Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 39

by George Warwick Deeping

XXXIX

1

DURING the whole of that July and the first week of August Stephen Sorrell passed the greater part of the day in his garden. So long as his own legs would carry him into it he used them, and when his strength failed towards the end, big Hulks would carry him out in his arms and lay him on a long chair. Sorrell had refused a trained nurse, and as it happened a nurse would have been superfluous, for all those good friends with whom he had worked gathered round him with so practical a devotion that he lacked for nothing. Moreover, he had not to Dey the softness and sympathy of ministering and tender ands.

Molly had taken her husband's sorrow as her own. She was living in the cottage, occupying Kit's old room, and it was she who realized—even more than Kit did—the extraordinary nature of this man's fortitude. He was never out of pain, for the morphia had ceased to quell completely the gnawings of that greedy and alien thing. The very business of living had become full of physical distresses, pathetic struggles, yet never did she hear Sorrell complain. She knew how he suffered; she heard it, felt it, yet when Kit appeared—he was travelling to and fro from town every other night,—Sorrell would greet him with a smile. "Oh, it is not so bad, old chap." But Molly knew how bad it was. That pinched, yellow, hawk-like profile endured against a background of pain, patiently and proudly. His poor neck was a starved yet magnificent stalk upon which his courage refused to wilt. His patience amazed her.

She called him "The Old Roman."

For the crumbling of a diseased body can be a sordid and repulsive process, yet Molly's fastidiousness was never shocked. Sorrell—somehow or other—refused to be overwhelmed by the squalor of his own poor body, illuminating its starved yellowness with the glow of his unconquered self, investing its grotesqueness with an uncomplaining dignity. At night, sometimes, she would hear a little groaning, and she would get up if Kit was away, slip on her dressing-gown and go in to him.

"You want morphia."

With that emaciated head propped high, he would climb to the height of a wry smile.

"No. I have managed it. Don't bother, dear. I rather prefer to get my dog-fight through in my own corner."

It seemed so heartless to leave him alone, and yet she felt that he preferred it. He hated fuss.

"I'm not lonely——. I can feel you all—near."

Other sides of life were revealed to Molly during those weeks of Sorrell's passing. He wrung from her a compassion, a tenderness, and an admiration that taught her to approach her own creative world with a new humility and a more poignant understanding. The merely clever became contemptible under the eyes of this dying man. He liked her to sit and talk to him. He grew reminiscent, and his wanderings into the past had a peculiarly vital interest, for these were not the meanderings of an old man, but rather the pregnant sayings of a very live one, the sap of a tree that was to fall in autumn and not in winter. He talked a great deal about Kit. It was as if he were living life over again, or re-reading a beloved book and making little wise, tender comments upon it, and his acceptance of her as part of the great plan touched her very deeply. When he was dead she would carry on. Kit would need her.

"And I," she said, "shall need him."

But she helped Sorrell to play his part, and to keep that old Roman head of his erect. The compact was a silent one, but realized by both of them. She worked; she had never worked better or with a more human insight; she shared with Fanny Garland the picking and arranging of his flowers, for the room was kept full of them. Sometimes she read some of her work to him,—and they discussed it.

"Yes,—you are much cleverer than Kit," he said to her one afternoon; "but I don't think you will let him find that out. It won't matter. I don't think he will bore you."

She asked him what he meant by cleverness, and he was unable to explain his meaning.

"I don't know. Just seeing an inch or two farther—and more quickly than the others. It is not the sort of cleverness that hurts people—provided that it does not want to show off."

She looked at his thin hands lying on the rug.

"You have got me——. I did want to show off. You have stopped that. It would have been bad for my work."

"And Kit."

"Who never shows off. Never seems to occur to him. He is right in and part of the heart of his work. I am learning."

He smiled that little wincing smile of his.

"You will do big things. Life should be a good business for both of you."

2

Days came when Stephen Sorrell went no longer into his garden, but looked at the trees and the sky from the little platform of his bed. He would never leave it again as a live man. He was an earthy coloured, emaciated creature whose very knees seemed to be thrusting through the bed-clothes. He was dying of pain and of starvation and of sleeplessness, but on that poor stalk of a neck a head, that looked enlarged, continued to endure. Looking at him Molly would wonder how he kept his soul erect, for he had no definite faith in a life beyond. It was just the quiet, indomitable nature of the man refusing to complain, to appeal, or to cry out.

But, during that last week, it was she who realized how near Sorrell was to breaking-point. She understood it better than did his son, though Kit was with them now till the end should come. Sorrell's son looked tired, gently and desolately tired, a little dazed too and dumb, with helpless, waiting eyes. He would sit and look at his father as though it hurt him to look, and yet as though there was nothing else to do. He gave him morphia, but the pain had become a flame of anguish that would not be quenched.

Kit seemed benumbed. He suffered with his father, but more like a child than a man. He watched and waited with an inarticulate, dry helplessness. It was Molly who rebelled, understanding the dumb appeal of that other rebel, the old gladiator who asked of death nothing but that last and merciful stab of the sword.

They were lying awake, and she drew Kit's head to her shoulder.

"Oh, my dear, why don't you do it?"

"What?"

His voice expressed the anguish of a tragic weariness.

"Put an end to it. Or—if you wish it—I will."

He drew away from her and sat up in bed. A moon was shining upon the window.

"He is in torment," she said.

She felt Kit trembling. Then he slipped out of bed and she saw him dimly, putting on his clothes. His silence was almost furtive. He left her; she heard him go into his father's room.

Sorrell was awake, with the blind up, and the moonlight shining upon the bed. He was in great pain.

"That you—old chap?"

Kit's voice was half broken.

"Anything I can do?"

"I'm thirsty—I could eat—one of those peaches——"

"Yes, father."

Christopher switched on a shaded light. A dish of peaches lay on the table beside the bed, and the bloom of the fruit contrasted with his father's tortured and ruined face.

"I'll peel one for you."

A dessert knife and fork were there, and as Kit stripped the soft skin from the juicy pulp of the fruit he felt his throat full of a dry anguish.

"Thanks, old chap."

Sorrell ate eagerly, and with a pathetic and starved relish, his eyes large and glassy under his lined forehead.

"If you will give me a dose——"

"Yes, father——"

"A little sleep. O, my God; it's bad—you know, Kit——. I——"

Something broke in Kit. He felt that it was another man and not himself who went to the table where the hypodermic case lay on a clean towel. His fingers fumbled. He had his back to his father, and his wet eyes could hardly see the syringe.

"Make it a strong one, old chap," said the voice from the bed.

"I will."

Kit was rather a long while filling the syringe, for he was smothering tears. Yet, that last act was done quickly, with an almost fierce and eager gladness. Kit rubbed gently with a finger on the loose skin of his father's wasted arm.

"That will put you to sleep, pater. I will come in again soon."

"Thanks, old chap."

"Shall I turn out the light?"

"Please."

Kit bent down and kissed his father on the forehead, turned out the light and went softly out of the room.

But in that other room he broke down.

"I—I've done it,—an overdose."

She took him into her arms, and he lay with his face on her bosom, weeping.

3

Kit lay and listened, and his wife listened with him, for from that other room came the sound of faint stertorous breathing.

She had felt Kit trembling.

"I gave him a big one. He—he mustn't wake again. He must not wake."

She knew what was passing in her husband's mind, for she too was listening to that heavy breathing, praying for it to cease, willing it to cease. Hours seemed to pass, with the moonlight dwindling, and the room growing dark, and still that rhythmic breathing continued.

She felt Kit stirring beside her.

"Not enough——"

He sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand, and she, feeling his anguish and his weariness, willed with all her strength for that sound to cease. It made her think of the playing of interminable and gentle waves upon a shore where night lay dying. She felt that she must speak to Kit.

"He had you to do it for him."

His hand pressed hers.

"What a last service! And yet—I'm glad."

Presently, she became aware of a changed tension in his listening suspense. There was a pause, a break in the rhythm of that heavy breathing, and when it recommenced it had a fluttering and hesitant shallowness.

She felt the sudden grip of her husband's fingers. He got up and left her with silent abruptness, and went into the other room. The uncurtained window showed as a square of greyness; the breathing figure in the bed was dimly visible.

Kit went to the window, and while he was standing there a long pause came in the flow of his father's breathing. Kit's own breathing seemed to pause with it. Again, it was resumed, but very gently, and with a rustling and pathetic serenity. Life was passing, and all the pain and the stress were passing with it.

The window grew more grey. Kit could distinguish the branches and the foliage of the old pear tree black against the gradual dawn. And suddenly, he turned quickly and looked towards the bed. His father's breathing had ceased; he saw the dim face on the pillow. The stillness held.

Kit turned again to the window where the grey world was coming to life before eyes that were wet and blurred.