The Zeppelin's Passenger
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.”
CHAPTER XIV
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