II
That evening John went to Hartington’s cabin for the first of many times; but the first, because it was so unexpected and so full of promise for the future, was perhaps the most marvellous evening of all. It did not end until long after the Gunroom had been closed and the other midshipmen were turned in. By then the ship had become very silent and peaceful. As he climbed into his hammock, after a glance at the curtain behind which Hartington’s cabin-light was still shining, John’s thoughts returned to the King Arthur, and to the nights when he had turned in bruised, bleeding, and covered with the filth of the Gunroom deck. He remembered the hopelessness of his outlook then, the sense he had had of confinement worse than physical confinement, of being surrounded and shut in by a wall which he could never, never break. And now—he thrust his face deep into his pillow—now he had found at last one living soul in and of the profession to which he was bound, in whose eyes the things he cared for were not all dust and ashes.
Upon youth the mass of men’s opinion lies heavily. He who stands alone in faith doubts at last; but two in faith are a sufficient army. And John had begun to doubt. His central beliefs were these: firstly, he believed that Art was a fine thing, a major force in life, not merely a slave to fan merchants or naval officers when they came, hot and tired, from their business in the City or on the bridge; secondly, he believed—to use a term as unrestrictive as his own opinion upon this matter—in political unselfishness. He had found the phrase once when driven into a corner during a trivial Gunroom argument about a newspaper article. Do you believe this? do you believe that? they had shouted at him; and he, because he could not accept all the implications of unqualified assent, and because he knew they would not listen to qualifications, had answered “No” and “No” and “No” again. Are you a Unionist? Are you a Liberal? No. Are you a Socialist? How could he tell them when he had never read Marx or opened one book written by a Russian. They hurled all the old arguments at him. If they sent ashore a naval landing-party, that would soon settle the strikers. Surely a man like the Duke of Westminster, with a real stake in the country, was entitled to more votes than his butler, who had no stake at all? If women were given votes, soon they would sit in Parliament, soon they would be running battleships. Once give way and you always gave way. What was wanted was a firm hand.
“I don’t believe it,” John said.
“Then what on earth do you believe in?”
The question was more searching than they knew—extraordinarily difficult to answer. Yet it had to be answered. Then John had struck upon his phrase. “I believe,” he had said, “in a certain political unselfishness at home and abroad. At least, that’s the spirit of the thing. I can’t explain it any better. It’s of no use to ask me what I should do if I were Prime Minister. I haven’t his experience. I don’t know how he is placed. But I don’t believe in your firm hand and landing-parties. All the blind destroyers have worshipped them.... I can’t go any further than that now—just political unselfishness.”
“That’s all very well as talk, but what would you do?” asked Cunwell, the man of action.
“I don’t know. I admit I don’t know. When I’ve had a chance—if ever—to read History and Economics, and—oh a dozen things I never shall read, then perhaps I shall have a more definite creed.”
And as to the other part of his belief: they didn’t laugh at Shakespeare—he had been a school subject, and was a tradition. They didn’t laugh at him any more than at the crests on their family note-paper. But, they asked, where would Shakespeare have been without Drake and Howard of Effingham? It was a question of values. To them, Art was the camp-follower of Action; to John it was Action’s equal and honourable ally. They thought of books as ministers to the tired warrior in his leisure hours, worthy only if they soothed him. And they liked poetry whose rhythm they could mark with their feet.
The effect of unanimous opposition had been to make John doubt himself. People so far divided by circumstance and experience as Cunwell and Mr. Fane-Herbert agreed on these points at least—that political unselfishness was the talk of ignorant agitators, and that Art was an handmaiden. Were they right after all? They said: “Wherever you look in the world to-day Physical Force rules us. Can you reject universal Evidence? Isn’t it just stubborn and foolish to refuse to do homage to a Force which, if you don’t bow your head, will cut it off? Isn’t it wiser to support the side that has already won?” John had begun to think that this victory must indeed be final. All his friends acclaimed it; scarcely a book he had read, except the New Testament, seemed to challenge it. Many of the poets sang it: not Blake—but Blake was accounted mad.
And now, though they had spent the evening in all the happiness of vigorous disagreement, John had found in Hartington one who denied the finality of this victory. He had been introduced, moreover, to authors who denied it uncompromisingly. Hitherto, such authors had been, within his experience, few, and these few had failed and were dead. They had seemed to have no heirs. That night he discovered that their flame was still guarded and honoured and fed. He had turned over pages, written by living men, that were lit with it. In France, in England, in Germany there were eyes that saw by it. In Russia the sky was red—perhaps with its light.
So, after all, the whole world did not believe that an Army of Occupation must be quartered for ever on the Kingdom of God.
CHAPTER X
EASTERN SEAS
It was not long after they sailed from England that the midshipmen decided that many of their dreams were coming true. The Colonsay, though she was a poor ship to look at, passed the great lowering battleships of the Home Fleet proudly, almost with a little toss of her head. They might frown contemptuously at her, but soon they would be buried in the Northern mists, ploughing up and down eternally, keeping station on the Flag, the bondservants of the wireless at Whitehall; and she would be away for a holiday. True, the wireless could reach her too, but it would not take the trouble. To Colombo and back she would be her own mistress, bound to drop a curtesy only now and then to other people’s admirals whom she might meet at ports of call.
And those who sailed in her might look further than Colombo. There they would take over the Pathshire from her homeward bound crew, and depart towards the freedom of the East. A small ship with its implied intimacy and informality; long cruises independent of even the ladylike China Squadron flagship; few fleet exercises; coaling with shore-labour; new countries, new faces, new interests—this was their prospect. It changed them all, and put new life and hope into them. For two years they were to be outside the vice whose jaws were Gibraltar Straits and the Shetland Isles. It was the release of their lives, a visit of slum children to the open fields. From the Home Fleet they came, and to the Home Fleet they would return, and they were all determined to make the best of the time that was to intervene.
“It’s extraordinary,” John wrote to his mother, “the contrast between this ship and the King Arthur. Ordith is odd to me—but nothing on earth to complain of; and the other two-stripers treat the Gunroom almost as equals off duty. Even on duty they are always polite, except when they let fly in moments of justifiable excitement, and that does no harm. And often they yield points of strict etiquette in a way that makes four hours on the bridge pass like two. I don’t know how long all this will last. I dare say that as the end of good things draws near, the good things themselves will deteriorate. But now everyone is so pleased with life that all goes well. Hartington, the Sub, I like immensely. You don’t know how much happier I am. There’s always something to which to look forward. I think the absence of that was the trouble of the King Arthur, and the trouble of all the unfortunates in home waters.”
The Colonsay put in to Arosa Bay to drop ratings who were taking passage to other ships, and of these the ship’s company took farewell with the air of schoolboys who, going out into the playing-fields, leave comrades to do impositions in class-rooms. At Gibraltar they did not tarry long. Soon after the Rock had gone down over the western horizon they were overtaken by a storm, which continued with extraordinary violence until they were within a few hours of Valetta. To reach the bridge was a formidable task. In the batteries, where the fo’c’sle gave shelter against the head wind, progress was comparatively easy, but, once over the break of the fo’c’sle, the trouble began. There was a space of several yards between the head of the battery ladder and the foot of the ladder that led to the bridge. Across this space had been stretched a rope, by clinging to which it was possible to avoid being whisked off the deck and blown, but for the friendly intervention of a davit or a sighting-hood, into the mountainous sea. John, heavy with sea-boots, and with skirts of oilskins clinging to his legs, held this rope and tried to advance, but the combined strength of legs and arms could not move him. While the boatswain’s-mate, secure under the lee of the bridge ladder, smiled at his attempts, John pulled and pulled but went forward not an inch. Then, suddenly realizing how ridiculous he must look, he burst out laughing, and swiftly choked because he had opened his mouth to the gale. And it was not until the boatswain’s-mate—himself securely lashed to a stanchion—came to his assistance, that John could move at all.
“Is this an official hurricane?” he said to Dyce, whom he was relieving.
“No, not yet. We are logging the wind as eleven. A hurricane is twelve.” He turned over the details of his watch. “Which battery did you come up?”
“Port.”
“Is that the driest to go down?”
John laughed. “There’s devilish little to choose. I think the port’s the better.”
Dyce ran his fingers over his face. “I’m sticky all over with it,” he said. “I feel as if I should crack if I grinned. It stings after a time. All the same, it’s exciting on watch. You never know when the foretopmast will go over the side.... Well, d’you know everything you want to know? Will you take over now? I’m going to the Gunroom to fug.”
“We’ve just had a green sea in there,” said John, “so the fug is considerable.”
The Colonsay entered Valetta white with salt. Ashore there, after coaling, John met Reedham and Ollenor, whose joy in having got so far East was overshadowed by the thought that, when their old shipmates had sailed for Port Said, they themselves would go westward again. “I’d give a year’s seniority to be coming out with you,” said Reedham. “Come and have a drink.”
An ankle twisted while playing grommet hockey on the quarter-deck prevented John from going ashore at Port Said, Suez, or Aden, and his knowledge of these places extended no further than the tales told by other midshipmen of the marvellous things they saw there. Already they had entered the atmosphere of the East. Colours had grown brighter, near outlines more distinct. In the Canal they went into half-whites, and as they entered the Red Sea blue monkey-jackets were discarded altogether, and for the first time they wore white tunics as well as white trousers and boots. The heat made the outboard wall of the Gunroom too hot to lean against. The midshipmen who were working in the Engine-room came up from the watches, not red with heat, but white and trembling with exhaustion.
“This ship,” said Hugh, “may have a thousand advantages, but its engines are not among them. The Tiffeys say they are the hottest they have ever served with—and the Lord defend them from hotter!”
“What watches do you have to keep?” John asked.
“Now only one four-hour watch each day. It doesn’t sound much. You try it. The indicator diagrams are the worst business—one set to be taken every watch. I suppose I’m slow, but I can’t take a set—allowing for mishaps—in much less than half an hour; and the temperature up there, on the top of the cylinders, is anything from 135° to 160°. It’s a real relief to get away into the boiler-rooms for a spell. And the more warm and sooty lime-juice you drink the faster you sweat, so that’s no good. But, barring odd jobs, we have to ourselves twenty hours out of the twenty-four, which is a recompense for most evils.”
There were tales, too, of the stokers on duty on the evaporators, of how they worked in a temperature of 126°, and how they had fainted at their posts within three-quarters of an hour.
From Aden across the Indian Ocean the way was calm and blue. The sea was an enormous, flat, highly-polished sapphire, and its surface was so still by day and so luminous by night that it seemed hard like a jewel. Astern, the wake was thin and regular, and visible almost to the horizon. The ship, and all life in the ship, seemed to John somehow theatrical. The brilliance of colour, the flash of white uniforms in the sun, the absence of most of those Service activities that ordinarily distinguish a warship from a yacht, contributed to this effect. Superficially this life corresponded closely to that led by puppet naval officers on the civilian stage. Here were sea and blue sky, white ducks still new, the gleam of sun on gold-laced shoulder-straps and gilded buttons. It was all pleasant and unreal.
“This,” said Hartington, “is very like a poster advertising for naval recruits. It catches the eye but doesn’t convince the mind.”
“It gives one the idea of the stage, or of toys,” John answered. “The ship goes through the water like a toy boat that you pull by a string across a bath—nothing to interrupt quite regular bow-waves that go oiling on and on to the very edge.”
Hartington leaned across his bunk towards his cabin scuttle. “Listen, now,” he said. “Down there—by the water-line—not a muffled swish of waves, but, clear and distinct, the touch of particles of water on steel. Almost you can hear each bubble split and scatter.... You seem, as you go East, to be able to look at everything very close, every detail like a minutely accurate miniature—or, as you said, a toy that you can pick up and hold under your eye. I remember, when I was a small boy, I loved to pick up a toy horse and cart, or an engine or a house—just for the fun of feeling like a god. I was Destiny brooding over the nursery! I could throw a divine boot at my sister’s dolls’ tea-party—but I didn’t, because of the crockery. But often, when one of her dolls was ill, and the doctor had failed, and the bottles were empty of physic, I used to remove the roof of the house—my dramatic mode of entry—and take the patient from her bed, and cure her, and put her out in the garden. Nine times out of ten my sister approved the miracle; but now and then, when she had had ideas of her own about that cure—probably a journey round the world from the night-nursery to the school-room—she used to weep because I had spoilt everything. I remember her nurse asked me what I meant by interfering, and I said solemnly that I had meant well—which was quite true—but that I had been ‘playing at God.’ I shall never forget the effect of that remark.”
“And here and now,” John said, “one has a feeling of being in the doll’s house one’s self.”
“And a horrible idea that someone is ‘playing at God’ not very far off—Someone whose Hand might come suddenly out of nothing and pick the painted ship up out of the painted ocean and—and drop it into the nursery fire. I used to send tin soldiers to Hell that way.”
John smiled. “Is that the ‘fatalism of the East?’”
“No: it’s a Cockney picking up an idea of Time and Space and the other capital letters. ‘O Time and Change they range and range From sunshine round to thunder.’... Have you written more verse?”
“No.”
“What have you written?”
“Nothing. It’s too hot.”
They sipped Irish whisky and lemon beneath the electric fan whizzing and vibrating in its cage.
CHAPTER XI
AWAY FROM THE SHIP
At Colombo the exchange of crews between Pathshire and Colonsay was effected as an evolution. With the exception of a few hands left behind for indispensable duties, both ships were simultaneously emptied into their boats. As they met and passed the men tried to cheer, but silence was immediately restored. There would be time for cheering, perhaps, when, with her new freight, the Colonsay left for home.
To John, who was too junior to have seen anything of the traditional “spit and polish” in the old Channel Fleet, the Pathshire was a revelation. In China, where time was less precious than in the North Sea, and where the menace of Wilhelmshaven was more remote, Gunnery, Torpedo Practice, and Fleet Exercises had not made good their claim to undivided attention. The Pathshire was full of bright work, which in home waters would have been obscured by Service grey. Her paint and enamel glistened in the sunlight so that her after-turret was a mirror; her stanchions were burnished like a knight’s armour; her dull metal was overlaid with silver gilt; everywhere were decorative turk’s-heads and whitened lanyards; her upper deck was spotless as a yacht’s.
“Think of Cleaning Stations in this packet!” said Sentley. “It must have cost her Commander and Number One about a third of their pay to provide all the paint and enamel in excess of the Service allowance.”
The Gunroom, they discovered, was but half a Gunroom, their quarters having been cut into two parts by a temporary bulkhead. One part was given over to the Warrant Officers, but, in compensation for this, Hartington obtained permission from the Commander to use as a smoking-room the after main-deck casemate on the starboard side. There had been no midshipmen in the previous commission, so that all furniture other than the scanty Service fittings had to be bought with the Mess Fund. A few wicker armchairs, a couple of cheap card-tables, and several ash-trays—these things being regarded as essentials—were obtained at Colombo, and all else was left, at Hartington’s suggestion, until they should reach the wider market of Hong Kong.
Nearly a week was to pass before they sailed again, and the midshipmen were given leave. John and Hugh went together to Kandi. They avoided the obvious hotel which other officers were likely to visit, and chose a place that consisted of three small bungalows, almost hidden among the trees that covered the hill on the less popular side of the lake. Here came men whose experience of the “best hotels” in the East did not tempt them to strain their finances—quiet folk, who were chiefly remarkable, in John’s eyes, for the matter-of-fact way in which they regarded what to him was novel and amazing. And the hotel itself, save when a breath of wind stirred the branches that overhung it or the sound of gong or bell came up from the lake below, was deeply silent.
After dinner on the evening of their arrival, sitting together in the verandah that ran the whole length of the three bungalows, and watching their cigarette smoke twist and disappear against a sky of so heavy a purple that the stars seemed to be embedded in it, they discussed their plans for the morrow—discussed them happily and at leisure, knowing that their time was their own, and that any decision made to-night might be freely reversed in the morning. As they were on the point of leaving the Pathshire an English mail—the first to reach them since they left home—had been distributed, and each had brought his share to Kandi unread. “Let’s keep them,” John had suggested, “until after dinner to-night, when we shall be alone and quiet, and clear away from the ship.” And now they brought out their letters from their pockets and began the reading they had so long postponed. Soon there was little sound but that of pages being turned. From far down the verandah came the murmur of indistinguishable voices, and from time to time the hiss of a match or the sharp tinkle of a liqueur glass.
Among John’s letters was one from Margaret, which he did not open until all the others had been returned to their envelopes. Then he read it slowly. When he began he was content with the moment. This evening’s beauty and quietness, so wonderful a contrast to the nights he had spent in the King Arthur, seemed a satisfaction of all his desires. For two days he was independent of routine—free to control his own movements, to read, to sleep, to go in and out according to his will. He and Hugh were filled with the spirit of content that visits all men at the beginning of their holiday. There had seemed no need to look further, to question motives or consequences. The night was pleasant; this letter of Margaret’s would add pleasure to the night.
But, as he read, he began to remember many things which the freedom of his new life from persecution had caused him to forget. She spoke of London, of political plots and rumours, of the strength or weakness of new movements, of the expansion of new ideas. New books, new expressions of opinion; the words of men who had been her father’s guests; fears of a strike at Ibble’s—her letter was extraordinarily suggestive of keenness and activity. Much had happened, more was about to happen—and this in a London many weeks away. What, Margaret asked, had he been doing? What had he written? He looked back over weeks of inactivity. He had done nothing but talk to Hartington. Days had slipped by—precious days. Since he left England he had read little, had created nothing, had not tried to create. The storm of the King Arthur being over he had relapsed into lazy content. Time had sped.
To youth, consciousness of the passage of time comes seldom, but coming, it brings with it pain by which age is not affected—pain unsoftened by any acceptance of the inevitable. Still the chance; still the opportunity to make good; still the feverish casting about for means! And middle-age growing nearer—a vision of the insignificant man going to and fro between his home and office, of the two-and-a-half stripe lieutenant many, many times passed over! John saw that he had been wasting his life.
Then he saw, in a flash that left him blind, that, unless its whole course were changed, he would continue to waste his life. Waste—and at the end old age, looking back upon years empty of achievement. “If only I had my time again! If I were but eighteen once more!” It was as if this foreseen wish had been uttered and fulfilled. He was eighteen now. The future was still his.
The letter fell with his hand on to his knees.
“Finished?” Hugh asked. John looked up to encounter his laughing eyes. “I have been watching your face,” he went on. “It seems to have been a disturbing letter.”
“It was,” John answered. “It reminds me how far we are out of the world and how infernally slack I have been.”
He held out the envelope that the writing might be seen.
“Margaret!” Hugh exclaimed. “What has she been saying?”
“She has made me think, thrown me back on things I had forgotten. It was so good to be free of the King Arthur that, during the whole passage out, the world has seemed the best of all possible worlds. It isn’t—or it won’t be long. Oh, Hugh, it’s all very well—a happy ship, a good Wardroom, a good Sub, and no Gunroom persecution; but what does it all lead to? I want to do other things—things I shall never be able to do—and to meet other people.”
Hugh, believing that John was thinking particularly of Margaret, said: “At any rate, some of the ‘other people’ will be out East before long.”
“You dear old fool!” John exclaimed. “That isn’t what I meant.... No; it’s just restlessness, I suppose. I feel that all the work we do is so like a housemaid’s—to-day’s routine the same as to-morrow’s. We never build or make anything. For all our work we leave nothing behind.”
“I don’t see your trouble,” Hugh said. “So long as life is pleasant I don’t want to leave anything behind.”
“We are missing so much. We get out of touch. In whatever progress there is we have no part.”
“I know we are missing a great deal. Every letter I get from outside makes me jealous of the people at home. They can go about and see things, and we are shut up day in and day out.”
“How they would shout if they heard you say that!” John broke in. “Mostly they imagine that it is they who are shut in and we who go about—as they say—seeing the world. It’s all wrong. The world doesn’t consist in places but in people. And the only boundaries are boundaries of thought. Think of the people your sister listens to, the books she reads, the opinions that count—coming to her first hand. Men and women from abroad—Germans, French, Americans—she is beginning to be in touch with them all. But the Service boundaries are desperately close-drawn.”
Hugh leaned back in his chair and yawned. “I suppose we are all much the same,” he said. “We all feel shut in—or shut out, rather—though perhaps for reasons different from yours. Sentley wants plants and birds—being a naturalist; and there’s not a plant or a bird in H.M.’s ships. Driss wants Ireland; Driss is almost sick for Ireland sometimes and he can’t go there. And do you remember Tintern?—he was starved for music. He said to me once—dead serious—that if he could get music he would never get drunk. He used to dream about going to Germany and being educated—‘start life all over again with the five-finger exercise,’ he used to say.... And the strange thing is that officers of the Old Navy didn’t feel like that. I suppose they were made of harder stuff. Last leave I asked an old retired Admiral about his snotty days, and he said, ‘No, we didn’t hanker after shore life as you young fellows do. Of course, we were keen enough to get ashore when we could—better food and beds—but I think we were all of us glad in a way to get back to the ship.’”
“But the Navy was smaller then, and more independent of the outside world,” John said. “I dare say your old Admiral felt an almost personal affection for it. But you can’t have affection for a vast machine that is itself only a unit in a greater system of machinery; you can feel loyalty, perhaps, but not affection. It’s like trying to fall in love with a Board of Directors. The Service is too big and impersonal to love. Moreover, it isn’t a free agent. You know as well as anyone what lies behind it.”
“Ibble’s?”
“And more.”
“And Ordith’s?”
“More than Ibble and Ordith’s, more even than the whole armament ring. Behind the armament firms are the mines, behind the mines is shipping, behind shipping—oh, it goes on for ever expanding and expanding. It goes out in every direction, and drags in every individual in the world—shareholders, banks, the financial houses at home, international finance—there it is, fully expanded again. Your sister, viewing it from her own angle, sums it up as a Net. We are all shut up inside it, and everyone who thinks is swimming round and round trying to find a way out. Discontented devils—so we are! Every novel that says anything is full of protest, and every speech—public or private. The papers call it Industrial Unrest, the Foreign Correspondents European Unrest. The whole world’s affected as it was not in your Admiral’s time.... And in the Service we are shut up in a corner pocket of the Net; we haven’t the chance even to swim round and round.”
“Margaret will never accept anything,” Hugh commented. “Father is always telling her that if only she would watch the world as it is instead of thinking of the world as it might be she would get on much better.”
“You wouldn’t care much for a sister who sat down placidly to watch the world as it is,” John observed.
“No—it wouldn’t be attractive. I don’t mind so long as she doesn’t go to hopeless extremes,” added her cautious brother. “But she won’t do any good. The net is there, and the net will remain.”
“Until it breaks,” John said.
Two men and a woman with a shrivelled face passed along the verandah into the hotel. One of the men was chinking the coins in his pocket. A dog rose sleepily from under the table by which they had been sitting, stretched himself, sniffed the warm air, and pattered after his master.