Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 28

by George Warwick Deeping

XXVIII

1

SORRELL knew.

He did not know how he knew, but know he did, intuitively, and with a quickness that was feminine.

For the thing was never talked of; it lived there in silence, known and avoided, and yet understood.

A difficult period,—yes, but like all difficult periods not lacking in its human compensations, for in spite of this silence, father and son seemed to draw closer to each other. What was most valuable was Sorrell's victory over himself, that old man self, querulous and interfering, angry and possessive, the eternal Puritan, the foolish parent. Troubled, he exercised a sensitive restraint. He met the old man's preachings and answered them, placing himself in the spirit beside his son, and not opposite him.

What right had he to interfere or to ask questions? Was the son responsible to the father? Was there not a secret corner in every life into which no friend can penetrate, though he may stand on the threshold and listen.

"It is not shame, but decent reticence. Surely—one can respect it."

His attitude towards his son had a wise gentleness. It was as though he wished Kit to feel a fellowship in the midst of this silence, and that Kit did feel it was Sorrell's reward. There were the same week-ends, the same country rambles, the same talks, with a sense of deepening affection in the realization of their common humanity. In Kit's heart there was the same refrain—"Dear old pater," and the boyishness of it merged into the fiercer faith of the man. That he was both happy and unhappy was one of Kit's discoveries, the patchwork of life's emotions, the ranging interplay, the completeness and in the incompleteness of passion. The day's work follows an exultantly tender night. Kit felt that somehow his father knew all this, that he had borne with it, and was bearing with it in his son. His silence was the silence of sympathy.

Kit pondered it all out.

Why did he not tell his father? He knew that it was possible to tell him. He did not want to tell him, and he had a feeling that his father did not want to be told. It was as though there existed between them tacit agreement to keep the thing like a shaded lamp, and to refuse its ray's penetration into the comradeship they shared as men.

Sorrell had his moments of curiosity. He would wonder about this woman, who she was and what she was, and how much ultimate significance she had for Kit, yet she remained a shadow, a creature divined but unseen, a human planet making itself felt in the emotional firmament And Mary Jewett had the same feelings about Christopher's father, that equally shadowy figure. Kit was very silent about his father, but he let her know that it was not the silence of fear.

"We have always trusted each other, the pater and I."

"And does he know?"

"I think so."

"You haven't told him?"

"No."

For a day or two after those words of Kit's she was more gentle and tender to him, she who was always gentle, smiling out of the deeps of a passionate sadness, for she had a nature that clung. She had the clearness of vision of a woman who is fay. Her love was without hard outlines, though the mouth of it might smile a wounded and foreseeing smile. She gave. She took life as it was, and held it passionately, while looking towards the ultimate shadows. There was something French in the logic of her emotions. This summer by the sea! She asked to forget the mists of November, though she knew that they would come.

Sorrell called her "The Shadow Woman."

It became evident to him that whatever her heritage might be she had no clogging effect on Kit's career or upon his keenness. Samson's hair was uncut, though his eyes were kinder. There was no faltering in his son's stride. He was working for his final, and he went through it with the same long lope, and came down to the Pelican for Christmas, and was glad to be with his father.

He had questions to discuss.

"When I have written and read my thesis, pater,—I can stand on my own feet."

Sorrell was poking the winter fire.

"Earn money?"

"Yes,—after all these years."

Kit was aware of his father's face and head lit by the glow of the flames. Sorrell was growing grey.

"That's not my view, old chap. You have been very good about money. It isn't our idea—is it—that you should become a G.P.?"

Kit remained silent.

"Hospital appointments?"

"Yes."

"And after that——"

"It may take a long time, pater, and all the while I shall——."

"Should you mind? Don't take my job away, my son, until I have seen it finished. The most damnable part of life for most of us is that we have to plunge into the muddy stream in order to make money. Before we are ready. Before we have had our opportunity. Money means growth, time to draw one's breath."

Kit had another fit of silence.

"Am I—your job, pater?"

"I think so!"

"You have been so jolly good to me."

"Kit!" said his father, and smiled.

Christopher's hand went out.

"I know. It means such a lot to me. Kennard is to become one of the seniors next month; old Goddard is retiring. Kennard wants me to be his house-surgeon. That will mean six months. And then—six months as house-physician. After that—a surgical registrarship—I'm pretty sure to get one; that might mean another year or two. After that—of course—I should try for an assistant-surgeonship; it might necessitate some waiting; but if I once get on the staff——."

"Say—five years," said Sorrell. "There will be the Fellowship too."

"Yes."

"You will be getting your keep most of the time. And when you arrive on the staff—that will be the time when you will need capital. I'm saving money, quite a lot of money."

Christopher, with his two fists under his chin, stared at the fire.

"How is it, pater, that you never bargain?"

"Why—bargain——?"

"You never exact—terms. You have given me everything, my chance,—and freedom. You have never tried to tie me down."

"Isn't it obvious——?"

"Very—in some ways."

"One gives to get—the thing that is worth getting."

"You are a great man, pater," said his son.

2

Plucking the red fruit from time to time Christopher found the juice of it sadder and less sweet; sad because of its lessened sweetness, and his sense of being responsible for its lessened sweetness. And why? Because he had tired,—because embraces became more tranquil and comradely, and because that more tranquil comradeship that is marriage at its best had in this case no future?

He owned to moods, moods of tenderness and of pity and of impatience, moods when he accused himself of taking and losing, of thinking less of the woman, and more of his work. He was Kennard's house-surgeon; he was a resident at St. Martha's; the Brunswick Square days: were over. And he was reading hard for the final of his Fellowship.

For months he had had a sense of drifting, and his character was not that of a drifter. The romance had begun to worry him; for it had become too real, nor was he one of those cheery egoists who can satisfy himself that an incident is just an incident and nothing more. For the man it is so—in the majority of cases, and also for a certain type of woman, but Mary was not that sort of woman.

He realized her generosity. She had never asked him to "put her right with the world" as the phrase goes, nor had she even hinted at it, for Mary Jewett had felt right with herself. She was a giver, she had had times of very great happiness; something in her had been satisfied.

Yet, Kit was not satisfied. There were certain little things that he confessed to with shame, broodings, forgetfulness, the taking of love for granted, a vague sense of limitation, a feeling of giving less and less than his share.

Once, he had spoken of marriage, and she had laughed and then burst into tears.

"That's almost an insult, dear boy."

"Mary!"

"I went into this with my eyes open. We didn't bargain, did we? We just wanted each other."

He did not understand her tears, nor those days when she showed a quiet aloofness, choosing to be a little apart from him, yet with no insinuation of pique or of suspicion. He remembered one particular Sunday on the Thames when she had sat at the other end of the punt, using a desultory paddle, her eyes looking into the distance beyond him. He had fallen asleep on the cushions. He had heard a voice calling—"Kit—Kit!" and had opened his eyes upon a strangely tragic face. "The weir, I didn't see it." He had scrambled up with a "Good lord," and had snatched up the pole and managed to work the punt clear of that sliding crest of water.

"What on earth were you doing, dear?"

"O,—just dreaming."

A time was to come which would make him wonder whether she had been dreaming a dream for both of them, and whether that warning cry had not been torn from her by an awakened selflessness.

3

Christopher was going round one of his surgical wards about six o'clock, examining two or three of the more serious cases, when the hospital porter came in search of him.

"Where's Mr. Sorrell?"

"In Battersby Ward."

Kit, bending over a man who had been operated upon for duodenal ulcer, heard the porter's voice behind him.

"Letter for you, sir."

"O," said Kit.

"Messenger brought it from the Charing Cross, sir."

Christopher opened the note. A few words had been written in haste on the back of a case-sheet, and the sheet folded upon itself.

"We have a patient here,—bad street accident, asking for you. The name is Jewett.

"J. T. Holmes, House Surgeon."

Christopher slipped the sheet into his pocket, made some excuse to the Sister, and hurried out of the ward.

"Get me a taxi, Carter."

"Right, sir."

"Quick as you can."

He felt cold with the shock of the news, and as the taxi carried him down those streets that were so familiar he sat looking out of the window at the meaningless movement without. What had happened to her? Was she disfigured, crushed, broken, this pretty thing who had held him in her arms? And suddenly his passionate need of her returned, but in the guise of an intolerable tenderness. He, who had seen so many red, torn bodies carried into St. Martha's, shrank from the imaginings of the moment, a vision of a dear thing crushed.

At Charing Cross he asked for the house-surgeon who had scribbled that note, and they met in a corridor outside one of the wards.

"I'm Sorrell of St. Martha's. You sent me that note. What's happened?"

The house-surgeon was a brisk little man with quivering pince-nez.

"Motor bus ran over her. Abdominal,—bleeding, pretty hopeless. Winter has seen her,—but thought she wouldn't stand an op. She asked me——"

Kit was very white.

"Conscious?"

"Yes."

"Can I see her?"

"Of course. Relation of yours?"

"Yes. I'm much obliged to you."

The house-surgeon took Kit into one of the surgical wards, spoke to the nurse on duty, and left Kit outside the screens that had been put up round Mary's bed. Those tragic screens! Christopher knew them so well, and all that they signified, a frail barrier erected about a little flame that was flickering towards its end.

He turned back one of the flaps, replaced it,—and was with her.

"Mary——"

She was white as the pillow, her eyes and hair looking strangely dark; he had never thought that eyes and hair could look so dark. Her lips were bloodless. And from the moment he appeared, her eyes fixed themselves upon him and never wavered, tragic eyes, possessive, caressing, poignant. She smiled very faintly, and her smile made Kit think of the wind stirring the pale face of a flower.

He went on one knee beside the bed, fearing to touch her.

"Mary."

Her right hand moved jerkily and touched his cheek.

"Dear boy——"

"O,—my dear,—how——?"

"Don't—don't let us talk of that. It's—all over, Kit, dear, all over. Put your arm—under—my head."

He did it—very gently, his eyes hot, his mouth quivering. She sighed; she lay and looked at him.

"It's better—dear—like this. I'm—I'm not frightened. You see—I knew——"

"What did you know——?"

"That things couldn't go on—always. But, Kit,—say I made you—happy, just a little——"

He lost himself.

"Nobody else will be——. O, my God, my dear, I have loved you so much,—and now——"

"Dear boy, don't cry. Oh——"

She caught a little breath of anguish.

"I'm—all—crushed——"

"Dear,—have they given you anything, morphia——?"

"I wouldn't have it; I—I was afraid of going to sleep—before——"

He kissed her very gently, got up, and came out from behind the screen. The house-surgeon and the nurse were talking by the ward door. Kit went towards them; he did not see any of the other patients; the world was blurred.

"She wants morphia,—she said she wouldn't——"

The house-surgeon looked at the floor.

"Quite so. Nurse——"

"Do you mind if I give it to her, if you fill the syringe? I'd like to."

"Quite so," said the little man.

Kit ran the needle into the whiteness of Mary Jewett's arm.

"No more pain, dear. I'm staying."

Presently, her dark eyes grew more blurred.

"Kit,—Kit, are you there——?"

"Yes."

"Do you love me? Did I——?"

"Mary,—my darling——."

"I'm so—so happy."

4

Sorrell was troubled by Christopher's letter.

"Kennard has let me off for a week, and a friend is doing my work. I am coming down to-morrow."

It was a very short letter, and it said less than any, letter of Kit's had ever said, yet Sorrell felt convinced that something had happened or was going to happen, and that the happenings concerned the Shadow Woman. He was troubled. He spent one of the most wakeful nights of his life, wondering whether Kit had fallen into the male madness. He thought of Pentreath's son freed from a miserable relationship after months of spying and lawyering and humiliation. If the thing had happened to Kit he was ready to swear that it had happened very differently.

Sorrell did not go to Winstonbury Station. Whatever the crisis might be, he felt that he would let it come to him and not go to meet it. He had taken up gardening, and had developed the little piece surrounding the cottage, and had filled it with roses, and Kit found his father syringing the aphides on his hybrid teas. Kit had walked from the station, carrying his suitcase; he was wearing a black tie.

"Hallo,—pater."

Sorrell's eyes had touched his son with one devoted and careful look, a doctor's glance. He replaced the syringe in the bucket, wiped his hands on his handkerchief, and was conscious of an intense and intuitive relief.

"Had tea, old chap?"

"Yes, pater, thanks."

Kit had lowered his suitcase to the grass path. He was looking at the roses, but not as though he saw them, but as though he was looking at something else, something within himself. His mouth and eyes had an extraordinary gentleness, the softened fineness that comes with suffering.

"Pater,—I want to tell you straight away——."

"Right, old chap."

Sorrell felt for his pipe.

"I've had—a love affair. It has been going on for quite a long while. We weren't married."

"Yes, old chap."

"She's dead. She was knocked down four days ago by a bus. She—she was awfully good—to me, pater. I—I've been sorry for things,—sorry——."

Sorrell was holding a match to the bowl of an empty pipe.

"I—I understand—old chap. These things——. Well you know,—when we look back——. I'm rather glad you have come down here."

"Thank you, pater. I——"

"Your room's all ready. I'll have our meals sent over. I shan't worry you. You see, old boy,—I knew——."

"Knew?"

"Well,—something; felt it. In your life, you know. I'm rather——. Yes, it must have been good. She didn't——. Poor little—girl——."

"Don't, pater," said Kit suddenly; "things hurt so damnably, especially—your—your goodness."

He picked up his suitcase and went in.

5

Before the end of Kit's week Sorrell had been able to paint a very passable portrait of Mary Jewett.

He was grateful to her, grateful for her having met Kit in the wild garden of their common youth, and for having taken him by the hand and shared the fruit with him, the wild fruit which grows as it pleases. She had done Kit no harm; on the contrary she had done him much good; she had taught him things; she had been one of those sacrificial women who give to men more than men give to them.

Kit talked a good deal.

"The thought that sticks in my throat, pater, is that she wanted to die."

"Perhaps dying is not so difficult, old man."

"Yes,—but——. It's as though she had begun to realize that too much love-making bores a man. I was bored. Horrible, isn't it? But not with her, the real Mary, the pal. One seems to get bored with the woman in a woman. And I suppose a woman, a woman like Mary——. She shouldn't have cared so much. I did not think people cared so much."

"O,—some of them," said Sorrell, "a few. And yet—she didn't interfere with your work."

"Not a bit. She helped. I think she cured my restlessness, pater. Did you ever feel it?"

"Did I not!"

"I was luckier than poor old Pentreath."

He told his father how he had gone to Mary Jewett's funeral, and met an old mother, one of those women with tired nah puzzled eyes, and how he had lied to her mother.

"I had to, pater. I said that we were to have been married. We weren't."

"Why not?"

"O, we began it—on the understanding——. She had an idea that marriage spoiled things. I told her to that I could not marry—for years."

"Did you want to marry?"

"No."

"And she accepted it. I think she treated you rather well, Kit."

"So damned well,—pater,—that I don't feel that I shall find anybody else like her.—Do you know, she would never take a penny from me. Just a few little presents, and things like that. And in London—now! Where the place is packed with hard young wenches who look as though they had been cut out of cardboard. I hate their rouged mouths, and their damned—artificial—up-to-date faces. They are hard, pater, hard."

"Perhaps."

"Mary was gentle. She understood."

"Yes," said Sorrell; "that's the thing that matters, understanding."

Each morning before breakfast Kit and his father rode out into Stoneberry Forest, Sorrell having arranged for a couple of horses to be sent out from a Winstonbury livery stable, and these early morning rides and his talks with his father helped Christopher to a new appreciation of life. He seemed to realize that a phase of it had passed, and that a particular experience can never be repeated. In the forest "rides" and upon the heathy uplands of Stoneberry he was very far from the turmoil of life, and from the sinister and increasing bitterness of civilization. Organized life was growing more tyrannical, and the industrial crowd—in blind strivings to escape—was attempting to impose a yet more senseless tryanny.

Yet Kit remembered that Mary—the seller of programmes in a theatre—had shown no bitterness. She had asked to be loved, but she had not asked to be given children. She had had a peculiar dread of children, and had shrunk away from the thought of motherhood.

"Give the world another clerk or factory hand? Would you?"

He remembered her putting that question to him, and when he had tried to answer it, she had given him an astonishing revelation of her insight into the soul of "Peter Pan."

"That's what we want, Kit, thousands of little playful rebels like that boy. If only a lot of us would refuse to grow up."

He realized that Mary had been one of the rebels.

Sorrell, sharing in one of these heart-to-heart talks under the Stoneberry beeches, confessed that his sympathies were with the rebel.

"Not the mulish mob, old chap, but the free-lance, the lone fighter."

"Isn't he becoming rather rare?"

"His day will come again. He is the one inevitable figure. Besides—he is the only really happy soul. A bad citizen—as organized slaving understands citizenship. What may good citizenship mean in the future,—being swallowed alive by the Labour Dragon, a clumsy beast crushing life under its crawling belly. Ha,—the sword of St. George."

Kit's face was very grave.

"You have had to fight, pater. What did you fight for?"

"For myself,—you."