CHAPTER VII
Sir Henry was in a pleasant and expansive humour that evening. The new
cook was an unqualified success, and he was conscious of having dined
exceedingly well. He sat in a comfortable easy-chair before a blazing
wood fire, he had just lit one of his favourite brand of cigarettes, and
his wife, whom he adored, was seated only a few feet away.
“Quite a remarkable change in Helen,” he observed. “She was in the
depths of depression when I went away, and to-night she seems positively
cheerful.”
“Helen varies a great deal,” Philippa reminded him.
“Still, to-night, I must say, I should have expected to have found her
more depressed than ever,” Sir Henry went on. “She hoped so much from
your trip to London, and you apparently accomplished nothing.”
“Nothing at all.”
“And you have had no letters?”
“None.”
“Then Helen's high spirits, I suppose, are only part of woman's natural
inconsistency.--Philippa, dear!”
“Yes?”
“I am glad to be at home. I am glad to see you sitting there. I know you
are nursing up something, some little thunderbolt to launch at me. Won't
you launch it and let's get it over?”
Philippa laid down the book which she had been reading, and turned to
face her husband. He made a little grimace.
“Don't look so severe,” he begged. “You frighten me before you begin.”
“I'm sorry,” she said, “but my face probably reflects my feelings. I am
hurt and grieved and disappointed in you, Henry.”
“That's a good start, anyway,” he groaned.
“We have been married six years,” Philippa went on, “and I admit at once
that I have been very happy. Then the war came. You know quite well,
Henry, that especially at that time I was very, very fond of you, yet
it never occurred to me for a moment but that, like every other woman, I
should have to lose my husband for a time.--Stop, please,” she insisted,
as he showed signs of interrupting. “I know quite well that it was
through my persuasions you retired so early, but in those days there was
no thought of war, and I always had it in my mind that if trouble came
you would find your way back to where you belonged.”
“But, my dear child, that is all very well,” Sir Henry protested, “but
it's not so easy to get back again. You know very well that I went up to
the Admiralty and offered my services, directly the war started.”
“Yes, and what happened?” Philippa demanded. “You were, in a measure,
shelved. You were put on a list and told that you would hear from
them--a sort of Micawber-like situation with which you were perfectly
satisfied. Then you took that moor up in Scotland and disappeared for
nearly six months.”
“I was supplying the starving population with food,” he reminded her
genially. “We sent about four hundred brace of grouse to market, not to
speak of the salmon. We had some very fair golf, too, some of the time.”
“Oh, I have not troubled to keep any exact account of your diversions!”
Philippa said scornfully. “Sometimes,” she continued, “I wonder whether
you are quite responsible, Henry. How you can even talk of these things
when every man of your age and strength is fighting one way or another
for his country, seems marvellous to me. Do you realise that we are
fighting for our very existence? Do you realise that my own father, who
is fifteen years older than you, is in the firing line? This is a small
place, of course, but there isn't a man left in it of your age, with
your physique, who has had the slightest experience in either service,
who isn't doing something.”
“I can't do more than send in applications,” he grumbled. “Be
reasonable, my dear Philippa. It isn't the easiest thing in the world to
find a job for a sailor who has been out of it as long as I have.”
“So you say, but when they ask me what you are doing, as they all did
in London this time, and I reply that you can't get a job, there is
generally a polite little silence. No one believes it. I don't believe
it.”
“Philippa!”
Sir Henry turned in his chair. His cigar was burning now idly between
his fingers. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together.
“Well, I don't,” she reiterated. “You can be angry, if you will--in
fact I think I should prefer you to be angry. You take no pains at
the Admiralty. You just go there and come away again, once a year or
something like that. Why, if I were you, I wouldn't leave the place
until they'd found me something--indoors or outdoors, what does it
matter so long as your hand is on the wheel and you are doing your
little for your country? But you--what do you care? You went to town
to get a job--and you come back with new mackerel spinners! You are off
fishing to-morrow morning with Jimmy Dumble. Somewhere up in the North
Sea, to-day and to-morrow and the next day, men are giving their lives
for their country. What do you care? You will sit there smoking your
pipe and catching dabs!”
“Do you know you are almost offensive, Philippa?” her husband said
quietly.
“I want to be,” she retorted. “I should like you to feel that I am. In
any case, this will probably be the last conversation I shall hold with
you on the subject.”
“Well, thank God for that, anyway!” he observed, strolling to the
chimneypiece and selecting a pipe from a rack. “I think you've said
about enough.”
“I haven't finished,” she told him ominously.
“Then for heaven's sake get on with it and let's have it over,” he
begged.
“Oh, you're impossible!” Philippa exclaimed bitterly. “Listen. I give
you one chance more. Tell me the truth? Is there anything in your
health of which I do not know? Is there any possible explanation of your
extraordinary behaviour which, for some reason or other, you have kept
to yourself? Give me your whole confidence.”
Sir Henry, for a moment, was serious enough. He stood looking down at
her a little wistfully.
“My dear,” he told her, “I have nothing to say except this. You are my
very precious wife. I have loved you and trusted you since the day of
our marriage. I am content to go on loving and trusting you, even though
things should come under my notice which I do not understand. Can't you
accept me the same way?”
Philippa, momentarily uneasy, was nevertheless rebellious.
“Accept you the same way? How can I! There is nothing in my life to
compare in any way with the tragedy of your--”
She paused, as though unwilling to finish the sentence. He waited
patiently, however, for her to proceed.
“Of my what?”
Philippa compromised.
“Lethargy,” she pronounced triumphantly.
“An excellent word,” he murmured.
“It is too mild a one, but you are my husband,” she remarked.
“That reminds me,” he said quietly. “You are my wife.”
“I know it,” she admitted, “but I am also a woman, and there are limits
to my endurance. If you can give me no explanation of your behaviour,
Henry, if you really have no intention of changing it, then there is
only one course left open for me.”
“That sounds rather alarming--what is it?” he demanded.
Philippa lifted her head a little. This was the pronouncement towards
which she had been leading.
“From to-day,” she declared, “I cease to be your wife.”
His fingers paused in the manipulation of the tobacco with which he was
filling his pipe. He turned and looked at her.
“You what?”
“I cease to be your wife.”
“How do you manage that?” he asked.
“Don't jest,” she begged. “It hurts me so. What I mean is surely plain
enough. I will continue to live under your roof if you wish it, or I
am perfectly willing to go back to Wood Norton. I will continue to bear
your name because I must, but the other ties between us are finished.”
“You don't mean this, Philippa,” he said gravely.
“But I do mean it,” she insisted. “I mean every word I have spoken. So
far as I am concerned, Henry, this is your last chance.”
There was a knock at the door. Mills entered with a note upon a salver.
Sir Henry took it up, glanced questioningly at his wife, and tore open
the envelope.
“There will be no answer, Mills,” he said.
The man withdrew. Sir Henry read the few lines thoughtfully:--
Police-station, Dreymarsh
SIR,
According to enquiries made I find that Mr. Hamar Lessingham
arrived at the Hotel this evening in time for dinner. His
luggage arrived by rail yesterday. It is presumed that he came
by motor-car, but there is no car in the garage, nor any mention
of one. His room was taken for him by Miss Fairclough, ringing
up for Lady Cranston about seven o'clock.
Respectfully yours,
JOHN HAYLOCK.
“Is your note of interest?” Philippa enquired.
“In a sense, yes,” he replied, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket.
“I presume we can consider our late subject of conversation finished
with?”
“I have nothing more to say,” she pronounced.
“Very well, then,” her husband agreed, “let us select another topic.
This time, supposing I choose?”
“You are welcome.”
“Let us converse, then, about Mr. Hamar Lessingham.”
Philippa had taken up her work. Her fingers ceased their labours, but
she did not look up.
“About Mr. Hamar Lessingham,” she repeated. “Rather a limited subject, I
am afraid.”
“I am not so sure,” he said thoughtfully. “For instance, who is he?”
“I have no idea,” she replied. “Does it matter? He was at college with
Richard, and he has been a visitor at Wood Norton. That is all that
we know. Surely it is sufficient for us to offer him any reasonable
hospitality?”
“I am not disputing it,” Sir Henry assured her. “On the face of it, it
seems perfectly reasonable that you should be civil to him. On the other
hand, there are one or two rather curious points about his coming here
just now.”
“Really?” Philippa murmured indifferently, bending a little lower over
her work.
“In the first place,” her husband continued, “how did he arrive here?”
“For all I know,” she replied, “he may have walked.”
“A little unlikely. Still, he didn't come from London by either of the
evening trains, and it seems that you didn't take his rooms for him
until about seven o'clock, before which time he hadn't been to the
hotel. So, you see, one is driven to wonder how the mischief he did get
here.”
“I took his rooms?” Philippa repeated, with a sudden little catch at her
heart.
“Some one from here rang up, didn't they?” Sir Henry went on carelessly.
“I gathered that we were introducing him at the hotel.”
“Where did you hear that?” she demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders, but avoided answering the question.
“I have no doubt,” he continued, “that the whole subject of Mr. Hamar
Lessingham is scarcely worth discussing. Yet he does seem to have
arrived here under a little halo of coincidence.”
“I am afraid I have scarcely appreciated that,” Philippa remarked; “in
fact, his coming here has seemed to me the most ordinary thing in the
world. After all, although one scarcely remembers that since the war,
this is a health resort, and the man has been ill.”
“Quite right,” Sir Henry agreed. “You are not going to bed, dear?”
Philippa had folded up her work. She stood for a moment upon the
hearth-rug. The little hardness which had tightened her mouth had
disappeared, her eyes had softened.
“May I say just one word more,” she begged, “about our previous--our
only serious subject of conversation? I have tried my best since we were
married, Henry, to make you happy.”
“You know quite well,” he assured her, “that you have succeeded.”
“Grant me one favour, then,” she pleaded. “Give up your fishing
expedition to-morrow, go back to London by the first train and let me
write to Lord Rayton. I am sure he would do something for you.”
“Of course he'd do something!” Her husband groaned. “I should get a
censorship in Ireland, or a post as instructor at Portsmouth.”
“Wouldn't you rather take either of those than nothing?” she asked,
“than go on living the life you are living now?”
“To be perfectly frank with you, Philippa, I wouldn't,” he declared
bluntly. “What on earth use should I be in a land appointment? Why, no
one could read my writing, and my nautical science is entirely out of
date. Why a cadet at Osborne could floor me in no time.”
“You refuse to let me write, then?” she persisted.
“Absolutely.”
“You intend to go on that fishing expedition with Jimmy Dumble
to-morrow?”
“Wouldn't miss it for anything,” he confessed.
Philippa was suddenly white with anger.
“Henry, I've finished,” she declared, holding out her hand to keep
him away from her. “I've finished with you entirely. I would rather be
married to an enemy who was fighting honourably for his country than to
you. What I have said, I mean. Don't come near me. Don't try to touch
me.”
She swept past him on her way to the door.
“Not even a good-night kiss?” he asked, stooping down.
She looked him in the eyes.
“I am not a child,” she said scornfully.
He closed the door after her. For a moment he remained as though
undecided whether to follow or not. His face had softened with her
absence. Finally, however, he turned away with a little shrug of
the shoulders, threw himself into his easy-chair and began to smoke
furiously.
The telephone bell disturbed his reflection. He rose at once and took up
the receiver.
“Yes, this is 19, Dreymarsh. Trunk call? All right, I am here.”
He waited until another voice came to him faintly.
“Cranston?”
“Speaking.”
“That's right. The message is Odino Berry, you understand? O-d-i-n-o
b-e-r-r-y.”
“I've got it,” Sir Henry replied. “Good night!” He hung up the receiver,
crossed the room to his desk, unlocked one of the drawers, and produced
a black memorandum book, secured with a brass lock. He drew a key from
his watch chain, opened the book, and ran his fingers down the O's.
“Odino,” he muttered to himself. “Here it is: 'We have trustworthy
information from Berlin.' Now Berry.” He turned back. “'You are being
watched by an enemy secret service agent.'”
He relocked the cipher book and replaced it in the desk. Then he
strolled over to his easy-chair and helped himself to a whisky and soda
from the tray which Mills had just arranged upon the sideboard.
“We have trustworthy information from Berlin,” he repeated to himself,
“that you are being watched by an enemy secret service agent.”