I
It happened that his mother’s reply, reaching the Pathshire in the middle of October, came to John soon after he had learnt of what he believed to be his irretrievable loss of Margaret. With her loss his need for her became more instant. While she had belonged to none other, and his own future had been at least not closed to dreams, he had hesitated to admit, even to himself, that he loved her. The lesson of the complete insignificance of midshipmen, which the Service teaches with such energy and eagerness, had been so deeply impressed upon him that, even in a matter so personal as this, he had been unable to forget it. “For drill purposes,” as the Service says, snotties did not love—they had women; and it was indeed ridiculous in one whose pay was twelve-and-threepence a week to contemplate any love that might lead to marriage. Moreover, John had felt that Time was on his side, and Chance as yet not a declared enemy. He had dreamed of a swift end to his snotty days, of expanding fortune, of reinforced hope. He had wished to justify his claim to Margaret before making it.
It had seemed enough that she should stand for the imaginative, the creative, the permanent—a contrast to that professional side of his life which he took to be destructive and ephemeral. But now all these things were changed. By his mother’s letter it had been made clear that there would be no expansion of fortune, no reinforcement of hope, no breaking free into a new world. Margaret ceased to represent the possibly attainable.
The outlines of his vision of her were thus sharpened. Now that she and his hopes for the future were at once taken away from him he saw her as he had never seen her before. Her personality stood out more clearly. A new fierceness and impatience entered into his thoughts of her. That the worldly difficulties in the way of his claiming her were as great as ever mattered no longer. That he was still a midshipman mattered not at all. There was no denying now that he loved her—that fact dominated all others, sweeping aside doubts, and arguments, and misgivings.
For a time this singleness of purpose was a source of happiness, a stimulant, the effects of which rapidly passed away. At last John went to Hartington, and showed him the fateful letter.
“Well,” Hartington said, “what are you going to do?”
“It’s definitely the end,” John answered. “It’s no good to go on hoping to leave the Service. I’d better settle down to it, I suppose.”
“What are you going to say to your mother?”
“Oh, some lie. I don’t want her to worry her soul out. Better make her believe I’ve changed my mind. How does one change one’s mind convincingly?”
Together they planned his reply.
“It’s all very well for me to say I will settle down,” John said, “but there’s no incentive in this job. I shall always look outside it. And yet, God knows, I shall take it lying down like the rest of them: grumble and grouse, but never break free, never rebel. Isn’t it odd how one submits and submits, until at last the average N.O. begins to believe, ‘Oh well, it isn’t so bad, after all’?”
“Even the cabhorse gets accustomed to his cab—perhaps gets to like it in the end.”
John answered: “I begin to see the wisdom of breaking snotties while they are young. I suppose it’s kinder in the long run.”