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Page 25
"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?"
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