Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 24
SORRELL continued to be interested in figures; in fact his interest in them grew as their significance increased.
It seemed to him incredible, but the Pelican was earning a profit of something like £4,000 a year, and the Royal Oak after a year at sea could sail in with a balance of £700. The Lion was trying her spars, and the White Hart had not left the stocks, but the Roland Hotels declared a dividend of fifteen per cent. and placed a solid sum to their reserve.
Sorrell's own income, with his interest on his shares and his percentage on the Pelican's profits had risen above a thousand pounds. He gloated over it with the practical exultation of the man who has had to kick and struggle, but his soul continued to kick at everybody and everything connected with the Inland Revenue. He loathed Schedule D. He loathed the beastly buff envelope in which it arrived; he loathed the man who sent it; he almost loathed himself for making a correct return. He paid, but he paid with an inward snarl. If anyone appreciated the pretty and nicely winged jibes in Punch, Sorrell appreciated them.
The apportioning of his income was fairly simple. He wrote £350 down for Kit, £200 for himself. That left him a very comfortable margin, and it was the margin that had value. He had decided to play with it, but to play cunningly, not to wrap it up in a gilt-edged napkin, but to behave adventurously. He was gaining confidence, and he had his margin.
During that winter he decided to buy Mr. Grapp's antique business, put in an energetic manager, and refresh the stock. Lacking the capital, he went up to Chelsea and saw Thomas Roland whose Blue Box was as full of money as were Cherry of Chelsea's pockets. Roland, laughing roguishly over the money glut, proved a very persuadable financier, and offered Sorrell what he pleased. He said that Christopher was a sufficient security, and Sorrell could pay him five per cent. and refund the capital at his convenience.
"I know the Pelican won't suffer, Stephen."
"When you have learnt to sail a good ship you stick to her."
Sorrell bought out Mr. Grapp, and put in as manager a man named Williams, an auctioneer's clerk, who knew the neighbourhood and had picked up a working knowledge of furniture, old silver, china and glass. Williams was a little dark, good-natured and shrewdly energetic man who had been looking for his chance to climb and had not found it. Sorrell arranged to have the curio shop refitted, redecorated and restocked. He and Williams between them bought in some really fine "pieces" in walnut and oak. The shop became alive, with liquid capital circulating in its blood vessels.
"Now—go ahead. I'll see that our American visitors come along to you."
Williams went ahead. He knew where old furniture, china, Sheffield plate and pewter were still to be found in the country towns and villages, and he knew the ways of the people. He could haggle with farmers' wives and crack a joke, and insinuate the thin edge of a bargain. He was to prove himself a most successful and discriminating buyer.
Sorrell had an inspiration in the matter of rechristening the business. Some time in the thirteenth century a Benedictine monk had compiled a chronicle, and it was known as the chronicle of William of Winstonbury. Sorrell's ear was caught by the rhythm of it; the thing sounded like a successful title, and it was distinctive. So "William of Winstonbury" was painted in white on the shop's fascia board. Sorrell had the shop and certain of their show pieces photographed, and these photographs were grouped in a handsome oak frame and hung in the lounge of the Pelican.
During the winter he made a change in his own habit of life. He was coming to an age when he appreciated privacy, silence, and those precious moments of serene aloofness when a man's self sits and speaks with its very self. He craved to push out the increasing noise of the world and to shut an autocratic door against it. Moreover, by vacating his two rooms he would be able to let them and add to the Pelican's margin. Also, he wanted Kit to have a quiet corner where he could read, a corner of his own.
At the end of the garden stood the old red brick cottage that Bowden had occupied, but the Bowden family knew nothing of Malthus and required a more capacious hive. Sorrell took over the cottage, had it redecorated and furnished very simply, and transferred himself there, turning his old porter's room into a manager's office. He had two of the cottage rooms fitted up for Christopher, so that when Kit came down for the vacations he could spread himself and his books in an atmosphere of his own. The rooms had stained floors and Oriental rugs, white taffeta curtains edged with green, buff-coloured walls, bookshelves, but no pictures. The blank walls were for Kit to fill, if he chose to fill them, and his ultimate filling of them amused his father. On one wall Kit placed a solitary picture, something from some art magazine, a picture of a French peasant coming back from the fields in the blue-green twilight. The remaining walls were covered with anatomical diagrams, sections of creatures' interiors, formulæ, neatly typed lists. Kit had saved and bought himself a typewriter. During the vacations his microscope stood on a little deal table by the window.
But Kit was not what his father called a "stuff-jacket." He had given up rowing because it interfered with his dissecting, but he was boxing for the University and carrying on the Porteous tradition. He played a fair game of tennis, could handle a gun, and swim a mile. His interest in life did not shut itself up in books. He was a great lover of the country and its life, and a keen observer; he would surprise his father on some of their walks by discovering plants and birds and insects that Sorrell would never have noticed. He had enthusiasm, not of the spluttering order, but that quiet, virile ardour that searches and sees.
Kit would get up first and make early morning tea over an oil stove in the cottage kitchen, for he and his father liked the informality of it and the sense of being undisturbed. Often he would sit on the end of Sorrell's bed, and smoke a cigarette and talk. They discussed Kit's work, his friends, Tom Roland's music, the hotels, William of Winstonbury, books, labour, the tendencies of the day as each saw them, trees, flowers, human eccentricities, women. Kit was shy of women. He had not forgotten Lola Merrindin, and that emotional adventure with his mother. They never mentioned Mrs. Duggan to each other; she had not troubled them again after a final and unsuccessful attempt on her part to persuade Sorrell that she was a lonely, reformed and misunderstood woman.
For all that Sorrell knew she might be all she claimed to be, but he had no intention of helping her to experiment upon Kit.
So far as his experience of life served him Sorrell had gathered that people did not change. Their distinctive characteristics became emphasized or softened. They grew kinder or more greedy or more stupid, or more crassly self-absorbed. During the days of his portership he had observed human nature as it displayed itself in an hotel, and his conclusions had made him a tolerant cynic in his attitude, Save to the very few.
To Kit he emphasized the need for independence. It was the one god-like quality that a man should strive for.
"Be free. No foot on your neck. Get money; go armed. Get money and go armed for the sake of the job you love."
Kit understood all this, for he had been a spectator while his father had fought in the arena.
"Didn't you feel pretty desperate, sometimes, pater?"
"Sick in the stomach, as the Americans say. But I wanted to put you on your perch."
"It's a pretty good perch. I want a first in the Science Trip. Then—there will be the second M.B. and the first part of the Fellowship. And London"
"Yes, London," said Sorrell thoughtfully. "Have you ever heard of fellows being afraid of London!"
Kit nodded.
"Pentreath is,"—Pentreath was one of Kit's friends.
"What is he afraid of?"
"O,—things," said Kit very seriously; "women and all that. Queer, isn't it? Yet, he is perfectly genuine about it. He's got sisters. They take things rather seriously, the Pentreaths. Good people, a bit too—too sensitive."
"Cover up your sensitiveness," said his father; "lock it up in a safe and bring it out only for the few."
That summer Kit met Pentreath's people at Henley, and Lady Pentreath liked him so well that Christopher was invited to spend a week at their place in Sussex.
Sorrell was pleased. He did not quarrel with his feeling of satisfaction over the fact that the son of an hotel porter should be a friend of the son of Sir Gordon Pentreath, and that Kit should be a guest at Charneys. The Pentreaths were good people, serious people. They had Quaker blood, and a Victorian tradition that had striven very hard to adapt itself to the new confusion.
Kit found the Pentreaths very serious but extraordinarily kind. They were people who felt responsible for other people's ignorances, not priggishly so, for they were too sensitive and too well matured to be priggish. The two elder girls were pale copies of their mother, fair, cultured, quiet-voiced young women who would never inspire any man to dare disaster. Lady Pentreath sat on innumerable committees, and managed with serene and cold seriousness to make the normal blatancies of the day appear even more triumphant. Sir Gordon was a man of many affairs, a tired and worried man, a sort of industrial King Arthur troubled by the inroads of the barbarians.
Charneys was a revelation to Kit, with its beauty, its repose, and its green other-worldliness. It was the home of the people who had dreamed and whose dream was dying, and Maurice—Kit's friend—seemed to know that it was dying.
He approached life very seriously. He had elected to take up medicine instead of joining his father, and the elder Pentreath had not opposed the digression. The barbarians were growing too strong for him.
Lying on his back in the punt on Charneys' pool, and watching the clouds sailing over the tops of the oaks and beeches, Maurice would confide in Kit.
"It's the venom in things, Sorrell. When you have tried to be a friend to your people and they turn and spit in your face. The governor feels it. I'm afraid it is breaking him up."
"You mean—Labour," said Kit,—"Labour with a big L."
"Of course."
"Well,—why doesn't he lay up the ship, pay off the whole mutinous crew, and retire."
"The Pentreaths don't retire."
"Anyhow—you wouldn't sign on, old chap."
Maurice flinched; he flinched too easily.
"Father and I talked it over. I offered to give up medicine. He was quite frank about it. He said that the modern industrial atmosphere is too beastly—and too humiliating for any man with a sense of fair play. Besides, I don't think there is any future"
"You mean?" said Kit.
"Yes—things are too difficult. We may have to sell this lace."
"Like the old Roman Empire."
"Yes,—breaking up."
The Pentreaths were too disinterested to survive. Sir Gordon's disillusioned dignity, his son's imaginative scrupulousness, flinched before the spoilt and greedy children, and looked towards the shades of some misty Avalon. But there was one young Pentreath,—the baby.
"O,—Molly!"
Maurice was bothered about Molly; he was afraid of Molly. A little savage!
And Kit saw Molly Pentreath as a long-legged, fierce young thing of thirteen, with a queer square head and face, dark and audacious eyes, and wavy and rebellious mouth. She was an extraordinary child,—a little devil. She appeared to combine an unholy insight into her elders' interiors, with a violent lack of respect for anybody or anything. A wild young egoist, a spitfire, she was the one live Pentreath with the spirit to fight and to survive.
She observed Kit in ominous silence for the first two days, and then betrayed her partiality by ragging him, and provoking him to quarrel. She put a live slow-worm in his bed, filled his tennis shoes with flour, and mocked him openly.
Kit laughed.
His laughter both attracted and annoyed her. She made him play tennis and golf croquet with her, and she was ready to cheat with fierce assurance.
She had a supreme contempt for Maurice. She more or less ignored her elder sisters. She scandalized her father.
She called Christopher "Kit-bag" or just "Boy." She was home from a very notable school, but the school appeared to have had no effect upon her. To Molly most of the world's opinions were tosh.
She inveigled Kit into wild scrambles about the place, up trees, anywhere. She went adrift with him in the punt, heaving paddle and pole into the water. She would sit with her bony knees tucked up under her chin, and declaim and argue and mock.
She said the most extraordinary things.
"O—father! Poor old father has forgotten how to grind the faces of the poor."
She was startling in her shrewdness. She seemed to have a Puckish intuition.
"Maurice won't cut any ice. He'll just give sugared powders to old ladies."
Kit talked back at her.
"You want to play—all the game yourself. You can't do that."
"O, can't I!"
"You must see the other person's point of view."
"Don't talk tosh. Poor old pater has always been trying to see his beastly workmen's point of view. They are all over him now like a lot of dogs. I'd teach 'em."
"How?"
"With a whip, old Kit-bag, a whip."
She hated losing; she could not play a losing game, and this fierce self-regard of hers led to a half-humorous yet very human incident. Kit had beaten her twice at golf croquet, and at the end of the third game when he won on the post she hurled her mallet at him because he had laughed.
The mallet caught Kit on the head above the right eyebrow.
It hurt him.
She flew at him with sudden contrition, and threw fierce young arms about his neck.
"O,—Kit, I'm a little beast. I'm sorry"
No one witnessed the incident, but Kit had to appear before the family with a palpable bruise on his forehead. He told a white lie about it.
"Silly of me, but I knocked my head against one of the beams in the boat-house."
Molly waylaid him on the stairs that evening.
"You sport!"
She kissed him.
Before going back to Cambridge for the autumn term, Christopher spent a week-end with Thomas Roland in his doll's house at Chelsea.
It was a particularly charming little house, furnished in a style that Roland called "Twentieth Century Queen Anne." The music-room had been formed of two rooms thrown together, and between its two windows stretched a black and polished floor with a vermilion-coloured border. There were two pianos, one in a red lacquer case, the other in one of rosewood stained black.
Roland gave Christopher music, and a new window upon life, a very modern window through which "Cherry of Chelsea" might have stepped with a shingled head and a cretonne frock. That she did appear in that echoing room was another revealing of the world to Kit. She appeared in the person of Iris Gent, the mezzo-soprano who had made "Cherry" famous, and who was teaching the world to laugh to music in Roland's "Blue Box."
Roland caused Christopher to think, and to take a step upwards, one of those hardly perceptible steps that yet bring into view a broader horizon and leave the young man gazing under the impression that it is he who has made the discovery. A few crudities loosened themselves from Kit during that week-end. He was breathing an air of laughing tolerance and breezy humanity, for Roland had cast many skins; the main structure of him was the same, but he had kept his doors and windows open.
For Roland and "Cherry" were lovers. Kit saw and wondered, and out of his wonder grew a new attitude towards work and woman. He caught the glimimer of a charmine intimacy, Roland at the piano, Iris sitting in one of the window seats, singing, so that her voice seemed to go through the room like a river of human laughter and tears and joy. Her singing brought a thickness into Kit's throat, and made him shiver.
The thing that astonished him was that these two were not married. The complete and happy understanding between them was obvious, even to a young man fresh from the Pentreath atmosphere, and it caused Kit much searching of soul. Youth explores, and Kit's questing had a serious and high ardour.
But the music! It was like all the laughing wisdom of the ages translated into sweet sounds, flexible and sensitive, vibrating high above a cast-iron system. This music-room suggested the eternal flux, a vortex with its spirals part of the dim past, and rising into the future. Kit felt that Thomas Roland understood life and the art of living as no young man could understand it.
They sat up till midnight one night, talking, and one phrase of Roland's stuck in Kit's memory.
"Everything is allowable, provided you take care not to hurt people, the people who ought not to be hurt."
Kit had asked him a question.
"But suffering? Oughtn't it to come? What I mean is,—well—look at my father. I always feel."
"Your father has had his dose."
"And you, sir?"
"Oh,—I! Don't let Iris hear you call me sir, you young vagabond. I have had my share, but I have set my fruit in the sun. It is the green apple stage that is painful."
On the morning of his leaving Kit made a request.
"When I come up to hospital, may I drop in here—sometimes?"
He felt that there were things to be learnt, unacademic facts and fancies, in this house at Chelsea.