QUARTERED ON THE KINGDOM
I
After leave which extended longer than any of them had hoped, the
junior midshipmen, who had parted at the _King Arthur’s_ gangway,
joined the _Colonsay_. In the sense that in their new ship there was
none senior to them they were junior midshipmen no longer. The Gunroom
would still have to be tidied by them, but, instead of Clearing-up
Stations at Krame’s command, there would be organization based upon
common consent. When the atmosphere became foul at sea, they would have
to open and shut the scuttles if they wanted fresh air, but this would
not be Scuttle Drill. Between them and an emancipation essential to
what happiness they might find in the _Colonsay_ and _Pathshire_ there
stood only one doubt. Of the Sub-Lieutenant they knew nothing but that
his name was Hartington. He was not on board when they joined, and all
the questions concerning him that they put to one another remained
unanswered.
“Anyhow,” said Cunwell, “if he kicks up a dust it will be easy enough
for us--there are six of us--to keep him steady.”
It sounded easy; but the Service tradition was against it.
“That’s bluff,” John answered. “We might be able to stave off obstacle
races and Angostura hunts if we were prepared to make a Gunroom
Revolution of it, but, as a matter of fact, we shouldn’t try. You know
we shouldn’t when it came to the point. If Hartington wants to make it
Hell for us, he can, though he is alone. But if he wants to live in
love and charity with his neighbours, we ought to have the best time of
any snotties in the Service.”
Hartington came on board late that evening, and, after an appearance
in the Gunroom too brief to give any indication of his character,
disappeared into his cabin. On his way thither he had passed John and
Hugh in the Chest Flat.
“I wonder if he realizes what an immense difference he can make to us
all,” John said. “Think, a two years’ commission in China, with no one
in the Gunroom but ourselves and a Sub we get on with! I don’t believe
he could spoil it all, if he knew.”
“I dare say we shall shake along, anyway,” Hugh answered. “But it would
be good--even if he were just neutral and didn’t go out of his way to
worry us.”
The anxiety was universal. All the midshipmen were discussing him in
whose hands their future lay. Then came Driss.
“I think Hartington’s going to be all right,” he said. “You know that,
for some reason, they have put my chest down outside his cabin--it will
have to be moved in the morning. Well, Sentley was standing by my chest
while I was looking to see if I had some pyjamas there--I came later
than the rest of you, so my trunk and tin case are still on deck. I
left them there, thinking I had in my hand-bag all I should want for
to-night. And, while I was cursing because I couldn’t find my pyjamas,
Hartington put his head out of his cabin. I had clean forgotten he
was inside, and I thought he was going to let me have it for making a
noise. But he just asked what was the matter--quite civilly, you know.”
Driss paused to allow the others to be sufficiently impressed by the
fact that the Sub in such circumstances had been quite civil.
“So I told him I should have to go up on deck and get my trunk down.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Pyjamas? Come in here and choose a pair
of mine. Blue silk or white silk? They are rather attractive, don’t you
think?’”
“He lent you some?”
“So might dozens of Subs!” Cunwell exclaimed scornfully.
“Yes,” said Driss eagerly, “so they might; but not in that way. I swear
he treated me as--as, an ordinary human being in a country house might
treat another ordinary human being who was short of a pair of pyjamas.
None of the being-generous-to-junior-snotties touch. You wouldn’t have
thought there was such a thing as seniority. I believe he must come
from the South of Ireland--though I’ve never heard the name there,” he
added solemnly.
“That sounds promising,” Hugh said. “I wonder.... Oh, wouldn’t it be
great, Driss, if Hartington were like that all through!”
“I believe he will be,” Driss answered. “I’m almost sure he will be.
He didn’t even give me the pyjamas and have done with it. We talked
for quite a long time--about where we should put his photographs,
and pictures, and writing-desk--he has an old writing-desk that he’s
very keen on, and an odd taste in pictures. And we talked about other
things as well, all off the ordinary track, just as if there wasn’t any
Service at all.”
But even then they could not believe that nothing aggressive lay
beneath this apparently pleasing exterior. Driss, who had seen and
heard, found it impossible to carry conviction in face of the others’
deep-rooted scepticism. The next day routine was irregular. Hartington
went ashore soon after breakfast and did not return until the dog
watches, when he took over the duties of the officer who had been
keeping the Day On with John as his midshipman.
“Have you been keeping watch all day?” Hartington asked.
“Yes, sir, on and off. I’ve been below a good deal when there was
nothing doing on deck.”
“Tired?”
“No, not very; I’d much rather keep Days On than the regular four-hour
watches.”
“Is anyone coming up to take over from you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, you may as well go below. I’ll look out up here. I’ll send down
a side-boy if I want you.”
In the Gunroom John found everyone busy appropriating lockers and
bringing in their books and papers from their chests.
“There’s enough room for two lockers each, and three for Hartington,”
Dyce said. “Those are your two, Lynwood, in the corner--the worst
billet of the lot.... No, we didn’t just push you into them because
you were away. We cut round--someone cut for you--and you were lurked.”
“I don’t mind,” John said. “Two lockers anywhere are luxury. I’ll
get my books in. By the way, Driss, I think you were right about
Hartington. He took over the watch just now; asked if I was tired, and
sent me down.”
“Of course I was right,” Driss answered, smiling. “Did you happen to
discover where he lives?”
“No; we aren’t on a personal footing yet. I called him ‘sir,’ being on
watch.”
They unpacked slowly, pausing often to sit on the table and discuss
the most suitable stowage places for sextants and Inman’s Tables and
Seamanship Manuals. They had a feeling of spaciousness and independence
that was altogether delightful--so glorious did it seem to dispose
their own dwelling-place in their own way, instead of availing
themselves of whatever odd corners were left over by Krame and Howdray.
On the table was a pile of John’s possessions--books, instruments, and
innumerable manuscripts which, though he had no hope of being able to
shake them into publishable form, he had not the heart to destroy.
There was a foolscap book with marble covers into which he had copied
such poems as he had completed; there were penny exercise-books in
which novels had been sketched and begun; there were bundles of papers
tied together with tape; and sheets of all colours and sizes, some of
them but half covered with writing, upon which he had set down pieces
of description, scraps of narrative and dialogue, and sentences
from imaginary political speeches--fragmentary records of fiery and
ambitious dreams. How little his best friends in that Gunroom knew of
the things that were written there! How they would laugh if they read
them, for many were evidence of absurd imaginings! John turned them
over. Here was the peroration by which the _King Arthur’s_ able seaman,
“’undredth class for conduck, ’undredth class for leave,” was to bring
the Albert Hall to its feet--“jes’ as if I ’ad ’em on strings.” And
here was John’s own speech to the House of Commons on Home Rule; here
his reply to the Foreign Secretary’s pronouncement on the imminence of
war with Germany--and in the corner of the manuscript he had written
the great sentence from John Bright’s speech on the Crimean War. On
the back of an old Torpedo Sketchbook he found his notes on Lawrence’s
_Principles of International Law_--part of the equipment of a Foreign
Secretary’s critic, he remembered with a smile, and among the notes was
a passionately eulogistic review of Mrs. Lynn Lynton’s _True History
of Joshua Davidson_. Some of his essays had progressed no further than
their motto--perhaps the fire within him had dried up his pen, perhaps
a boat had been called away....
“Midshipman o’ the Watch ’ere, sir?” said the voice of an invisible
side-boy.
“Yes.”
“Orficer o’ the Watch wants you on deck, sir.”
“All right.”
“I’m going down to have a cigarette,” Hartington said when John reached
him. “Let me know if there’s a panic.”
For an uneventful hour John walked up and down at the top of the
gangway. A hand touched his arm, and he turned to find Hugh beside him.
“John, what do you think has happened?”
“What? Something to do with Hartington?”
“Hartington has been reading some of your stuff.”
“Lord Almighty! How did he get hold of it?”
“Found it on the deck in the Gunroom. He picked it up to see what it
was. Then he asked if it was private. Cunwell said No, you often let
people read it.”
“Some of it,” said John, “and some people.”
“I know. But we couldn’t do anything. Hartington smiled, and said
that, seeing it wasn’t letters and was sculling about the deck of his
Gunroom, he thought he had a right. We couldn’t do anything,” Hugh
repeated. “But I thought I’d better come and tell you.”
John thought for a moment.
“What was he reading?” he asked.
“I don’t know--verse, I think.”
“In a marble-covered book?”
“Yes, he had that. He said it looked more like a formal volume for the
public service than the odd bits of paper.”
“Well, I’d rather he read the volume than the odd bits.... But isn’t
it perfectly damnable--the Sub’s getting hold of that right at the
beginning! What comments?--the usual remarks about long hair?”
“He hasn’t spoken a word.”
“Oh well,” John said, “it can’t be helped now. It was my own
fault--leaving it on the table. I suppose I shall hear about it from
Hartington for ever and ever, Amen. I wonder why it is regarded as an
almost criminal offence to try to write verse?”
Left alone, John tried to think out smooth answers to the remarks the
Sub would make when he came on deck. So far as the Sub himself was
concerned, the damage was done, but it might still be possible to
prevent him from sharing his intelligence with the Wardroom. Of course,
the news was certain to spread sooner or later. If Hartington had not
made his discovery now, he would have made it in a week’s time, and if
the fact of there being a poet in the ship were not laughed over in the
Wardroom to-day it would be laughed over to-morrow. But John knew it
was important to gain time. If the _Colonsay’s_ officers learned first
to think of him as an ordinary midshipman who discharged his duties
with reasonable efficiency, they would tolerate his writing of poetry
as a superficial eccentricity. If, on the other hand, he was made known
to them primarily as a poet, it would be extraordinarily difficult to
rid himself of the stigma and to win back his good name.
When at last Hartington reappeared he spoke only of Service matters.
John wondered what was coming. Perhaps he had not realized that his
midshipman of the watch was the author of the verse he had been
reading. Perhaps he thought the whole affair so unimportant that he
would not trouble to refer to it. John clung to this last possibility
as long as he could, but from time to time he noticed that Hartington
regarded him curiously, with eyes that seemed to laugh at his
apprehension and discomfiture.
“Lynwood,” he said suddenly, “I shouldn’t leave my manuscript sculling
about the deck, if I were you.”
“It was all on the table,” John answered quickly. “I hadn’t time to put
it away when you sent for me. I’m sorry it made a litter. If I may go
down for a moment, I’ll get Fane-Herbert to put it into my locker for
me--I should be back almost at once. Then everything will be tidy----”
He stopped helplessly.
“I wasn’t objecting to the untidiness,” Hartington said.
The silence seemed unending. John had never felt so uncomfortable,
so utterly at a loss. He knew the contemptuous thoughts that must be
passing through Hartington’s mind. He tried haltingly to minimize his
error.
“I do it only--only in my spare time,” he said, “just as other people
do--do other things.” He wanted to explain that he meant no harm by his
poetry, but he could find no words. The poetry itself was the harm,
he knew. There was no explaining it away. “Do you mind very much?” he
asked nervously.
Hartington smiled. “Mind?” he said. And then he added, “Why should
I mind? Is it contrary to the King’s Regulations and Admiralty
Instructions to write verse?”
“No, but----”
“The point is, that most Subs would have made you read it to the Mess
after dinner, and very probably beaten you at the end of it--if not on
that pretext, then on some other. So it wasn’t very discreet of you to
leave it about, do you think?”
“No.”
“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.”
“That’s all very well as talk, but what would you _do_?” asked Cunwell,
the man of action.
“I don’t know. I admit I don’t know. When I’ve had a chance--if
ever--to read History and Economics, and--oh a dozen things I never
shall read, then perhaps I shall have a more definite creed.”
And as to the other part of his belief: they didn’t laugh at
Shakespeare--he had been a school subject, and was a tradition. They
didn’t laugh at him any more than at the crests on their family
note-paper. But, they asked, where would Shakespeare have been without
Drake and Howard of Effingham? It was a question of values. To them,
Art was the camp-follower of Action; to John it was Action’s equal
and honourable ally. They thought of books as ministers to the tired
warrior in his leisure hours, worthy only if they soothed him. And they
liked poetry whose rhythm they could mark with their feet.
The effect of unanimous opposition had been to make John doubt himself.
People so far divided by circumstance and experience as Cunwell and
Mr. Fane-Herbert agreed on these points at least--that political
unselfishness was the talk of ignorant agitators, and that Art was an
handmaiden. Were they right after all? They said: “Wherever you look
in the world to-day Physical Force rules us. Can you reject universal
Evidence? Isn’t it just stubborn and foolish to refuse to do homage
to a Force which, if you don’t bow your head, will cut it off? Isn’t
it wiser to support the side that has already won?” John had begun to
think that this victory must indeed be final. All his friends acclaimed
it; scarcely a book he had read, except the New Testament, seemed to
challenge it. Many of the poets sang it: not Blake--but Blake was
accounted mad.
And now, though they had spent the evening in all the happiness of
vigorous disagreement, John had found in Hartington one who denied the
finality of this victory. He had been introduced, moreover, to authors
who denied it uncompromisingly. Hitherto, such authors had been, within
his experience, few, and these few had failed and were dead. They had
seemed to have no heirs. That night he discovered that their flame was
still guarded and honoured and fed. He had turned over pages, written
by living men, that were lit with it. In France, in England, in Germany
there were eyes that saw by it. In Russia the sky was red--perhaps with
its light.
So, after all, the whole world did not believe that an Army of
Occupation must be quartered for ever on the Kingdom of God.