IN THE CROSS-PASSAGE
I
There was no Gunnery after the first days of September, and on the
fifth the squadron sailed for Yokohama in order that it might send
representatives to the Mikado’s funeral. The Gunroom was cheered by
the prospect, though the enthusiasm of the midshipmen who were then
attached to the Engine-room staff was somewhat damped by the thought of
so many days continuously at sea. John, however, had by now returned to
the Upper Deck, and to him watch-keeping on the fore-bridge had ever
been the most attractive of his duties. By night it was even pleasanter
than by day; for then the bridge’s isolation was accentuated; there
was no routine, no hurrying to and fro of the hands; no Commander, no
Captain, no Navigator, save in exceptional circumstances. The Gold
Lace, together with all that the Gold Lace implied, was securely packed
away. The officer of the watch and his midshipman drew closer together,
the barriers of Service were dissolved, and personality lived again.
Sipping the cocoa that John had made, he and his officer would stoop
over charts of strange regions and weave tales of the places whose
names they found; or, together on monkey’s island, they would exchange
reminiscences of Dartmouth and the _Britannia_; or discuss books,
women, politics, or spiritualism, according to the officer’s taste.
In the _Pathshire_ the relations between Wardroom and Gunroom were
excellent--a circumstance which, as had been said at that last dinner
in the _King Arthur_, went far towards the making of a Happy Ship.
There was not one watch-keeping Lieutenant with whom John was reluctant
to spend four hours on the bridge. It was necessary, when the watch
began, to make a swift estimate of his officer’s mood, and to regulate
his conduct accordingly. Sometimes the four hours were allowed to pass
almost in silence, and, in any case, it was not the midshipman’s part
to begin anything but a strictly Service conversation. Often it was
cocoa that loosened the officer’s tongue.
“Well, young fellah-me-lad,” Dendy, the ship’s rake, would begin. “I’m
damned bored. I don’t know about you?” This would open the way for
tales of Dendy’s invariably triumphant loves--tales which John had
found he was required, not to comment upon, but to believe. Dendy had
his moments of seriousness, too, when he would take hold of John’s arm
and explain that love could not always be lightly regarded....
Lanfell, a stolid salt-horse, was a less amusing companion. At times
when other officers were more carefully dressed, Lanfell had a habit
of appearing in a sweater and scarf, an incredibly old monkey-jacket
and trousers, and a pair of sea-boots. When at sea he would ask his
midshipman how he would moor ship, or rig sheers, or lay out a bower
anchor, and the watch was liable to degenerate into a peripatetic
seamanship lecture. If he could think of no more questions he would
sometimes consent to be diverted into lighter paths; but even then his
imagination led him with painful regularity to a football field. He
was never tired of explaining that he was neither a mathematician nor
a theorist.
“I can’t chase _X_--never could,” he would say. “And in a destroyer
with a sea running I’d rather have a drop o’ rough seamanship than all
your ballistics.”
“Then you don’t believe in specializing, sir?”
“Specializing? Oh, I don’t know. I suppose the specialists have the
pull. But there’s still room for the seaman--more room than most
fellows think.”
There were times when Lanfell’s faith failed him, and he saw himself
as a salt-horse eternally waiting for promotion; but such misgivings
he drowned quietly. His skin would become pasty and opaque, his eyes
heavy, his movement cumbrous. Then, by taking violent exercise and cold
baths, he would restore his health and hope. The Service suited him,
and, save in those periods when his wine bill mounted prodigiously, he
was happy.
The most exciting watch-keeping partner was undoubtedly the First
Lieutenant; but his visits to the bridge were voluntary, and
unfortunately few. He would appear at odd hours--usually at night
when he had been unable to sleep. At first he would take no notice
of anyone, but stand at the end of the bridge, staring down upon the
chains. Then, rousing himself jerkily--every movement of his was a
jerk--he would do breathing exercises, a performance so strange
that the Quartermasters shook their heads and sometimes tapped their
foreheads significantly.
When the breathing exercises were finished the First Lieutenant would
turn swiftly, his cap over his eyes, and rattle up to monkey’s island,
where the officer of the watch and his midshipman were standing by the
compass.
“Ee!” he began. This was a strange sound, peculiar to himself, which
was forced from his throat--apparently in spite of some physical
obstruction. “Ee! Finish your watch for you. You go below. Anything to
turn over?”
“Can’t you sleep, Number One?”
“No. Ee. Yes, I mean. You push off. Mm?”
One night, after such preliminaries, the First Lieutenant being left on
watch, he rapped out at John:
“Ever seen a sea-monster?... Ought to see a sea-monster.... No, boy,
don’t look mazed. This isn’t a Peter-Piper-Picked-a-Peck exercise.
Common sense. Ought to see a sea-monster. Good for snotties. Mm?”
After a pause. “Seamen’s fairies. Believe in fairies. Believe in
fairies, believe in God. Look for sea-monster and you have your eye on
the Devil. Catch sea-monster; catch Devil by tail.”
Other midshipmen had been known to laugh, as they thought, politely;
but John knew the First Lieutenant too well. Left alone he would
presently become comprehensible and interesting. Interruption would
drive him into silence.
Soon he began a rambling disquisition upon the probable anatomy,
functions, and habits of sea-monsters. His talk was full of the
technicalities of doctors and zoologists. The longer a word the more
rapid his pronunciation of it.... From sea-monsters to prehistoric
beasts, and thence to were-wolves and vampires was an easy progress.
Of the supernatural he spoke with none of the nervous suggestion of
one who visits séances. He did not persuade or argue, and his tales,
frankly imaginary, seemed to be told to himself rather than to John.
They were wonderful tales.
“D’you read Algernon Blackwood?... Ee.... More fun to spin the yarns
yourself. Mm? Now, if ever you get writing, don’t lose a sense of
Eternity. That’s what the modern people lack. Brilliant enough: dozens
of women--acid mostly; brilliant like chandeliers, though--not stars.
So taken up with their own few years they forget the rest. Scramble
for the nuts; forget the tree; forget the forest; forget the hawk
overhead. That’s why Hardy sits in the inner parlour with the giants
and all the others rattle their mugs in the taproom. Know Hardy? Every
word a new link in chain from Adam; every kiss taught by Eve. Sense of
Eternity.... Sense of Eternity makes a watch pass quicker. Read Gibbon,
boy, when the Commander curses----”
“Light on the port bow, sir!” sang the look-out in the foretop.
“Aye, aye.... Take a bearing, boy.” He took off his cap and flung it on
to the bridge below. “Ee.... Signalman o’ the Watch--my cap. Dropped
it. Bring it.” And when the Signalman had come and gone he added to
John: “Must keep them awake. Must remind ’em I’m here. They like it.
Bad for morals to stare too long at the sea. Breaks the morbid current
if you bash things about. That’s why Cabinet Ministers ought to have
Jesters with balloons. Smack on the head with a balloon restores sense
of proportion. Mm?... What was the bearing?... Take the Corporal of the
Watch with you and go the Rounds.”
Almost any occasion--especially the solemn and pompous--might be
enlivened by the flight of the First Lieutenant’s cap. Once he had
hurled it, without explanatory comment, into the midst of the ship’s
company when they were engaged in prayer during quarter-deck Church.
“Sorry, padre,” he said afterwards. “Forgot about you. Fellow talking.
Had to stop him. No other means of communication.”
II
After the Mikado’s funeral the _Pathshire_ visited Vladivostok and
Nagasaki before returning to Wei-hai-wei. The way of life ran smooth,
and seemed to John to run the smoother because for him its direction
might so soon be changed. His hope, at first so weak, of a favourable
answer from his mother, had fed upon itself, until at last it had
become almost a conviction. He had ceased to think of his future as
that of a naval officer.
This sense of approaching emancipation and the thoughts of independence
by which it was accompanied changed his attitude towards Margaret.
His hope had so grown that now once more it included her. From a
midshipman, from an officer who throughout his life would be dependent
upon the pay of his rank, she was separated by impassable barriers of
wealth, influence, and competition. But now, in the light of his new
hope, the barriers between him and her seemed no longer impassable.
He would at least have the chance to construct ladders of fame and
money before it was too late. He would be able, too, to bring those
ladders near. The Service etiquette and tradition would bind him no
more. Ordith, for instance, would cease to be his superior officer. He
would not be borne away to sea, nor would his shore leave be stopped
at the moment when he most wanted to see Margaret. Mr. Fane-Herbert,
whom it was impossible not to regard as some kind of naval chief
with additional advantages of wealth and civilian freedom, could not
continue to treat him as a junior officer of no account. The blind
alley would open into a clear field. Opportunity would increase.
Or, at any rate, this is how John’s sudden optimism led him to regard
his future.
Margaret was one of a small party that came on board to tea with
Hartington early in October. It was a Gunroom party, to which Ordith
was not invited. Its beginning had been difficult because civilians
seem always to require so much space that a warship cannot provide.
The chairs, which had been comfortable enough until it was necessary
to invite ladies to sit in them, appeared suddenly to be in a shocking
state of disrepair. Never had Gunroom china seemed so thick or Gunroom
fare, for all the preparations that had been made, so brutally
masculine. The corticene, scarred with burnings of cigarette-ends,
cried out for rugs to hide it.
The ladies, however, were tactfully blind to these deficiencies. The
tea had been a success. At Hartington’s suggestion the party broke up
so that the guests might “see over the ship,” he having conveniently
forgotten that they had “seen over” it many times before. He himself
took charge of Mrs. Fane-Herbert. Margaret was left to John.
Having examined the Upper Deck twelve-pounders in the view of all the
world, he took her into the ammunition and cross-passages, where he
knew none other would be. The electric lights flared from polished
metal and white enamel; the atmosphere was heavy; their lightest
footsteps clattered and resounded. But John was oblivious to all this.
“I’ve never seen you in such good spirits,” she said. “Tell me why.”
“Because I am going to leave the Service.”
“Leave it--for good?” She drew in her breath.
“Yes. I’ve never told you. I haven’t had a chance to tell you. My leave
was stopped for a time, and I never seemed to be able to get near you.
You know why my leave was stopped?”
“Yes. Nick told me.”
Nick! So it had gone thus far. “What did he say?” John asked.
“He said that what you did was a serious offence--technically.”
“Technically?”
“I mean he seemed to sympathize in the circumstances. He told me about
Mr. Aggett and the watches you were keeping. He told me everything.”
“And he sympathized?”
“Yes. You needn’t say it like that, John. I believe it was he who
persuaded Mr. Aggett to stop your leave instead of taking it further.”
“Did he tell you that too?”
“No; but I read between the lines.”
“Ah!”
“And father said he thought you had been lucky.”
“So Nick told _him_?”
“I don’t know who told him. Nick may have done. It’s been the talk of
the fleet.”
John winced under that.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We oughtn’t to have talked about it. I’ve made
you wretched.”
“No. I don’t care now--now I’m going to get out.”
“When is it to be?”
“I wrote home at the end of August. The mail takes just over a
fortnight each way. I might get an answer--to-morrow.”
She said after a moment’s thought: “Oh, I am glad, tremendously glad
... for you.”
The thought of John’s leaving China, of his returning home, troubled
her. It brought Ordith and the inevitable decision nearer. Somehow
John’s absence--though lately his presence had meant so little to
her--would weaken her own defences. Now that he was breaking free of
his net, his company and the likeness of his situation to her own as
she conceived it had become suddenly more valuable to her. A safeguard,
she told herself.... And yet, more than a safeguard.... She looked at
him nervously. She wanted him not to go. She would be alone when he had
gone.
“You know,” she said, “this--all this life--doesn’t suit me better than
you. We’re together in that. And you are escaping.”
“It’s no good without you.”
He had spoken on the instant. There was no going back. He said, before
she could interrupt him:
“Margaret, you must listen. One can’t go on alone. I can’t. I don’t
believe you can. We are both caught the same way. I’m getting free. You
must, too. Oh, you must, Margaret!”
“It’s impossible.”
“Now, yes. But couldn’t we come to an understanding now? And later----”
He was stricken by doubt for the meaning of her word “impossible.” He
tried and failed to read her face.
“Or did you mean----”
“You are not out of the Service yet, John,” she said.
He was sure now that she had intended to check him. That reminder of
the Service--which she had spoken partly to gain time, partly to drag
back her own thoughts to realities--seemed to him a deliberate thrust,
well aimed. He was still in the Service, still a snotty--powerless.
It became a source of embarrassment that she was beautiful and wore
beautiful things. His imagination drew for him a picture of her
dressing-table, spread with silver; of her furs; of her soft dresses,
orderly and exquisite; of her maid brushing that wonderful hair--and
of the vast house in London, with its stone steps for ever in the
twilight of a frowning porch, and its stern door, of which the handle
was but an ornament not made to turn. In contrast were his barbarous
sea-chest and hammock, his own small home tucked away in the country,
and his one shilling and ninepence a day.
He had been a fool to think that she--oh, a thousand times a fool!
Feeling that the moment and, above all, her cruel thrust had given
him the right to say what for long years--until he was more than a
snotty--he might not say again, he flashed out:
“Come what may, Margaret, you’re the best I have on earth.”
And he turned away, leaving her to follow him out of the ammunition
passage. She, not knowing how she had wounded him, not realizing
how her one word “impossible” had been misinterpreted, moved her
lips to speak. His last phrase--a direct statement rather than an
exclamation--thrilled her. He had meant every word of it. It was
the finest tribute a woman could hear spoken; and he had given it
finely--every syllable swift and clear-cut like sharp-edged flames. And
yet----
She did not speak. She stood without moving. Already he was a few paces
away--the nozzle of a fire-hose glinted between them: and he did not
turn round. There would have been no need for speech had he turned. She
would have run to him. They would have made great plans, too brave to
be impossible.
But he did not turn, and in a moment she began to follow him.