I
After leave which extended longer than any of them had hoped, the junior midshipmen, who had parted at the King Arthur’s gangway, joined the Colonsay. In the sense that in their new ship there was none senior to them they were junior midshipmen no longer. The Gunroom would still have to be tidied by them, but, instead of Clearing-up Stations at Krame’s command, there would be organization based upon common consent. When the atmosphere became foul at sea, they would have to open and shut the scuttles if they wanted fresh air, but this would not be Scuttle Drill. Between them and an emancipation essential to what happiness they might find in the Colonsay and Pathshire there stood only one doubt. Of the Sub-Lieutenant they knew nothing but that his name was Hartington. He was not on board when they joined, and all the questions concerning him that they put to one another remained unanswered.
“Anyhow,” said Cunwell, “if he kicks up a dust it will be easy enough for us—there are six of us—to keep him steady.”
It sounded easy; but the Service tradition was against it.
“That’s bluff,” John answered. “We might be able to stave off obstacle races and Angostura hunts if we were prepared to make a Gunroom Revolution of it, but, as a matter of fact, we shouldn’t try. You know we shouldn’t when it came to the point. If Hartington wants to make it Hell for us, he can, though he is alone. But if he wants to live in love and charity with his neighbours, we ought to have the best time of any snotties in the Service.”
Hartington came on board late that evening, and, after an appearance in the Gunroom too brief to give any indication of his character, disappeared into his cabin. On his way thither he had passed John and Hugh in the Chest Flat.
“I wonder if he realizes what an immense difference he can make to us all,” John said. “Think, a two years’ commission in China, with no one in the Gunroom but ourselves and a Sub we get on with! I don’t believe he could spoil it all, if he knew.”
“I dare say we shall shake along, anyway,” Hugh answered. “But it would be good—even if he were just neutral and didn’t go out of his way to worry us.”
The anxiety was universal. All the midshipmen were discussing him in whose hands their future lay. Then came Driss.
“I think Hartington’s going to be all right,” he said. “You know that, for some reason, they have put my chest down outside his cabin—it will have to be moved in the morning. Well, Sentley was standing by my chest while I was looking to see if I had some pyjamas there—I came later than the rest of you, so my trunk and tin case are still on deck. I left them there, thinking I had in my hand-bag all I should want for to-night. And, while I was cursing because I couldn’t find my pyjamas, Hartington put his head out of his cabin. I had clean forgotten he was inside, and I thought he was going to let me have it for making a noise. But he just asked what was the matter—quite civilly, you know.”
Driss paused to allow the others to be sufficiently impressed by the fact that the Sub in such circumstances had been quite civil.
“So I told him I should have to go up on deck and get my trunk down. ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Pyjamas? Come in here and choose a pair of mine. Blue silk or white silk? They are rather attractive, don’t you think?’”
“He lent you some?”
“So might dozens of Subs!” Cunwell exclaimed scornfully.
“Yes,” said Driss eagerly, “so they might; but not in that way. I swear he treated me as—as, an ordinary human being in a country house might treat another ordinary human being who was short of a pair of pyjamas. None of the being-generous-to-junior-snotties touch. You wouldn’t have thought there was such a thing as seniority. I believe he must come from the South of Ireland—though I’ve never heard the name there,” he added solemnly.
“That sounds promising,” Hugh said. “I wonder.... Oh, wouldn’t it be great, Driss, if Hartington were like that all through!”
“I believe he will be,” Driss answered. “I’m almost sure he will be. He didn’t even give me the pyjamas and have done with it. We talked for quite a long time—about where we should put his photographs, and pictures, and writing-desk—he has an old writing-desk that he’s very keen on, and an odd taste in pictures. And we talked about other things as well, all off the ordinary track, just as if there wasn’t any Service at all.”
But even then they could not believe that nothing aggressive lay beneath this apparently pleasing exterior. Driss, who had seen and heard, found it impossible to carry conviction in face of the others’ deep-rooted scepticism. The next day routine was irregular. Hartington went ashore soon after breakfast and did not return until the dog watches, when he took over the duties of the officer who had been keeping the Day On with John as his midshipman.
“Have you been keeping watch all day?” Hartington asked.
“Yes, sir, on and off. I’ve been below a good deal when there was nothing doing on deck.”
“Tired?”
“No, not very; I’d much rather keep Days On than the regular four-hour watches.”
“Is anyone coming up to take over from you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, you may as well go below. I’ll look out up here. I’ll send down a side-boy if I want you.”
In the Gunroom John found everyone busy appropriating lockers and bringing in their books and papers from their chests.
“There’s enough room for two lockers each, and three for Hartington,” Dyce said. “Those are your two, Lynwood, in the corner—the worst billet of the lot.... No, we didn’t just push you into them because you were away. We cut round—someone cut for you—and you were lurked.”
“I don’t mind,” John said. “Two lockers anywhere are luxury. I’ll get my books in. By the way, Driss, I think you were right about Hartington. He took over the watch just now; asked if I was tired, and sent me down.”
“Of course I was right,” Driss answered, smiling. “Did you happen to discover where he lives?”
“No; we aren’t on a personal footing yet. I called him ‘sir,’ being on watch.”
They unpacked slowly, pausing often to sit on the table and discuss the most suitable stowage places for sextants and Inman’s Tables and Seamanship Manuals. They had a feeling of spaciousness and independence that was altogether delightful—so glorious did it seem to dispose their own dwelling-place in their own way, instead of availing themselves of whatever odd corners were left over by Krame and Howdray. On the table was a pile of John’s possessions—books, instruments, and innumerable manuscripts which, though he had no hope of being able to shake them into publishable form, he had not the heart to destroy. There was a foolscap book with marble covers into which he had copied such poems as he had completed; there were penny exercise-books in which novels had been sketched and begun; there were bundles of papers tied together with tape; and sheets of all colours and sizes, some of them but half covered with writing, upon which he had set down pieces of description, scraps of narrative and dialogue, and sentences from imaginary political speeches—fragmentary records of fiery and ambitious dreams. How little his best friends in that Gunroom knew of the things that were written there! How they would laugh if they read them, for many were evidence of absurd imaginings! John turned them over. Here was the peroration by which the King Arthur’s able seaman, “’undredth class for conduck, ’undredth class for leave,” was to bring the Albert Hall to its feet—“jes’ as if I ’ad ’em on strings.” And here was John’s own speech to the House of Commons on Home Rule; here his reply to the Foreign Secretary’s pronouncement on the imminence of war with Germany—and in the corner of the manuscript he had written the great sentence from John Bright’s speech on the Crimean War. On the back of an old Torpedo Sketchbook he found his notes on Lawrence’s Principles of International Law—part of the equipment of a Foreign Secretary’s critic, he remembered with a smile, and among the notes was a passionately eulogistic review of Mrs. Lynn Lynton’s True History of Joshua Davidson. Some of his essays had progressed no further than their motto—perhaps the fire within him had dried up his pen, perhaps a boat had been called away....
“Midshipman o’ the Watch ’ere, sir?” said the voice of an invisible side-boy.
“Yes.”
“Orficer o’ the Watch wants you on deck, sir.”
“All right.”
“I’m going down to have a cigarette,” Hartington said when John reached him. “Let me know if there’s a panic.”
For an uneventful hour John walked up and down at the top of the gangway. A hand touched his arm, and he turned to find Hugh beside him.
“John, what do you think has happened?”
“What? Something to do with Hartington?”
“Hartington has been reading some of your stuff.”
“Lord Almighty! How did he get hold of it?”
“Found it on the deck in the Gunroom. He picked it up to see what it was. Then he asked if it was private. Cunwell said No, you often let people read it.”
“Some of it,” said John, “and some people.”
“I know. But we couldn’t do anything. Hartington smiled, and said that, seeing it wasn’t letters and was sculling about the deck of his Gunroom, he thought he had a right. We couldn’t do anything,” Hugh repeated. “But I thought I’d better come and tell you.”
John thought for a moment.
“What was he reading?” he asked.
“I don’t know—verse, I think.”
“In a marble-covered book?”
“Yes, he had that. He said it looked more like a formal volume for the public service than the odd bits of paper.”
“Well, I’d rather he read the volume than the odd bits.... But isn’t it perfectly damnable—the Sub’s getting hold of that right at the beginning! What comments?—the usual remarks about long hair?”
“He hasn’t spoken a word.”
“Oh well,” John said, “it can’t be helped now. It was my own fault—leaving it on the table. I suppose I shall hear about it from Hartington for ever and ever, Amen. I wonder why it is regarded as an almost criminal offence to try to write verse?”
Left alone, John tried to think out smooth answers to the remarks the Sub would make when he came on deck. So far as the Sub himself was concerned, the damage was done, but it might still be possible to prevent him from sharing his intelligence with the Wardroom. Of course, the news was certain to spread sooner or later. If Hartington had not made his discovery now, he would have made it in a week’s time, and if the fact of there being a poet in the ship were not laughed over in the Wardroom to-day it would be laughed over to-morrow. But John knew it was important to gain time. If the Colonsay’s officers learned first to think of him as an ordinary midshipman who discharged his duties with reasonable efficiency, they would tolerate his writing of poetry as a superficial eccentricity. If, on the other hand, he was made known to them primarily as a poet, it would be extraordinarily difficult to rid himself of the stigma and to win back his good name.
When at last Hartington reappeared he spoke only of Service matters. John wondered what was coming. Perhaps he had not realized that his midshipman of the watch was the author of the verse he had been reading. Perhaps he thought the whole affair so unimportant that he would not trouble to refer to it. John clung to this last possibility as long as he could, but from time to time he noticed that Hartington regarded him curiously, with eyes that seemed to laugh at his apprehension and discomfiture.
“Lynwood,” he said suddenly, “I shouldn’t leave my manuscript sculling about the deck, if I were you.”
“It was all on the table,” John answered quickly. “I hadn’t time to put it away when you sent for me. I’m sorry it made a litter. If I may go down for a moment, I’ll get Fane-Herbert to put it into my locker for me—I should be back almost at once. Then everything will be tidy——” He stopped helplessly.
“I wasn’t objecting to the untidiness,” Hartington said.
The silence seemed unending. John had never felt so uncomfortable, so utterly at a loss. He knew the contemptuous thoughts that must be passing through Hartington’s mind. He tried haltingly to minimize his error.
“I do it only—only in my spare time,” he said, “just as other people do—do other things.” He wanted to explain that he meant no harm by his poetry, but he could find no words. The poetry itself was the harm, he knew. There was no explaining it away. “Do you mind very much?” he asked nervously.
Hartington smiled. “Mind?” he said. And then he added, “Why should I mind? Is it contrary to the King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions to write verse?”
“No, but——”
“The point is, that most Subs would have made you read it to the Mess after dinner, and very probably beaten you at the end of it—if not on that pretext, then on some other. So it wasn’t very discreet of you to leave it about, do you think?”
“No.”
“And there must be a penalty,” said Hartington, taking John by the arm. “I suppose I must be a very bad Sub in some respects—at any rate, not in accordance with pattern: you’ll find that out, I expect. But there must be a penalty. So after dinner, when we have turned over to the Officer of the Night, you will report yourself in my cabin with the manuscript you are going to read to me, and two whiskies-and-sodas.... Do you mind reading to me?”
“Of course not,” said John, amazed. “I should like to.”
“And I want to hear more of it. So that’s settled.”