The Zeppelin's Passenger
told me some wonderful stories about it. He spoke of broad channels down
which a dreadnought could approach within a hundred yards of the land.”
“He is quite right, too,” his host agreed.
“There's a lot of deep water about here. The whole of the coast is very
curious in that way. What the--what the dickens is this?”
Sir Henry, who had been strolling about the room, picked up a Homburg
hat from the far side of a table of curios. Philippa glanced up at his
exclamation.
“That's Nora's trophy,” she explained. “I told her to take it up to her
own room, but she's always wanting to show it to her friends.”
“Nora's trophy?” Sir Henry repeated. “Why, it's nothing but an ordinary
man's hat.”
“Nevertheless, it's a very travelled one, sir,” Harrison pointed out.
“Miss Nora picked it up on Dutchman's Common, the morning after the
observation car was found there.”
Sir Henry held out the hat.
“But Nora doesn't seriously suppose that the Germans come over in this
sort of headgear, does she?” he demanded.
“If you'll just look inside the lining, sir,” Sinclair suggested.
Sir Henry turned it up and whistled softly. “By Jove, it's a German hat,
all right!” he exclaimed. “Doesn't look a bad shape, either.”
He tried it on. There was a little peal of laughter from the men.
Philippa had ceased her knitting and was watching from the couch. Sir
Henry looked at himself in the looking-glass.
“Well, that's funny,” he observed. “I shouldn't have thought it would
have been so much too small for me. Here, just try how you'd look in it,
Mr. Lessingham,” he added, handing it across to him.
Lessingham accepted the situation quite coolly, and placed the hat
carefully on his head.
“It doesn't feel particularly comfortable,” he remarked.
“That may be,” Sir Henry suggested, “because you have it on wrong side
foremost. If you'd just turn it round, I believe you would find it a
very good fit.”
Lessingham at once obeyed. Sir Henry regarded him with admiration.
“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Look at that, Philippa. Might have been made
for him, eh?”
Lessingham looked at himself in the glass and removed the hat from his
head with some casual observation. He was entirely at his ease. His
host turned towards the door, which Mills was holding open.
“Captain Griffiths, sir,” the latter announced.
Sir Henry greeted his visitor briefly.
“How are you, Griffiths?” he said. “Glad to see you. Excuse my costume,
but I am just back from a fishing expedition. We are all admiring Mr.
Lessingham in his magic hat.”
Captain Griffiths shook hands with Philippa, nodded to the others, and
turned towards Lessingham.
“Put it on again, there's a good fellow, Lessingham,” Sir Henry begged.
“You see, we have found a modern version of Cinderella's slipper. The
hat which fell from the Zeppelin on to Dutchman's Common fits our friend
like a glove. I never thought the Germans made such good hats, did you,
Griffiths?”
“I always thought they imported their felt hats,” Captain Griffiths
acknowledged. “Is that really the one with the German name inside, which
Miss Nora brought home?”
“This is the genuine article,” Lessingham assented, taking it from
his head and passing it on to the newcomer. “Notwithstanding the name
inside, I should still believe that it was an English hat. It feels too
comfortable for anything else.”
The Commandant took the hat to a lamp and examined it carefully. He drew
out the lining and looked all the way round. Suddenly he gave vent to a
little exclamation.
“Here are the owner's initials,” he declared, “rather faint but still
distinguishable,--B. M. Hm! There's no doubt about its being a German
hat.”
“B. M.,” Sir Henry muttered, looking over his shoulder. “How very
interesting! B. M.,” he repeated, turning to Philippa, who had
recommenced her knitting. “Is it my fancy, or is there something a
little familiar about that?”
“I am sure that I have no idea,” Philippa replied. “It conveys nothing
to me.”
There was a brief but apparently pointless silence. Philippa's needles
flashed through her wool with easy regularity. Lessingham appeared to be
sharing the mild curiosity which the others showed concerning the hat.
Sir Henry was standing with knitted brows, in the obvious attitude of a
man seeking to remember something.
“B. M.,” he murmured softly to himself. “There was some one I've known
or heard of in England--What's that, Mills?”
“Your dinner is served, sir,” Mills, who had made a silent entrance,
announced.
Sir Henry apparently thought no more of the hat or its possible owner.
He threw it upon a neighbouring table, and his face expressed a new
interest in life.
“Jove, I'm ravenous!” he confessed. “You'll excuse me, won't you? Mills,
see that these gentlemen have cigars and cigarettes--in the billiard
room, I should think. You'll find the young people there. I'll come in
and have a game of pills later.”
The two young soldiers, with Captain Griffiths, followed Sir Henry at
once from the room. Lessingham, however, lingered. He stood with his
hands behind him, looking at the closed door.
“Are you going to stay and talk nonsense with me, Mr. Lessingham?”
Philippa asked.
“If I may,” he answered, without changing his position.
Philippa looked at him curiously.
“Do you see ghosts through that door?”
He shook his head.
“Do you know,” he said, as he seated himself by her side, “there are
times when I find your husband quite interesting.”
CHAPTER XIII
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.