Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 22
SORRELL was lying in a punt on a luxurious superfluity of red and blue cushions, his grey hat placed carefully beside him, a good cigar sending its perfume and blue smoke upwards into the trailing foliage of a weeping willow. The punt, propelled by Kit who sat and dipped a lazy paddle, had glided in under the willow and come to rest there. The evening was very warm and still; the soft sheen of the river between the bridges reflected many other punts and splashes of colour, reminding Sorrell of those brilliant and quaint little mosaics made of flower petals pressed upon brown paper under a piece of glass which a country girl had taught him to arrange with his childish fingers. He had dined in hall with Christopher. Like Calverley he felt that fate could not touch him. He looked at his neat brown shoes, and his well-cut, well-pressed grey trousers. He enjoyed the fretted gold and the greenness of the weeping willow. He looked at Kit sitting square to the sunset with the glow of it upon his face.
"We have arrived," was Sorrell's thought; "every damned piece of luggage that I struggled with in the old days was worth it. Life is good."
A punt-load of parents and young things drifted past them, and the dark eyes of one of the young things dwelt interestedly upon Kit. He was worth a girl's glance. He seemed both aware of the dark eyes and unaware of them.
"Going to make your bump to-morrow?" asked the voice of Kit's father.
Christopher came out of a brown study, but his immediate awareness of life was not concerned with the May races.
"We ought to. We are faster than our second boat. They don't allow it—of course."
His glance raised itself to the glowing tops of the elms, and came back to survey the river. There was laughter under Clare bridge, and someone was splashing water with a paddle.
"I have had a letter from South Audley Street, pater."
"O," said Sorrell beneath the calm drift of his cigar smoke.
"She wants me to spend a few days there when I go down. A dance or something."
He looked questioningly at his father.
"Do you want to go?"
"Not much. Do you think I ought to?"
Sorrell was silent for a few seconds.
"There is no ought about it. But there need be no reason why you shouldn't."
"I'm not particularly keen on dancing. Would you go, pater, if she asked you?"
His father took a little time to answer the question.
"No,—I don't think I should. Not prejudice, you know. I have no feeling against anybody, so long as they don't interfere. One of the things in life is to keep clear of incompatibles."
Kit stroked the water with his paddle.
"You have got to set yourself a course. Most chaps just drift. Girls and things. You know, pater. And then—there is hurting people's feelings."
"Quite. But if you have got feelings, don't make the mistake of imagining that everybody else has got just the same feelings."
"I suppose they haven't."
"No."
"Some of them play up."
"The takers always play up to the givers."
Kit pondered this saying.
"You are one of the givers, pater."
"O, not always. Don't throw yourself away on the crowd."
There was much more talk between them under the edge of the dusk, with the sentimental river dividing the conventional sentiment of the grey colleges and the green spaces. Kit paddled the punt slowly up stream. They passed other punts with cargoes of hard young she-things; and Sorrell found himself wondering what Kit thought of women. What was his attitude? Had this sentimental dusk on this sentimental piece of water the mystery of the old illusions, and would it make very ordinary young women appear divinities? But surely—love—modern love—refused to pose upon pedestals. Sorrell could hear the lean, long-limbed girl of the day saying—"Come off it—you silly ass."
"Drifting,—just drifting," said Kit suddenly, and swinging the punt round; "what do people want"
Sorrell surveyed the first stars.
"That is youth's trouble. It does not know what it wants."
"Didn't you, pater?"
"Vague flashes. No,—not clearly. When I look back now I see that I was in a sort of enchanted fog. You would rush about and see—sudden things when the fog lifted for a moment. A bit of red sky, or a tree, or a silly full moon, or a girl's face. And you thought you wanted the moon or the girl's face. Perhaps, you got one of them,—and then the fog came down again, and you went on groping. But it's worse for two to be groping."
"It's sex," said Kit suddenly, leaning over his paddle, "sex,—that's what it is."
Sorrell raised himself on one elbow.
"The fog of sex. You have found that out! It took me twenty years, my son. But—hush!"
He laughed.
"We shall shock—the May Flies."
Kit surprised him.
"They take a lot more shocking than one thinks, pater. We aren't easily shocked. Were you?"
"We pretended to be."
"Why," he dug the paddle into the water and closed his mouth on some impulsive confession. Sorrell wondered. He told himself that a man got out of date. The young things had different ways of arranging the world, and at present they walked instead of dancing, and eschewed elemental curves. Obviously, Kit had met other young things and had parleyed with them. Sorrell's feeling was that for Kit woman was not upon a pedestal.
"You are aways saying, pater, that the job matters—more than—other things."
"So it does."
"That's what I think. But sometimes—a chap—feels he must go head over heels into—life."
"Of course," said Sorrell. "The unknown, woman, all that. The thing is,—though one does not realize it when one's young, that one wants—the sensation—not the particular woman. One wants all women that ever were. The sensation is natural,—but marriage"
He paused, looking beyond Kit at the grey arch of a bridge.
"Marriage is—artificial. That's the whole trouble—So—you see"
"You don't believe in marriage?"
Sorrell would like to have shrugged his shoulders.
"No,—not till the job is launched. After that—a comrade. But the other thing,—like one's morning tub. Not a sort of cement pool in a Zoo with two bored animals—swimming around. If you must take a plunge—be sure—you can get out again. Some day you'll know whether you want to get out. A few of us do, or think we do. Not many."
Sorrell found himself on the towing path between Grassy and Ditton. He had suggested going down to watch the boats start, but Kit had warned him that he might have to run half a mile if he hoped to see 1st Trinity 3 bump Emmanuel 2.
"I should hang about between Grassy and Ditton, pater. Ask somebody on the towing path."
Sorrell felt most absurdly excited. He had watched the boats of the division paddle down, and he sat on the bank and listened to the gossip of other interested people. It was a still, green English day, with not a breath of wind in the willows, and the river like glass. He could see the crowd at Ditton Corner, packed in the meadow and in the boats along the bank, a gaily-coloured crowd.
The boom of the starting gun reached him. He stood up. He was trembling. Absurd parent!
Presently, he saw figures running, the flash of oars rounding the green curve of Grassy, the nose of an eight. Young men were shouting. The leading boat cleared the corner, but Sorrell was not interested in this particular boat. Emmanuel 2 came next, and it seemed to him that their oars were moving with a scuffling haste. By George, yes! Kit's boat was right on top of them.
Sorrell ran. He ran down to meet the boats, got himself hustled by an eager crowd of young men in cerise-coloured blazers, in fact he was nearly pushed into the river. He was shouting, and waving his hat. "First,—First, well rowed, First." He ran again in the opposite direction, seeing for a while nothing but Kit with a very stern face swinging and plugging at No. 5. The boats were overlapping. At Ditton Corner the 1st Trinity cox made his bump, and the arm of the Emmanuel cox went up. Both eights drifted close in to the line of boats, and Sorrell stood on the towing path bank, waving to Kit bent over his oar and drawing deep breaths.
Kit saw his father, straightened up, and waved a hand. His face ceased to be stern, and began to smile.
Sorrell put on his hat.
"I'm a bit excited. Damn it,—why not?"
Sorrell walked back with his son from the First Trinity boat-house. He was just a little anxious. A gruelling game—this rowing, bad—so he had heard—for young men's hearts.
"Feeling all right, Kit?"
Christopher's smile was reassuring.
"Quite. We ought to catch the leading boat to-morrow. Emmanuel were up on them. Then we shall be sandwich boat."
"What does that mean?"
"We have to row twice, at the head of the second division and at the bottom of the first."
Sorrell's sympathies were divided. An exhausting business, two races in one day! But perhaps he was growing old, and youth was youth.
Kit's boat made their second bump on the second day, but failed to catch the last boat of the first division. And there they stuck, having to row for their lives on the last day in order to keep away from a fast boat that had made three bumps behind them. Sorrell ran all the way up the e Long Reach, and he was nearly as "done" as his son when First Trinity got home with half a length to spare, and so finished head of the second division.
There was a bump supper that night,—but Kit came back early to his rooms where Sorrell was sitting in one of the big chairs, smoking the pipe of peace.
"You're early."
Kit was very sober.
"I have had my rag, a good one. Let's talk, pater. There are one or two things"
"South Audley Street?"
"Yes,—that,—and others."
As for the first part of the examination for the Bachelorship of Medicine Kit did less well in Physics than he had hoped to do, but his Chemistry and Biology were satisfactory. That was his own opinion, and he conveyed it to his father in a letter written after the last paper. The results would be known in a few days, and Kit was staying up to see the lists.
Duly, they were posted on the Senate House door, and Kit walked from his digs, and crossed King's Parade with a feeling of suspense. He was not thinking of himself so much as of his father, for time was money, and lost months would mean money, his father's money. He saw a small crowd of undergrads on the steps of the Senate House, and as Kit passed through the iron gates a figure detached itself from the group. It belonged to a man named Gorringe who had worked next to Sorrell in the "stinks" lab, a cocky and opinionated little man with a profile like a sparrow's. Gorringe had a sick face. He did not see Sorrell; he did not want to see him.
"Pilled," thought Kit, and was not sorry, for Gorringe needed a course of pilling.
He leaned against the backs of two other men, and peered between and over their heads. "Sanger, Smith, Smith, Snaith, Snowden, Sorrell." He felt a quick thrill at the sight of his name. He went away quietly to the post office, and sent off a telegram to his father. "Through."
Sorrell read that one word some two hours later, and he sent the under-porter on a bicycle to Winstonbury with an answering message.
"Splendid. Congratulations.—Pater."
Christopher joined him next day at the Pelican, and Mr. Porteous came to dinner. Two telegrams had been waiting for Kit; one had come from Tom Roland who had had the news wired to him by Sorrell; the other had been sent by Christopher's mother.
Kit had showed it to his father.
"How did she know!"
"Arranged with someone to have the lists watched, I suppose."
"Rather decent of her, pater, after the way I."
Kit had found no answering approval in his father's eyes, and he had understood. Women,—yes, women, even his own mother! Wanting their fingers in the pie.
He had torn up his mother's telegram.
But there was that invitation of hers still hanging unanswered in the air, for he had written to her to say that he had decided to make no plans until the result of the examination was known. He had promised to write later.
Well,—what was he going to do about it?
Tucked under his porridge plate Kit discovered an envelope addressed to him in his father's handwriting, and on opening it he found that it contained a ten-pound note.
"I say,—pater!"
Sorrell had been pretending to read the morning paper, and he glanced up at his son's serious face.
"Well.—old man?"
"You: know—you oughtn't—to be so jolly good to me."
"Why not? Something to celebrate with. You have worked hard."
Kit got up and, going round the table, bent down and kissed his father on the forehead.
"You are a sport, pater."
"That's all right," said Sorrell, blushing slightly, and gripping Kit's shoulder for a moment; "why not go up and spend that week-end with your mother?"
He saw Kit's face take on an expression of surprised solemnity.
"I have been wanting to talk about that."
"Right. I'm ready. The porridge is on the sideboard."
Christopher helped himself to porridge, sugared it liberally, and disposed of half a dozen spoonfuls before he found his voice.
"I think it was rather fine of you, pater, to give me that opening."
"Not a bit. If you want to go."
"I don't want to go. I mean—if I go—it won't be because I want to,—but I have a queer feeling that I ought to go—just once."
"Because she is your mother?"
Kit sat silent for a little while, staring hard at the bacon dish.
"No,—because of you."
It was Sorrell's turn to pause.
"O,—how's that?"
"Well,—supposing she thinks that she could matter as much as you? I want her to know—what sort of friends you and I are. It's fair to her in a way, isn't it, pater? I don't look upon her as my mother; I never shall."
Sorrell stared hard at his son.
"Kit," he said presently, "I don't know what to say about it. You have got me rather hard—over the heart."
"That's all right," said his son hurriedly, falling fiercely upon his porridge; "that's all right. So long as you and I understand each other."