THE CAPTAIN IN CONFIDENCE
I
On the afternoon of the first Sunday after the _Pathshire_ sailed from
Colombo for Singapore, Hartington was sitting alone in his cabin when
a double knock sounded at the door and the curtains were drawn aside.
A pale face, with thin lips, watery, protuberant eyes, and a pitted
forehead fringed with straight, clipped hair, was thrust into the cabin.
“Hullo, Aggett! Come in.”
Aggett smiled, exposing the gaps in his teeth, and entered awkwardly.
He was an Engineer-Lieutenant of the older, rougher school. Round his
neck, instead of a collar, he wore a white scarf that was not clean.
The creases in his fingers and the thick cuticles which grew high on
his nails were stained with oil and dirt. But that scarred forehead and
those strange eyes which had the extraordinary opaque appearance of
great age--almost as if they had done service once before to some other
being now dead--proclaimed their owner’s intelligence. A flabby vicious
little man, but no fool, this Aggett appeared. And, to one who cared to
seek further, to contrast the darting movements of his hands with the
cumbrousness of his feet, or to remark how strong and decided a voice
proceeded from that poor body, Aggett seemed more than intelligent.
He possessed force and wariness, a rare power to stake all at need,
combined with a distrust of his fellows, which was valuable because it
was discriminating. He was a man whom it was impossible to imagine as a
child. No lasting affection of wife or mother could be easily thought
of as connected with him. He could have no home, no ties. He passed,
surely, from ship to hotel, from hotel to ship, making hundreds of
acquaintances but not a friend, despising and using all he met, never
introspective or lonely, sufficient unto himself.
He threw over the cabin a quick glance of disapproval. It irritated
him that anyone should take trouble to decorate his habitation; and he
was the more irritated in this instance because Hartington’s taste,
unlike that of many officers who tried to make their cabins “tiddley,”
could not be easily scorned as effeminate. The few photographs, in the
simplest of wooden or silver frames; the books, with their appearance
of dignity and quietness; the pictures--here a Medici reproduction of
a Dürer drawing, there a water-colour landscape of the hills about
Fiesole--were such as no woman was likely to have chosen. Aggett wanted
to say what he said usually to officers whose walls were not so bare as
his own, “This place is like a whore’s boudoir;” but his sense of the
appropriate overcame him, and he said:
“Well, Hartington-me-lad, sittin’ in your country residence, eh? Let’s
ring for the family butler.”
“Which means you want a cocktail? Put your head out and ask one of the
snotties in the casemate to send for Ah Foo.”
Aggett did as he was bid, sat down on the edge of a chair, and took a
cigarette from a paper packet concealed in his breast-pocket.
“Ordith wants you to come in to supper to-night in the Wardroom. Can
do?”
“Yes. I shall have to leave you early, though. I’ve got the Middle. I
shall want some sleep first.”
“Right.... Ordith asked me to come with the invite. He’s
workin’--always workin’.”
“Gunnery?”
“Yes. Fellows in the Wardroom don’t know how much work he puts in. I
know him better than most. I _do_ know. They think he’s slack ’cause
he only takes a watch now and then. But I give you my word”--he leaned
forward and smacked Hartington’s knee--“I give you my word there’s not
a man in this ship or any other damned ship who does more work than
Ordith.”
“I believe it. And he has brains.”
“Brains!” Aggett exclaimed. “I should jus’ say he has. One o’ the
smartest men alive. And no slop or sentiment. On and on like a
well-lubricated engine. And an eye to the main chance--why, I’ll tell
you.” He hitched up his chair closer to Hartington’s, and continued
with slow emphasis: “Ordith’s a man worth watchin’. Head an’ shoulders
above the Service truck. All the powers have an eye on him. Ordith and
Co.? Why, you mark my words, Ordith’s goin’ to control more ’n that
some day.... Good fellow, too. Think so?”
“I like him,” Hartington answered, “though I don’t know him well. None
of us knows him well, so far as I can see. He keeps to himself.”
“He keeps to himself where the blamed fools are concerned. An’ he looks
round slow, an’ takes his pick o’ the best.”
Hartington laughed. “So it’s a particular compliment to be asked to
supper?”
“Well,” said Aggett slowly, “I wasn’t thinkin’ o’ that. But I dare say
you’re right. He’s not a friend to be sniffed at.”
Ah Foo, light-footed and blue-clad, came in with cocktails.
“Rum crowd of snotties in your Gunroom,” Aggett said, when he had
sipped his drink and thrown a slice of lemon-peel into the wastepaper
basket. “They want shakin’, I think.”
“Why? What have they done wrong?”
“Oh, nothing in particular; but they seem to take life too easy to my
way of thinkin’. Got a nice, thick stick? A taste o’ that would do ’em
good.”
“Well, you look after them in the Engine-room,” Hartington said, “and
I’ll see about the Gunroom; then we shan’t quarrel.”
Aggett emptied his glass and rose. “Don’t think I’m tryin’ to poke
my finger into your pie. You can mollycoddle the young gents to your
heart’s content, for all I care. But you’ll find it doesn’t pay in the
long run. You mark my words.”
And he went out of the cabin, leaving Hartington to wonder what lay
behind this visit and this invitation. He had noticed that Aggett was
much in Ordith’s company, and had marvelled that one so uncouth should
be so well received in that quarter. What was now afoot? What reason
had Ordith to cultivate the acquaintance of the Sub of the Gunroom? And
why had Aggett been sent--for it was plain that he had been sent--to
sing Ordith’s abilities and importance.
When he left Hartington, Aggett went immediately to Ordith’s cabin. He
found Nick in white trousers and a singlet, mopping his forehead so
that sweat should not run down on to the drawings over which he was
bending. At Aggett’s entry Nick looked up, a pair of dividers held
between his fingers.
“Well?” he said.
“O.K. He’ll come.”
“Get a drink?”
“One cocktail.”
“Seem well disposed?”
“Fair to moderate. Likes you; doesn’t like me. Thinks I’m a coarse
brute.”
Nick smiled. “Well, you’re not a fairy, Aggett. He’s a delicately
nurtured young man, you must remember. Old county family, and God knows
what!”
“I know about that,” Aggett answered. “I don’t go much by the fruit
that grows on the family tree.”
“That’s where you are at fault.”
“Fault be damned. Then is that what you are at--makin’ the most of the
Hartington family connection?”
Nick laid down his dividers and turned to face Aggett. “No,” he said.
“That particular connection doesn’t happen to be of any use to me.”
“Well, what is it then? Look here, Ordith, I’m in with you in all your
pretty little schemes--or am I wrong? No? Very good, then. I give you
expert engineering advice--and you won’t find a better combination of
theory and practice than there is in me. I help you all I can. Probably
I get nothing out of it. I’m prepared to risk that. I’ll chance your
caring to remember me when you are Ordith and Co. But I want to know
right now what you are up to. Why are you bringing in this Sub? What
the hell use is he to be? Tell me straight.”
“I will tell you straight, although, so far as you are concerned, it’s
a side issue. Haven’t you observed that Hartington’s popular with the
snotties? Haven’t you seen young Lynwood go into Hartington’s cabin
evening after evening?”
“I dare say. Well?”
“Lynwood’s friend is Fane-Herbert. I foresee that when old Fane-Herbert
and his wife and daughter come out East we shall see much of Lynwood,
Hartington, and, of course, the son himself. Now Hartington may not
appeal too strongly to old Fane-Herbert, but unless I’m much mistaken
the women will take to him. He talks well. He may be persuasive and
have influence. And I’d rather have him a friend than--the other thing.
That’s the long and short of it.”
Aggett shot out a glance of suspicion; then covered it with a smile. He
felt that even the cautious Ordith was looking uncommonly far ahead.
Hartington to Fane-Herbert the snotty; the snotty to the women; the
women to Fane-Herbert the father--it was a circuitous approach. He
did not know that Ordith was now thinking, not of contracts but of
personalities, not of the father but of the daughter. Aggett knew
nothing of Margaret. His partnership with Ordith was a business
partnership--loose and informal at that.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Anyhow, I leave it to you.”
Nick turned to his drawings when Aggett had gone, but did not
immediately begin to work. Aggett--what a dirty little man he was!
But full of knowledge and energy which was useful now, which might be
even more useful some day. It went against the grain that he should
be even remotely connected with Margaret. He didn’t know; he should
never know. And yet--those searching eyes would see, that alert brain
form its conclusions. Probably Aggett would come and make his oily
jokes about love and women and masculine weakness. They would be hard
to endure. Nick thought for a moment that he would banish Aggett from
his confidence, do without him. He was a mean creature; why not break
with him? Then Aggett’s virtues rose up in his defence. He was a
wonderful fellow to pick holes in an idea, to expose the impracticable
in a theory--a destructive critic of great ability. And Nick knew how
much he stood in need of informed destructive criticism. At night he
would discover some improvement in breech mechanism, or a perfected
driving-band or a brilliant new system of fire-control. When he rose
in the morning he would be blind with enthusiasm, aware only of the
excellence of his own idea. But the thing would need to be threshed
out. Talk was the only method, so poor a critic was he of himself. And
Aggett could talk admirably. He could put his finger instantly on a
weak spot.... Yes, Aggett was indispensable. Sly jokes and indecencies,
those unpleasant teeth, that grating laugh--they must be borne.
Margaret or no Margaret, Aggett was necessary.
“Don’t be a fool,” Nick said aloud. “Don’t give way to your prejudices.”
He dipped his head into cold water and dried himself vigorously
with a rough towel. Then he picked up his dividers, and, commanding
concentration as others switch on an electric light, began to work
quickly.
II
After supper, in a corner of the Wardroom Casemate, Nick and Hartington
sat drinking whisky-and-soda. In front of them was a vacant chair, from
which Aggett, ten minutes earlier, had been summoned to the Engineer’s
Office. Now he returned.
“Just had a star-turn in Number Four stoke-hold,” he remarked. “Stoker
off his chump.”
“Mad?” Nick said.
“Fightin’ mad. Up with his shovel and started layin’ about him. But
they brought him down all right--no damage, except to him. He’s
unconscious. They’ve got him in the Sick Bay, but they can’t bring him
round. All over with him, I’m told. Only a question of hours now.”
“That means a funeral,” said Nick gloomily. “Burials at sea are
depressing affairs.”
“Don’t wonder he went mad. The heat’s fierce, an’ four hours in every
twelve isn’t a kid’s job. Hope it don’t take the others the same way.
We’re short enough o’ stokers as it is, without ’em dyin’ off.”
“You can hardly blame them for dying, Aggett,” the Commander put in
from his distant seat.
“You stand rebuked,” Nick said.
Aggett drained his glass. “The Commander hasn’t got to run the
boiler-rooms,” he observed. “It would be different, wouldn’t it, sir,
if the Chief Boatswain’s-mate kicked the bucket?”
“Nothing to jest about.”
“No, indeed.”
“No, indeed,” the Commander repeated, and, picking up an illustrated
paper, rattled his shirt-cuffs as he turned its pages angrily.
A man appeared at the Casemate door.
“Mr. Hartington ’ere, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Captain wishes to speak to you, sir, in the after-cabin.”
Hartington rose. “Sorry, Ordith.”
“All right, my dear fellow.”
The Commander threw aside his paper. “Hold on a minute Hartington....
You say this stoker is going to die, Aggett?”
“Probable.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hammond, Zachariah Peter, Stoker First Class.”
“Right. I’ll just go in and tell the Captain, Hartington, before you
begin your pow-wow. I shan’t be a second. Come along with me.”
They went aft together, and, while Hartington waited, the Commander
passed into the Captain’s quarters, and presently reappeared.
“All right, Hartington. He’s waiting for you.”
Hartington entered. The Captain, a tall, grave man, who, but for his
beard and moustache, might well have been taken for a judge, was
leaning back in an armchair, his feet thrown up on to the fender that
surrounded the empty fireplace.
“Ah, come in, Hartington, and sit down. You will find cigarettes on the
small table.”
Hartington offered him the silver box.
“Will you have one, sir?”
“Thanks, no; I never smoke. You light up, though. I want a few words
with you.”
An uncomfortable silence followed while Hartington lighted his
cigarette, took an ashtray from the mantelpiece, and sat down.
“Now,” the Captain said, “I want to talk to you about the Gunroom. I
don’t know what your own views may be upon the treatment of midshipmen.
I hope you have views. I hope you have thought the matter out. The Sub
of a Gunroom, you know, holds a position of responsibility.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what is your policy?”
“Put shortly, sir, my idea is to make the Gunroom tolerable.”
“You think it likely to be intolerable?”
Hartington paused before he answered. He had no knowledge of the
Captain’s own views on this matter. Was he of opinion that midshipmen
should be shaken? Was this interview to be an intimation that the
_Pathshire’s_ midshipmen were not being shaken enough? It would be
dangerous to cross him. The Old School was strong, wonderfully
tenacious, intolerant of heresy. It would be easy not to commit himself
until the Captain’s attitude was made plain.
Then he saw the Captain’s eyes watching him, but their expression
conveyed nothing save enquiry and interest. He decided to take the
risk. Many and many a time he had wanted to test his views by laying
them before a man with long experience of the Service. He said:
“A Gunroom can easily be an intolerable place, sir.”
“Still? I suppose the Service doesn’t change very fast.”
“There was a case before a Court of Enquiry only a few months ago, sir.
I have heard that was pretty bad. The junior snotties in that ship were
in the same Term as ours, so I have heard a good deal of it indirectly.”
“But perhaps that was an isolated case.”
“I don’t think so, sir. The Home and Atlantic Fleets----”
“Stop a minute.” The Captain took his feet from the fender, and raised
himself in his chair. “That’s what I want to get at. I want to be quite
frank, and I expect frankness from you. I know--of course I know--that
this chasing of midshipmen goes on. But it is very difficult for one
in my position--a Captain of a ship is more isolated than, perhaps,
many of you imagine--it’s difficult to find out the exact extent of
the evil. How much of it is genuine? How much exaggeration? And, more
difficult still, what is the cause of it? Young officers nowadays are
different from the old--differently educated. Osborne and Dartmouth
aren’t the mill that the old _Britannia_ was. They come to sea less
prepared for--for whatever harsh treatment they may receive. You
mentioned the Home and Atlantic Fleets. I’m afraid I interrupted you,
but I think you were going to limit the system--to a certain extent,
at least--to those fleets. Isn’t that so? Well--now, what’s the cause
of it all? What is there behind it? Is it the drive at home, or is it
something--something more fundamental, something in the very veins and
arteries of the Service.”
“You are better able to judge of that than I am, sir.”
The Captain leaned back. “I want your opinion.”
“I think it goes on for three reasons, sir. First, it’s the Service
tradition. There are hundreds of officers who believe--honestly
believe--that it is necessary to chase snotties in order to bring them
to a right frame of mind, in order to produce efficiency. Second--the
reason you suggested, sir--the pressure of work, the feeling one has
of living from day to day until--until something happens to break the
tension--that makes us not quite ourselves. We never trouble about the
effect on the snotty. A long view is impossible--there isn’t time. And
so we do without thinking what we should never do if we thought.”
“And the third cause?”
“It’s rather complicated, sir.”
“Never mind.”
“And I’m afraid you may think it fantastic--not quite a practical view
to take.”
“Let me have it, all the same. You seem to have thought out this
matter, Hartington?”
“Yes, sir; I have. It struck me as important--even of first-rate
importance. And the present state of affairs is so bad that there’s
bound to be an end to it soon, one way or another. It’s better that the
change should come from inside the Service than from outside.”
“You think it’s as bad as that? But no one outside knows anything about
it.”
“They will, sir. It is so bad that one day someone will wake up to it.
The Press may get hold of it.”
“We don’t want the Press in the Service.”
“No, sir. That’s why I think this business ought to be stopped from
inside.”
“There are regulations on flogging.... However, what is your third
cause? I think that is the right way to tackle the problem--see the
causes, then root them out.”
“The third cause, so far as I can see, sir, is that the Service is so
isolated and so specialized. Put briefly, it’s a government without
opposition, with the usual result of tyranny. And in the Service we
have no contact with any interests but our own--no books or pictures,
no women, if you see what I mean, sir.”
“No women?”
“Only the physical.”
“Ah! you mean we lack the refining influence!” The Captain smiled.
“I shouldn’t have put it that way, sir. I mean that if men are left too
long with men they are liable to become beasts.” An illustration of
his point flashed across Hartington’s mind. “You know what it is, sir,
after dinner in England, when the ladies are gone. It begins in talk
almost at once. And, left together long enough, men become cruel.”
“That’s true.” The Captain ran his tongue across his lips. “But you
spoke of books and pictures.”
“And plays and music, sir, and walks in the country, and games, and
riding--but chiefly books and pictures, plays and music. They are the
best products of civilization.”
“And we live among the worst--guns, torpedoes? Is that the idea? But
you can have books and pictures in the Service?”
“You can have a few of your own, sir; but that’s not the same thing
as meeting them at every turn, in every house. We are outside the
atmosphere of----” Hartington broke off suddenly. This was a senior
naval officer to whom he was speaking. Almost he had forgotten that.
“Go on,” the Captain said. “The atmosphere of----”?
“Outside the atmosphere of beauty,” Hartington said reluctantly. One
does not wisely speak of the atmosphere of beauty to post-captains.
But the Captain did not smile until he said: “You put it strangely, but
I think I understand you. We are brutalized, in fact?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so. If we were brutalized we should be brutes
ashore and brutes consistently on board. We are neither one nor the
other. It’s this--that one branch of us is starved, stunted, so that it
can’t grow, and consequently the other branch develops abnormally.”
“And I can see no cure for that. We have our job to do. There is very
little time for anything else. Of course,” the Captain added, his
words coming slowly, “when you come to think of it, our job itself is
ethically indefensible.”
They pondered that overwhelming statement in silence, each momently
unconscious of the other’s presence. When at last Hartington met the
Captain’s eyes he saw in them a strange expression, half guilty, half
amused.
“I’m afraid that’s true. We have probably struck bed-rock,” the Captain
said, with a smile. Then, suddenly serious, he added: “That goes no
further, Hartington.”
“No, sir.”
The Captain laughed--nervously, Hartington thought. “And since we
can’t abolish the Service, Hartington, or the forces behind that make
it necessary, let us return to practical politics. Taking your causes
in reverse order: We can but nibble at the third. You recommend that
the Gunroom should be made tolerable. That’s something. A decent place
to live in, so far as its size permits--some of the amenities of life
preserved--not utterly a bear-garden. Further, I propose to help, if
I can, by having the snotties to dine in here, and talking books,
or games, or travel, or the theory of cruiser screens--anything, in
short, but everyday shop and everyday women, the Gunroom topics. A
clean napkin, a smooth shirt-front, and bright glass and silver have
an extraordinarily civilizing effect. Besides, to a snotty’s mind,
these quarters of mine seem spacious, and room to move is room to
think. And your job consists in making your own personality felt; stop
them talking and thinking filth eternally. But you are up against it,
Hartington; the China Station, the naval officer’s Mecca, because on
the surface it seems slack and pleasant, is a test--but more of that
later on. Your second cause--the pressure of work, the sense of war,
and a break-up of all our lives being so close that the ‘long view’
is unattainable. Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die; be
cruel, brutal, at any rate, unheeding, for to-morrow--God knows what
may happen! That’s the attitude. Frankly, I don’t know how to change
it. Religion, any kind of religion, any quick sense of worlds outside
our own and of time beyond our time, might change it. But that’s
hopeless in a Gunroom. There can be no God where there’s no privacy. Do
you realize that there is no place in this ship where midshipmen can
pray? By their chests, in a public passage, with marines in hammocks
blaspheming above their heads? Or they could pray on their backs in
their own hammocks if they remembered. But they are tired and sleepy,
and they forget--so the fact stands. I dare say they could do without
formal prayers. But no one can do without occasional seclusion. They
are for ever rubbing shoulders with their own sordidness, until at
last they come to think they are all sordid, and care to be nothing
else. That’s the root of the snotty’s tragedy, Hartington. I’m sure of
it. He’s never alone--never, from the moment he comes on board to the
moment he gets ashore. His mind hasn’t a chance to expand--to stray out
into the vague purposelessness from which, if you can trace them back
far enough, all right purposes spring.”
“I’ve given two of them--Lynwood and Fane-Herbert--leave to use my
cabin whenever I’m not there. There isn’t room for more, sir.”
“No, there isn’t room for more,” the Captain said. “I dare say some
of the Wardroom would do likewise if I dropped a hint, but, though it
is some gain, there’s no real seclusion in another man’s cabin. That
problem’s insoluble, Hartington, while ships are built as they are,
and so they must be built if they are to be efficient fighting units.
It brings us back again to the essential immorality of our calling,
and--and to the _forces behind_ that make our calling inevitable.
Doesn’t it?”
He broke off, smiling.
“There’s the solution of leave, sir,” Hartington said boldly.
“I know,” the Captain answered. “I’ve thought of that. And I agree: the
snotties must have all the leave we can manage to give them. But there
are two difficulties. First, officers often stop snotties’ leave--it’s
the recognized Service punishment, and the alternative is flogging.
Second----You’ve never been on the China Station before, Hartington?”
“No, sir.”
“I have; and I’m not sure that short leave is much better than no
leave at all. I can give them four or five days now and then, but you
know what happens--Hong-Kong, Shanghai, they are Hell. Japan’s better;
but even there unless by chance they go into the country, there’s
Yokohama and Number Nine, or Tokio and the Yoshiwara. The East’s a
bad atmosphere through which to see life for the first time. Let
loose from the ship’s confinement into a strange land with an unknown
language--not even a comprehensible theatre--what is there but bars and
women? What’s needed is long leave among their own people, their own
women--sisters, mothers. In the Home Fleet where distance makes that
possible the drive of work makes it impossible. What do they get--an
average of fourteen days a year, or a bit more if they are lucky. And
out here, England, Home, and Beauty are thousands of miles away.”
The Captain stood up. “But, as for your first cause,” he said, “as
for the Service tradition and the chasing of midshipmen to produce
efficiency, I can do something about that in my own ship. Fortunately
all our snotties are of the same seniority, so that there can be no
seniors trampling on juniors ‘to get a bit of their own back.’ And so
far as you yourself are concerned--well, I know your somewhat unusual
views. But other Subs may join us later on, or even the Wardroom may
demand that the snotties be shaken. And I want you to understand that,
no matter what may come--even if you get orders from the Commander
himself, you are to stand out against anything that follows the
principle of ‘the young gentlemen must be broken.’ The fact that these
things were done in Nelson’s day doesn’t weigh with me. I will have
none of it in my ship. Is that understood?”
“Quite, sir.”
“I shall hold you personally responsible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, apart from any order of mine considered as an order, I want your
promise. You know as well as I do that the order is one I can’t enforce
from day to day. The Service etiquette keeps the Captain well aft. I
can’t see what goes on.”
“I’m as strongly against the system as you are, sir.”
“That settles the matter, then, for one ship among hundreds.
Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir.”
Hartington walked towards the door. Because a question in his mind
remained unanswered he hesitated visibly.
“What is it?” the Captain asked. “Another ‘cause’ to baffle us?”
“There was a question, sir.”
“Yes?”
“You spoke--twice--of the forces behind the Service. I was wondering,
sir----”
The Captain shook his head. “No, Hartington; we haven’t time to try to
unravel that mesh. Besides, it savours of politics, which are not for
naval officers. I have said enough already this evening--perhaps too
much unless you are discreet. Good-night, again.”
“Good-night, sir.”