“Do you think it will happen again this evening?”
“I don’t know. It can’t happen every evening.... I shouldn’t mind so much if it were a punishment of some kind—if they even pretended that we had done something wrong. As it is, they chase us for an hour, and then offer us drinks, and then chase us again.”
“I think I would rather that,” John answered, “than that they should be avowed enemies. One feels, at any rate, that they are not doing it out of any personal spite against us. They seem to do it largely because they feel they must.”
“But why must they?”
“It’s the tradition, I suppose.”
Fane-Herbert, who had uttered no word of protest while the Evolutions were going on, and who, when they were over, had quietly washed the dust and blood from him and had turned in, broke out now. He was talking to his friend. He could afford to let the mask drop.
“I’m keen on the Service,” he said, “keener than most people, I think. I don’t expect a soft life. I don’t care how much I am chased on duty by commanders and officers of the watch. Probably that makes you do your job better—at any rate, it’s all in the day’s work. Every junior is chased by his seniors in one way or another.... But I swear one has a right to a certain part of one’s life. The Gunroom is our Mess. It is the only place we can go to, or write or read in, or do any of the things we want to do when we are off duty; and it isn’t as if the day was slack. Heaven knows, what with School, and watches, and boats, and signals, and divisional work, and sketches, we have enough ordinary work to do. But then at the end of the day our own Mess is made hell for us.”
“I know. It’s no good thinking about it.”
“I suppose when you and I are Subs there won’t be any of it in our Gunrooms.”