Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 17
THERE followed for Stephen Sorrell a season of happy accomplishment. He was able to pause and to think, not as a man thinks in some hustling crisis, but calmly and pleasantly. He strolled instead of walking. The Pelican had become very prosperous; the bird's feathers were turning to gold.
In one week in August Sorrell had taken nearly ten pounds in tips.
That was a solid basis upon which to build reveries, and at eight o'clock each evening Sorrell would change into a blue serge suit and a soft hat and walk out along the great black road that led Londonwards. These evening walks became dear to him. The road was a spacious terrace along which he paced, and looked out on life and the landscape. When it rained and blew he still took that walk, but he loved most those evenings when there was no wind, and a half moon shone in a sky of horizontal greyness. There were the distant chalk-hills, sometimes seen, sometimes obscured, and of the quality of tarnished silver. They seemed to set a soft and impartial limit to the landscape, like death closing in life.
The green world would turn to grey and from grey to black. The further trees merged into one dim mass. Sometimes the nearer trees remained distinct and green. There were the tall poplars, and an occasional old spruce or pine striking an individual note. The wires hummed, and cattle pulled softly at the grass. Dim flowers looked out of a gently flowing dimness.
An occasional car would rush by, full of plethoric people hurrying dinnerwards.
A star or two would appear, and lights, the lights in cottage windows.
There were times when he was made to realize the incredible dreariness of the English country. Its beauty vanished in slush and slime, and man would thank God for man-made London, or some such place as the Pelican where you could eat and drink and feel alive. These Northern countries! And those horrible northern towns, full of people who were becoming conscious of their own horrible ugliness, and who were beginning to utter savage and resentful cries. Winstonbury was still somewhat English, not Wellsian, or a snarling, love your brother sort of town, but love him, with reservations. Hate him if he happens to have five shillings in his pocket, or is a little more clever and energetic than his neighbours.
Sorrell philosophized. He thought of that other young life away over yonder, of his boy whose face was not a half-finished smudge. Kit was going to be a good-looking fellow, with his large and expressive mouth, and his rather silent but smiling frankness. Kit would be a complete person, not a plaster-cast of a man whom Life had got bored with and not troubled to finish.
When the grey chalk-hills showed, Sorrell would think of boundaries and of the finality of a man's experiences. Death, oblivion, extinction—perhaps, a melting into a soft greyness. And all man's passionate little tricks to escape it, his myths, his gods and his immortalities, his theosophies, and spiritisms. A yearning, a chilliness—after life's full meal. The soft dusk, the obliterating darkness, the unknown and the unknowable.
"Consciousness, is less," he thought, "than the planks of a boat between you and the deep waters. Some day you will sink, disappear, be forgotten. You will be less than some tree that once grew here.
"Accept. Do your job. Then, be ready to close your eyes and sleep."
He was a pragmatist. The satisfaction of life lay in accomplishment. He was content to gaze at the unknown as he looked at the distant chalk-hills, and he felt no urge to climb them. The whole world of the senses might be an illusion, but man's business was to behave as though it were real. The job mattered, the thing you had set out to accomplish, and not for yourself alone. Fighting mattered, striving, enduring, loving the few, disdaining the many. When struggle ceases men cease to be men.
Besides, who could tell where life ended? Death might be the opening of a door, especially to those who climbed to it after a life of stubborn effort. And without effort there might be no door? Or was death like a sieve, letting the finer spirits through, and throwing the baser back upon the muck-heap?
He was conscious of a sense of maturity, of a feeling of mellowness within himself. He could look at women without desiring them too fiercely. The money he made was a spiritual essence stored up for his son; opportunities, wings, arms, a buckler to ward off humiliation. His whole life orientated itself towards this other rising, younger life.
He found Kit's letters vastly interesting. They were not the letters of a boy who could think of nothing but footer and cricket. Kit observed, and asked questions.
There were some questions which Sorrell could not answer, and he said so. There were others, human appeals which he had to answer.
For when Christopher came back to Winstonbury on his first holiday it seemed to Sorrell that the boy was troubled. Roland had allowed him to live at the Pelican, and he occupied a little bedroom next to his father.
It was sex that was troubling Christopher, and all that sex implied,—his mother, other fellows' mothers.
Sorrell had dipped into Freud, and his inclination was to laugh at Freud, but he took Christopher much more seriously.
He told him everything, cleanly and frankly. He tried to make the boy feel the dignity of sex, and Christopher did feel it.
There were things at the school that had disgusted him. He appeared to be one of those boys who pass straight through the half-way house of sex, and come almost at once to a feeling of the mystery of woman.
He asked to be told about his mother.
And Sorrell told him. He tried to be utterly impartial. He gave his view of marriage as a great comradeship.
"Your mother and I were not comrades. It wasn't our fault, or rather—it was both our faults."
As for the so-called "Œdipus complex," it did not appear to exist in Kit. Nor had it existed in Sorrell. And yet it did not seem to him that either he or his son were abnormal. He rather thought that the abnormality could be looked for on the Continent, and in the mental make-up of a certain sort of Continental youth who grew up to be a professor.
Desire was desire, and it could be clean, if you did not shut it up in a box till it turned musty.
He asked Christopher if he would like to leave St. Benedict's and come back to Mr. Porteous.
"No,—I'm all right there now, pater. Now—that I've had these talks. It is not being sure about things"
"Work is the cleanest of all things, the game you are playing or the job you are going to do."
"I see that in a sort of way. But I suppose one has feelings"
"Get your feelings to back up your job."
"You—and mother, pater?"
"We didn't back each other. We were after different jobs; we played the game differently. Some day—you will have to think of the job and the woman. If you can get them both—happily—into the same boat"
"Pulling together—pater? But—then—there are things,—you know."
"All sorts of things," said Sorrell; "you will have to go through with them, Kit. We all have to. But because a girl has baby eyes—and pretty curly hair. No, that's not eyeing it may be no more than your dinner or your early morning tub. It is better to be keener on your job—than on girls. It's so difficult for me to explain. But get the job before you get the girl,—the real girl—I mean."
They left it at that, but each knew that there was a shadow-land before them, and the consoling thought in the heart of each was that if they kept shoulder to shoulder—the shadow-land would pass.
Once or twice a year Sorrell packed a prosperous-looking suit-case, put on a lounge suit made for him by Toole's, and a bowler hat, and white spats, and a pair of wash-leather gloves, and took three days' holiday. He travelled first-class to Westbourne; in fact, on these occasions he made himself appear as a gentleman of leisure and of means. He put up at the Salisbury Hotel on the sea-front, so that Kit should be able to say "My pater's staying at the Salisbury," for the Salisbury was the proper place for parents to stay at. Kit dined with his father, and Sorrell put on a dinner jacket, and in the lounge—afterwards—smoked a cigar, looking amused at life.
If it happened to be "school-day," Sorrell would take a taxi to St. Benedict's, and stroll on to the school playing-field with the air of being something of an old hand. He looked and was the gentleman; in fact, much more so than many other fathers.
He watched Christopher win the school quarter-mile for boys under sixteen.
He talked to Mr. Lowndes.
"Yes, Sorrell is doing very well."
Sorrell was not drawn to Mr. Lowndes. Nor did the "Head" appear to be the sort of man who wished to draw people. He took you by the collar—so to speak, and held you at arm's length, and talked at you. He had very blue and rather prominent eyes, and a high and baldish forehead, and a fine chin. He was rather young for a headmaster, sure of himself to the point of arrogance, confident in attack. Mr. Lowndes always attacked. He set out to impress people. He appeared to have views and opinions ready upon every question that you might raise, and he gave you his opinions with an air of saying—"Now—you can go home—and be reassured on that point for the rest of your life."
He had his inquisitorial side. His blue eyes searched people out. His class-consciousness was so narrow and yet so complete, that it made him careful and suspicious.
"The tradition of the 'school,' my dear sir."
His "tone" was unimpeachable. Looking down at you, for he was very tall, he seemed to be demanding that you should ascend to his level. To the average parent he was tactfully condescending.
"Tact" was one of his favourite words—"Value" was another. Everything had to have "value," the Lowndes' value.
Sorrell suspected him of being the most agile snob.
In conversation he had a way of cross-examining a parent, while pretending to show ordinary social interest. He liked to know exactly what he had got, and Sorrell puzzled him not a little. Obviously, Sorrell was a gentleman, but queer, reserved, a fellow who lived at hotels, and who lacked a domestic centre of gravity.
"I suppose you get a good deal of hunting at Winstonury?"
"O, not bad country. I'm not allowed to ride now. The war,—you know."
"Ah,—the war!"
That was a favourite trick of Mr. Lowndes, the repeating of the last three words or so of the other person's sentence.
Mr. Phelps, the games master, was a much more easy person. A little, wiry man with very thin legs, he looked like a boy. He was not very clever, but full of infinite good nature,—and he made most comic jokes. Mr. Lowndes never made jokes. He thought Phelps a good fellow, but rather a tame monkey.
Christopher and Mr. Phelps were excellent friends, for Mr. Phelps had discovered that Christopher could box, and fight even better than he could box.
"Your kid's a great little man, Mr. Sorrell. He's in my 'house'—you know. A fatherly sort of kid."
Sorrell liked Phelps, and not only because Phelps liked his boy. He was tempted to tell Phelps his secret,—and he did tell him, and the games master thought the better of him for it. He had been in the war.
"Well,—I think you are doing a fine thing,—old chap. But—one word; I shouldn't let Lowndes know"
"I think I know what you mean."
"He's the most filthy snob. Only took me on because was a rugger 'blue,' and my uncle's a baronet. You talk to him about me,—I bet you he'll drag in the baronet."
Christopher had one particular friend, a boy named Summervell, a sensitive and rather gentle creature, with long dark eyelashes and stag's eyes. Summervell was no good at games, though he had to play them; his passion was music. Christopher would bring Summervell with him to the Salisbury to sit at the table in the window and dine with them. It was obvious to the father that Christopher felt protective towards this fragile and sensitive boy, the only son of a widow who had to live on an inadequate pension.
"Poor old Peter's mater is not too well off."
He confided to his father the tragic story of a pair of torn trousers, the only decent pair of trousers that Summervell possessed that term.
"I passed him on one of my pairs, pater."
"All right. I'll write and tell Thompson's to send you another pair."
Christopher had every right to think of his father as the most understanding and generous of men.
Christopher had been a year and a half at St. Benedict's when his father received a letter from Mr. Phelps the games master. The envelope was marked "Confidential."
"My dear Mr. Sorrell,—It seems a beastly sort of thing to write about, but some of the boys here have found out that you are head-porter at an hotel.
"Apparently half a dozen of them have been ragging your boy about it ever since the opening of the term. How I found out was through surprising a fight going on one night in my house-dormitory. As a matter of fact your boy got the best of it.
"There are times, my dear sir, when I loathe being a master,—and sometimes I loathe boys. Not all of them. Personally, I think Christopher had played St. George to the Dragon,—but the 'Head' has heard about it.
"I thought that the only decent thing I could do was to write and warn you. We have had a solemn conference, and a lot of palaver,—the 'Tradition of the School' you know, and all that. I tried to point out that the 'tone' of the school was not suffering,—but I got sat upon.
"I hope you will understand"
Mr. Lowndes' letter arrived a day later. It was ingenious and patronizing. It flowed from a higher level to what must be presumed to be a lower one.
"My dear Mr. Sorrell,—This is one of the most painful letters that I have ever had to write—etc.
"I think for the boy's sake you should remove him. Boys are sensitive creatures, my dear sir,—and when a sensitive boy is made to feel himself to be in a false position"
Sorrell wrote off at once both to Christopher and to Mr. Lowndes. Nor was there any anger in his letter to the "Head." He was wondering how deeply Christopher had been hurt, and he felt that the fault was his.
Sorrell met his son at Winstonbury station. Kit was smiling. His hands came out quickly to meet his father's.
"I'm sorry, old chap, it was all my fault."
Kit held his father's arm.
"How did it happen?"
"O, Barrington Smith—primus, was motoring with his people,—and they put up at the Pelican."
"I see. Did they make it rather beastly—for you?"
"O, not so bad, pater. I rather enjoyed some of it, especially when I got Barrington Smith hiding under his bed. Mr. Phelps came in. He saw me off at the station."
"Did he? Good chap."
"And he gave me his boxing-gloves. He asked to be remembered to you, pater. He said some rather"
"I ought to have forseen this," said Sorrell.
"Dear old pater,—why—I enjoyed it."
"What?"
"Telling one or two of the swine that you were worth ten of their gov'nors. Besides—I had a whole lot of the fellows on my side. We have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Sure?"
"Well,—you should let me tell you what Mr. Phelps said about"
So Kit returned to Mr. Porteous, and Mr. Porteous and Sorrell began to talk of scholarships and sizarships.
"My dear sir, it's a certainty," said the tutor, "if the boy makes up his mind to go through with it. Trinity or Caius or Pembroke. I'll get hold of all the necessary information. Nearly two clear years. If he doesn't get a scholarship I'll eat my hat."