Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 30
THOUGH Cherry might mock a little at Thomas Roland's whimsies, and at his cult of "A Smooth Surface" as she called it, Roland's christening of Kit as "The Fortunate Youth" betrayed that half laughing insight that comes with maturity. Man has collected an immense store of theory which is useful to him as the small change of existence, but when a big issue gallops up like a March wind, man is apt to forget his little theories. He is inclined to act upon impulse, to let the wind blow through the rags of his social reason. "You do the thing you want to do, Cherry, and afterwards you invent all sorts of nice excuses to prove that you acted like a lawyer, and not like a fool. The lawyer in us is always an afterthought. I fell in love with your face and your voice, not with a category of virtues and vices." When he heard about Mr. Simon Orange, he smiled. "Told you so. Contrasts. Beauty and the Beast. I knew that someone would open Kit's door for him."
Simon Orange opened it very successfully. Call a man an individualist, which means that he objects to being jostled either by mobs or an oligarchy, and you had Orange outlined as a lone, grim, anthropoid creature, hairily grotesque, smashing his way through the jungle. Sometimes, life had caused him to utter cries of rage and of pain, but life, the little oppositions, the class prejudices, had not stopped him. He had been very poor. There had been days when he had had but two shirts to cover his hairy chest, and the tails of these shirts would have fluttered like torn clouds. Even that room of his in St. Mary's Street pictured the long struggle; possessions, books, chairs, a table, a sideboard, an old Turkey carpet snatched up by simian hands and carried off on various occasions. An indefatigable, fierce, laborious creature, with something very human and pleading in the hidden deeps of its brown eyes.
Orange had a consulting-room on the ground floor, and a waiting-room that he shared with three other doctors. They also shared the services of the very plain and capable woman in black who received their patients. And Orange had a growing practice. The grotesque exterior could not mask a skill, a thoroughness, a courage that were unusual. Most of his work took him to the suburbs among people of the lower middle class. His practice as a consultant had come to him very gradually, gathered by those grim hands. He was a man who had come to be believed in by a number of general practitioners. He gave you results; he was reliable, he did not demand his pound of flesh; he never let—you down. He had a personality, queer and uncouth no doubt, but it was a personality oo.
And this was the man who first opened the door to Christopher Sorrell, and did it with an abrupt and awkward shyness, and a look half of appeal. Human intuition. An almost womanish impulse towards that which was good to look at and to wonder at. The straight, well-built body, and the comely, virile head. And more than that. Character, clear eyes, a young dignity, a fineness of emotional outline. Attractions may seem incalculable, but they are more real than the wisdom of the text-books.
The friendship grew. Certain envious young men might gibe, and complain that "Sorrell had buttered the Orang's fingers," but what did that matter. Hostility is homage; envy tribute. Kit had the blood of life on his hands, and of that precious experience which alone can justify a young man's self-confidence. It became his custom to go to Simon Orange's room two or three evenings a week, and he remembered the night when Orange first called him "old man."
It came out gruffly with the tentative shyness of a man afraid of caring too much, or afraid that his caring might not matter.
"lad a good day, old man."
He did not ask a question; he stated a fact. For Kit had one of those unexpected days when unexpected things happen. He had experienced one of those almost dramatic, human clashes that cannot be planned for or foreseen.
"A pretty nasty case."
"Old Ormsby told me about it."
There was a smile on Orange's face as he opened the cigar-box, and held a cigar to his nostrils. It is good to give of one's best to a friend, and his best had been such a sorry thing,—and Sorrell was his first friend.
"If I had known," said Kit, "that Sir Ormsby was standing there watching me,—I should have fumbled it."
"No you wouldn't. A cut throat is a cut throat."
"It—was—a throat. Nicked one carotid, and gone clean through the larynx. It took me the best part of two hours."
"Ormsby watched you for half an hour."
"As long as that!"
"And then he asked you to do an emergency job for him in the theatre."
"Just a simple appendix."
Orange held his big and clever hands to the fire.
"Glad—old man. We'll be on the staff together—some day."
"I hope so. And but for you"
"I've done nothing."
Orange did not tell Kit that Sir Ormsby Gaunt, that father of surgery and master of craft, had discussed Sorrell with him, and spoken significant words. "Good fellow that. Have you ever seen him blush, Orange?" Orange had seen Christopher blush, and it had sent a thrill of curious affection through him. Tenderness—almost. There were people who thought the "Orang" a jealous and a grudging beast, one of those fellows who grabbed and held on and showed his teeth if any other man came too near him, but Orange was happy in Christopher's success. He could give of his best to Sorrell because he wanted to give to him.
Nor was the work at St. Martha's the only avenue of experience that he opened to his friend. In his private work he sometimes needed assistance, and on Sundays Sorrell would go with Orange to some nursing-home, and add Orange's self-confidence to his own.
"Doing things, difficult things, day in and day out, and doing them better and better."
It was through Orange that Christopher obtained his first appointment, the post of junior surgeon to a hospital in the north of London.
"There is a vacancy at the Northern Free, a junior surgeonship. Sir Ormsby told me about it to-day in the staff-room. He mentioned you."
Kit's face lit up.
"But, Simon,—why not you?"
"Oh,—I don't want it; too much to do already. Rather a sinecure,—but useful to a man who wants to keep his hands in."
"Do you think I should have a chance?"
"Sir Ormsby mentioned you. I said that I would sound you on the subject. If you are keen"
"What do you think?"
"Well, go and see Sir Ormsby. He is the senior honorary at the Northern Free."
In this way it came about that Christopher was appointed to his first public post, and was able to go down to Winstonbury with the secret up his sleeve. And in the letting loose of such secrets there is much simple human joy.
Christopher never forgot the quick lift of his father's head when he heard the news.
"Great! I'm glad. You have worked for it."
And as they sat by the fire Kit thought of Simon Orange sitting in front of that other fire in St. Mary's Street, a vivid and gnarled figure bulging out an old black velvet coat, its feet thrust into red leather slippers, and a cerise-coloured tie flapping under a heavy and thoughtful chin. That was Orange, good friend, God bless him!
Later that winter Simon Orange became a member of the In-patient Staff, and Kit was given Orange's vacant post.
It was an event. Sorrell came up to town, and Roland and Cherry gave a dinner at Chelsea, and while Sorrell Senior was in London he called upon a very notable firm of house and estate agents and made it known to them that he was ready to purchase a house in one of those decorous streets where the consulting world functions. He was told that there was no such house purchasable at the moment, but that the firm would make inquiries and keep the matter in evidence, and they would hope to communicate with Mr. Sorrell in due course.
Meanwhile, Christopher joined Simon Orange at No. 11, St. Mary's Street, taking over two rooms on the third floor, and arranging to use the waiting-room and one of the consulting-rooms when providence should send him any patients. Sorrell furnished the two rooms for his son, and never had the spending of money given him more pleasure. The rising sun seemed to shine on that little brass plate attached to the green front door.
"Mr. Christopher Sorrell."
Standing one May morning at the open window of Kit's sitting-room, and caressing a grey moustache with a meditative fore-finger, Sorrell looked down into St. Mary's Street and felt that life was good. Kit was arriving. He had his niche in the sacred enclosure; the son of the hotel-porter was one of the elect. The street below him, half in the sunlight and half in the shadow, was as full of the panoply of triumph as any Via Sacra. An itinerant flower-seller was trundling a barrow full of flowers, and Sorrell, the flower lover, felt that his happy mood had a posy. Here and there a car was drawn up outside a house; solid, shimmering cars, blue and black and claret and grey. There was one car that suggested to Sorrell a glass of good red wine. Some day before long Kit would have his car.
The flower-seller's voice was to be heard. He had two or three crimson and white azaleas in pots, also a few polyantha roses. Sorrell leaned out with his hands on the window-sill, caught the flower-seller's eye, and pointed to the door of No. 11.
Christopher was arranging some of his books.
"What are you up to, pater?"
"O,—nothing," said Sorrell. "There's a chap down there with some flowers."
A maid came to say that a man with flowers had come to the front door.
"Tell him I want two of his azaleas, one crimson and one white, and two pots of the carmine roses."
"Yes, sir."
"Ask him what he wants for them, and you can take the money down."
When Sorrell had posed the plants to his liking, and touched them with his fingers, he sat sideways on the window-sill, and watched the street, and Kit, and felt that life was still more good.
"Well,—here you are," he said suddenly.
Kit, with a volume of "Operative Surgery" in his hand, smiled gravely at the figure by the window.
"And you, pater."
"And I. We haven't done so badly, old chap. Comes of concentrating on the job. It gives one to think."
"And feel," said Kit.
Presently Sorrell mentioned Pentreath, for he had been able to enjoy a pleasant pity where Pentreath was concerned.
"How's he doing?"
"Settled at Millchester; good old practice. Married again,—you know."
"Who to?"
"A canon's daughter. Haven't seen him for a year. He writes fairly regularly."
"Some men do. Nice mellow, ecclesiastical atmosphere. I suppose it is just the thing!"
"I suppose so. Arthurian, pater. Millchester, in the West, not much harried yet by the barbarians."
"Ah,—the barbarians," said Sorrell. "Poor, greedy children. Pentreath would be no good with greedy children. Nice fellow."
"He is earning his living," said Kit.
"One can do more than that," was Sorrell's reply.
Less than a month from the day of Kit's establishing himself at No. 11 St. Mary's Street, Pentreath reappeared with personal vividness upon his immediate horizon.
Christopher was rung up at St. Martha's. They were calling him from No. 11, and he heard the voice of Page, the woman in the black dress.
"There's a Dr. Pentreath here, sir. Wants to see you very particularly."
"Dr. Pentreath of Millchester?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll be round in half an hour."
Christopher found Pentreath in the waiting-room, a Pentreath who reminded him of the friend who had come to him that day in Brunswick Square.
"Hallo,—old chap."
He saw at once that Pentreath was fidgety and worried. He shook hands rather too eagerly, and his grip was uncertain and clammy. He stood in the middle of the room, looking with inattentive attention at the pictures and the furniture. His movements were jerky.
"Nice place you have here."
"I have been in hardly a month. How's Millchester?"
Pentreath sat down abruptly in a chair and after some desultory confidences he blurted out the very words that expressed all that Kit had seen in his eyes.
"Private practice is horribly worrying."
Kit had taken a chair by the table where the periodicals and magazines were arranged for waiting patients. He sat with his hands in his pockets.
"So is London. But I suppose one gets hard."
Pentreath winced.
"I can't get hard,—Sorrell. Sometimes I think I'm too soft. There are some cases;—I have one now."
"Let's hear about it."
The face of his old friend hurt him, for in Pentreath's eyes he found a suggestion of horrible cringing.
"A damnable case. I ought to have—had one of the other fellows in, but it was one of my chauffeur's children, and my wife"
For the moment Kit could not see how Mrs. Pentreath—the canon's daughter—came to intrude upon a problem in surgery, but later he was made to understand that Maurice's wife was a lady of many intrusions. Jerked out by Pentreath's sensitive and rather high-pitched voice, the description of the case appeared very simple. The chauffeur's eldest girl had fallen downstairs and hurt her wrist; Pentreath had been out at the time, and his wife had initiated one of her intrusions. She had applied a cold banda and sympathy. "When Dr. Pentreath comes back he will see to it."
Pentreath had examined the girl's wrist in the presence of his wife, another superfluous and indiscreet intrusion.
"Obviously, Sorrell, there seemed to be a fracture, a Colles. I suppose I ought to have had another opinion."
Listening in between the lines Kit seemed to catch a whisper of Pentreath's inveterate fearfulness. He suspected that Maurice was a little afraid of his wife. She happened to be one of those very self-sure young women who despise procrastination, and for very shame Pentreath had bluffed before her and proceeded to deal with that hypothetical fracture, when he had known in his heart that old Tombs the senior partner would have been much more competent to deal with it. For with his hands Pentreath had always been a nervous fumbler.
"I put the thing in plaster, Sorrell, and of course I made the girl move her fingers. But when I took the fracture down—a week ago; it looked all wrong."
"They do, sometimes," said Kit.
"And then—you know—one of those silly panics got me,—just as they used to during exams. I bluffed. And now—I simply can't make up my mind"
"Whether there was a fracture?"
"O,—yes, there was a fracture. I had it X-rayed. But whether I"
"Didn't you have it rayed again?"
"No."
"My dear old chap, why not?"
"Simply—because I was afraid,—afraid of what I might see."
He gave Christopher a mute and deprecating look.
"Sounds too futile, doesn't it? But the case has begun to worry me to death. Of course I ought to have gone to one of my partners,—but it seemed such a confession of helplessness. I suppose it is difficult for you to understand"
"You can't make up your mind—whether the girl's wrist is right or wrong?"
"Exactly. It must sound absurd to you."
"Not a bit."
He was aware of Pentreath's clasped hands with their fingers interlocked twisted between his knees.
"I suppose you could not spare the time?"
"I'll come down to-morrow, if you like."
Pentreath's eyes loved him.
"Great man! You see, the girl's father is a rather suspicious sort of chap, interfering, funny. He had the cheek to take the splints off the other evening. Tackled me about the girl's wrist—next morning. You know how those people like to hint"
Kit nodded.
"Look here. I had better arrive informally. To-morrow is Saturday. Suppose that I am spending the week-end with you. I can have a look at the girl's wrist—just out of curiosity—so to speak."
Mr. Christopher Sorrell travelled down to Millchester by an afternoon train, and found Pentreath's car waiting for him at the station. Pentreath's suspiciously minded chauffeur met Sorrell without troubling to salute him in any way, and allowed the porter to dispose of Kit's suitcase.
Kit had given the chauffeur a smile, and one quick, discriminating glance. He had learnt to place men and women with a shrewdness shorn of all sentimental illusions. He had observed and handled and smelt them for years in the out-patient departments of St. Martha's. He had seen them cringe and swagger and pretend, and try to hide what it was madness to hide; and he had learnt to tell false faces from true ones, and to know almost by instinct when someone was lying. He had his gallery of "types," and the fellow at the wheel in front of him was a rodent, a nasty, acute little man of the Nosey Parker genus, very self-pleased, with one of those long, intrusive noses, a patch of raddled red on each cheek bone, and bright, insolent, treacherous little eyes.
"All right, my friend," thought Kit.
Pentreath had an old red house with a walled garden behind it in Bishop's Way leading from the Close. A maid opened the white door with its lion-headed brass knocker and took Sorrell's suitcase, the chauffeur not troubling to move from his seat. The maid had had her orders; Dr. Pentreath was out, but would be back for tea, and Mrs. Pentreath was expecting Mr. Sorrell. They crossed the pleasant and softly lit square hall of the house, with a Jacobean oak cupboard very black against one wall, and a gate-legged table with a bowl of roses in the centre of it. The maid opened the door, and at the farther end of a long and beautifully proportioned room Christopher saw a tall girl rising from a chintz-covered sofa ranged sideways to a very graceful long window. The end of the room looked all window, and filled with the pleasant smoothness of an old lawn and the further gloom of a cedar.
"Mr. Sorrell."
Christopher Icoked at Pentreath's wife. She was a fair young woman, tall, with dark eyes, a little Roman nose and a decisive mouth, a beauty, an immediate beauty, but less subtly so when you inhaled the faint, cold perfume of her perfection. She smiled faintly at Kit; it was like turning on a pale light and turning it off again. She did not say that she was pleased to see him. Why should she be pleased?
Such was Perdita Pentreath.
"Maurice has been called out. I don't think he will be very long."
She resumed her place on the sofa. She enthroned herself against the greens of grass and cedar, while Kit sat down very carefully on a chair, and felt that a certain brightness was necessary.
"What a very charming window," he said.
She surveyed him with veiled attention, as though he had surprised her, and she did not permit people to surprise her. She had a beautifully cold presence, the perfect composure of some white flower, manners that were serenely detached. A most exquisite egoist.
"Yes, it is particularly right. The house was my father's wedding present."
"A very delightful one."
He felt himself completely in the circle of her cold consciousness, a figure out of the past, her husband's past, to be observed and considered with courteous hostility. And Kit was thinking— "So this is Maurice's wife! Arthur's Guinevere. What a reaction from the other. She looks as though she had buried something and had planted herself like a lily over the grave. I wonder." But he kept on talking with a genial glibness, feeling that she regarded him as part of Pentreath's past, and that she utterly disapproved of it, and would hold it crystallized in ice.
And then Pentreath came in with an uneasy brightness, and shook hands with Kit, and looked anxiously at his wife. It became obvious to Christopher that Pentreath was very much in love with his wife, and afraid of her.
"Well,—I have often wanted you two to meet."
She said something about it's being a fait accompli, and asked Pentreath to ring the bell. They had tea and Pentreath tried to talk of the old Trinity days, and became self-consciously inept, while Perdita held to her young episcopal throne. Afterwards there was the garden, and golf croquet.
"You still play golf croquet?"
"We do. My wife says that it economizes small talk."
"Remember Molly? By the way,—what is Molly?"
Pentreath had the toe of his boot on the red ball.
He appeared to look anxiously over his shoulder to assure himself that Perdita was still upon her throne.
"My surgery hours—half-past six. Girl coming in then. You might"
"I'll stroll in casually—if you show me.Shall I begin? Right. And what about Molly?"
Pentreath crooked his long finger over his mallet, and played his ball on to the wrong side of the first hoop.
"O—Molly Haven't you heard? Selling Paris models, and writing novels. Haven't you read 'Broken Pottery'?"
"Novels are not much in my line."
"'Broken Pottery' sold thirteen thousand. Horribly clever.—Perdita."
He glanced again towards the window.
"Your shot. Perdita refuses to have Molly's books in the house. Don't gee. Perdita's rather old-fashioned."
"Molly used to be rather a fierce young person."
"O, too much so, too much so. Is still. She has been here just once. A pity"
He potted at a hoop and missed it.
"Dear me! Having things on your mind"
He looked at his watch.
When Mr. Christopher Sorrell strolled into Pentreath's surgery, smoking a pipe and appearing as the most casual of intruders, he surprised the group by the window, Pentreath, Maggs the chauffeur, and Maggs's girl. Pentreath was seated, unrolling a light bandage, the girl standing in front of him, a pale and strumous child with a bulging forehead and weak blue eyes. The chauffeur stood by the window, head cocked with an air of critical and impertinent attention.
"Sorry," said Christopher; "I was wondering whether you had last week's Lancet in here."
Pentreath appeared intent upon the splinted wrist.
"On my desk—I think, old chap."
Christopher sought for the Lancet and found it, and then dallied smiling at the child.
"Anything interesting?"
Pentreath glanced up as though he had been hardly aware of Kit's presence.
"A Colles. Care to have a look. We are rather proud of our own pet fracture, aren't we, Gladys?"
The girl simpered, and her father made a scraping' sound with his feet, a sound of potential protest.
Pentreath removed the splints, and Kit stood looking at the girl's wrist, thinking that a man like Maggs would call a child Gladys; and also wondering how he could manipulate an awkward situation. If Pentreath really had? The truth was the truth. And he stood and looked, noting a bumpy prominence on the back of the wrist, and a very slight deflection of the hand.
Then he took the girl's wrist and fingers in his deliberate hands, and Pentreath, who was watching his friend's face, saw an incipient and pleasant smile there.
"Move your hand, old lady. That's it. Now, the fingers."
Kit could have laughed, for the result was fairly satisfactory and the slight apparent deformation more or less normal. Pentreath had worried so furiously that he had become incapable of recording a perfectly scrupulous opinion.
Kit patted the girl's wrist.
"Very nice,—very nice."
Instinct warned him that the father was about to say something. And he did say something, in a little, acid, threatening voice.
"What's that lump there?"
"That? Bone—my friend."
"There wasn't no lump like that before."
"Exactly," said Kit; "and now you are wiser."
"I don't know what you gentlemen think, but it looks all wrong to me."
And Kit laughed, but so very quietly. He still held the girl's arm, but he looked at the father.
"Now, Mr. Wiseacre, have you ever seen a plumber's joint?"
"Maybe I have."
"And how does a broken bone unite?"
The man was sullenly silent.
"Not quite like a piece of welding; more like a joint on a lead pipe. Put your finger on the thing you call a lump. Hard—isn't it?"
"I've felt it," said the man.
Kit smiled at him.
"Live and learn. Gladys can watch that lump disappearing slowly. Like to have a bet with your father on it, old lady?"
Kit stayed with the Pentreaths till late on the Sunday afternoon. On parting, Perdita gave him a correct and cold hand, and Pentreath accompanied him to the station. They walked up and down the Millchester platform.
"I'm awfully grateful to you, old chap. Weight off my mind."
"That's all right."
"Nothing more to suggest about that case?"
Christopher stood watching the engine of the incoming train.
"No," he said slowly; "nothing. But—at the first convenient opportunity I should sack your chauffeur."