Almost any occasion—especially the solemn and pompous—might be enlivened by the flight of the First Lieutenant’s cap. Once he had hurled it, without explanatory comment, into the midst of the ship’s company when they were engaged in prayer during quarter-deck Church.
“Sorry, padre,” he said afterwards. “Forgot about you. Fellow talking. Had to stop him. No other means of communication.”
II
After the Mikado’s funeral the Pathshire visited Vladivostok and Nagasaki before returning to Wei-hai-wei. The way of life ran smooth, and seemed to John to run the smoother because for him its direction might so soon be changed. His hope, at first so weak, of a favourable answer from his mother, had fed upon itself, until at last it had become almost a conviction. He had ceased to think of his future as that of a naval officer.
This sense of approaching emancipation and the thoughts of independence by which it was accompanied changed his attitude towards Margaret. His hope had so grown that now once more it included her. From a midshipman, from an officer who throughout his life would be dependent upon the pay of his rank, she was separated by impassable barriers of wealth, influence, and competition. But now, in the light of his new hope, the barriers between him and her seemed no longer impassable. He would at least have the chance to construct ladders of fame and money before it was too late. He would be able, too, to bring those ladders near. The Service etiquette and tradition would bind him no more. Ordith, for instance, would cease to be his superior officer. He would not be borne away to sea, nor would his shore leave be stopped at the moment when he most wanted to see Margaret. Mr. Fane-Herbert, whom it was impossible not to regard as some kind of naval chief with additional advantages of wealth and civilian freedom, could not continue to treat him as a junior officer of no account. The blind alley would open into a clear field. Opportunity would increase.
Or, at any rate, this is how John’s sudden optimism led him to regard his future.
Margaret was one of a small party that came on board to tea with Hartington early in October. It was a Gunroom party, to which Ordith was not invited. Its beginning had been difficult because civilians seem always to require so much space that a warship cannot provide. The chairs, which had been comfortable enough until it was necessary to invite ladies to sit in them, appeared suddenly to be in a shocking state of disrepair. Never had Gunroom china seemed so thick or Gunroom fare, for all the preparations that had been made, so brutally masculine. The corticene, scarred with burnings of cigarette-ends, cried out for rugs to hide it.
The ladies, however, were tactfully blind to these deficiencies. The tea had been a success. At Hartington’s suggestion the party broke up so that the guests might “see over the ship,” he having conveniently forgotten that they had “seen over” it many times before. He himself took charge of Mrs. Fane-Herbert. Margaret was left to John.
Having examined the Upper Deck twelve-pounders in the view of all the world, he took her into the ammunition and cross-passages, where he knew none other would be. The electric lights flared from polished metal and white enamel; the atmosphere was heavy; their lightest footsteps clattered and resounded. But John was oblivious to all this.
“I’ve never seen you in such good spirits,” she said. “Tell me why.”