The Zeppelin's Passenger
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.
CHAPTER XXX
It was a happy, if a trifle hysterical little dinner party that evening
at Mainsail Haul. Philippa was at times unusually silent, but Helen had
expanded in the joy of her great happiness. Richard, shaved and with
his hair cut, attired once more in the garb of civilisation, seemed
a different person. Even in these few hours the lines about his mouth
seemed less pronounced. They talked freely of Maderstrom.
“A regular 'Vanity Fair' problem,” Richard declared, balancing his wine
glass between his fingers, “a problem, too, which I can't say I have
solved altogether yet. The only thing is that if he is really going
to-night, I don't see why I shouldn't let the matter drift out of my
mind.”
“It is so much better,” Helen agreed. “Try as hard as ever I can, I
cannot picture his doing any harm to anybody. And as for any information
he may have gained here, well, I think that we can safely let him take
it back to Germany.”
“He was always,” Richard continued reminiscently, “a sort of cross
between a dreamer, an idealist, and a sportsman. There was never
anything of the practical man of affairs about him. He was scrupulously
honourable, and almost a purist in his outlook upon life. I have met
a great many Germans,” Richard went on, “and I've killed a few, thank
God!--but he is about as unlike the ordinary type as any one I ever met.
The only pity is that he ever served his time with them.”
Philippa had been listening attentively. She was more than ever silent
after her brother's little appreciation of his friend. Richard glanced
at her good-humouredly.
“You haven't killed the fatted calf for me in the shape of clothes,
Philippa,” he observed. “One would think that you were going on a
journey.”
She glanced down at her high-necked gown and avoided Helen's anxious
eyes.
“I may go for a walk,” she said, “and leave you two young people to talk
secrets. I am rather fond of the garden these moonlight nights.”
“When is Henry coming back?” her brother enquired.
Philippa's manner was quiet but ominous.
“I have no idea,” she confessed. “He comes and goes as the whim seizes
him, and I very seldom know where he is. One week it is whiting and
another codling. Lately he seems to have shown some partiality for
London life.”
Richard's eyes were wide open now.
“You mean to say that he is still not doing anything?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“But what excuse does he give--or rather I should say reason?” Richard
persisted.
“He says that he is too old for a ship, and he won't work in an office,”
Philippa replied. “That is what he says. His point of view is so
impossible that I can not even discuss it with him.”
“It's the rummest go I ever came across,” Richard remarked
reminiscently. “I should have said that old Henry would have been up and
at 'em at the Admiralty before the first gun was fired.”
“On the contrary,” Philippa rejoined, “he took advantage of the war to
hire a Scotch moor at half-price, about a week after hostilities had
commenced.”
“It's a rum go,” Richard repeated. “I can't fancy Henry as a skulker.
Forgive me, Philippa,” he added.
“You are entirely forgiven,” she assured him drily.
“He comes of such a fine fighting stock,” Richard mused. “I suppose his
health is all right?”
“His health,” Philippa declared, “is marvellous. I should think he is
one of the strongest men I know.”
Her brother patted her hand.
“You've been making rather a trouble of it, old girl,” he said
affectionately. “It's no good doing that, you know. You wait and let me
have a talk with Henry.”
“I think,” she replied, “that nearly everything possible has already
been said to him.”
“Perhaps you've put his back up a bit,” Richard suggested, “and he may
really be on the lookout for something all the time.”
“It has been a long search!” Philippa retorted, with quiet sarcasm. “Let
us talk about something else.”
They gossiped for a time over acquaintances and relations, made their
plans for the week--Richard must report at the War Office at once.
Philippa grew more and more silent as the meal drew to a close. It was
at Helen's initiative that they left Richard alone for a moment over
his port. She kept her arm through her friend's as they crossed the hall
into the drawing-room, and closed the door behind them. Philippa stood
upon the hearth rug. Already her mouth had come together in a straight
line. Her eyes met Helen's defiantly.
“I know exactly what you are going to say, Helen,” she began, “and I
warn you that it will be of no use.”