LOOKING BEYOND
I
Those streets at Singapore where the harlots of East and West sit at
their doors and in their verandahs, stretching out their whitened arms
towards the passers-by, were investigated and discussed by the Gunroom.
They are investigated and discussed by most Europeans who pass through
Singapore, and they remain and will remain. Cunwell thought them funny;
Dyce was curious, and desired information; Sentley, who had entered
them inadvertently, left them in haste, fearful and embarrassed. John
and Hugh, who drove through them together in rickshaws, were glad when
they were clear of them.
“My God!” John said, “isn’t it amazing how beastliness spreads?”
“The women?” Hugh asked.
“No; at the moment I was thinking of Krame. But the women, too, if you
like.”
“Oh, be damned to Krame! We are free of him.”
“Yes, we are, but others are not.”
“I’d forgotten them.”
“One does forget.”
Hugh looked at him. “Cheer up, John,” he said, “the sight of the women
has made you miserable. It’s no good being miserable about them.
There’s nothing to be done.”
“I’m not miserable about them only. I’m angry because they are
helpless, and we are helpless. I’m angry for all helpless things. They
would probably tell you that they would never have come to this if they
had had plenty of money. Sweated labour would tell you that what it
wants is higher wages. And--though my reason tells me it’s all a lie--I
myself think that if only I had more money I could do the work I want
to do and be happy. We all look to money for help--that’s why we are
helpless.”
“Then it’s our own fault.”
“Oh, it starts higher than that. It’s older than we are. The Golden
Calf is the established creed. Put it wider than just money; call
it gain--any material gain: temporal power, private land, national
territory, influence; and those nights we had in the _King Arthur_, and
what other snotties are going through now, and the streets with their
harlots--they are just fragments of the result.... I’m looking forward
to seeing your sister again. She is the only person I have met who, in
her heart of hearts, seems not to care for wealth.”
“But she has always had everything she wants,” Hugh said.
II
Later in April they made Hong-Kong, where they joined the squadron.
Being in time for the Japanese summer cruise, they sailed a fortnight
later for Yokohama, whither the squadron had preceded them. Throughout
the voyage the _Pathshire_ was active in preparation for the time
when she would be called upon to compete with other ships in Fleet
Evolutions; and General Quarters, Fire and Collision Stations, and
other exercises were continually practised.
The whole of May was spent out of China. In Tokio a party from the
fleet was officially received and entertained. Each British officer was
assigned to a Japanese officer of corresponding rank who remained close
to him always, providing him with food, drink, and information. The
arrangements were perfect, and mathematically precise. The motor-cars
were filled but not crowded. Much was shown, but not too much. The
programme, of which every officer was given a copy typed in English,
was accurately followed. Not a moment was lost. Dinner was taken
between the acts at the Imperial Theatre.
Though, after the official reception, John went often to Tokio, and
found that the Japanese citizen was peaceful enough, he could never
shake off his first impression of a nation essentially military,
encouraged by its recent victories over Russia, ready for further
wars should they come. Far inland such an impression might have
been contradicted; but in Tokio, the centre of official life, it
was continually reinforced. It was remarkable and terrible that the
Japanese military mind was not even choked, as were the minds of
Western nations, by official pomposity. It seemed faultless. Salaries
were small, offices unpretentious. The nation was as an athlete
stripped.
“Just as well these fellows are our allies,” said Aggett in the
Wardroom.
Nick Ordith had much leave in Japan; indeed, from the day of the ship’s
arrival to the day of her departure his messmates saw little of him,
save when he came on board for a few hours to deposit one bag of
papers and to carry off another. Sometimes Aggett accompanied him; but
Aggett, not being supernumerary, and having ship’s duties, could not
take all the leave he desired. Nick called at many important offices,
and in all of them was amicably received. It was to be understood, of
course, that he represented no one; but, nevertheless, the Japanese
were aware of the existence of Ibble’s and of Ordith’s. In those days,
Mr. Fane-Herbert being as yet far away, perhaps Nick allowed Ordith’s
to eclipse Ibble’s, telling himself that, the understanding between the
two firms being so cordial and complete, he could do so with an easy
conscience. Further, he had prospects, sprung from his own inventive
mind, which were but indirectly connected with either firm. He wanted
experiments made, but these must be unofficial. He had ideas to sell,
but, realizing the prior claims of his own nation’s firms, he could not
part with them unreservedly. All his negotiations, which involved so
many conflicting interests, were complicated and slow, but before the
_Pathshire_ put to sea he felt that he had made preliminary progress,
some of which he would report to Mr. Fane-Herbert.
III
Sailing by way of Nagasaki, the squadron reached Wei-hai-wei on the
first morning of June. The Fane-Herberts, who had travelled overland,
were already established there, having taken a small house and equipped
it with Chinese servants. Mr. Fane-Herbert had urged his wife not to
settle down in a place so deserted. In the absence of the squadron,
he told her, there would be little company but that of the somewhat
distant regiment. But she had made up her mind, and was not to be
dissuaded. The squadron would be at Wei-hai during a part of the
summer at least, and, if rumour spoke truly, the _Pathshire_ was to
winter there alone. Both she and Margaret wanted to be near Hugh, and
taking into consideration the probabilities of the squadron’s ever
uncertain movements, they seemed likely to see more of him at Wei-hai
than elsewhere.... But he couldn’t do his business at Wei-hai, Mr.
Fane-Herbert remonstrated; the boy was quite capable of looking after
himself.
“You are quite free,” Mrs. Fane-Herbert had said, “to move about
independently of us. If the _Pathshire_ leaves Wei-hai for long we will
come anywhere you like, and return when the _Pathshire_ returns. We
shall have enough time in her absence to see Japan, and Hong-Kong, and
Shanghai, or any other places you feel we ought to see. At present I
want to see my son. Wild horses shall not move me.”
She had had enough of travelling. She liked to be settled in a home,
and did not intend to trail about the seas at her husband’s heels.
Nick invited himself to dine, and John and Hugh, who would not ask for
late leave that night, went ashore in the afternoon.
“Mr. Alter is always talking of you,” Margaret told him when, after
tea, he had her alone. “He wants more of your work, and he has given me
this letter for you.”
“I have done no more work,” he confessed.
“None?”
“None.”
“Didn’t you get my letter. I addressed it to Colombo.”
“Yes, I got that. I took it up to Kandi with me to read. I made
wonderful resolutions that night.”
“And haven’t kept them?”
“No.”
“John, you are hopeless.”
He defended himself as best he could. “I can’t help it,” he said;
“I have tried to write and I have tried to read. I have read
spasmodically. But it seems useless. I started this naval business
too early. My education has been a naval education, and--what is more
important--my life is a naval life. If you can’t be alone you can’t
think; if you can’t think you are a fool to try to write. Besides,
to write you must read and read and read. You must see life from a
thousand angles--not from one professional standpoint. And you must
feel that, for better or for worse, you are master of yourself--not
necessarily of your actions, but of your thinking.”
“But you have written in these very circumstances. Why can’t you write
more?”
“For the same reason that a man who chances upon an occasional phrase
can’t write an epic. Literature isn’t luck; it’s the result of
substantial effort.”
“Others have written who had other things to do than write.”
He wondered if, after all, he was overrating difficulties in order to
shield a lack of courage. “Yes,” he said, “but out of their office,
or shop, or factory, their life was their own. They went home--to some
kind of home. At any rate, it was theirs. A snotty’s life is never his
own. He lives in his office the whole twenty-four hours. He never ‘goes
home.’”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“So you give up?” she asked.
“Yes. What can I do?”
“And you are not nineteen yet. What’s your life going to be?”
“I may get to like it. Perhaps in the senior ranks it will be better.”
“It won’t.”
“I know. Of course it won’t.”
She was tempted to be angry because he had so early abandoned hope,
because he was not putting up a fight; but she saw that he was opposed
to forces so much stronger than any he could command that by no courage
could he unaided stand against them. Then she remembered a source
whence help might come.
“John,” she said, “I want you to fight this out.”
“Fight?”
“Because I believe it’s worth the fighting. You feel hopeless now,
partly, I dare say, because your other work prevents your writing, but
chiefly--isn’t that true?--chiefly because you don’t feel sure that you
could ever write.... You can write, you know.”
“What guarantee have you of that?” he asked, in a tone that was
unusually hard, because he did not feel hard. Her presence, her voice,
her repose above all, affected his uneasy mind profoundly. It was
amazing that anyone should care two damns whether he wasted his life or
not.
“I think I had better tell you,” she said. “I didn’t intend to. There’s
a sort of convention that you mustn’t tell people good of themselves,
but I shall tell you this now. I have Mr. Alter’s guarantee.”
“Because he said he liked my work? It’s so easy to say that.”
“No--more than that. He said you were an example of godless waste.”
“Good heavens!” John exclaimed with a laugh.
“And he said,” she went on, “that he believed you could, if you would,
be a great man. I asked him at once what reasons he had for saying
that. He gave me certain points in your work: I shan’t repeat them or
you will strain after them and exaggerate them. But he thought them
decisive. He showed your work to other men whose opinions confirmed his
own.... What now?”
“It’s wonderfully good to hear,” John said unsteadily. “Margaret, tell
me the special points he hit on. I don’t see how it is possible to be
sure at this stage.”
“I’ll tell you one point--too general for you to exaggerate and spoil.
He said that you wrote naturally, established a curious intimacy with
your audience, and that yet what you said was momentous--the rarest
of combinations. And he repeated what you heard him say that night at
dinner--that your images were chosen with the eyes tight shut or wide
open--the full vision, inward or outward. He gave instances.”
“What instances?”
“Those I can’t tell you. If I did you would be bound to imitate them.”
He thought over this in silence. “Margaret,” he said, “may not this be
mere talk? You know how great men love an occasional enthusiasm. Mr.
Alter is in no way bound by what he says.”
“He acts on it, at any rate. He went to see your mother about it.”
“She wrote that he had called.”
“He has called often,” Margaret said. She smiled as she remembered his
words, spoken after one of those expeditions to the country. “Mrs.
Lynwood is delightful,” he had said. “She understands everything except
her son. She wishes he would settle down to the Navy--a fixed income
and an open-air life. She smiles at his poetry, and says, ‘Yes, I dare
say it is good, Wing, and I’m glad he does it so well; but there’s no
money in it. And we are dreadfully poor, you know.’”
Margaret told John nothing of this. If Mrs. Lynwood did not see fit to
mention to her son that she had known Wingfield Alter long enough and
intimately enough to call him “Wing,” she had probably good reasons for
concealing the fact.
“I must think over all this,” John said. “I want to tell Hartington
about it. Hartington is the Sub.”
“The Sub?” she said in surprise. “Does the Sub listen kindly to poetry?”
“Yes, thank Heaven. You must meet him soon.... And I’ll try to write
to-night, Margaret.”
“No; don’t _try_.”
“But I want to write now. I am so suddenly happy. I have been longing
and longing to see you. And when you come you bring this wonderful
news.”
Near at hand the gulls were crying, and sampan men crooning to
themselves as they rocked their bodies over their stern oars.
“Come and tell me about England,” he said; “the Thames, the bridges,
the lights, the trains; and pictures and music, and books and plays,
and carpets and rugs; and little narrow country lanes, and hills, and
being free, and----”
“But I can’t tell you everything at once!”
“Oh, splendid!” he exclaimed. “I guessed you would say that. I have
guessed it every night for weeks and weeks. ‘But I can’t tell you
everything at once!’ Now it’s coming true. You see,” he explained, “I
have been looking forward to this.”
A tremor of joy passed through her because she had made him happy. She
began to talk eagerly, so that, for a time at least, he might forget
the ship, and might not remember, what she understood now, that “for
weeks and weeks” there had been nothing but this meeting to which he
might look forward.
From the bridge of the _Pathshire_ Nick Ordith was surveying the shore
through a telescope.
“Dull spot, Yeoman,” he said.
The Yeoman of Signals rubbed his hands. “Precious cold in the winter,
sir.”
IV
John returned to the ship in a spirit of exultation, intoxicated, not
so much by the heady wine of praise as by the discovery that he was not
altogether alone in his difficult world. Margaret cared what became of
him; apparently Mr. Alter also cared. But it was Margaret’s interest
and her personality that filled his thoughts to the exclusion of the
colder critic. He sought out Hartington, and laid the matter before
him, reading aloud Mr. Alter’s letter, and repeating the passages in it
which seemed to him unusually important.
“DEAR LYNWOOD,
“_I am sending this letter by Margaret lest it follow you from sea to
sea. If she does not meet you at once, she can at least discover your
whereabouts.
“I have shown your work to several friends--all creative artists,
not critics only. Their opinions support my own. Probably in your
present situation you have no one to whom you can go for counsel,
so I have taken upon myself the duties of adviser. You must read. I
don’t care about the quantity, but your reading must be regular and
sound. The modern men are excellent when you have found your own
feet, but before you are twenty you are prone to imitation of their
extremes--probably the worst of them. So go back to men whom you will
not be tempted to imitate. Read the_ Actes and Monuments, _Swift,
Addison, Walton, Goldsmith. Burton’s_ Anatomy of Melancholy _has been
an inexhaustible quarry for later essayists. If you must have the
living, try Mrs. Meynell for her prose. Go to De Quincey for speed
and amazement, Poe for short stories, Fielding for action--Fielding,
in fact, for most things. In poetry, take Shakespeare--enough,
believe me, for your present needs._
“_As for a method of writing--whatever I tell you, a thousand others
will tell you I am wrong. Fast or slow? Rough-hewn or polished? That
you must find out for yourself. I believe_ le mot juste _is well
worth long seeking in chilly, critical moments. But if you feel
excited about what you are writing it’s best to use a slack rein.
Never be afraid of the whip--it’s very good to write a ‘portion’
every day, if you have the courage to destroy it when necessary in
the evening. The wastepaper-basket is a good, silent friend whom it
is folly to despise.
“Write to me whenever you care to, and send me the little that the
wastepaper-basket does not swallow up. I have been seeing much of
your mother lately, talking of old times and of you._
“_Yours_,
“WINGFIELD ALTER.
“_P.S.--If you can find a place to do it in, read your work aloud
to yourself--especially verse. I should have told you to read the
Bible and Thomas Hardy and Murray’s translations of the Greek.
Robert Bridges will teach you much of metre. Try Clutton Brock for
scholarly prose. Margaret is taking out a supply of my books for
you. Talk to her when you can, but don’t believe all she tells you
about literature--and don’t accept what I tell you as anything but a
foundation upon which to build up your own tastes. I think you might
read Conrad, too, if you will promise to stop when Marlow begins to
dominate you completely.--W.A._”
Hartington who thought that by this time he had a fairly accurate
understanding of the working of John’s mind, was at first astonished by
the extraordinary elation of which this letter was the only apparent
cause. It was natural that John should be pleased by the approval
and interest of a man of Alter’s standing, but his changed mood, the
laughter, the quickened speech, the heightened colour, called for an
explanation more personal. John spoke of Margaret as “Fane-Herbert’s
sister” when he spoke of her at all.
“So Alter advises you to talk to Miss Fane-Herbert when you can?”
Hartington said. “What’s the exact meaning of that?”
“She knows a good deal of books,” said John easily.
“But he doesn’t suggest that you should be tutored by her?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then it’s her talk that’s to do you good?”
“Yes.”
“Because it is _her_ talk--not for the sake of her knowledge?”
“I suppose so.”
Hartington smiled. Between them as they sat in the small cabin hung
a large red-paper lantern, lighted by an electric lead. Hartington
touched it with his foot, and set the light and shadows chasing each
other round the Fiesole paintings and Dürer’s _Hare_.
“Do you think I might ask you an extremely rude question?” he said.
“It’s important. I think it’s relevant.”
“I know what you are going to ask,” John answered. “About
Fane-Herbert’s sister? I suppose you think I am a fool to be in love
with her.”
“It makes the whole business more complicated. It means that half the
time when you think you are wanting one thing you are really wanting
another. Now any consideration of the future will be hopelessly
entangled with consideration of her.”
John explained that, in truth, Margaret simplified the issue, because,
as he said, her own ideas were so very like his own. He elaborated this
theory until he could elaborate it no more. Then he stopped suddenly.
“It’s so exciting,” he said, after a pause. “Everything is so exciting.”
The excitement of it took his breath away. He steadied the red lamp,
and watched its light glow through the tips of his fingers. Obviously
he had forgotten that his life did not consist entirely in Margaret
and literature. Of what use was it to remind him now that he was a
midshipman, very young and altogether unknown, who earned one shilling
and ninepence a day? of what use to speak of Ibble’s and Ibble’s
wealth? Hartington decided not to trouble him that night, to leave
unshattered so long as they would endure his vain, happy dreams.
“Do you think,” John said, “that Mr. Alter would put in a word with a
publisher about a novel?”
“Probably. Have you written one? Have you a great work stored away
secretly underneath your private till?”
“No,” said John seriously; “but I could write one. A hundred thousand
words. Suppose I did a thousand a day--or even five hundred--a couple
of quarto pages.... There might be money in that.”
He turned into his hammock that night to lie long awake, dreaming of
title pages, bindings, and press-cuttings, and calculating royalties.
He was generous to himself in the matter of royalties, for so much
money would be needed before--perhaps a play would be better, after
all.... Very carefully, mindful of Hartington’s warning, he excluded
Margaret from his consideration of these practical matters. But when
at last he fell asleep and could no longer deceive himself, he dreamed
of Margaret only. He dreamed that she kissed him, not that he kissed
her; of a hundred tendernesses of word and deed that were outside his
experience. They had a house in Westminster.... She looked down from
behind the grille on to the floor of the House of Commons.
V
Margaret sat very still on the edge of her bed. The last word she had
heard her father speak that evening came back to her like a tawdry tune.
“The most steel-like mind I know.”
That was Mr. Ordith’s. Steel-like: strong, supple, elastic, highly
finished. He had, too, some of the splendour, even the poetry, of
machinery: accurate, clean, with no uncertain edges, without misgiving.
And he had power.
He was a man to whom one might go confidently in any worldly
difficulty. He would know what ought to be done, and would do it at
once. He would see quite clearly one side of every question. In a way,
she supposed, it was a compliment that one who had so wide a field of
choice should have chosen her.
Then she remembered how he had watched her. She saw again, as if they
were watching her now, those large dark eyes, with their lower lids
slightly raised and puckered. It gave one a sense of being a specimen,
of being exposed. She shivered, stood up, walked to the window and
closed it. The night was hot, so she opened the window again.
“Anyhow,” she said, “_he_ doesn’t want help from anyone.” She blew
out the candle and got into bed. There were so many people who wanted
help--John among them; so many, that one might as well give up trying
to help them. With Ordith it would be an easy passage in a comfortable
ship that he would steer.
The bedclothes were tucked into place with a little jerk. She pushed
back a wisp of hair from her face as if she were angry with it. Then
she shut her eyes--tight. No need to think. No need to worry yet. Sleep.
But she opened her eyes again, and stared at the little white mountain
of her pillow.