Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 38

by George Warwick Deeping

XXXVIII

1

SORRELL wrote two or three very cheerful letters to the two in Switzerland, and since the increasing pain had begun to sap the strength of his charmed silence, he called in the man from Winstonbury. On this occasion there was no reticence and no reference to the bottle of physic. Sorrell, with that deepening tinge of yellow in his skin, advanced a frank fatalism.

"You might examine me. I think I have a lump here."

He became aware of the little doctor looking very grave and rather grieved. He had been observing, palpating and percussing, and asking pertinent questions.

"How long is it since I last saw you?"

"Five or six weeks."

"But—why—on—earth——?"

Sorrell was lying on his bed; he raised his head from the pillow and smiled.

"I had reasons. I have a pretty shrewd notion that my number is up. If you can help me with the pain."

"My dear sir, it is not a certainty. I should like you to see someone in town. Meanwhile, I'll have you X-rayed. I am inclined to think that the mischief lies round your gallbladder."

Sorrell was X-rayed, and the photo proved inexorably cheerless, for it did not contain the details that the little doctor had hoped to find. He closed a prim and grave mouth over the inevitable conclusion.

"I should like you to see somebody——"

Sorrell had not expected to escape his doom.

"I am waiting till my son returns. He is away in Switzerland——"

"But, my dear sir, if the thing is operable——"

"No, thank you. Besides, it is only a question of a few days. If you can help me to fight the pain."

On that day Sorrell began to take morphia.

He had received two letters from Thomas Roland and had evaded the direct answer to his old friend's question, and a week before the homecoming of Kit and Molly, Roland and Cherry came down by car. They arrived unheralded, and Roland saw Fanny Garland and Mrs. Marks before Sorrell knew of their arrival. The women had sad eyes.

Roland found Sorrell lying in a long cane chair in his garden, close to his roses. He had that peculiarly serene look of a man whose body is under the influence of morphia, and whose brain is calm and lucid. His eyes seemed to have grown bigger, perhaps because his face had begun tothin. They were extraordinarily intelligent eyes, keen, with a queer glassiness, eagerly interested, missing no detail.

Roland sat on the grass beside him, and looked at Sorrell's roses. He had been shocked by the change in Sorrell, by that sharpening profile and that yellowing skin. Even in the passing of two or three weeks those fatal signals had developed a striking emphasis.

"Heard from Kit—I suppose?"

"Yes, they will be back next week."

Roland seemed on the point of asking a question, and while he was hesitating over the asking of it, Sorrell told him the truth.

"I've got cancer, old man."

His voice was quite unemotional, and Roland saw his eyes fixed upon the flowers with a soft and melancholy tenderness.

"Glad I saw the roses out. And Kit—married. I think it is going to be a happy marriage——"

But there was emotion in Roland's voice when he answered him.

"But—my dear old man—how long——?"

"Some months—now—I suppose. Suspected it quite a long while. My doctor man pretended to hope that it might be gallstones or something,—but I felt pretty sure."

"Does Kit know?"

"He doesn't. I thought it would be time enough when he came back to work."

"But—surely—something can be done? Why didn't you tell people, take some steps——?"

Those large and human eyes smiled at him.

"Oh,—I don't know. My job is done, old man. And somehow—I did not feel like being messed about. I have been very lucky. Life is a fairly rotten business for most people. A good thing they don't realize how rotten it is,—what flies we are—buzzing against a window pane."

Roland sat all hunched up, looking grim.

"If I believed——" he said.

Sorrell went on speaking, and in a way that left Roland imprisoned in silence.

"I don't believe in anything. I have just done a particular sort of job—and loved it. The whole business is beyond me. Sometimes I have felt that there is a plan, but then—there is so much against the idea of a plan. Just a warring of blind forces—pushing—like a lot of beasts. And yet—there is much that is wonderful, the struggle that plants—live things—have made against the devil of impersonal cussedness. Yes, and not even cussedness. That is the thing that has always got me, Roland, the fact that there is nothing that cares, the utter-impersonal callousness of the scheme, the soullessness of it. We don't matter. Man matters only to himself. He is fighting a lone fight against a vast indifference. A gardener learns that. His flowers are fighting the same sort of lone fight, and perhaps that is why he loves them and pities them. Man invents religion to hide the full horror of the universe's complete indifference, for it is horrible. He tries spiritism. Oh,—anything to escape, to colour the spectacles. I have always felt myself up against—not only the human scuffle—but against the crushing—impersonal foot of the heedless universal. It just treads on you, or it does not. They called Ajax mad for defying the lightning; he wasn't mad; there was something in Ajax that knew. So—I—have gone about with a savage grin on my face—— And now—I'm tired. I feel I have fooled the great indifference—just a little, got my job through in spite of it. I don't care much now that it has put its foot on me—at last. I have kept my pygmy back stiff; I have managed to buzz a bit before it pulped me on the window pane."

For a while Roland said nothing; he just stared. For the truthfulness of a doomed man can be rather terrible.

2

Mr. Christopher Sorrell was writing letters on the morning after the return to Welbeck Street when the door bell rang, and the woman in black came to announce Mr. Thomas Roland.

"O, show him in."

Kit swung round in his chair. He had had a busy two hours picking up the threads of his work from Simon Orange who had been carrying on for him during the holiday, and to Tom Roland he showed a brown and happy face. Kit was a more expressive and a more sociable soul than his father; he met—even casual people—with a pleasant smile, perhaps because he had not had to scuffle with them. But Roland was not a casual person.

"Hallo, sir. How is everybody?"

Roland's smile puzzled Kit. It was affectionate yet enigmatic, coming from behind a cloud.

"My family has started an orchestra in the nursery. In self-defence I had to join it. Had a good time? I can see you have."

"Splendid."

And Kit waited. He was asking himself why Roland had come to see him at this hour, and with a smile that was like a kind and warning touch of the hand. Not for personal or professional reasons—surely? Roland had the face of a brown, whole-meal loaf.

"Cherry and I have been down at Winstonbury."

The manner of his saying it was to Kit like the opening words of a story. Once upon a time——

"How did you find things? I had two or three cheery letters from the pater. We thought of going down next Sunday."

Roland looked at the floor.

"Your father thinks that he has cancer."

Kit travelled to Winstonbury that afternoon, and his wife went with him. They had a first-class compartment to themselves, and Kit sat and stared out of the window. Molly, who lived in two worlds, that of her creative spirit, and that of her senses, found herself in an attitude of speculation. Kit had come to her with a shocked face. He had said very little. "I want you to come with me. Will you?" There had been a hurried packing and a hurried lunch, and in the taxi he had given her a few broken glimpses of a part of himself that was suffering. Sorrell was il. And it seemed to Molly that her husband had some quarrel with himself and that she was involved in it. Curious how baffling a mood could be, and the disturbed vibrations of a loved comrade. She was made to reflect upon life as she felt and saw it, and life as it welled up out of her subconsciousness. It was easier to write than to read. She knew all about the people in her books; in fact she felt that they were more intimately hers than the man who sat in the corner opposite her. She was aware of a passionate urge towards him. He was one of her problems, perhaps her most dear problem; she had to understand; this understanding was a precious and poignant compulsion laid upon her; eluded, unsolved, it would spell failure, the worst sort of failure.

She kept very still. There was a part of her that seemed to be groping towards the hidden silences of her mate. And suddenly she felt that she had got it, touched the knot of soul pain in him, and that she could unravel it.

His eyes met hers with a sudden questioning uneasiness. He was conscious of that other intelligence.

"Sorry to drag you off like this."

"Do you think I mind?—It was I who dragged you away."

His eyes seemed to give a little start of surprise.

"What's that,—Molly? How——?"

"He has been hiding something from us both."

Kit got up and came and sat beside her.

"Roland says—that he has cancer."

Her right hand found one of his.

"O,—my dear!"

His face was all puckered.

"What a blind brute! I thought he looked rather seedy, I asked him——. Of course—now—I see it all. He put me off. But—I—I ought to have known. A man whose whole business——! And I didn't see it in him—the one man who has given me—everything. I was too darned happy, too horribly happy——."

He felt the pressure of her fingers.

"My sin—too—dear heart."

"O, no."

"Yes."

"Rut think of it. Think of the sort of man he is—to hide that thing—and let us be married and go away. And I was fooled. What must he have thought?"

She drew him to her.

"It is what he wanted. O,—but how splendid! It is just the big thing in life, Kit, the only thing that matters. To him it mattered so much—that it made him happy——."

"Happy!"

"Yes. You'll understand that. You do understand it. What a memory to carry about—in the future——."

"What a wound!" he said.

She sighed.

"A memory may be a wound, but what is life without wounds? They are sacred."

3

Christopher found his father where Thomas Roland had found him a week or so ago, lying in a long chair in his garden, in the midst of his flowers. It was a serene and windless evening, and the face and the eyes of the doomed man shared in this serenity. He held out a thin hand to his son.

"Well, old chap——."

And then he saw that Kit knew, for his son's face was unsteady with distress.

"Father, why didn't you tell me?"

Sorrell smiled and was silent, but Kit turned aside, with a hand pressing against the trunk of one of the old fruit trees. He spoke with difficulty.

"I ought to have seen. You gave me everything to fit me for my job,—and yet—when—you wanted me—the very soul's craft of me——"

"But I told you a lie. I think it was one of the very few lies——."

"But I ought to have seen. You let it all happen and you let us go away—like a couple of blind and selfish fools."

"It was my pleasure, old chap," said his father.

Something happened to Kit, but he seemed to shake his shoulders and to put his head back. He came and stood by Sorrell's chair, and his eyes and his voice were gentle.

"I want to look at you."

"Need you?"

"Father,—I must."

Sorrell moved in his chair, and Kit bent down and helped him up. They entered the cottage together and passed into the sitting-room.

"Will the sofa do?"

"Yes. The light is pretty good, I want your things undone. Let me——."

Sorrell lay with closed eyes and a cushion under his head while his son's hands touched him. They were cool and deliberate, but back of them he seemed to feel a quivering of Kit's courage. So, it mattered to Kit. He thanked life for it, and for the infinite solace of his son's caring.

"Hurt at all?"

"Just a little."

"Let yourself go slack, pater, and breathe deeply."

Sorrell opened his eyes for a moment on his son's face, and in Kit's eyes he saw death realized. There was a silence. Kit pulled down his father's shirt as though he were drawing a curtain, turned aside, and stood looking out of the window.

"I should like Orange to see you."

"All right."

"I'll wire for him. One—one can't judge quite accurately, pater, when one's——."

Sorrell was fastening his braces, and with a little effort he sat up.

"I know. But I am afraid there is not much doubt about it, old chap. My finis. I'm not afraid."

Kit moistened his lips.

"It's damnable," he said, "utterly damnable. The thing might have left you——. You might have had years——"

Sorrell gave a little wincing smile.

"But it hasn't. Besides—my job is through. I'm a little proud of it, old chap."

His hands hooked themselves under the wooden frame of the sofa.

"Could you give me a hypodermic? I have to have it now. Pain;—coming on again."

"My God!" said Kit to his own silent soul.

4

Simon Orange and Christopher went out into the garden, and when Kit had glanced back at his father's window, he drew his friend through the gate in the hedge to one of the Pelican lawns.

"Well——?"

Orange's heavy head hung forward.

"Afraid so. Not much doubt. He must have had it for months."

He did not look at Kit.

"Can anything be done——?"

"Old man,—would you?"

"Oh,—I know. Hopeless,—even a palliatory operation. The liver is down to his umbilicus; a cancerous mass."

Orange nodded.

"Nothing but morphia. Will you tell him, or shall I?"

Kit's eyes had a strange blueness.

"I will. I think he knows. He is an extraordinary chap, my father. Never anybody like him, never will be."

5

That night, for the first time in her life, Christopher Sorrell's wife saw a man's tears.