Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 32
SORRELL, having purchased No. 107 Welbeck Street, had put in a firm of painters and decorators, and when these had departed, a vanload of furniture arrived by road from Winstonbury. A waiting patient looking idly out of a window of No. 106 saw "William of Winstonbury" painted in white upon the green van. For two-years or more Sorrell had been collecting the furniture for that portion of Kit's house which would matter, and it had been stored in the Winstonbury warehouse, beautiful eighteenth century pieces, much of it Queen Anne. China too, and prints, and needlework pictures, and old Sheffield plate and silver. Williams, now a partner in that very stirring business, had added to it a large shop in the High Street where the more modern minded could be supplied with everything from a mock-antique four post bedstead to a soap dish. The Young William and the Old William both flourished exceedingly.
The furnishing of this house was to Sorrell like the putting of a last and delicate polish upon the casket of his son's career. It was done lovingly, and with the sensitive satisfaction of a man who had come to realize that beauty in line and in texture has a mysterious and sweet permanence. The mellow sheen of the wood, and the gentle richness of the old colours were a perpetual delight, and in wandering over Kit's house Sorrell knew that most secret joy, the perfume rising from the full flower of accomplishment.
"I can do no more," he thought.
And so thought his son, touched and a little troubled, and perhaps in his heart of hearts vaguely self-critical. If ever a man had had the path of his career blazed for him and made easy! Yet, he understood his father's reasons, the shrewd and steady purpose of the old gladiator who had fought in the commercial arena, and who knew that the money struggle is not the truest test.
"You are doing too much for me, pater."
Handling lovingly a Famille-Rose bowl Sorrell defended his plan
"Am I? Well,—I have just about finished. And if you had not backed me what would have been the use? I have had to use an axe, because I wanted you to have your chance to handle a much more delicate and valuable weapon. I wanted to save you the baser scuffle."
"It might have made me soft."
"It might. But it is plain to me that you have had your struggles, your effort; different from mine. And here you are."
One autumn evening Kit stood in front of his glass pulling at the bows of a black dress tie. His dinner-jacket and waistcoat had been laid out on the bed. A pleasant silence reigned in the house, his house, though he had sub-let certain rooms and facilities to Miss Rebecca Morrison, a lady gynecologist, and Dr, Eustace Weymouth, a specialist in diseases of the skin. There were the three brass plates upon the apple green door. Moreover, a few patients came daily to consult Mr. Christopher Sorrell, unexpected people sent to him out of the seemingly unknown. Their coming still continued to surprise him a little. One young surgeon in the centre of all this complex crowding! He had heard of men waiting for years for work that never came, and making successful marriages in order to be able to wait still longer, or drifting in the end to some more obscure but equally useful field. Some of these patients he could trace to the influence of old Gaunt, others to Orange, but a number came from old St. Martha's men in country practices. Sir Ormsby had retired, but people continued to ask him questions, if they could not command his skill. "Recommend me someone. Not one of your smart fellows. A straight man who won't slash me just for the kudos or the guineas." They did not put it quite so crudely, but Sir Ormsby understood them very well. "Go and see Mr. Christopher Sorrell, 107, Welbeck Street. Young, but absolutely straight. Most able chap. You can trust him."
Christopher was dining at Chelsea. Driving in a taxi through the ordered confusion with its ever increasing glare, he thought of his father before his cottage fire, probably reading some bulb catalogue or a book on soils. Sorrell had ceased to care for London; in fact he actively disliked it, and Kit could fancy him thinking the words—even if he did not utter them—"Different in my day." When Sorrell thought of London he thought of it as the London of hansom cabs, and when it was possible to walk along Oxford Street without becoming involved in "that crowd of idle and superfluous women." His mind had become reminiscent. All that appeared ordinary to Kit, the absurd crowding, the noise, the thundering herds of motor buses, seemed strange and alien to the father.
The Rolands were people who contrived to look ahead, ironically, perhaps, but their irony was pleasant. Kit enjoyed these evenings at Chelsea. He had to be very much on the alert there, with a live twinkle in his eyes, his serious workaday tail left behind him. It was a house of laughter, mellow and mischievous and kind, the Punch attitude to life; mature, invaluable. It corrected Kit's too much seriousness. It gave him that very necessary glass of champagne.
Kit sat on Cherry's left. A very pale young man posted somewhere across the table and wearing enormous spectacles and speaking with a slight lisp, said that some book or other was like an aeroplane dropping bombs. Kit was watching the young man's pink, crimped mouth. And Cherry, fingering the stem of a wine glass, glanced at Kit remindingly out of her rogue's eyes.
"Read it,—I suppose?"
"What?" asked Kit.
"'The Amazon,'"
"The river?"
"No,—my child, Molly Pentreath's latest."
Kit had not heard of the book.
"I read her 'Broken Pottery.'"
"Like it?"
"I thought it a beast of a book."
He saw that he had amused her.
"Well—I can't help it, Cherry. I used to know Molly Pentreath as a kid. She raised a bump on my head with a croquet mallet."
"She raises bumps now, my dear."
"I dare say she does. Same sort of croquet mallet. And she used to cheat like blazes."
"Be careful. I know her."
"Do you?" said Kit, and he felt a desire to be told what Miss Pentreath had grown into, but Cherry did not tell him. She had duties to a rather dull little man on her right who wrote very serious books on ethnology, and brought his own bread with him when he went out to dine. Kit had heard him saying "No sugar, please, no sugar," and Kit thought that he looked like it. To Cherry he was something of a saccharine responsibility.
Some two weeks later Mrs. Roland met Molly Pentreath at the Minerva Club. It was the occasion of one of the Minerva guest nights when the members collected a selection of male celebrities and poked fun at them. Molly and Cherry Roland happened on each other in the smoking-room. The speeches had been very boring; the fish had shown themselves shy.
"Hallo. I had someone dining with me the other night who used to know you."
"Who's that?"
"Christopher Sorrell."
Molly looked straight and hard into Cherry's eyes.
"Oh, old Kit-bag! I hear about him occasionally from my brother. An appendix-snatcher, isn't he?"
"We are rather fond of Kit. He told me that he had read your 'Broken Pottery.'"
"Poor lad!"
"Yes. He said that he thought that it was a beastly book."
Miss Molly Pentreath laughed.
Kit, being of a wholesomeness that needs exercise and cannot live to the top of its bent without it, took to fencing, and became a member of the Foil Club. Also he walked, varying his objectives or terminal pylons, and the chief of them were Kensington Palace, the Roman Catholic cathedral at Westminster and the northern boundary of Regent's Park. He had walked through this park on one of those bland March days when the virago month becomes treacherously gentle, and had sat down on a seat in one of the side-walks. The sun shone; there was not a cloud in the sky; he saw daffodils nodding heads of sensuous gold, and beyond a grove of budding lilacs a row of old houses spread a glimmering whiteness.
Kit heard shouts, a scuffling of young feet. Half a dozen urchins, having with a lucky stone shot broken the wing of a sparrow, had captured the creature, tied a thread to one of its legs and attached a white paper bag to the other end of the thread. Then, they had let the bird go, and were following up its desperate and broken little flutterings, shying their caps at it, and shouting.
Kit got up to intervene, but someone else was before him, a tall girl in soft apple green who rose with swiftness from a seat farther along the path. Her intervention was fierce and sudden, selecting the biggest of the children, and taking him by the coat collar. She cuffed him with vigour, and the boy, responding like the little savage animal, kicked at her ankles. Kit took two strides forward, and then turned and resumed his seat. His interference would have been superfluous, for the Green Lady went on with her cuffing until the boy had ceased to respond with kicks. She held him by the collar, and talked him into tears.
"Now—how do—you—like it? How do you think the sparrow liked it? You little beast."
Releasing him she went to catch the bird, and having freed its leg from the trailing thread and paper, she held it in her hollowed hands with that small group of depressed children staring at her.
"Who threw the stone?"
She got no answer, and stroking the bird's head with a finger, she turned fierce eyes upon the sportsmen.
"Just think—now. Supposing one of you were left out here with a broken leg, and with a lot of tigers about? It is so easy to throw stones,—but you can't mend a broken wing. No one can."
She left them dawdling and depressed, and with the bird in her hand went past Christopher's seat, walking with a fierce, swift litheness. Her green costume was touched at the throat and wrists with threads of gold. She wore a little black hat that came down low over her broad straight forehead, and from under the brim two jet black curls painted half moons upon the white skin. She had one of those milky skins, and a very red, wavy and expressive mouth, sinuous, mischievous, fearless. Her dark eyes were equally fearless, and they were bright and fierce when she passed the seat upon which Christopher Sorrell sat.
His body swung forward at the hips.
"Surely—it is"
He had not spoken, and she had not looked at him, but he rose and followed her, wondering where she was going, and what she would do with that bird. Molly Pentreath! The same as of old and yet different, a brilliant, gleaming figure sweeping with swiftness through the March sunshine. She walked fast. Those long legs, the legs of the irrepressible, tree-climbing Molly! And something in Kit thrilled as he followed her. How she walked, skimming, a beautiful, live, fierce, compassionate thing. He drifted after her, wondering, like a drawn shadow. He felt that he had no desire to overtake her, at least not yet. He simply followed after her as though she were the figure of Spring, and he a mere mortal man instinctively pursuing all that Spring cried for.
She led him out of the park, and down Portland Place, and turning to the right, struck out a course that passed within a hundred yards of Mr. Christopher Sorrell's house. She was quite unconscious of being followed. They crossed Oxford Street somewhere near Selfridge's. Three minutes later they were in Taunton Street. She entered a shop just cies a primrose-coloured delivery van was drawn up at the curb.
Christopher drew level with the shop. Costumes, a hat or two, a pair of shoes, a girdle! He glanced up at the fascia board and read the name "Salome."
"Of course!" he exclaimed to himself; "didn't Maurice tell me?"
So this was Molly's shop where she sold Paris models to the understanding few and the imitative many. He strolled past, glancing at the window, and catching a sheen of green. Proceeding a little way, he faced about and returned, and crossing the narrow road, pretended to be interested in an "antique" shop. A minute later he was gazing across the road and through the glass door. Kit's eyesight was very good.
Molly Pentreath had her back to him. A man was standing opposite her and very close. The first thing that Kit noticed about the man was that he was wearing no hat. His slightly bent and attentive head showed a large sleek blackness above a large white face, one of those formless faces, as though someone had flung a mass of dough against a wall, moulded it casually, and stuck in two big coffeeberries for eyes. The two figures pivoted slightly. Molly had the sparrow in the closed hollow of her hand, and the man was stroking the sparrow's head.
Kit rubbed his chin.
What the devil was the fellow doing there without his hat? Looking very much at home too, and peculiarly friendly. Intimate, almost.
Kit walked thoughtfully away.
Mr. Christopher Sorrell turned up at Chelsea some three evenings later. Roland was out, and Kit had no quarrel with Thomas Roland's absence, for Cherry was the person whom he wanted to see and to whom he wished to talk. Quite casually of course. His curiosity, a surprisingly aggressive curiosity had been pricking him. Very absurd, but he would not allow that there was anything more in it than curiosity.
Cherry was at the piano in the red and black room, enjoying one of those idle and solitary hours when music comes and sits at your elbow. She smiled at Kit, but did not leave the piano, and he sat down behind her, and at a distance, in one of the black and gold chairs.
"Want to talk or listen?"
"O, go on, please," and she knew at once that he wanted to talk.
But dallying with the notes for a minute or more before turning on the square stool, she was more attentive to him and the feel of him than Kit imagined, for when a potent and purposeful young man like Kit arrived in the room and set it vibrating Cherry caught the tremor of his unrealized mystery and turned it into music.
"Tom is dining at the 'Savage.'"
"Is he? I have never been there."
"Get him to take you some night."
"I will. What's that you were strumming? Some new thing of his?"
"No. A piece of Ravel's. How are all the domestic arrangements at No. 107? Has the doctor woman?"
Her rogue's look puzzled Kit.
"We made an arrangement. My two maids are splendid women,—but somehow they and Miss Morrison could not hit it. I don't know why; so I had to suggest to the lady."
"That your two servants were of more importance."
"Well, so they are. Rather awkward telling the good woman that her own sex wanted to call a lock-out. Now—there is peace. Wynter, a throat-man, has come in instead."
He nursed a knee, and looked at Mrs. Cherry's shoes, and seemed to meditate. And then he said quite suddenly, and with an air of bright innocence—"Who do you think I saw the other day? Or—I'm sure it must have been her." Mrs. Cherry became smooth as a cat.
"Dear lad, how can I guess—if you are not sure of the identity of the person you thought you saw? Rather involved."
"Oh,—it was Molly Pentreath. She went into a shop, a dress shop; I believe she runs a shop as well as writing novels. 'Salome' was the name over the shop."
"Then it must have been Molly."
"I thought so.—By the way—who is the man?"
"What man?"
"In the shop—with his hat off—as though he belonged there?"
"My dear lad,—how should I know. Unless it was Oscar Wolffe—her partner."
"She has a partner?"
"I believe so. That is to say—the man Wolffe financed the enterprise."
"Who is he?"
"Something in the City; an insurance broker—I think."
"Not married—are they?"
"Have you forgotten 'Broken Pottery'? That's Molly Pentreath's attitude to marriage."
Christopher made some rather foolish remark about such an attitude being a pose, and Cherry, with an "O—no, my dear," turned again to the keyboard and began to play fragments from her husband's operas. And now and again she threw a few words at Kit, almost as though she was singing them. "One's view point changes. Old wine and new wine,—you know. Hasn't it ever occurred to you, Christopher, how marriage limits a woman?" He sat, attentive and silent. "Molly is one of those women who have no intention of being limited. There are women who are keen on their jobs—their careers,—just as you are."
She glanced over a shoulder at his grave face.
"I suppose so," he said.
"And suppose—for a moment—dear lad—that some tumultuous woman came and married you and shut you up in a house—and you had to look after the children—and the servants,—and the work of your life had ceased, and you were expected to be glad about it. How does that sound to you?"
"Oh,—I quite agree," he said, "that if a woman has a career."
"Well,—Molly Pentreath has. And I imagine she believes with many of us that bringing children into the world—and all that—is for the specialists—the women who want children. All women don't—you know."
Christopher examined his finger-nails.
"Don't think me rude, Cherry, but I wish you would tell me"
She swung round and faced him.
"Now—I know what you are going to ask me.—I had to,—and when we had to—we wanted to. Marriage seems to happen sometimes without your being able to help it. Besides."
She sat poised with that thrush-like tilt of the head.
"Some men understand things,—and when they do. Well, a woman's fine resolutions may blow inside out like a sunshade. But—the Mr. Gullivers. How would you like to be tied to a Mrs. Gulliver?"
A week or two later Christopher received a note from Cherry Roland.
"Come and dine with us on Saturday. No formalities. We shall expect you at 7.30."
Cherry rose to meet him. She was alone, and in her eyes there was a mischievous gaiety.
"Hope I'm not too early?"
"No. The others are in the garden. Tom has just bought an Italian well-head."
She moved towards the spacious west window with its central arch and white flanking pillars. The panes were full of the sunset and the dark branches of a budding plane tree. Kit moved with her, aware of the smile on her face, a glimmer as of sly dew in her eyes.
She stood looking down into the garden which was a creation of Roland's, he having rescued it from a bare, sour smuttiness, and converted it into a pleasant, stonepaved court set with statues and clipped trees in blue tubs and grey vases. Treillage painted a dark green screened the walls. In the centre of the court stood Roland's Italian well-head, and he and a girl were looking at it. She turned her head as she spoke to Roland, and Christopher saw her profile.
For a moment he stood looking at her while Cherry played with her finger-tips upon one of the window-panes.
"You wicked woman!"
"How wicked, my dear?"
The gong thundered, and the two up above went down to meet the two below in the hall with its eastern rugs and old English furniture.
"See what I have produced for you, Molly."
Her surprised eyes looked straight at Christopher. Cherry had planned a mutual ambuscade.
"Surely—old Kit-bag!"
He held out a hand, his eyes as steady as hers.
"My Lady of the Mallet."
She gave him a sudden smile.
"That's hitting low. We used to quarrel"
"Shall we resume it?"
Her open eyes, shrewdly and widely alive to him, turned a sudden slanting glance on Cherry.
"And he has read one of my books. A rather beastly book!"
"O, come now, you two," and Roland's hand was on Kit's arm, "don't resume it here—please. And I'm hungry."
Sitting opposite to Molly Pentreath and looking at her across the clothless, polished table, Christopher felt a curious confusion in the midst of which his consciousness of her strove like a blurred light. It was she who confused him. He could not say quite why or how, save that there seemed to be something peculiar and unique about her, a sureness that was challenging. He remembered that she was a celebrity, and yet she struck him as being supremely natural and fiercely unaffected, Molly of the mallet, and yet a far more mysterious Molly. That was it; she had mystery, at least for him. She was unexpected. He felt that he had no more understanding of the woman behind those fearless and level brown eyes than he had of the mystery of life. The whole of her was disturbing, her glances, her movements, the unforeseen and unforeseeable flashes of her temperament. He was aware of a personal crudeness in the setting up his consciousness against hers. He felt that if he spoke he would say things that would sound platitudinous and Gulliverish, and that she would look right through them and him. Yes, she was brilliant, and her brilliance troubled him. It hurt.
They had arrived at the fish before Kit uttered a sound, and that was in answer to a question of hers.
"I hear you spent a week-end with Maurice."
"Yes."
Nothing came but that single, silly word, and he pushed himself to amplify it.
"I liked his house. We played golf croquet."
"And Perdita?"
"No. Only old Maurice and I."
"I suppose you beat him."
"I think I did."
She turned to say something to Roland, and while her eyes were elsewhere Kit looked at her deliberately and with a combative curiosity. He could not help wondering why she made him feel combative, confusedly quarrelsome. She was wearing black; and a green jade necklace hung about her throat. He watched the moving curves of her expressive mouth, and thought how black her hair was.
And suddenly she looked at him, and seemed to draw the veil of her self about her with the haughtiness of a proud thing taken unawares. He realized that he had been staring and there was a quality in her quick glance that reminded him of foil play, as though her glance were pressing against his and turning it aside. Something in her resented the way of his studying her. Her face seemed to grow thin. It was as though he had touched her and she had cried out fiercely—"Don't touch me."
He reddened and looked at his plate, while the Rolands exchanged a glimmer of the eyes.
"Have some more Burgundy, Kit?"
"Thanks."
"Had a heavy day?"
"Fairly so. In the theatre for three hours; rather difficult cases."
He had become suddenly possessed by a fierce desire to swagger, to ruffle his plumage under the eyes of the challenging presence on the other side of the table. Why should she resent his looking at her admiringly? For he had been admiring her.
He began to talk, and the more forcibly he talked, the more silent grew that other presence. She was watching him, appraising him just as he had done while she had been chatting to Roland. He felt it, and he resented it. He began to think of her as a clever, satirical, enigmatic young woman.
Cherry was singing, and a full moon had risen and was shining upon Thomas Roland's garden. He had opened the window before his wife's hands had touched the piano, and standing there and looking down into the garden, with the smoke from his cigar spreading out into faint, horizontal films, he appeared to be listening. The April night had a soft warm breath.
Cherry's voice ceased, and with her hands still resting on the keyboard she sat and waited.
"Lovely night," said the man at the window; "come along you two and see my garden by moonlight."
He paused by the piano.
"Sing, Cherry, sing. You should hear her voice dropping down into the garden, with my Narcissus listening"
Molly Pentreath was given a cloak, and refused it, and had it placed upon her shoulders by Roland's insisting hands. He led them out to look at the white figures of his statues, and the shadows cast by them upon the moonlit stones, and at the well-head with its circle of blackness. Christopher stood beside the figure of the Dancing Faun, and opposite to him Narcissus,—one finger raised—seemed to be listening to Cherry's voice. She had chosen "Samson and Delilah." She sang it with passion and with a tenderness that made Kit bow his head as though he were sinking into the deep water of her lovely voice.
A silence came. Molly Pentreath was leaning against the well-head, while Roland looked up at the window of the music-room.
"What a voice she has!"
In an underchant he sang a few notes of some song, and then made suddenly towards the house.
"Wait a moment,—I'll get her to sing out of 'Cherry of Chelsea' You have got my garden, you may as well have my music."
And he did not return. They stood there in the moonlight and waited, Kit by his statue, Molly by the well-head, listening to some amiable, domestic argument that appeared to be taking place in the music-room. They heard Cherry laughing, and striking an occasional and casual note upon the piano, and Roland's voice, big and deep and amused.
Silence. Two people rigid as Roland's statues. Kit looked at the girl,—and the girl surveyed the moon. She was a figure of irresponsive blackness, calmly poised, waiting not upon him, but upon the music that was to be. And he felt a sense of conflict within him, as though he were silently wrestling with her silence.
"What did you do with that sparrow?"
She did not move. It was as if he had thrown an urchin's stone at her, and her very silence—like a magic shield—had turned it aside.
His sense of conflict increased, urging him on against her silence.
"Did you wring its neck?"
Her voice came low and casual.
"No—I bought a cage for it. Either it was that, or a twisted neck. Cherry is a dear, but she talks too much."
"Wrong," he said; "Cherry did not talk. I was there."
He realized that she was looking at him.
"The long arm of coincidence! Were you the man on the seat?"
"I suppose so."
"Just a man on a seat."
He felt a trembling, a quivering of all his senses, and this was new to him. Just a man on a seat! Well—very likely.
"I wasn't sure."
"No."
"I wondered what you would do—with the bird. So you have got it in a cage at Taunton Street."
She made a movement as of drawing the folds of the cloak more closely about her.
"It comes out and sits on the table. Full of cheek, quite a cockney of a cock-sparrow. They are arguing about something up there. Good-night, Narcissus."
Kit followed her in, feeling flushed about the ears and heart, and as she ascended the stairs she began to talk to him dispassionately about, poor old Maurice. "Safely canonized," as she expressed it; "with a stained-glass wife, and a holy bambino expected." Kit felt her level voice trampling upon him. She carried the conversation into the music-room and trailed it serenely under the eyes of the two by the piano.
"It is just the atmosphere for Maurice. He always looked at life as though it was just a nice church window, all Burne-Jonesy—you know. No; I don't see very much of them"
Kit felt that if she had been ten years younger he would have pulled her hair.