During their passage to England, John and Hugh heard many golden legends of the East, but, apart from these, they had a reason of their own for looking eagerly towards the future. Mr. Alter had said that Mrs. Fane-Herbert and Margaret were going to China. This news, which, while he himself expected to remain west of the Straits, had promised Hugh nothing but that he would spend in strangers’ houses what little leave he might obtain, now made his good fortune seem more fortunate. It meant that his own people would be often accessible to him. And into John’s imaginings of the East Margaret persistently entered. Though his acquaintance with her was so short, he never thought of her as of a stranger. The very brevity of their contact made vivid his memory of her. Her personality appeared to him as a thing apart, strangely complete, and significant on account of its completeness and its independence of the rest of his life. The impression she had made upon him was an impression of contrast. His own existence was set about with a wall of steel. A door had opened for a moment, and he had seen her. When the door was closed, still he saw her, an occupant of another world, the citizenship of which was denied him. For all the interdicts he had laid upon himself in his attempt to settle down where Fate had cast him, he made from time to time dream-sorties into that other world, and on these occasions of secret adventure it was Margaret whom he encountered. But the country in which he found her was strange to him. He was conscious always of having overstepped his boundaries. To stray, even in dreams, beyond his steel wall was to expose himself to forces outside his experience, and now life seemed indefinably dangerous as it had never seemed before.
It is this sense of danger, experienced by all natures neither utterly animal nor merely trivial, that gives to love both its dignity and its finest colour. It is never more acute than in minds that have been isolated or confined, for to these the new world is new indeed. John was so much a stranger to the perilous country that as yet he did not call it by any name. In childhood his shy reserve had withheld him from close friendship. His mother had been an invalid—“too frail to be hugged”—and it was not until circumstances had placed her beyond his reach that her strength had in some measure returned to her. His nurse, unusually free from a mistress’s supervision, had been too occupied with her own affairs to accept the devotion which John would have given so eagerly. He had no sister upon whom to expend his affection. For lack of outlet, emotion had accumulated within him until its force could no longer be resisted.
Margaret had seemed so inaccessible, by reason of her own position and of the distances which must always divide him from her, that John had never regarded her as a prize he might hope to win. The thought of her was as a clear bugle awakening the finest legions of his mind—thoughts which had slept long, and, being aroused, were masters of the evil in him, masters of sorrow and loneliness and pain, as faith is master of us all while faith endures.
And now, though the difficulty of her position remained, the miles between them were to be swept away. For on the China Station ships remained long in one port, and leave was more generously given than elsewhere. John listened gladly to the tales that were told of Yokohama and Tokio, of Hong Kong and Shanghai, but repeated to himself, happy in the possession of his secret, “She will be there, and there will be no London to absorb her.” It was almost incredible that the news which, when it was given, had seemed disastrous should have become the substance of his happiness.
Then doubt arose. The first letters Margaret wrote to Hugh on the subject had confirmed Mr. Alter’s tale; both her father and mother had been in favour of her going. Then her tone had become less assured.
“I don’t know whether I shall go to China after all,” she wrote. “Father is discovering difficulties—or, rather, Mr. Ordith, who has been to China, is discovering them for him; and now he talks of taking mother with him, and leaving me in the charge of some aunt—I don’t know which aunt.”
And in a later letter:
“Father seems to have decided now that I am to stay in England. I am horribly disappointed. It may be the only chance I shall ever have of seeing the East—and the East is changing so fast. Mother is still on my side, I think, though she doesn’t like to say very much. It is so difficult for her and for me to argue, because neither of us knows anything about China, and Mr. Ordith, who has been staying with us again, is full of facts and figures. I wonder why he is so much against my going? He is always pointing out difficulties. He has a mind like a blue-book, all tabulated and accurate. You can almost hear him saying, ‘Section Two, Sub-section Four—so-and-so; Sub-section Five—so-and-so.’ What can an ordinary human being do in face of that? Of course, father is tremendously impressed. He says it is so refreshing to meet a young man with an orderly mind. There’s no doubt that Mr. Ordith is clever, and very attractive—in a way. I dare say he is right about the Chinese horrors, but, even if he is, there’s no need to tell the truth so often. But I still have hopes. Nothing is definite yet. Perhaps if I light enough of father’s cigarettes and warm his Times for him every morning, he may relent. Or perhaps all the aunts will refuse to have me, if I get my word in first.”
When these letters arrived Hugh paid little attention to them. He had made up his mind that his family was leaving England, and he refused to be deluded by false hopes. But now, when his attitude towards the matter had been changed, he read over with real anxiety such of Margaret’s letters as he had not destroyed.
“This fellow Ordith,” he said to John, when the extracts had been read aloud, “seems likely to be an infernal nuisance. He is a Gunnery Lieut. R.N.—a star-turn at Whaley, an inventor and that kind of thing. My father’s firm, Ibble and Company, has a lot of Admiralty contracts. I suppose that’s how they met.”