favourably consider this proposal. And all at once Philip remembered having read in some book of physical geography, studied by him in happier boyish days, that the Atlantic in certain places was not less than seven miles deep.…
He read this amiable epistle to his wife.
“Upon my word, it sounds a very good plan,” he said brightly. “What do you say, Phoebe? It will give me the holiday of which you think I stand in need.”
Phoebe shook her head.
“Do you propose that I should come with you?” she asked. “Why should a holiday among the submarines do you more good than the Malvern Hills?”
The thought of the deep holes in the Atlantic grew ever more rosy to Philip’s mind. Even the hideous notion of being torpedoed failed to take the colour out of it.
“My dear, these are days in which a man must not mind taking risks,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“I know your fearless nature, darling,” she said; “but what is the point of running unnecessary risks?”
“Local colour. There is a great deal in Mr. Elherington’s remarks.”
“I don’t agree. I should think with our experience we ought to be able to describe New York without going there. We didn’t find it necessary to go to Athens, or Khartoum, or Mexico.”
“True,” said he; “but perhaps my descriptions might have gained in veracity if we had. That was a tiresome letter to the Yorkshire Telegraph about the spires on the Acropolis. If we had been there, we should have known that there weren’t any.”
He fingered the stud-box in his pocket for a moment, and his fingers itched to drop it over a ship’s side.
“My part of our joint work might gain in true artistic feeling,” he said, “if I described what I had actually seen. Art holds the mirror up to nature, you know.”
“Yes, darling; but do you think Shakespeare meant that Art must hold the mirror up to New York?” asked she. “I fancy there is very little nature in New York.”
He took a turn or two up and down the room, while the box positively burned his finger-tips.
“I can’t help feeling as I do about it,” he said. “And, Phoebe, one of our earliest vows to each other was that each of us should respect the other’s literary conscience!”
She got up.
“You disarm me, dear,” she said. “Apply for your passport, and if they give it you, go. I only ask you to respect my feminine weakness and not make me come with you among all those horrid submarines.”
They sealed their compact with a kiss.
By the time Phoebe had interviewed her cook, her husband had already written his letter applying for his passport, on the grounds of artistic necessity in his profession. She read it through with high approval.
“Very dignified and proper,” she said. “By the way, dear, there will be no work for us this morning. We are going over the factory for explosives with kind Captain Traill. You and I must observe the processes very carefully, as we want all the information we can get for ‘The Hero of Ypres.’”
He jumped up with something of his old alacrity.
“Aha, there speaks your artistic conscience,” he said. “And don’t let me see too many soft glances between you and kind Captain Traill.”
Phoebe looked hugely delighted and returned the compliment.
“And there are some very pretty girls working there,” she observed slyly.
An hour afterwards they were padding in felt slippers round the room where bombs were packed with a fatal grey treacle, one spoonful of which was sufficient to blow them and the whole building into a million fragments. A new type of bomb was being made there, consisting of a cast-iron shell fitted with a hole through which the grey treacle was poured; an iron stopper was then screwed into the hole. There were hundreds of those empty shells, which slid along grooved ways to where the treacle was put into them, and they then were passed on to the girls, who fixed their stoppers. It was all soft, silent, deadly work, and Philip recorded a hundred impressions on his retentive memory.
Phoebe and Captain Traill were walking just ahead of him, when suddenly a great light broke, so vividly illuminating his brain that he almost thought some terrific explosion, seen and not heard, had occurred. Stealthily he drew from his pocket the stud-case, stealthily he opened it and took out the razor-blade. Then, bending over an empty bombcase as if to examine it, he dropped the blade into it. It fell inside with a slight chink, which nobody noticed.
A couple of minutes afterwards the bomb-case had passed through the hands of the dispenser of treacle, and had its stopper screwed in.
“And where are all those little surprise packets going?” asked Philip airily.
“To aeroplanes on the west front,” said kind Captain Traill. “We’re sending off a lot tonight. Perhaps that one “—and he pointed to the identical bomb which Philip had had a hand in filling—“will make a mess in Mannheim next week.”
“I hope so,” said Philip fervently.
The only thing, now that Philip had disposed of the razor-blade, that clouded his complete content was the fear that his passport would be granted him, and that he would have to make a journey to America. Happily no such unnerving calamity occurred, for a week later he received a polite intimation from the passport office that the object for which he wanted to go there did not seem of sufficient importance to warrant the granting of a permit; so, wreathed in smiles, he passed this letter over to Phoebe.
“There’s the end of that,” he said.
“Philistines! Barbarians!” she said indignantly.
“I suppose they are acting to the best of their judgment,” said he. “I dare say they have never heard of me.”
“My dear, don’t be so cynical,” said Phoebe.
“Well, well! Certainly I am bitterly disappointed.”
He took up the morning paper.
“Bitterly!” he said again. “Hallo! Our airmen bombed Mannheim two nights ago, and dropped three tons of high explosives. Well, that is very interesting. Captain Traill said that perhaps some of those bombs which we saw being filled would make a mess in Mannheim. I hope they were those actual ones.”
“So do I,” said Phoebe. “Was there much damage done?”
“The German account says that there was hardly any, but of course that is the German account. A few people were wounded and cut by fragments of the bombs. Cut!”
He got up and could hardly refrain from dancing round the table among the rushes.
“Some deep cuts, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said.
QUEEN LUCIA (Part 1)
CHAPTER ONE
Though
