Philippa, late that afternoon, found what she sought—solitude. She had walked along the sands until Dreymarsh lay out of sight on the other side of a spur of the cliffs. Before her stretched a long and level plain, a fringe of sand, and a belt of shingly beach. There was not a sign of any human being in sight, and of buildings only a quaint tower on the far horizon.
She found a dry place on the pebbles, removed her hat and sat down, her hands clasped around her knees, her eyes turned seaward. She had come out here to think, but it was odd how fugitive and transient her thoughts became. Her husband was always there in the background, but in those moments it was Lessingham who was the predominant figure. She remembered his earnestness, his tender solicitude for her, the courage which, when necessity demanded, had flamed up in him, a born and natural quality. She remembered the agony of those few minutes on the preceding day, when nothing but what still seemed a miracle had saved him. At one moment she felt herself inclined to pray that he might never come back. At another, her heart ached to see him once more. She knew so well that if he came it would be for her sake, that he would come to ask her finally the question with which she had fenced. She knew, too, that his coming would be the moment of her life. She was so much of a woman, and the passionate craving of her sex to give love for love was there in her heart, almost omnipotent. And in the background there was that bitter desire to bring suffering upon the man who had treated her like a child, who had placed her in a false position with all other women, who had dawdled and idled away his days, heedless of his duty, heedless of every serious obligation. When she tried to reason, her way seemed so clear, and yet, behind it all, there was that cold impulse of almost Victorian prudishness, the inheritance of a long line of virtuous women, a prudishness which she had once, when she had believed that it was part of her second nature, scoffed at as being the outcome of one of the finer forms of selfishness.
She told herself that she had come there to decide, and decision came no nearer to her. A late afternoon star shone weakly in the sky. A faint, vaporous mist obscured the horizon and floated in tangled wreaths upon the face of the sea. Only that line of sand seemed still clear-cut and distinct, and as she glanced along it her eyes were held by something approaching, something which seemed at first nothing but a black, moving speck, then gradually resolved itself into the semblance of a man on horseback, galloping furiously. She watched him as he drew nearer and nearer, the sand flying from his horse's hoofs, his figure motionless, his eyes apparently fixed upon some distant spot. It was not until he had come within fifty yards of her that she recognised him. His horse shied at the sight of her and was suddenly swung round with a powerful wrist. Little specks of sand, churned up in the momentary stampede of hoofs, fell upon her skirt. For the rest, she watched the struggle composedly, a struggle which was over almost as soon as it was begun. Captain Griffiths leaned down from his trembling but subdued horse.
“Lady Cranston!” he exclaimed in astonishment.
“That's me,” she replied, smiling up at him. “Have you been riding off your bad temper?”
He glanced down at his horse's quivering sides. Back as far as one could see there was that regular line of hoof marks.
“Am I bad-tempered?” he asked.
“Well,” she observed, “I don't know you well enough to answer that question. I was simply thinking of yesterday evening.”
He slipped from his horse and stood before her. His long, severe face had seldom seemed more malevolent.
“I had enough to make me bad-tempered,” he declared. “I had tracked down a German spy, step by step, until I had him there, waiting for arrest—expecting it, even—and then I got that wicked message.”
“What was that wicked message after all?” she enquired.
“That doesn't matter,” he answered. “It was from a quarter where they ought to know better, and it ordered me to make no arrest. I have sent to the War Office to-day a full report, and I am praying that they may change their minds.”
Philippa sighed.
“If you hadn't received that telegram last night,” she observed, “it seems to me that I should have been a widow to-day.”
He frowned, and struck his boot heavily with his riding whip.
“Yes, I heard of that,” he admitted. “I dare say if he hadn't gone, though, some one else would.”
“Would you have gone if you had been there?” she asked.
“If you had told me to,” he replied, looking at her steadfastly.
Philippa felt a little shiver. There was something ominous in the intensity of his gaze and the meaning which he had contrived to impart to his tone. She rose to her feet.
“Well,” she said, “don't let me keep you here. I am getting cold.”
He passed his arm through the bridle of his horse. “I will walk with you, if I may,” he proposed. She made no reply, and they set their faces homewards.
“I hear Lessingham has left the place,” he remarked, a little abruptly.
“Oh, I expect he'll come back,” Philippa replied.
“How long is it, Lady Cranston, since you took to consorting with German spies?” he asked.
“Don't be foolish—or impertinent,” she enjoined. “You are making a ridiculous mistake about Mr. Lessingham.”
He laughed unpleasantly.
“No need for us to fence,” he said. “You and I know who he is. What I do want to know, what I have been wondering all the way from the point there—four miles of hard galloping and one question—why are you his friend? What is he to you?”
“Really, Captain Griffiths,” she protested, looking up at him, “of what possible interest can that be to you?”
“Well, it is, anyhow,” he answered gruffly. “Anything that concerns you is of interest to me.”
Philippa realised at that moment, perhaps for the first time, what it all meant. She realised the significance of those apparently purposeless afternoon calls, when through sheer boredom she had had to send for Helen to help her out; the significance of those long silences, the melancholy eyes which seemed to follow her movements. She felt an unaccountable desire to laugh, and then, at the first twitchings of her lips, she restrained herself. She knew that tragedy was stalking by her side.
“I think, Captain Griffiths,” she said gravely, “that you are talking nonsense, and you are not a very good hand at it. Won't you please ride on?”
He made no movement to mount his horse. He plodded along the soft sand by her side—a queer, elongated figure, his gloomy eyes fixed upon the ground.
“Until this fellow Lessingham came you were never so hard,” he persisted.
She looked at him with genuine curiosity.
“I was never so hard?” she repeated. “Do you imagine that I have ever for a single moment considered my demeanour towards you—you of all persons in the world? I simply don't remember when you have been there and when you haven't. I don't remember the humours in which I have been when we have conversed. All that you have said seems to me to be the most arrant nonsense.”
He swung himself into the saddle and gathered up the reins.
“Thank you,” he said bitterly, “I understand. Only let me tell you this,” he went on, his whip poised in his hand. “You may have powerful friends who saved your—”
He hesitated so long that she glanced up at him and read all that he had wished to say in his face.
“My what?” she asked.
His courage failed him.
“Mr. Lessingham,” he proceeded, “from arrest. But if he shows his face here again in Dreymarsh, I sha'n't stop to arrest him. I shall shoot him on sight and chance the consequences.”
“They'll hang you!” she declared savagely.
He laughed at her.
“Hang me for shooting a man whom I can prove to be a German spy? They won't dare! They won't even dare to place me under arrest for an hour. Why, when the truth becomes known,” he went on, his voice gaining courage as the justice of his case impressed itself upon him, “what do you suppose is going to happen to two women who took this fellow in and befriended him, introduced him under a false name to their friends, gave him the run of their house—this man whom they knew all the time was a German? You, Lady Cranston, chafing and scolding your husband by night and by day because he isn't where you think he ought to be; you, so patriotic that you cannot bear the sight of him out of uniform; you—the hostess, the befriender, the God knows what of Bertram Maderstrom! It will be a pretty tale when it's all told!”
“I really think,” Philippa asserted calmly, “that you are the most utterly impossible and obnoxious creature I have ever met.”
His face was dangerous for a moment. They had not yet reached the promontory which sheltered them from Dreymarsh.
“Perhaps,” he muttered, leaning malignly towards her, “I could make myself even more obnoxious.”
“Quite possibly,” she replied, “only I want to tell you this. If you come a single inch nearer to me, one of them shall shoot you.”
“Your friend or your husband, eh?” he scoffed.
She waved him on.
“I think,” she told him, “that either of them would be quite capable of ridding the world of a coward like you.”
“A coward?” he repeated.
“Precisely! Isn't it a coward's part to terrorise a woman?”
“I don't want to terrorise you,” he said sulkily.
“Well, you must admit that you haven't shown any particular desire to make yourself agreeable,” she pointed out.
He turned suddenly upon her.
“I am a fool, I know,” he declared bitterly. “I'm an awkward, nervous, miserable fool, my own worst enemy as they say of me in the Mess, turning the people against me I want to have like me, stumbling into every blunder a fool can. I'm the sort of man women make sport of, and you've done it for them cruelly, perfectly.”
“Captain Griffiths!” she protested. “When have I ever been anything but kind and courteous to you?”
“It isn't your kindness I want, nor your courtesy! There's a curse upon my tongue,” he went on desperately. “I'm not like other men. I don't know how to say what I feel. I can't put it into words. Every one misunderstands me. You, too! Here I rode up to you this afternoon and my heart was beating for joy, and in five minutes I had made an enemy of you. Damn that fellow Lessingham! It is all his fault!”
Without the slightest warning he brought down his hunting crop upon his horse's flanks. The mare gave one great plunge, and he was off, riding at a furious gallop. Philippa watched him with immense relief. In the far distance she could see two little specks growing larger and larger. She hurried on towards them.
“Whatever did you do to Captain Griffiths, Mummy?” Nora demanded. “Why he passed us without looking down, galloping like a madman, and his face looked—well, what did it look like, Helen?”
Helen was gazing uneasily along the sands.
“Like a man riding for his enemy,” she declared.
Philippa and Helen looked at one another a little dolefully across the luncheon table.
“I suppose one misses the child,” Helen said.
“I feel too depressed for words,” Philippa admitted.
“A few days ago,” Helen reminded her companion, “we were getting all the excitement that was good for any one.”
“And a little more,” Philippa agreed. “I don't know why things seem so flat now. We really ought to be glad that nothing terrible has happened.”
“What with Henry and Mr. Lessingham both away,” Helen continued, “and Captain Griffiths not coming near the place, we really have reverted to the normal, haven't we? I wonder—if Mr. Lessingham has gone back.”
“I do not think so,” Philippa murmured.
Helen frowned slightly.
“Personally,” she said, with some emphasis, “I hope that he has.”
“If we are considering the personal point of view only,” Philippa retorted, “I hope that he has not.”
Helen looked her disapproval.
“I should have thought that you had had enough playing with fire,” she observed.
“One never has until one has burned one's fingers,” Philippa sighed. “I know perfectly well what is the matter with you,” she continued severely. “You are fretting because curried chicken is Dick's favourite dish.”
“I am not such a baby,” Helen protested. “All the same, it does make one think. I wonder—”
“I know exactly what you were going to say,” Philippa interrupted. “You were going to say that you wondered whether Mr. Lessingham would keep his promise.”
“Whether he would be able to,” Helen corrected. “It does seem so impossible, doesn't it?”
“So does Mr. Lessingham himself,” Philippa reminded her. “It isn't exactly a usual thing, is it, to have a perfectly charming and well-bred young man step out of a Zeppelin into your drawing-room.”
“You really believe, then,” Helen asked eagerly, “that he will be able to keep his promise?”
Philippa nodded confidently.
“Do you know,” she said, “I believe that Mr. Lessingham, by some means or another, would keep any promise he ever made. I am expecting to see Dick at any moment now, so you can get on with your lunch, dear, and not sit looking at the curry with tears in your eyes.”
“It isn't the curry so much as the chutney,” Helen protested faintly. “He never would touch any other sort.”
“Well, I shouldn't be surprised if he were here to finish the bottle,” Philippa declared. “I have a feeling this morning that something is going to happen.”
“How long has Nora gone away for?” Helen enquired, after a moment's pause.
“A fortnight or three weeks,” Philippa answered. “Her grandmother wired that she would be glad to have her until Christmas.”
“Just why,” Helen asked seriously, “have you sent her away?”
Philippa toyed with her curry, and glanced around as though she regretted Mills' absence from the room.
“I thought it best,” she said quietly. “You see, I am not quite sure what the immediate future of this menage is going to be.”
Helen leaned across the table and laid her hand upon her friend's.
“Dear,” she sighed, “it worries me so to hear you talk like that.”
“Why?”
“Because you know perfectly well, although you profess to ignore it, that at the bottom of your heart there is no one else but Henry. It isn't fair, you know.”
“To whom isn't it fair?” Philippa demanded.
“To Mr. Lessingham.”
Philippa was thoughtful for a few moments.
“Perhaps,” she admitted, “that is a point of view which I have not sufficiently considered.”
Helen pressed home her advantage.
“I don't think you realise, Philippa,” she said, “how madly in love with you the man is. In a perfectly ingenuous way, too. No one could help seeing it.”
“Then where does the unfairness come in?” Philippa asked. “It is within my power to give him all that he wants.”
“But you wouldn't do it, Philippa. You know that you wouldn't!” Helen objected. “You may play with the idea in your mind, but that's just as far as you'd ever get.”
Philippa looked her friend steadily in the face. “I disagree with you, Helen,” she said. Helen set down the glass which she had been in the act of raising to her lips. It was her first really serious intimation of the tragedy which hovered over her future sister-in-law's life. Somehow or other, Philippa had seemed, even to her, so far removed from that strenuous world of over-drugged, over-excited feminine decadence, to whom the changing of a husband or a lover is merely an incident in the day's excitements. Philippa, with her frail and almost flowerlike beauty, her love of the wholesome ways of life, and her strong affections, represented other things. Now, for the first time, Helen was really afraid, afraid for her friend.
“But you couldn't ever—you wouldn't leave Henry!”
Philippa seemed to find nothing monstrous in the idea.
“That is just what I am seriously thinking of doing,” she confided.
Helen affected to laugh, but her mirth was obviously forced. Their conversation ceased perforce with the return of Mills into the room.
Then the wonderful thing happened. The windows of the dining room faced the drive to the house and both women could clearly see a motor car turn in at the gate and stop at the front door. It was obviously a hired car, as the driver was not in livery, but the tall, mulled-up figure in unfamiliar clothes who occupied the front seat was for the moment a mystery to them. Only Helen seemed to have some wonderful premonition of the truth, a premonition which she was afraid to admit even to herself. Her hand began to shake. Philippa looked at her in amazement.
“You look as though you had seen a ghost, Helen!” she exclaimed. “Who on earth can it be, coming at this time of the day?”
Helen was speechless, and Philippa divined at once the cause of her agitation. She sprang to her feet.
“Helen, you don't imagine—” she gasped. “Listen!”
There was a voice in the hail—a familiar voice, though strained a little and hoarse; Mills' decorous greetings, agitated but fervent. And then—Major Richard Felstead!
“Dick!” Helen screamed, as she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Dick! Dick!”
It was an incoherent, breathless moment. Somehow or other, Philippa found herself sharing her brother's embrace. Then the fire of questions and answers was presently interrupted by Mills, triumphantly bearing in a fresh dish of curry.
“What will the Major take to drink, your ladyship?” he asked.
Felstead laughed a little chokingly.
“Upon my word, there's something wonderfully sound about Mills!” he said. “It's a ghoulish thing to ask for in the middle of the day, isn't it, Philippa, but can I have some champagne?”
“You can have the whole cellarful,” Philippa assured him joyously. “Be sure you bring the best, Mills.”
“The Perrier Jonet 1904, your ladyship,” was the murmured reply.
Mills' disappearance was very brief, and in a very few moments they found themselves seated once more at the table. They sat one on either side of him, watching his glass and his plate. By degrees their questions and his answers became more intelligible.
“When did you get here?” they wanted to know.
“I arrived in Harwich about daylight this morning,” he told them; “came across from Holland. I hired a car and drove straight here.”
“When did you know you were coming home?” Helen asked.
“Only two days ago,” he replied. “I never was so surprised in my life. Even now I can't realise my good luck. I can't see what I've done. The last two months, in fact, seem to me to have been a dream. Jove!” he went on, as he drank his wine, “I never thought I should be such a pig as to care so much for eating and drinking!”
“And think what weeks of it you have before you?” Helen explained, clapping her hands. “Philippa and I will have a new interest in life—to make you fat.”
He laughed.
“It won't be very difficult,” he promised them. “I had several months of semi-starvation before the miracle happened. It was all just the chance of having had a pal up at Magdalen who's been serving in the German Army—Bertram Maderstrom was his name. You remember him, Philippa? He was a Swede in those days.”
“What a dear he must have been to have remembered and to have been so faithful!” Philippa observed, looking away for a moment.
“He's a real good sort,” Felstead declared enthusiastically, “although Heaven knows why he's turned German! He worked like a slave for me. I dare say he didn't find it so difficult to get me better quarters and a servant, and decent food, but when they told me that I was free—well, it nearly knocked me silly.”
“The dear fellow!” Philippa murmured pensively.
“Do you remember him, either of you?” Felstead continued. “Rather good-looking he was, and a little shy, but quite a sportsman.”
“I—seem to remember,” Philippa admitted.
“The name sounds familiar,” Helen echoed. “Do have some more chutney, Dick.”
“Thanks! What a pig I am making of myself!” he observed cheerfully. “You girls will think I can't talk about any one but Maderstrom, but the whole business beats me so completely. Of course, we were great pals, in a way, but I never thought that I was the apple of his eye, or anything of that sort. How he got the influence, too, I can't imagine. And oh! I knew there was something else I was going to ask you girls,” Felstead went on. “Have you ever had a letter, or rather a letter each, uncensored? Just a line or two? I think I mentioned Maderstrom which I should not have been allowed to do in the ordinary prison letters.”
Felstead was helping himself to cheese, and he saw nothing of the quick glance which passed between the two women.
“Yes, we had them, Dick,” Philippa told him. “It was one afternoon—it doesn't seem so very long ago. And oh, how thankful we were!”
Felstead nodded.
“He got them across all right, then. Tell me, did they come through Holland? What was the postmark?”
“The postmark,” Philippa repeated, a little doubtfully. “You heard what Dick asked, Helen? The postmark?”
“I don't think there was one,” Helen replied, glancing anxiously at Philippa.
Felstead set down his glass.
“No postmark? You mean no foreign postmark, I suppose? They were posted in England, eh?”
Philippa shook her head.
“They came to us, Dick,” she said, “by hand.”
Felstead was, without a doubt, astonished. He turned round in his chair towards Philippa.
“By hand?” he repeated. “Do you mean to say that they were actually brought here by hand?”
Perhaps something in his manner warned them. Philippa laughed as she bent over his chair.
“We will tell you how they came, presently,” she declared, “but not until you have finished your lunch, drunk the last drop of that champagne, and had at least two glasses of the port that Mills has been decanting so carefully. After that we will see. Just now I have only one feeling, and I know that Helen has it, too. Nothing else matters except that we have you home again.”
Felstead patted his sister on the cheek, drew her face down to his and kissed her.
“It's so wonderful to be at home!” he exclaimed apologetically. “But I must warn you that I am the rabidest person alive. I went out to the war with a certain amount of respect for the Germans. I have come back loathing them like vermin. I spent—but I won't go on.”
Mills made his appearance with the decanter of port.
“I beg your ladyship's pardon,” he said, as he filled Felstead's glass, “but Mr. Lessingham has arrived and is in the library, waiting to see you.”
To Major Richard Felstead, Mills' announcement was without significance. For the first time he became conscious, however, of something which seemed almost like a secret understanding between his sister and his fiancée.
“Tell Mr. Lessingham I shall be with him in a minute or two, if he will kindly wait,” Philippa instructed.
“Who is Mr. Lessingham?” Richard enquired, as soon as the door had closed behind Mills. “Seems a queer time to call.”
Helen glanced at Philippa, whose lips framed a decided negative.
“Mr. Lessingham is a gentleman staying in the neighbourhood,” the latter replied. “You will probably make his acquaintance before long. Incidentally, he saved Henry's life the other night.”
“Sounds exciting,” Richard observed. “What form of destruction was Henry courting?”
“There was a trawler shipwrecked in the storm,” Philippa explained. “You can see it from all the front windows. Henry was on board, returning from one of his fishing excursions. They were trying to find Dumble's anchorage and were driven in on to that low ridge of rock. A rope broke, or something, they had no more rockets, and Mr. Lessingham swam out with the line.”
“Sounds like a plucky chap,” Richard admitted.
Philippa rose to her feet regretfully.
“I expect he has come to wish us good-by,” she said. “I'll leave you with Helen, Dick. Don't let her overfeed you. And you know where the cigars are, Helen. Take Dick into the gun room afterwards. You'll have it all to yourselves and there is a fire there.”
Philippa entered the library in a state of agitation for which she was glad to have some reasonable excuse. She held out both her hands to Lessingham.
“Dick is back—just arrived!” she exclaimed. “I can't tell you how happy we are, and how grateful!”
Lessingham raised her fingers to his lips.
“I am glad,” he said simply. “Do you mean that he is in the house here, now?”
“He is in the dining room with Helen.”
Lessingham for a moment was thoughtful.
“Don't you think,” he suggested, “that it would be better to keep us apart?”
“I was wondering,” she confessed.
“Have you told him about my bringing the letters?”
She shook her head.
“We nearly did. Then I stopped—I wasn't sure.”
“You were wise,” he said.
“Are you wise?” she asked him quickly.
“In coming back here?”
She nodded.
“Captain Griffiths knows everything,” she reminded him. “He is simply furious because your arrest was interfered with. I really believe that he is dangerous.”
Lessingham was unmoved.
“I had to come back,” he said simply.
“Why did you go away so suddenly?”
“Well, I had to do that, too,” he replied, “only the governing causes were very different. We will speak, if you do not mind, only of the cause which has brought me back. That I believe you know already.”
Philippa was curiously afraid. She looked towards the door as though with some vague hope of escape. She realised that the necessity for decision had arrived.
“Philippa,” he went on, “do you see what this is?”
He handed her two folded slips of paper. She started. At the top of one she recognised a small photograph of herself.
“What are they?” she asked. “What does it mean?”
“They are passports for America,” he told her.
“For—for me?” she faltered.
“For you and me.”
They slipped from her fingers. He picked them up from the carpet. Her face was hidden for a moment in her hands.
“I know so well how you are feeling,” he said humbly. “I know how terrible a shock this must seem to you when it comes so near. You are so different from the other women who might do this thing. It is so much harder for you than for them.”
She lifted her head. There was still something of the look of a scared child in her face.
“Don't imagine me better than I am,” she begged. “I am not really different from any other woman, only it is the first time this sort of thing has ever come into my life.”
“I know. You see,” he went on, a little wistfully, “you have not taken me, as yet, very far into your confidence, Philippa. You know that I love you as a man loves only once. It sounds like an empty phrase to say it, but if you will give me your life to take care of, I shall only have one thought—to make you happy. Could I succeed? That is what you have to ask yourself. You are not happy now. Do you think that, if you stay on here, the future is likely to be any better for you?”
She shook her head drearily.
“I believe,” she confessed, “that I have reached the very limit of my endurance.”
He came a little nearer. His hands rested upon her shoulders very lightly, yet they seemed like some enveloping chain. More than ever in those few moments she realised the spiritual qualities of his face. His eyes were aglow. His voice, a little broken with emotion, was wonderfully tender. He looked at her as though she were some precious and sacred thing.
“I am rich,” he said, “and there are few parts of the world where we could not live. We could find our way to the islands, like your great writer Stevenson in whom you delight so much; islands full of colour, and wonderful birds, and strange blue skies; islands where the peace of the tropics dulls memory, and time beats only in the heart. The world is a great place, Philippa, and there are corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride nowhere upon the sapphire seas.”
“It sounds like a fairy tale,” she murmured, with a half pathetic smile.
“Love always fashions life like a fairy tale,” he replied.
She stood perfectly still.
“You must have my answer now, at this moment?” she asked at last.
“There are yet some hours,” he told her. “I have a very powerful automobile here, and to-night there is a full moon. If we leave here at ten o'clock, we can catch the steamer to-morrow afternoon. Everything has been made very easy for me. And fortune, too, is with us—your vindictive commandant, Captain Griffiths, is in London. You see, you have the whole afternoon for thought. I want you only for your happiness. At ten o'clock I shall come here. If you are coming with me, you must be ready then. You understand?”
“I understand,” she assented, under her breath. “And now,” she went on, raising her eyes, “somehow I think that you are right. It would be better for you and Dick not to meet.”
“I am sure of it,” he agreed. “I shall come for my answer at ten o'clock. I wonder—”
He stood looking at her, his eyes hungry to find some sign in her face. There was so much kindness there, so much that might pass, even, for affection, and yet something which, behind it all, chilled his confidence. He left his sentence uncompleted and turned towards the door. Suddenly she called him back. She held up her finger. Her whole expression had changed. She was alarmed.
“Wait!” she begged. “I can hear Dick's voice. Wait till he has crossed the hail.”
They both stood, for a moment, quite silent. Then they heard a little protesting cry from Helen, and a good-humoured laugh from Richard. The door was thrown open.
“You don't mind our coming through to the gun room, Phil?” her brother asked. “We're not—My God!”
There was a queer silence, broken by Helen, who stood on the threshold, the picture of distress.
“I tried to get him to go the other way, Philippa.”
Richard took a quick step forward. His hands were outstretched.
“Bertram!” he exclaimed. “Is this a miracle? You here with my sister?”
Lessingham held out his hand. Suddenly Richard dropped his. His expression had become sterner.
“I don't understand,” he said simply. “Somebody please explain.”
For a few brief seconds no one seemed inclined to take upon themselves the onus of speech. Richard's amazement seemed to increase upon reflection.
“Maderstrom!” he exclaimed. “Bertram! What in the name of all that's diabolical are you doing here?”
“I am just a derelict,” Lessingham explained, with a faint smile. “Glad to see you, Richard. You are a day earlier than I expected.”
“You knew that I was coming, then?” Richard demanded.
“Naturally,” Lessingham replied. “I had the great pleasure of arranging for your release.”
“Look here,” Richard went on, “I'm groping about a bit. I don't understand. Forgive me if I run off the track. I'm not forgetting our friendship, Maderstrom, or what I owe to you since you came and found me at Wittenburg. But for all that, you have served in the German Army and are an enemy, and I want to know what you are doing here, in England, in my brother-in-law's house.”
“No particular harm, Richard, I promise you,” Lessingham replied mildly.
“You are here under a false name!”
“Hamar Lessingham, if you do not mind,” the other assented. “I prefer my own name, but I do not fancy that the use of it would ensure me a very warm welcome over here just now. Besides,” he added, with a glance at Philippa, “I have to consider the friends whose hospitality I have enjoyed.”
In a shadowy sort of way the truth began to dawn upon Richard. His tone became grimmer and his manner more menacing.
“Maderstrom,” he said, “we met last under different circumstances. I will admit that I cut a poor figure, but mine was at least an honourable imprisonment. I am not so sure that yours is an honourable freedom.”
Philippa laid her hand upon her brother's arm.
“Dick, dear, do remember that they were starving you to death!” she begged.
“You would never have lived through it,” Helen echoed.
“You are talking to Mr. Lessingham,” Philippa protested, “as though he were an enemy, instead of the best friend you ever had in your life.”
Richard waved them away.
“You must leave this to us,” he insisted. “Maderstrom and I will be able to understand one another, at any rate. What are you doing in this house—in England? What is your mission here?”
“Whatever it may have been, it is accomplished,” Lessingham said gravely. “At the present moment, my plans are to leave your country to-night.”
“Accomplished?” Richard repeated. “What the devil do you mean? Accomplished? Are you playing the spy in this country?”
“You would probably consider my mission espionage,” Lessingham admitted.
“And you have brought it to a successful conclusion?”
“I have.”
Philippa threw her arms around her brother's neck. “Dick,” she pleaded, “please listen. Mr. Lessingham has been here, in this district, ever since he landed in England. What possible harm could he do? We haven't a single secret to be learned. Everybody knows where our few guns are. Everybody knows where our soldiers are quartered. We haven't a harbour or any secret fortifications. We haven't any shipping information which it would be of the least use signalling anywhere. Mr. Lessingham has spent his time amongst trifles here. Take Helen away somewhere and forget that you have seen him in the house. Remember that he has saved Henry's life as well as yours.”
“I invite no consideration upon that account,” Lessingham declared. “All that I did for you in Germany, I did, or should have attempted to do, for my old friend. Your release was different. I am forced to admit that it was the price paid for my sojourn here. I will only ask you to remember that the bargain was made without your knowledge, and that you are in no way responsible for it.”
“A price,” Richard pronounced fiercely, “which I refuse to pay!”
Lessingham shrugged his shoulders.
“The alternative,” he confessed, “is in your hands.”
Richard moved towards the telephone.
“I am sorry, Maderstrom,” he said, “but my duty is clear. Who is Commandant here, Philippa?”
Philippa stood between her brother and the telephone. There was a queer, angry patch of colour in her cheeks. Her eyes were on fire.
“Richard,” she exclaimed, “you shall not do this from my house! I forbid you!”
“Do what?”
“Give information. Do you know what it would mean if they believed you?”
“Death,” he answered. “Maderstrom knew the risk he ran when he came to this country under a false name.”
“Perfectly,” Lessingham admitted.
“But I won't have it!” Philippa protested. “He has become our friend. Day by day we have grown to like him better and better. He has saved your life, Dick. He has brought you back to us. Think what it is that you purpose!”
“It is what every soldier has to face,” Richard declared.
“You men drive me crazy with your foolish ideas!” Philippa cried desperately. “The war is in your brains, I think. You would carry it from the battlefields into your daily life. Because two great countries are at war, is everything to go by—chivalry?—all the finer, sweeter feelings of life? If you two met on the battlefield, it would be different. Here in my drawing-room, I will not have this black demon of the war dragged in as an excuse for murder! Take Dick away, Helen!” she begged. “Mr. Lessingham is leaving to-night. I will pledge my word that until then he remains a harmless citizen.”
“Women don't understand these things, Philippa—” Richard began.
“Thank heavens we understand them better than you men!” Philippa interrupted fiercely. “You have but one idea—to strike—the narrow idea of men that breeds warfare. I tell you that if ever universal peace comes, if ever the nations are taught the horror of this lust for blood, this criminal outrage against civilisation, it is the women who will become the teachers, because amongst your instincts the brutish ones of force are the first to leap to the surface at the slightest provocation. We women see further, we know more. I swear to you, Richard, that if you interfere I will never forgive you as long as I live!”
Richard stared at his sister in amazement. There seemed to be some new spirit born within her. Throughout all their days he had never known her so much in earnest, so passionately insistent. He looked from her to the man whom she sought to protect, and who answered, unasked, the thoughts that were in his mind.
“Whatever harm I may have been able to do,” Lessingham announced, “is finished. I leave this place to-night, probably for ever. As for the Commandant,” he went on with a faint smile, “he is already upon my track. There is nothing you can tell him about me which he does not know. It is just a matter of hours, the toss of a coin, whether I get away or not.”
“They've found you out, then?” Richard exclaimed.
“Only a miracle saved me from arrest a week ago,” Lessingham acknowledged. “Your Commandant here is at the present moment in London for the sole purpose of denouncing me.”
“And yet you remain here, paying afternoon calls?” Richard observed incredulously. “I'm hanged if I can see through this!”
“You see,” Lessingham explained gently. “I am a fatalist!”
It was Helen who finally led her lover from the room. He looked back from the door.
“Maderstrom,” he said, “you know quite well how personally I feel towards you. I am grateful for what you have done for me, even though I am beginning to understand your motives. But as regards the other things we are both soldiers. I am going to talk to Helen for a time. I want to understand a little more than I do at present.”
Lessingham nodded.
“Let me help you,” he begged. “Here is the issue in plain words. All that I did for you at Wittenberg, I should have done in any case for the sake of our friendship. Your freedom would probably never have been granted to me but for my mission, although even that I might have tried to arrange. I brought your letters here, and I traded them with your sister and Miss Fairclough for the shelter of their hospitality and their guarantees. Now you know just where friendship ended and the other things began. Do what you believe to be your duty.”
Richard followed Helen out, closing the door after him. Lessingham looked down into Philippa's face.
“You are more wonderful even than I thought,” he continued softly. “You say so little and you live so near the truth. It is those of us who feel as you do—who understand—to whom this war is so terrible.”
“I want to ask you one question before I send you away,” she told him. “This journey to America?”
“It is a mission on behalf of Germany,” he explained, “but it is, after all, an open one. I have friends—highly placed friends—in my own country, who in their hearts feel as I do about the war. It is through them that I am able to turn my back upon Europe. I have done my share of fighting,” he went on sadly, “and the horror of it will never quite leave me. I think that no one has ever charged me with shirking my duty, and yet the sheer, black ugliness of this ghastly struggle, its criminal inutility, have got into my blood so that I think I would rather pass out of the world in some simple way than find myself back again in that debauch of blood. Is this cowardice, Philippa?”
She looked at him with shining eyes.
“There isn't any one in the world,” she said, “who could call you a coward. Whatever I may decide, whatever I may feel towards you, that at least I know.”
He kissed her fingers.
“At ten o'clock,” he began—
“But listen,” she interrupted. “Apart from anything which Dick might do, you are in terrible danger here, all the more if you really have accomplished something. Why not go now, at this moment? Why wait? These few hours may make all the difference.”
He smiled.
“They may, indeed, make all the difference to my life,” he answered. “That is for you.”
He followed Mills, who had obeyed her summons, out of the room. Philippa moved to the window and watched him until he had disappeared. Then very slowly she left the room, walked up the stairs, made her way to her own little suite of apartments, and locked the door.