THE CURRENCY
I
It happened that his mother’s reply, reaching the _Pathshire_ in the
middle of October, came to John soon after he had learnt of what he
believed to be his irretrievable loss of Margaret. With her loss his
need for her became more instant. While she had belonged to none other,
and his own future had been at least not closed to dreams, he had
hesitated to admit, even to himself, that he loved her. The lesson of
the complete insignificance of midshipmen, which the Service teaches
with such energy and eagerness, had been so deeply impressed upon him
that, even in a matter so personal as this, he had been unable to
forget it. “For drill purposes,” as the Service says, snotties did not
love--they had women; and it was indeed ridiculous in one whose pay
was twelve-and-threepence a week to contemplate any love that might
lead to marriage. Moreover, John had felt that Time was on his side,
and Chance as yet not a declared enemy. He had dreamed of a swift end
to his snotty days, of expanding fortune, of reinforced hope. He had
wished to justify his claim to Margaret before making it.
It had seemed enough that she should stand for the imaginative, the
creative, the permanent--a contrast to that professional side of his
life which he took to be destructive and ephemeral. But now all these
things were changed. By his mother’s letter it had been made clear
that there would be no expansion of fortune, no reinforcement of hope,
no breaking free into a new world. Margaret ceased to represent the
possibly attainable.
The outlines of his vision of her were thus sharpened. Now that she and
his hopes for the future were at once taken away from him he saw her as
he had never seen her before. Her personality stood out more clearly.
A new fierceness and impatience entered into his thoughts of her. That
the worldly difficulties in the way of his claiming her were as great
as ever mattered no longer. That he was still a midshipman mattered not
at all. There was no denying now that he loved her--that fact dominated
all others, sweeping aside doubts, and arguments, and misgivings.
For a time this singleness of purpose was a source of happiness, a
stimulant, the effects of which rapidly passed away. At last John went
to Hartington, and showed him the fateful letter.
“Well,” Hartington said, “what are you going to do?”
“It’s definitely the end,” John answered. “It’s no good to go on hoping
to leave the Service. I’d better settle down to it, I suppose.”
“What are you going to say to your mother?”
“Oh, some lie. I don’t want her to worry her soul out. Better make
her believe I’ve changed my mind. How does one change one’s mind
convincingly?”
Together they planned his reply.
“It’s all very well for me to say I will settle down,” John said, “but
there’s no incentive in this job. I shall always look outside it. And
yet, God knows, I shall take it lying down like the rest of them:
grumble and grouse, but never break free, never rebel. Isn’t it odd
how one submits and submits, until at last the average N.O. begins to
believe, ‘Oh well, it isn’t so bad, after all’?”
“Even the cabhorse gets accustomed to his cab--perhaps gets to like it
in the end.”
John answered: “I begin to see the wisdom of breaking snotties while
they are young. I suppose it’s kinder in the long run.”
II
As autumn drew on to winter, the cold of Northern China closed down
on Wei-hai-wei, and, after a short cruise to Ching-Wang-Tao, the
_Pathshire_ lay in harbour until Christmas-time. John saw little of
Margaret, and never saw her alone. To meet her now was an exquisite
agony, for her beauty, of which he seemed never before to have been
fully aware, had that amazing power to baffle and astonish which is
the attribute of ghosts. For him the former Margaret still existed,
but under a cloak of unreality. Her friendly smile, her deep, quiet
eyes, that reflected laughter as a great lake reflects the lamps
swinging on the boats of _fête_, her manner of giving him her hand, of
inclining her body a little backwards as she spoke, these things were
familiar with the familiarity of a persistent memory--in the light of
circumstance they were no more substantial than this.
The cold became intense; there were enormous stoves in every part of
the ship; the ice made the scrubbing of decks impossible; officers
kept watch in hoods and gauntlets of fur, and the men were shrouded
in wool. In such weather there could be little activity. The Gunroom
found nothing better to do than smoke, and gamble, and drink, and
tell stories of women who were now inaccessible. And with Christmas
Day came an opportunity for outbreak. To-morrow they were to sail
for Woo-Sung--that is, for Shanghai. Christmas was their last day in
harbour, a climax, an end to many months.
In accordance with Service custom the men had decorated their messes,
and the Captain, followed by all the officers in order of seniority,
inspected them. The mess-tables were covered with good things--cakes,
jam, cigarettes, tobacco. At the end of every table stood a man with a
plate containing samples of the mess’s Christmas fare, and from every
plate each officer as he passed by was compelled to take a morsel. They
ate what they could, and carried the rest in their caps.
When Captain’s rounds and Church and Divisions were completed, the
Gunroom was entertained by the Wardroom. John drank cocktails with
everyone, drank so many that he lost accurate count of them, and
emerged with nothing but a vague consciousness of the figure eleven. He
refused to believe he had drunk so many, for he was strangely sober.
His speech was a little quickened, but his legs were steady and his
brain was clear. Oh yes, his brain was clear. And he wasn’t making as
much noise as those other fellows. They were further gone than he; the
Wardroom was further gone than he.... And the Wardroom was drifting
into the Gunroom; hospitality was being returned: cocktails were
circulating again.... What about wine bills? Would they run their wine
bills over?... Wine bills be damned! All these cocktails were going
down to the Mess. Hartington had said so. They would be charged on the
Mess share. And anyhow, seeing it was Christmas, the Captain----
“Thank God we’re going to Shanghai to-morrow!” Dendy exclaimed. “Then
to Hong-Kong. Life moves again. Here’s to the pretty ladies what takes
pity on the lone, lorn N.O.!”
John had another cocktail from the tray presented to him by the Chinese
boy. He must go steady with those cocktails. Three since he came to the
Gunroom; the third must be made to last.
“What about putting in for leave together at Shanghai?” said Dyce’s
voice. “What about night leave?”
“Could we get it?”
“I have friends there--genuine friends. We could say we were going to
stay with them.”
“Commander’d see through that.”
“Commander doesn’t want to.... Commander knows snotties’ human
beings--animals, like the rest.” Dyce put down his glass on the table.
“Anyhow, means getting out of the ship for a night....”
“D’you know where to go?”
“Find out from Dendy--he knows the ropes.”
“I----”
John drank, that none might read in his face the workings of his mind.
“That fixed?” said Dyce.
“Yes.”
A great shout went up at some joke. Heads were thrown back, slack
mouths were opened. Someone slapped his thigh to show his appreciation
of the current wit.
“That’s good ... hellish good!... D’you know the one about the Irish
girl who----”
John’s glass slipped from his fingers and broke with a clean, tinkling
sound. A heel ground the fragments....
The Wardroom officers went their way. The Gunroom sat down to lunch.
There was a basket of champagne, brought by the Captain’s steward....
Through the long afternoon the Wardroom and the Gunroom slept. Through
the dog watches they slept. A few stirred for supper.
III
Night leave was granted at Shanghai. As many midshipmen as could be
spared from ship’s duties accepted it and went ashore. They went with
a light conscience, for this affair of women had long ceased in their
eyes to have any connection with right or wrong. They regarded it
neither from the social nor from the moral standpoint. They did not
consider it more seriously than a civilian considers a visit to a
theatre. To them it was a break in routine, an escape from sameness, an
obtaining, in the only accessible form, of that change of association
which is as necessary to the mind as is change of diet to the body.
“In the only accessible form”--in that phrase was the essence of the
truth. When first they went to sea they had no taste for drink, no
habit of women. What relief they needed from the inevitable hardness of
work and discipline they found as other men find it, in the company of
those whose interests differed from their own professional interests.
According to their tastes they read, or played games, or danced, or
flirted. They talked to their mothers or their sisters, and forgot;
they went to a theatre and forgot; they saw colour, silk, pictures,
furniture, and forgot; they hunted, or read some poem, or walked
on high hills, and they forgot with the saving and strengthening
forgetfulness of sleep. So men live; such is the meaning of recreation.
In Gunrooms these things, which have in common that their appeal is
imaginative, do not exist; and the inhabitants of Gunrooms--and not
of Gunrooms only--because the imagination must needs be fed somehow,
seek relief where they may. The _Pathshire’s_ midshipmen were not
naturally drunkards or gamblers, nor were they naturally corrupt. When
they had gone home on leave from the _King Arthur_ they had not drunk
or womanized; when they returned from leave they had found the tone of
the whole Gunroom temporarily changed. Leave, a chance to break free,
an opportunity to meet women other than harlots, had cleared their
minds as the opening of a window clears a foul atmosphere. For a time
blasphemy had been unpopular, foul language infrequent. But by the
pressure of circumstance they had been driven back into the old ways.
Now they thought lightly of drinking in excess and of going with women.
“You R.N. snotties,” a merchant service officer had told John, “have
the filthiest minds I know.”
That night on which leave was given Hartington dined with the Captain.
“Well,” he said, “what of your snotties now? I suppose they are off
with the women. One can’t blame them. There’s nothing to be done
out here. They can’t be given home leave.... But the devil of it
is, Hartington, that even in home waters they don’t get leave worth
speaking of.... The fact of their having women doesn’t worry me.
The trouble is that snotties’ minds, their whole manner of life,
their outlook--it’s like a gradual debasing of a currency.... They
are strange people, the Powers-that-Be. Give them an invention or a
strategical idea and they’ll work on it untiringly, develop it with
amazing ingenuity and care. Give them boys, as fine human material
as is to be found in the world, and for four and a half years they
educate them magnificently. Then, before they are eighteen, when their
minds are in a most impressionable stage, these boys are sent to sea.
They are subjected to persecution; they are flogged continually for
no specific wrong-doing; they are deprived of all opportunity for
solitude or thought; they are put in a crowded mess where they are cut
off from intimate association with men older than themselves, from
women of their own kind, from art and culture, from trees and hills,
from all legitimate amusement. And the Powers know it. They have
absolute authority in the Service, but the evil continues. Wine bills
are limited on board, and there is a free issue of prophylactics, but
the evil continues. I know the difficulties--the inevitable conditions
of sea-service, the need there is that snotties should be taught
discipline by a short method. But it’s an odd thing, Hartington, that
men with ability and power, who have the interests of the Service at
heart, should be unable to find any means of preventing that waste and
wrong.”