Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 37
KIT descended the steps into the Green Park, and after looking at his wrist-watch, strolled on down Queen's Walk. It was the first Spring day when the world had ceased suddenly from looking shabby, and the geass—sleeked by the sun—caught the suggestion of a young greenness. The hard eyes of the sky had softened for a moment, and even the faces of men—city men—looked softer and less brutish.
A seat offered itself and Kit sat down under the bare branches of a plane tree. At the other end of the seat two Germans—a man and a girl—kept up a guttural babbling over a Baedeker's guide. The pleasant and diverse façades of the houses warmed themselves in the afternoon sunlight, so individual and so English after the fashion of an England that was dead. Kit found himself gazing at one particular house built of mellow-gold brown brick, with faded blue blind-cases and a dark old balcony. A chestnut tree was opening its green buds against this background of warm brickwork flecked with blue, and Kit was touched by the beauty of it.
Yes, life was good. And he glanced again at his wrist-watch, and between his baskings threw an occasional quick and expectant look in the direction of Piccadilly. An old park loafer, seedy and shiny, had joined him on the seat, and producing a pipe, applied a match to the foul dottle remaining at the bottom of the bowl. Sot though he was he examined Kit with appreciative interest, and a shrewdness that was alive to the meaning of those expectant and quick turns of the head. Here was a young toff, waiting for a girl. Good business on such an April afternoon. And the little blue eyes in the inflamed face examined Kit's shoes and trousers and his clear brown profile, and then went on to discover the emptiness of a matchbox.
"Haven't a match, sir, have you?"
There—spoke the voice of a man who had known other days, and Kit produced a matchbox, and observed the patched boots, and the frayed trousers, and the greasy cuffs, and collar of the old black tail coat. The man was sucking hard at the pipe. His chin was all grey stubble, his nose and cheeks a network of little blood vessels.
"Much obliged, sir."
He handed back the matches, and smiled a yellow, broken-toothed smile at the fortunate one.
"Worth being alive—a day like this."
"It is."
"Even me. Dry feet,—and no draught under what you might call by courtesy a shirt. Nice bit of colour that,—ain't it?"
He indicated the brown and blue house with the stem of his pipe.
"Used to do a little with the brushes—myself—once, till I started paintin' my nose. Hee, hee!"
He chuckled, and Kit felt the sunlight, and a happy man's human compassion. His hand disappeared into a trouser pocket at the very moment that he saw a particular figure floating on April feet down the Walk of the Queen. A surreptitious hand passed two half-crowns to a consenting and ready paw.
Kit stood up. So did the greasy one.
"Much obliged. Don't you mind me. The lady can have my seat."
He gave Kit a friendly, human leer, and with a considering and appreciative glance at Kit's lady, he raised his ancient bowler hat and mooched off with a contemptuous stare at the two Germans. Honeymooners! Boch honeymooners! Their lingo still smelt of that old and almost forgotten war. What the hell were they doing in England anyway? Made him think of the prison camp he had inhabited, and the German women who used to stand and mock at him through the wire fencing. He turned about for a moment to observe the coming together of the other two. English people, his people! By Jove, some girl too; moved as though corsets—and all tight constraints—were things of the past! The willowy, audacious, quick-eyed type, black and white. Damn it, he had always admired that sort of woman! A fine pair, and good luck to them.
Kit took the place that the derelict had vacated, and gave Molly his. The two Germans, suddenly and internationally sympathetic, arose and strolled away.
"You brown man," she said.
He sat sideways on the seat, smiling and looking into her eyes.
"I couldn't say what I wanted to say—yesterday—at Chelsea. The time and the place."
"It is very good here. The young green."
He bent towards her.
"Molly,—why did you make no terms?"
She glanced at his eyes and then at his tie.
"Does one,—when life rushes on one—like that? I surrendered."
"You gave—with open hands. And so—will I."
She put up a hand and began to speak, but he took her hand and laid it gently on the seat.
"No,—my turn. I understand things better now. I have been thinking a lot—while I was away. It began during those days. Listen."
His eyes had that happy inward look.
"Your job—as well as mine. We are workers both of us. I'm thinking that work is the worker's child. Half a house each, or a whole house each. Your—atmosphere—as well as mine. No cramping sentimentalities. We go and come as we please."
He covered her hand for a moment with his.
"That last book of yours. Great. I'm proud,—but I am going to be much prouder,—because I'm learning. I'm an awful kid, dear, in some ways."
Her hand turned over on the seat and clasped his.
"Some things are greater than books. Be patient with me, Kit, sometimes."
Sorrell had finished tea. He filled and lit a pipe, and after standing at the open window for a minute with a thoughtful face from which came rhythmic puffs of smoke, he went out into his garden. He had grown very grey these days, much greyer since the crisis in Kit's life, and but for the flowers at his feet his figure might have seemed lonely. For a while he just wandered up and down and to and fro, under the fruit blossom and between the beds of spring flowers. There was a wonderful show this year, the best show that he had ever had, and he enjoyed one of those rare half-hours on a perfect evening when the eyes see deeper, and perfumes are more poignant. He sat down on a rough seat under one of the fruit trees over against a half wild patch of purple and rose aubretia, red daisies, blue myosotis, purple and gold tulips, and burning orange Siberian wallflowers. His eyes remained fixed upon this richness; he puffed at his pipe; he reflected. It occurred to him that a man's last and best friends might be his flowers. They grudged nothing; they gave you results.
Yes, and how little in the way of results could most poor, flustered conventional lives show. Just pathetic rushings to and fro after the passing of that state of semisavagery and vague rebelliousness which is childhood. Getting up in the morning and going to bed, catching trains, eating indifferent food, responding rather blindly to the sex urge, squabbling with other individual men or groups of men over twopence on the wage-sheet, going with crowds of other human cattle to some cheap holiday resort and finding the same stale crowds there. Never to be alone, or to produce anything of significance, save perhaps a few children who would repeat the same obscure slave's march.
The social system! Citizenship! Boodle!
And it seemed to Sorrell as he sat there in the green corner of his own contriving that the intelligent rebel, the grim lone fighter, was the man to be envied. Not all men could be rebels, ploughers of lonely furrows. Nor had he any quarrel with the inevitableness of the crowd; it was just frog's spawn glued together. And becoming more and more so.
Poor people! Townsmen.
Bending to touch a flower he thought of death. He thought of death quite often now, much as he might think of the fall of the leaf, and with surprising serenity. He could remember the days when he had known blind fear. He had feared his son's death with the same terror, but that was because he had felt the urgent and vital youth in Kit. Christopher's death would have been a tragedy. But dying was not tragic, when one had obtained one's results. Just sleep, the rounding off of the life's effort.
He relit his pipe and thought of Kit's coming marriage early in June. He was glad of it. Five years ago he might have grudged him to Molly, but now he had come to look on life as a flowering and a setting of the fruit, a beautiful mystery to be shared in and not hindered. Let them be happy. Let Kit cleave to his wife. Some things are unforgettable and perhaps Sorrell understood almost without realizing it, that as his son came nearer to the final maturity, the memory of his father would grow more vivid and more significant, an ever present nearness. To be felt and remembered—in that way—years hence—would matter. It would be shining out of a life's afterglow.
The happiest hour of Sorrell's day was before him. He left the seat under the tree, and going to the red brick out-house where he kept his tools, he took a Dutch hoe from the wall, and a trug and a weeding fork from the potting table. The soil in the rose beds needed stirring,—and there were young weeds among the violas. The hoeing he did first, taking his coat off and hanging it over the bough of a fruit tree. With the soil of the rose beds broken up into a brown and powdery mulch, he set to work among the violas. The viola beds had been dressed the previous autumn with heavy loam, and the weeds of the old turf that had not rotted were thrusting up, docks, bulbous rooted buttercups, and here and there a blade of couch. It was a job that needed thoroughness and patience, and Sorrell crouching and working away with the weeding fork, forgot everything but the intruding weeds and the blue and yellow and purple faces of the flowers.
Suddenly, he sat back upon his heels and remained quite still for some seconds with a look of attention that also expressed anxiety. Not fear, but disquietude. It was not the first time that this twinge of pain had gripped him, like a hand twisting something at the pit of his stomach. Queer, disturbing, a nuisance. He had noticed that stooping seemed to bring it on. But hang it all, half gardening is stooping!
In a minute or so the pain had passed, and Sorrell resumed his weeding. He had cleared half the bed, and he was in the act of changing his position when the pain caught him with an abruptness that made him hold his breath. He dropped the trug, and stood up, pressing his hand to his body, conscious of this pain as of something menacing and strange. It brought on a feeling of faintness and of slight nausea.
He went to the seat and sat down. He was conscious of a sense of stillness, not of fear, but of disturbing curiosity. Instinctively his hand explored that part of his abdominal wall under which the pain knotted itself. It was rather high up, in the V-shaped space between the ribs. He could feel nothing but a tenseness of the muscles.
"Indigestion," he thought; "stooping after a meal,"—but at the back of his mind more than a suspicion had crystallised itself that this pain betokened something very different. He had suffered from indigestion in the old days, but this thing was not the same. It stabbed you suddenly, and remained as a knot of gnawing anguish, just as though a claw were digging into your vitals.
He sat attentive and wondering, drawing his breath very lightly. The pain was passing, leaving him conscious of physical relief, but the sense of mental tension remained. He was aware of a vague menace.
A voice came from close beside him.
"What's the matter, Stephen?"
He found himself looking up into Fanny Garland's clear but anxious face. Maturity had come upon her with kindness; a pleasant and mellow shrewdness lived in the blue eyes.
"O, nothing,—indigestion. Stooping about too soon after a meal. Getting old."
He gave her a whimsical little smile.
"I had better try China tea."
She looked at him gravely.
"You had better see someone,—Kit"
"O, it's nothing. If I get much more of it,—perhaps. I have some weeding to finish."
Two weeks before Christopher's wedding the pain under Sorrell's ribs grew more persistent. It had been intermittent and elusive; there had been one whole week when it seemed to have disappeared. He had called in one of the Winstonbury men who had happened to be attending a visitor at the Pelican.
"I am getting some indigestion. I dare say you will be able to give me something to stop it."
The doctor had looked at Sorrell's tongue, asked him a few questions, advised him what not to eat, and had prescribed a simple mixture.
"If that does not put you right—let me know."
A week or two of amelioration had been followed by a disturbing recrudescence. Not only was the pain more persistent and more frequent, but Sorrell had a queer feeling that something had arrived there under his ribs, an alien thing, obscure yet growing more definite. Lying in bed at night, and pressing his hand gently against his body he fancied that he could feel a resistance that was almost but not quite a new substance. He was not afraid, but he would lie awake feeling chilled and troubled, conscious of a sudden sense of insecurity, and: the nearness of the unknown.
Well,—what of it? His mind was full of Christopher's wedding, that new and adventurous phase. He was going up to Welbeck Street a few days before the affair, and it was no wish of his to carry a sick, face to his son's wedding. The future was full of their mutual plans. They were keeping on the bungalow at Marley, and the top floor at No. 107 was to be Molly's. They had faced the problem of two workers in one house. At Marley Kit's wife could take her temperament into retreat. Kit would go down for week-ends, and bathe, and sun himself on a punt, while she—full of her creating—would draw the curtain aside and come to him out of the midst of it. "Let's play—now. It's down on paper, and I'm happy."
Sorrell lay awake with a tense forehead, and that alien thing gnawing its greedy way under his ribs. He faced the potential reality. Two or three weeks of stoicism, and a mood of soldierly resignation! He was not going to whimper, and if the thing was what he thought it was, well—he would have to face the finality of it. He did not want to be fussed or messed about. As for the Winstonbury doctor-man Sorrell decided to leave him to think that that bottle of physic had done the trick.
He knitted himself together, and put a clear face upon it. Ne would carry on through that last tour of duty in the trenches, and come out to billets with a stiff smile. After all, there was nothing like sticking it.
He was growing thinner; he observed this,—though his appetite remained fairly good.
On the morning before going up to town, he noticed, while he was shaving himself, that his skin had a faint yellowish tinge.
On the night before the wedding Kit looked suddenly and attentively at his father. He had been absorbed—yes—happily absorbed in that mysterious new future, and now that it was so near he seemed to come back to his normal self for a moment, much like a man who has been packing before a journey and who realizes when he has finished it that a whole night lies between him and the morrow.
They were standing at a window—talking.
"You don't look very fit, pater."
Sorrell smiled a queer, elusive little smile.
"I have been a bit liverish. Smoking too much—perhaps. I am cutting off some of it."
"No pain?"
"O,—nothing."
"Quite sure?"
"Quite."
"No secrets, you know."
"Yes, no secrets, old chap," said Sorrell, somehow feeling that doomed lie sweet under his tongue.
At the reception after the wedding a few of those who best knew Stephen Sorrell noticed a peculiar change in him after the first flush of the crowd's congratulations. He drew a little apart beside an unoccupied sofa, and stood there behind it with an indescribable and vacant look in his eyes. He was very pale. And some of those who loved him well thought that he had drawn apart to bear within himself the stress of some lonely emotion. They left him there, to come back to the smiling occasion when he could bear to smile with the crowd.
It was Tom Roland who saw Sorrell make that surreptitious yet hurried move towards a table where a waiter was filling champagne glasses. Sorrell almost snatched at a glass and drank it, one hand bearing heavily upon the table. He reached for a second glass and drank that also with little painful gulps.
Roland went quietly up to him.
"Feeling a bit—faint, old man?"
Sorrell's jaw was set hard. His hand reached for Roland's shoulder.
"Let me hold on a moment. Shall be all right in a moment. Don't want to be a ghost at the feast."
"What's wrong!"
"Nothing. A bit faint. Regular old woman, Tom. I'm all right now."
The wine had worked, and the spasm of unbearable pain was dwindling; some of the colour came back to his face. He looked flushed and smiling when Kit's voice was heard in the crowd.
"I'm looking for my father. He seems to have got lost"
Roland put up a hand.
"Here, drinking healths"
Kit came pushing through. He looked happy, so very happy, and Sorrell's heart yearned fatally towards him.
"Pater,—I have been looking for you everywhere."
Smiling, Sorrell led his forlorn hope forward.
"Tom and I, a couple of bibulous old fogies"
"Molly is going to cut the cake,—and she wants you"
"Right, old chap," and Sorrell took his son's arm.
Half an hour later he saw them make their escape through a crowd of excited women and showers of rose petals. He stood on the lowest step under the red and white awning. Rose petals showered on him. Kit paused with a very flushed face, and eyes that had a slight dimness.
"Good-bye, dear old pater"
"Good-bye, old chap, good luck and God bless you."
He gripped Kit's hand. He felt the soft warmth of his son's wife's lips as she kissed him. Then, they were gone.