“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.”
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.”