AWAY FROM THE SHIP
At Colombo the exchange of crews between _Pathshire_ and _Colonsay_ was
effected as an evolution. With the exception of a few hands left behind
for indispensable duties, both ships were simultaneously emptied into
their boats. As they met and passed the men tried to cheer, but silence
was immediately restored. There would be time for cheering, perhaps,
when, with her new freight, the _Colonsay_ left for home.
To John, who was too junior to have seen anything of the traditional
“spit and polish” in the old Channel Fleet, the _Pathshire_ was a
revelation. In China, where time was less precious than in the North
Sea, and where the menace of Wilhelmshaven was more remote, Gunnery,
Torpedo Practice, and Fleet Exercises had not made good their claim to
undivided attention. The _Pathshire_ was full of bright work, which in
home waters would have been obscured by Service grey. Her paint and
enamel glistened in the sunlight so that her after-turret was a mirror;
her stanchions were burnished like a knight’s armour; her dull metal
was overlaid with silver gilt; everywhere were decorative turk’s-heads
and whitened lanyards; her upper deck was spotless as a yacht’s.
“Think of Cleaning Stations in this packet!” said Sentley. “It must
have cost her Commander and Number One about a third of their pay to
provide all the paint and enamel in excess of the Service allowance.”
The Gunroom, they discovered, was but half a Gunroom, their quarters
having been cut into two parts by a temporary bulkhead. One part
was given over to the Warrant Officers, but, in compensation for
this, Hartington obtained permission from the Commander to use as
a smoking-room the after main-deck casemate on the starboard side.
There had been no midshipmen in the previous commission, so that all
furniture other than the scanty Service fittings had to be bought with
the Mess Fund. A few wicker armchairs, a couple of cheap card-tables,
and several ash-trays--these things being regarded as essentials--were
obtained at Colombo, and all else was left, at Hartington’s suggestion,
until they should reach the wider market of Hong Kong.
Nearly a week was to pass before they sailed again, and the midshipmen
were given leave. John and Hugh went together to Kandi. They avoided
the obvious hotel which other officers were likely to visit, and chose
a place that consisted of three small bungalows, almost hidden among
the trees that covered the hill on the less popular side of the lake.
Here came men whose experience of the “best hotels” in the East did
not tempt them to strain their finances--quiet folk, who were chiefly
remarkable, in John’s eyes, for the matter-of-fact way in which they
regarded what to him was novel and amazing. And the hotel itself, save
when a breath of wind stirred the branches that overhung it or the
sound of gong or bell came up from the lake below, was deeply silent.
After dinner on the evening of their arrival, sitting together in the
verandah that ran the whole length of the three bungalows, and watching
their cigarette smoke twist and disappear against a sky of so heavy a
purple that the stars seemed to be embedded in it, they discussed their
plans for the morrow--discussed them happily and at leisure, knowing
that their time was their own, and that any decision made to-night
might be freely reversed in the morning. As they were on the point of
leaving the _Pathshire_ an English mail--the first to reach them since
they left home--had been distributed, and each had brought his share
to Kandi unread. “Let’s keep them,” John had suggested, “until after
dinner to-night, when we shall be alone and quiet, and clear away from
the ship.” And now they brought out their letters from their pockets
and began the reading they had so long postponed. Soon there was little
sound but that of pages being turned. From far down the verandah came
the murmur of indistinguishable voices, and from time to time the hiss
of a match or the sharp tinkle of a liqueur glass.
Among John’s letters was one from Margaret, which he did not open until
all the others had been returned to their envelopes. Then he read it
slowly. When he began he was content with the moment. This evening’s
beauty and quietness, so wonderful a contrast to the nights he had
spent in the _King Arthur_, seemed a satisfaction of all his desires.
For two days he was independent of routine--free to control his own
movements, to read, to sleep, to go in and out according to his will.
He and Hugh were filled with the spirit of content that visits all men
at the beginning of their holiday. There had seemed no need to look
further, to question motives or consequences. The night was pleasant;
this letter of Margaret’s would add pleasure to the night.
But, as he read, he began to remember many things which the freedom of
his new life from persecution had caused him to forget. She spoke of
London, of political plots and rumours, of the strength or weakness
of new movements, of the expansion of new ideas. New books, new
expressions of opinion; the words of men who had been her father’s
guests; fears of a strike at Ibble’s--her letter was extraordinarily
suggestive of keenness and activity. Much had happened, more was about
to happen--and this in a London many weeks away. What, Margaret asked,
had he been doing? What had he written? He looked back over weeks
of inactivity. He had done nothing but talk to Hartington. Days had
slipped by--precious days. Since he left England he had read little,
had created nothing, had not tried to create. The storm of the _King
Arthur_ being over he had relapsed into lazy content. Time had sped.
To youth, consciousness of the passage of time comes seldom, but
coming, it brings with it pain by which age is not affected--pain
unsoftened by any acceptance of the inevitable. Still the chance; still
the opportunity to make good; still the feverish casting about for
means! And middle-age growing nearer--a vision of the insignificant man
going to and fro between his home and office, of the two-and-a-half
stripe lieutenant many, many times passed over! John saw that he had
been wasting his life.
Then he saw, in a flash that left him blind, that, unless its whole
course were changed, he would continue to waste his life. Waste--and
at the end old age, looking back upon years empty of achievement. “If
only I had my time again! If I were but eighteen once more!” It was as
if this foreseen wish had been uttered and fulfilled. He was eighteen
now. The future was still his.
The letter fell with his hand on to his knees.
“Finished?” Hugh asked. John looked up to encounter his laughing eyes.
“I have been watching your face,” he went on. “It seems to have been a
disturbing letter.”
“It was,” John answered. “It reminds me how far we are out of the world
and how infernally slack I have been.”
He held out the envelope that the writing might be seen.
“Margaret!” Hugh exclaimed. “What has she been saying?”
“She has made me think, thrown me back on things I had forgotten. It
was so good to be free of the _King Arthur_ that, during the whole
passage out, the world has seemed the best of all possible worlds. It
isn’t--or it won’t be long. Oh, Hugh, it’s all very well--a happy ship,
a good Wardroom, a good Sub, and no Gunroom persecution; but what does
it all lead to? I want to do other things--things I shall never be able
to do--and to meet other people.”
Hugh, believing that John was thinking particularly of Margaret, said:
“At any rate, some of the ‘other people’ will be out East before long.”
“You dear old fool!” John exclaimed. “That isn’t what I meant.... No;
it’s just restlessness, I suppose. I feel that all the work we do is so
like a housemaid’s--to-day’s routine the same as to-morrow’s. We never
build or make anything. For all our work we leave nothing behind.”
“I don’t see your trouble,” Hugh said. “So long as life is pleasant I
don’t want to leave anything behind.”
“We are missing so much. We get out of touch. In whatever progress
there is we have no part.”
“I know we are missing a great deal. Every letter I get from outside
makes me jealous of the people at home. They can go about and see
things, and we are shut up day in and day out.”
“How they would shout if they heard you say that!” John broke in.
“Mostly they imagine that it is they who are shut in and we who go
about--as they say--seeing the world. It’s all wrong. The world doesn’t
consist in places but in people. And the only boundaries are boundaries
of thought. Think of the people your sister listens to, the books she
reads, the opinions that count--coming to her first hand. Men and
women from abroad--Germans, French, Americans--she is beginning to be
in touch with them all. But the Service boundaries are desperately
close-drawn.”
Hugh leaned back in his chair and yawned. “I suppose we are all much
the same,” he said. “We all feel shut in--or shut out, rather--though
perhaps for reasons different from yours. Sentley wants plants and
birds--being a naturalist; and there’s not a plant or a bird in H.M.’s
ships. Driss wants Ireland; Driss is almost sick for Ireland sometimes
and he can’t go there. And do you remember Tintern?--he was starved for
music. He said to me once--dead serious--that if he could get music
he would never get drunk. He used to dream about going to Germany
and being educated--‘start life all over again with the five-finger
exercise,’ he used to say.... And the strange thing is that officers
of the Old Navy didn’t feel like that. I suppose they were made of
harder stuff. Last leave I asked an old retired Admiral about his
snotty days, and he said, ‘No, we didn’t hanker after shore life as you
young fellows do. Of course, we were keen enough to get ashore when we
could--better food and beds--but I think we were all of us glad in a
way to get back to the ship.’”
“But the Navy was smaller then, and more independent of the outside
world,” John said. “I dare say your old Admiral felt an almost personal
affection for it. But you can’t have affection for a vast machine that
is itself only a unit in a greater system of machinery; you can feel
loyalty, perhaps, but not affection. It’s like trying to fall in love
with a Board of Directors. The Service is too big and impersonal to
love. Moreover, it isn’t a free agent. You know as well as anyone what
lies behind it.”
“Ibble’s?”
“And more.”
“And Ordith’s?”
“More than Ibble and Ordith’s, more even than the whole armament ring.
Behind the armament firms are the mines, behind the mines is shipping,
behind shipping--oh, it goes on for ever expanding and expanding. It
goes out in every direction, and drags in every individual in the
world--shareholders, banks, the financial houses at home, international
finance--there it is, fully expanded again. Your sister, viewing it
from her own angle, sums it up as a Net. We are all shut up inside it,
and everyone who thinks is swimming round and round trying to find a
way out. Discontented devils--so we are! Every novel that says anything
is full of protest, and every speech--public or private. The papers
call it Industrial Unrest, the Foreign Correspondents European Unrest.
The whole world’s affected as it was not in your Admiral’s time.... And
in the Service we are shut up in a corner pocket of the Net; we haven’t
the chance even to swim round and round.”
“Margaret will never accept anything,” Hugh commented. “Father is
always telling her that if only she would watch the world as it is
instead of thinking of the world as it might be she would get on much
better.”
“You wouldn’t care much for a sister who sat down placidly to watch the
world as it is,” John observed.
“No--it wouldn’t be attractive. I don’t mind so long as she doesn’t go
to hopeless extremes,” added her cautious brother. “But she won’t do
any good. The net is there, and the net will remain.”
“Until it breaks,” John said.
Two men and a woman with a shrivelled face passed along the verandah
into the hotel. One of the men was chinking the coins in his pocket. A
dog rose sleepily from under the table by which they had been sitting,
stretched himself, sniffed the warm air, and pattered after his master.