the same, the fellow's rather a puzzle. I can't help wondering how he succeeded in making such an easy conquest of a lady who has scarcely been notorious for her flirtations, and a young woman who is madly in love with another man. He hasn't—”
“Hasn't what?”
“He hasn't,” Sir Henry continued, blowing out the match which he had been holding to his cigarette and throwing it away, “been in the position of being able to render you or Helen any service, has he?”
“I don't understand you,” Philippa replied, a little uneasily.
“There's nothing to understand,” Sir Henry went on. “I was simply trying to find some explanation for his veni, vidi, vici.”
“I don't think you need go any further than the fact,” Philippa observed, “that he is well-bred, charming and companionable.”
“Incidentally,” Sir Henry queried, “do you happen to have come across any one here who ever heard of him before?”
“I don't remember any one,” Philippa replied. “He was at college with Richard, you know.”
Sir Henry nodded.
“Of course, that's a wonderful introduction to you and Helen,” he admitted. “And by-the-by, that reminds me,” he went on, “I never saw such a change in two women in my life, as in you and Helen. A few weeks ago you were fretting yourselves to death about Dick. Now you don't seem to mention him, you both of you look as though you hadn't a care in the world, and yet you say you haven't heard from him. Upon my word, this is getting to be a house of mysteries!”
“The only mystery in it that I can see, is you, Henry,” she declared.
“Me?” he protested. “I'm one of the simplest-minded fellows alive. What is there mysterious about me?”
“Your ignominious life,” was the cold reply.
“Jove, I got it that time!” he groaned,—“got it in the neck! But didn't I tell you just now that I was turning over a new leaf?”
“Then prove it,” Philippa pleaded. “Let me write to Rayton and beg him to use his influence to get you something to do. I am sure you would be happier, and I can't tell you what a difference it would make to me.”
“It's that indoor work I couldn't stick, old thing,” he confided. “You know, they're saying all the time it's a young man's war. They'd make me take some one's place at home behind a desk.”
“But even if they did,” she protested, “even if they put you in a coal cellar, wouldn't you be happier to feel that you were helping your country? Wouldn't you be glad to know that I was happier?”
Sir Henry made a wry face.
“It seems to me that your outlook is a trifle superficial, dear,” he grumbled. “However—now what the dickens is the matter?”
The door had been opened by Mills, with his usual smoothness, but Jimmy Dumble, out of breath and excited, pushed his way into the room.
“Hullo? What is it, Jimmy?” his patron demanded.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” was the almost incoherent reply. “I've run all the way up, and there's a rare wind blowing. There's one of our—our trawlers lying off the Point, and she's sent up three green and six yellow balls.”
“Whiting, by God!” Sir Henry exclaimed.
“Whiting!” Philippa repeated, in agonised disgust. “What does this mean, Henry?”
“It must be a shoal,” her husband explained. “It means that we've got to get amongst them quick. Is the Ida down on the beach, Jimmy?”
“She there all right, sir,” was the somewhat doubtful reply, “but us'll have a rare job to get away, sir. That there nor'easter is blowing great guns again and it's a cruel tide.”
“We've got to get out somehow,” Sir Henry declared. “Mills, my oilskins and flask at once. I sha'n't change a thing, but you might bring a cardigan jacket and the whisky and soda.”
Mills withdrew, a little dazed. Philippa, whose fingers were clenched together, found her tongue at last.
“Henry!” she exclaimed furiously.
“What is it, my dear?”
“Do you mean to tell me that after your promise,” she continued, “after what you have just said, you are starting out to-night for another fishing expedition?”
“Whiting, my dear,” Sir Henry explained. “One can't possibly miss whiting. Where the devil are my keys?—Here they are. Now then.”
He sat down before his desk, took some papers from the top drawer, rummaged about for a moment or two in another, and found what seemed to be a couple of charts in oilskin cases. All the time the wind was shaking the windows, and a storm of rain was beating against the panes.
“Help yourself to whisky and soda, Jimmy,” Sir Henry invited, as he buttoned up his coat. “You'll need it all presently.”
“I thank you kindly, sir,” Jimmy replied. “I am thinking that we'll both need a drink before we're through this night.”
He helped himself to a whisky and soda on the generous principle of half and half. Philippa, who was watching her husband's preparations indignantly, once more found words.
“Henry, you are incorrigible!” she exclaimed. “Listen to me if you please. I insist upon it.”
Sir Henry turned a little impatiently towards her. “Philippa, I really can't stop now,” he protested. “But you must! You shall!” she cried. “You shall hear this much from me, at any rate, before you go. What I said the other day I repeat a thousandfold now.”
Sir Henry glanced at Dumble and motioned his head towards the door. The fisherman made an awkward exit.
“A thousandfold,” Philippa repeated passionately. “You hear, Henry? I do not consider myself any more your wife. If I am here when you return, it will be simply because I find it convenient. Your conduct is disgraceful and unmanly.”
“My dear girl!” he remonstrated. “I may be back in twenty-four—possibly twelve hours.”
“It is a matter of indifference to me when you return,” was the curt reply. “I have finished.”
The door was thrown open.
“Your oilskins, sir, and flask,” Mills announced, hurrying in, a little breathless. “You'll forgive my mentioning it, sir, but it scarcely seems a fit night to leave home.”
“Got to be done this once, Mills,” his master replied, struggling into his coat.
The young people from the billiard room suddenly streamed in. Nora, who was still carrying her cue, gazed at her father in amazement.
“Why, where's Dad going?” she cried.
“It appears,” Philippa explained sarcastically, “that a shoal of whiting has arrived.”
“Very uncertain fish, whiting,” Sir Henry observed, “here to-day and gone to-morrow.”
“You won't find it too easy getting off to-night, sir,” Harrison remarked doubtfully.
“Jimmy will see to that,” was the confident reply. “I expect we shall be amongst them at daybreak. Good-by, everybody! Good-by, Philippa!”
His eyes sought his wife's in vain. She had turned towards Lessingham.
“You are not hurrying off, are you, Mr. Lessingham?” she asked. “I want you to show me that new Patience.”
“I shall be delighted.”
Sir Henry turned slowly away. For a moment his face darkened as his eyes met Lessingham's. He seemed about to speak but changed his mind.
“Well, good-by, every one,” he called out. “I shall be back before midnight if we don't get out.”
“And if you do?” Nora cried.
“If we do, Heaven help the whiting!”