Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 12
THERE followed some weeks of peace, and once more Sorrell became a "person." The stoop went out of his shoulders; his eyes were clear; he sat at the head of the staff table and was addressed as "Mr. Sorrell." He had not realized his own incipient dignity, or that he was de veloping a certain "presence," and that the women respected him. They forgave him his rather silent attitude, his air of gentlemanly reserve, for after all he was a gentleman, born and in action, and his long thin figure and dark and intelli gent head were topped by a halo of mystery. For Sorrell was something of a mystery, and women love a mystery, especially when their intuition divines a kind and staunch reality at the back of it.
He was much discussed on the back stairs and in the kitchen.
"He's devoted to that boy of his."
"And a nice kid he is too. He's got such eyes, and a big laughing mouth. When he gets a bit older the women will want to kiss him."
It was not evident that the women wished to kiss Sorrell. He was more than a sex-man, and even the working women of to-day are more practically romantic than were their mothers. It seemed that Sorrell was not a marrying man; like Mr. Roland he was married to his job; but there were one or two women who were interested in his attitude towards marriage. Fanny Garland for one, fresh faced, cheerful, wholesomely ambitious. She had reasons for asserting to her secret self that she and Sorrell would make very good partners, that Sorrell's boy liked her and that she liked the boy. Both of them were saving money. Even Miss Murdoch—"the girl in the cage,"—who lived in rooms in Winstonbury and walked out each morning to immure her pale primrose gentility in the Pelican office, had a secret partiality for Sorrell. In fact—she did not hide it. From her cage her tired eyes watched life, the life that could come and go as it pleased. She envied it its freedom, but without bitterness, for she had not the vitality to be bitter. And she would watch Sorrell, and her pale face would light up whenever something brought him to the window of her cage.
She thought him "distinguished," yes, even in the Pelican's blue uniform.
But the chief contributor to Sorrell's peace of mind was Mr. Roland's "stout lad," Albert Hulks. The breadth and strength of him were comforting, as was his infinite good nature, and from the first glimpse of his great rosy face Sorrell had every cause to bless him. Albert was a modest creature. He hadn't much head, and he said—so, but his good temper and his strength were of more value to the man who had the head. Albert dealt with the luggage; it was nothing to him; he enjoyed man-handling it; he had the vigour of a young steam-engine. His attitude towards life too—was so easy.
He had two or three characteristic phrases.
"I'm not worrying. You leave it to me,—I'll tackle it, Keep smiling."
Bert was proud of his strength, and was ready to spend it with healthy enthusiasm, for no one had persuaded him that he ought to bottle it up, and dole it out in careful drops. He admired Sorrell, and they got on famously.
"O, yes,—I've got a back, but he's got a head, some head."
They were straight with each other over the tips, agreeing to keep a box in the office into which each slipped his takings, and the box was opened each night and the money shared out, three-fifths to Sorrell, and two-fifths to Hulks.
Had any interfering "Friend of the people" challenged Bert's attitude towards Sorrell and their work, he might have looked puzzled.
"Being exploited—am I? Don't see it, chum. I've got the back and he's got the head. Besides—he got a bit smashed up in the war. Dicky inside, see. Carrying luggage upstairs don't hurt me. He's got the head piece. We get on champion. What's wrong with that?"
The plain fellow's good nature had solved the problem:
Sorrell now found himself with more leisure, for Mr. Roland had not objected to his porters so arranging the work that one of them should be off duty twice a day.
"I leave it to you, Stephen. I know you'll not let me down."
Sorrell's free hours were from twelve till half-past one, and from eight till half-past nine. The evenings were sacred to Kit, but that midday hour he spent reading in his room, or in wandering about the garden. He knew very little about gardens, and on one occasion he had drawn a rare and hoarse chuckle from the churlish Bowden.
"What are those things,—sunflowers?"
"Sunflowers! Don't 'ee know an artichoke?"
But Sorrell enjoyed the garden. He used to wander up and down a broad grass walk in the vegetable garden, where vegetables and fruit and flowers were intermixed. Sweet peas grew here, and Fanny Garland, coming out to cut flowers for her table vases, would see Sorrell walking up and down, and usually he had a little black note-book in his hand.
She wondered whether he wrote poetry.
But Sorrell found his poetry in figures. He was enjoying the romance of hard cash. These little glittering sixpences, shillings, florins, and half-crowns, they were the stars above his immediate world, and of far more significance and import than the stars. His means to an end, his material plunder for immaterial needs. For with his savings he was going to arm his son against a world that babbled of socialism and still clutched a knife or a club.
Skill and knowledge were to be Kit's "arms," some craft in which he should use hand and brain, and could say to the miner "Bring coal, or my skill is not for you," or to the baker "Bread, or you die." For Sorrell's sufferings and struggles had not led him towards the illusion of socialism. He had seen too much of human nature. Labour, becoming sectionalized, would split into groups, and group would grab from group, massing for the struggle instead of fighting a lone fight. Only the indispensable and individual few would be able to rise above this scramble of the industrial masses. It is the few who matter and who will always matter. So Sorrell thought.
Social service? O, yes, ten thousand years hence—perhaps. But for the moment—arms—and not too much trust in your neighbour.
So, he wandered in the garden and carried his little book, and discovered the delight of scientific hoarding for the benefit of his pride and for the future of his son.
"Week ending June 23:
| Wages | £2 | 10 | 0 |
| Share of Tips | £5 | 3 | 6" |
Sacred symbols! He was not unconscious of the flowers and of the fruit, or of old Bowden putting in an extra hour each day,—not for love—but because of his percentages. His figures set him dreaming dreams. Tips averaging £5 a week in summer! With good health he might count on an income of £250 to £300 a year, and with his keep and his uniform thrown in. Kit was costing him about twenty-five shillings a week; his own personal expenses were very small. That should leave him at least £5 a week to play with.
"Save half,—and use the other half on education."
He began to think that he might launch out on his first adventure.
He wanted to take the boy away from the town school.
Sorrell spoke to Thomas Roland on the subject, and each man found that the other had very definite views on education, and that on some points they differed.
"What is your idea, Stephen?"
"A private tutor for a year or two."
"Can you afford it?"
"I might—if I can find a good local man."
"And what about games?"
Yes, that was a difficulty. Neither man believed in mass production as applied to education, but Roland did believe in games.
"Getting kicked on the shins, you know, and learning to keep your temper, and not to squeal 'off-side' on every ossible occasion. A boy wants it."
"All boys?"
"I think all boys ought to know how to take punishment."
"I want my boy to be something more than a healthy young animal with nice manners."
"Health and good manners are not a bad foundation, Stephen."
"Better than being a half-educated young prig with no manners. I grant it. But I want my boy to be a free man. I want him to be in a position to be able to say 'Go to hell' to both capital and labour."
"Do you want to send me to hell, Stephen?"
"You are a free man, sir; that's different. But it has always seemed to me that half one's youth is wasted; fooled away, rotted with boredom. A boy just drifts, or is pushed along by his parents. You stuff him with things in which he has no interest. Why, at eighteen, after seven years at a public school"
"Exactly.—But my sympathies are with the boy who refuses to be stuffed. He comes in fresh and big at the finish."
"Yes,—I don't want to stuff the boy. If he had two or three hours coaching a day,—and could then run free. He's keen on country things,—birds—and the river. I can have him taught to box and to swim, and perhaps to manage a horse. My idea is to give him plenty of fresh air—and enough book stuff, until he shows some inclination. Or—I might send him to a good school for a year or two—after he has had a year or two's coaching."
He smiled.
"The business would be—to get him in, the son of a hotel porter."
"I think you could camouflage that," said Mr. Roland.
Sorrell began to make inquiries in Winstonbury. Neither he nor Mr. Roland knew anything of the inner life of the place, for to the people who lived in the Queen Anne and Georgian houses of the Minster Close the Pelican was nothing more than a glorified "pub." Sorrell knew a few of the tradesmen, and one of the doctors. It occurred to him that Mr. Towner who kept the book-shop in Angel Row might be considered some sort of a guide to the intellectual possibilities of Winstonbury.
Mr. Towner was able to offer a suggestion. It arose from the fact that he was one of the few Victorians left in Winstonbury who put on a top hat and went to church on Sundays, and his church was St. Peter's. St. Peter's had a curate.
"There's Mr. Porteous. I believe he takes pupils."
Sorrell jotted down the Rev. Robert Porteous's address, and that same evening, having changed into mufti, he hunted out the curate's house in Gold Hill Lane. It was an old stone cottage with a leaded porch, sad and austere, and overshadowed by a great elm that seemed to bend over it menacingly.
A young woman of thirty or so answered the door.
"Is Mr. Porteous in?"
"Yes."
"Can I see him?"
She appeared flustered, and upon her pinched face was visible the vague fear of a woman whom poverty and conventional pride had turned into a social coward. The Porteouses kept no servant; they could not afford one. This shabby girl with the red, yet refined hands strove to be both a servant and a lady; her sensitiveness had been banked up in a narrow channel; she was ashamed of things that were not shameful; she had let herself be overawed by other people's cake-stands and carpets.
"I'm not quite sure. What name—please?"
"Sorrell—Captain Sorrell."
"Will you come in"
All her movements were self-conscious and secretive. She could do nothing naturally, and even when she showed Sorrell into a stuffy little drawing-room she seemed to be drawing curtains, preparing pathetic and futile excuses.
"Mr. Porteous's sermon, you know."
"I don't want to disturb him."
"I'll go and see."
She closed the door with care, and departed to find her father, who was engaged upon something far more practical than the writing of sermons. For Mr. Porteous, in his shirt sleeves, and wearing the oldest trousers he possessed, was attacking a choked flue in the kitchen range. Somewhat sooty about the face, he was enjoying himself like a child, for Mr. Porteous—robust and stout and bald—with a little fringe of butter-coloured curls waving over his occiput, cared not a damn for social niceties. His lack of pretence was a great trouble to his daughter. "Father's so unconventional." He was. Hence—his poverty, his obscure, fumbling life in a back street in Winstonbury.
"A Captain Sorrell to see you."
Mr. Porteous withdrew a flue-brush. He looked hot and cheerful.
"Sorrell? Don't know the name. What's he want?"
"I didn't ask him."
"All right. I'll go and see."
He would have gone as he was had not his daughter insisted that a sooty face and hands were sacrilegious, and that he must put on a collar and slip a pair of detachable cuffs over the sleeves of his grey flannel shirt.
"You can't go in like that."
Mr. Porteous showed a very neat set of false teeth.
"I'm a bounder, my dear; I know it. Who was it said that Peter and Paul were bounders? Anyhow—I take off my hat to him."
Miss Porteous sighed.
In the interview that followed Sorrell and Mr. Robert Porteous discovered in each other a mutual surprise, and also an element of delight in their surprise.
"You'll excuse me—but our kitchen flue was stopped up. A rather sooty undertaking. What can I do for you, Captain Sorrell?"
Sorrell was absorbing Mr. Porteous, the squareness and the muscularity of him, his short, slightly bowed and stalwart legs, his round face and vast bald head with its butter-coloured halo. An uncouth, clumsy, powerful, yet intelligent figure, with boyish and bright blue eyes.
"I hear you take pupils, sir."
"I do when I can get 'em, day pupils."
"I have a boy. I'm head porter at the Pelican Inn."
"Head porter. Splendid!"
Mr. Porteous made a movement as of bouncing in his chair. His false teeth gleamed. For years Winstonbury had been trying to suppress him, to squash him into a decent dullness, but Mr. Porteous's joy in life was of such a resiliency that the natural and eager swell of it returned. To him it was really splendid that a captain should be a hotel porter.
"How old's the boy?"
"Nearly thirteen. At present he is at the town school. It was a question of funds."
Porteous nodded.
"I know all about that, sir. Or I shouldn't be using a flue-brush, hey—what! What's your idea?"
Sorrell explained his ideas to this round and sympathetic and vigorous man whose head was bigger than any other head in Winstonbury. Mr. Porteous was a learned failure, as the world understands failure. His unconventionality and the uncouth vigour of his exterior had rendered him unacceptable to the gods behind his God.
"In brief—you want your boy coaching for a good school?"
"That's it."
"Any special subject?"
"He has not developed any special inclination—yet."
"So much the better. I can give him anything from Sanscrit to the Differential Calculus. But you said something about boxing."
"Yes,—but"
"I can teach him to box."
"You can, sir?"
"Well,—I was the middle-weight man of my years at Cambridge. Knocked out the Dark Blue in the first round—two years running. He's a Cabinet Minister—to-day."
They smiled at each other.
"I think you are the very man I want, sir. I don't wish my boy to be pushed into a groove."
"Quite so. I shan't bore him, my dear chap. I'm never bored. Light a pipe."
Then came the question of fees. Sorrell began a little tentatively, only to find that there was no need for him to be tentative with Mr. Porteous.
"I like teaching, my dear chap. I get paid for it. Fees? Well,—what can you afford?"
"Would two guineas a week rage?"
"That would satisfy me. Two and a half hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. I may have to go out sometimes, but the boy can carry on. Method's the thing. Now, what about you?"
"How,—sir?"
"I shan't be bleeding you?"
"No. I can manage two guineas quite well."
"Well,—that's that," said Mr. Porteous; "come and watch me finish my flue."