The Young Doctor was waiting with his nose flattened against the darkened window of a gunsmith's opposite when the Lieutenant joined him. His silence held a vague hint of disapproval as they fell into step. "That girl," he ventured presently, "isn't she a bit fond of you, old thing?"
The Junior Watch-keeper paused to light a pipe. "I—I don't think so, Peter. Not more than she is of a dozen others." He glanced at his companion: "You don't think I've been up to any rotten games, do you?" The other shook his head with quick protest. "But I like her awfully, and she's a jolly good little sport. They all are, taking them all round, in a Naval Port. It's a rotten life when you think of it ... cooped up there in that beastly atmosphere, year in, year out, listening to everlasting Service shop, or being made love to by half-tight fools. Their only refuge from it is in marriage—if they care to take advantage of some young ass. Who else do they meet...? The marvel of it is not that a few come to grief, but that so many are so jolly straight. That girl to-night—Molly—I suppose she has refused half a dozen N.O.'s. Prefers to wait till some scallywag in her own class can afford to take her away out of it. And I've heard her talking like a Mother to a rorty Midshipman—a silly young ass who was drinking like a fish and wasting his money and health pub-crawling. She shook him to the core. Lord knows, I don't want to idealise barmaids—p'raps I'd be a better man if I'd seen less of them myself—but——"
The Surgeon gripped his elbow soothingly. "I know—I know, old son. Don't get in a stew! And as for seeing less of them ... it's hard to say. Unless a man knows people ashore, and is prepared to put on his 'superfine suitings' and pay asinine calls when he might be playing golf or cricket, where else is he to speak to a woman all the days of his life? Dances...? I can't dance."
They had turned into the main thoroughfare, and the traffic that thronged the pavements and roadway made conversation difficult. The liberty men from scores of ships in the port streamed to and fro: some arm-in-arm with quietly-dressed servant girls and shop girls; others uproarious in the company of befeathered women. At short intervals along the street a flaring gin-palace or cinema-theatre flung smudges of apricot-coloured light on to the greasy pavements and the faces of passers-by. Trams clanged past, and every now and again a blue-jacket or military foot-patrol, belted and gaitered, moved with watchful eyes and measured gait along the kerb.
As they neared the music-hall the throng grew denser. On all sides the West Country burr filled the night, softening even the half-caught oath with its broad, kindly inflection. Men from the garrison regiments mingled with the stream of blue-clad sailors. A woman hawking oranges from the kerb raised her shrill voice, thrusting the cheap fruit under the noses of passers-by. A group of young Stokers, lounging round a vendor of hot chestnuts, were skylarking with two brazen-voiced girls. At the doorway of the music-hall, a few yards away, a huge man in livery began to bawl into the night, hoarsely incoherent.
The two officers mounted the steps together, and, as one obtained tickets from the booking-office, the other turned with a little smile to look down the mile-long vista of lights and roaring humanity. The scintillant tram-cars came swaying up the street from the direction of the Dockyard: on either side the gleaming windows of the shops that still remained open—the tattooists, the barbers, tobacconists, the fried-fish and faggot shops, and the host of humbler tradesmen who plied most of their trade at this hour—grew fainter and duller, until they dwindled away to a point under the dark converging house-tops. A girl, shouting some shameless jest, broke away from the horse-play round the chestnut-oven, and thrust herself, reeling with laughter, through the passing crowd. A burly Marine caught her by the waist as she wriggled past, and kissed her dexterously without stopping in his stride. His companion smirked appreciation of the feat, and glanced back over his shoulder....
The watcher on the steps turned and followed the other up the broad stairway.
* * * * *
A man with a red nose and baggy trousers was singing a song about his mother-in-law and a lodger. His accents were harshly North Country, and out of the paint-streaked countenance, his eyes—pathetic, brown monkey-eyes—roamed anxiously over the audience, as if even he had little enough confidence in the humour of his song.
The Lieutenant leaned back in his seat and refilled his pipe. "Isn't it wonderful to think that when we come home again in three years' time that chap with the baggy trousers and red nose—or his twin-brother, anyhow—will still be singing about the same old mother-in-law!"