I
On the afternoon of the first Sunday after the Pathshire sailed from Colombo for Singapore, Hartington was sitting alone in his cabin when a double knock sounded at the door and the curtains were drawn aside. A pale face, with thin lips, watery, protuberant eyes, and a pitted forehead fringed with straight, clipped hair, was thrust into the cabin.
“Hullo, Aggett! Come in.”
Aggett smiled, exposing the gaps in his teeth, and entered awkwardly. He was an Engineer-Lieutenant of the older, rougher school. Round his neck, instead of a collar, he wore a white scarf that was not clean. The creases in his fingers and the thick cuticles which grew high on his nails were stained with oil and dirt. But that scarred forehead and those strange eyes which had the extraordinary opaque appearance of great age—almost as if they had done service once before to some other being now dead—proclaimed their owner’s intelligence. A flabby vicious little man, but no fool, this Aggett appeared. And, to one who cared to seek further, to contrast the darting movements of his hands with the cumbrousness of his feet, or to remark how strong and decided a voice proceeded from that poor body, Aggett seemed more than intelligent. He possessed force and wariness, a rare power to stake all at need, combined with a distrust of his fellows, which was valuable because it was discriminating. He was a man whom it was impossible to imagine as a child. No lasting affection of wife or mother could be easily thought of as connected with him. He could have no home, no ties. He passed, surely, from ship to hotel, from hotel to ship, making hundreds of acquaintances but not a friend, despising and using all he met, never introspective or lonely, sufficient unto himself.
He threw over the cabin a quick glance of disapproval. It irritated him that anyone should take trouble to decorate his habitation; and he was the more irritated in this instance because Hartington’s taste, unlike that of many officers who tried to make their cabins “tiddley,” could not be easily scorned as effeminate. The few photographs, in the simplest of wooden or silver frames; the books, with their appearance of dignity and quietness; the pictures—here a Medici reproduction of a Dürer drawing, there a water-colour landscape of the hills about Fiesole—were such as no woman was likely to have chosen. Aggett wanted to say what he said usually to officers whose walls were not so bare as his own, “This place is like a whore’s boudoir;” but his sense of the appropriate overcame him, and he said:
“Well, Hartington-me-lad, sittin’ in your country residence, eh? Let’s ring for the family butler.”
“Which means you want a cocktail? Put your head out and ask one of the snotties in the casemate to send for Ah Foo.”
Aggett did as he was bid, sat down on the edge of a chair, and took a cigarette from a paper packet concealed in his breast-pocket.
“Ordith wants you to come in to supper to-night in the Wardroom. Can do?”
“Yes. I shall have to leave you early, though. I’ve got the Middle. I shall want some sleep first.”
“Right.... Ordith asked me to come with the invite. He’s workin’—always workin’.”
“Gunnery?”
“Yes. Fellows in the Wardroom don’t know how much work he puts in. I know him better than most. I do know. They think he’s slack ’cause he only takes a watch now and then. But I give you my word”—he leaned forward and smacked Hartington’s knee—“I give you my word there’s not a man in this ship or any other damned ship who does more work than Ordith.”
“I believe it. And he has brains.”
“Brains!” Aggett exclaimed. “I should jus’ say he has. One o’ the smartest men alive. And no slop or sentiment. On and on like a well-lubricated engine. And an eye to the main chance—why, I’ll tell you.” He hitched up his chair closer to Hartington’s, and continued with slow emphasis: “Ordith’s a man worth watchin’. Head an’ shoulders above the Service truck. All the powers have an eye on him. Ordith and Co.? Why, you mark my words, Ordith’s goin’ to control more ’n that some day.... Good fellow, too. Think so?”
“I like him,” Hartington answered, “though I don’t know him well. None of us knows him well, so far as I can see. He keeps to himself.”
“He keeps to himself where the blamed fools are concerned. An’ he looks round slow, an’ takes his pick o’ the best.”
Hartington laughed. “So it’s a particular compliment to be asked to supper?”
“Well,” said Aggett slowly, “I wasn’t thinkin’ o’ that. But I dare say you’re right. He’s not a friend to be sniffed at.”
Ah Foo, light-footed and blue-clad, came in with cocktails.
“Rum crowd of snotties in your Gunroom,” Aggett said, when he had sipped his drink and thrown a slice of lemon-peel into the wastepaper basket. “They want shakin’, I think.”
“Why? What have they done wrong?”
“Oh, nothing in particular; but they seem to take life too easy to my way of thinkin’. Got a nice, thick stick? A taste o’ that would do ’em good.”
“Well, you look after them in the Engine-room,” Hartington said, “and I’ll see about the Gunroom; then we shan’t quarrel.”
Aggett emptied his glass and rose. “Don’t think I’m tryin’ to poke my finger into your pie. You can mollycoddle the young gents to your heart’s content, for all I care. But you’ll find it doesn’t pay in the long run. You mark my words.”
And he went out of the cabin, leaving Hartington to wonder what lay behind this visit and this invitation. He had noticed that Aggett was much in Ordith’s company, and had marvelled that one so uncouth should be so well received in that quarter. What was now afoot? What reason had Ordith to cultivate the acquaintance of the Sub of the Gunroom? And why had Aggett been sent—for it was plain that he had been sent—to sing Ordith’s abilities and importance.
When he left Hartington, Aggett went immediately to Ordith’s cabin. He found Nick in white trousers and a singlet, mopping his forehead so that sweat should not run down on to the drawings over which he was bending. At Aggett’s entry Nick looked up, a pair of dividers held between his fingers.
“Well?” he said.
“O.K. He’ll come.”
“Get a drink?”
“One cocktail.”
“Seem well disposed?”
“Fair to moderate. Likes you; doesn’t like me. Thinks I’m a coarse brute.”
Nick smiled. “Well, you’re not a fairy, Aggett. He’s a delicately nurtured young man, you must remember. Old county family, and God knows what!”
“I know about that,” Aggett answered. “I don’t go much by the fruit that grows on the family tree.”
“That’s where you are at fault.”
“Fault be damned. Then is that what you are at—makin’ the most of the Hartington family connection?”
Nick laid down his dividers and turned to face Aggett. “No,” he said. “That particular connection doesn’t happen to be of any use to me.”
“Well, what is it then? Look here, Ordith, I’m in with you in all your pretty little schemes—or am I wrong? No? Very good, then. I give you expert engineering advice—and you won’t find a better combination of theory and practice than there is in me. I help you all I can. Probably I get nothing out of it. I’m prepared to risk that. I’ll chance your caring to remember me when you are Ordith and Co. But I want to know right now what you are up to. Why are you bringing in this Sub? What the hell use is he to be? Tell me straight.”
“I will tell you straight, although, so far as you are concerned, it’s a side issue. Haven’t you observed that Hartington’s popular with the snotties? Haven’t you seen young Lynwood go into Hartington’s cabin evening after evening?”
“I dare say. Well?”
“Lynwood’s friend is Fane-Herbert. I foresee that when old Fane-Herbert and his wife and daughter come out East we shall see much of Lynwood, Hartington, and, of course, the son himself. Now Hartington may not appeal too strongly to old Fane-Herbert, but unless I’m much mistaken the women will take to him. He talks well. He may be persuasive and have influence. And I’d rather have him a friend than—the other thing. That’s the long and short of it.”
Aggett shot out a glance of suspicion; then covered it with a smile. He felt that even the cautious Ordith was looking uncommonly far ahead. Hartington to Fane-Herbert the snotty; the snotty to the women; the women to Fane-Herbert the father—it was a circuitous approach. He did not know that Ordith was now thinking, not of contracts but of personalities, not of the father but of the daughter. Aggett knew nothing of Margaret. His partnership with Ordith was a business partnership—loose and informal at that.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Anyhow, I leave it to you.”
Nick turned to his drawings when Aggett had gone, but did not immediately begin to work. Aggett—what a dirty little man he was! But full of knowledge and energy which was useful now, which might be even more useful some day. It went against the grain that he should be even remotely connected with Margaret. He didn’t know; he should never know. And yet—those searching eyes would see, that alert brain form its conclusions. Probably Aggett would come and make his oily jokes about love and women and masculine weakness. They would be hard to endure. Nick thought for a moment that he would banish Aggett from his confidence, do without him. He was a mean creature; why not break with him? Then Aggett’s virtues rose up in his defence. He was a wonderful fellow to pick holes in an idea, to expose the impracticable in a theory—a destructive critic of great ability. And Nick knew how much he stood in need of informed destructive criticism. At night he would discover some improvement in breech mechanism, or a perfected driving-band or a brilliant new system of fire-control. When he rose in the morning he would be blind with enthusiasm, aware only of the excellence of his own idea. But the thing would need to be threshed out. Talk was the only method, so poor a critic was he of himself. And Aggett could talk admirably. He could put his finger instantly on a weak spot.... Yes, Aggett was indispensable. Sly jokes and indecencies, those unpleasant teeth, that grating laugh—they must be borne. Margaret or no Margaret, Aggett was necessary.
“Don’t be a fool,” Nick said aloud. “Don’t give way to your prejudices.”
He dipped his head into cold water and dried himself vigorously with a rough towel. Then he picked up his dividers, and, commanding concentration as others switch on an electric light, began to work quickly.