Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 13
SO Christopher left the town school, and went daily to Mr. Porteous's stone house in Gold Hill Lane, and there he began to learn that which no schoolmaster had ever taught him before,—method. For this unconventional clergyman was not only a great scholar, but a born teacher. He was full of enthusiasms, and his enthusiasms communicated themselves to Kit.
They sat in a big, bare room on the first floor. The room had no carpet; it was lined with books; it had two windows, one of which looked into a dark and damp garden, and the other into a yard. The windows had no curtains. A long plain deal table, clothless, stretched from the fire-place to one of the windows.
Kit and Mr. Porteous sat opposite each other, for when Kit was at work on Latin prose and algebra, Mr. Porteous would be amusing himself with Einstein's theory or a book of MacDougal's on psychology.
"Psycho-physical parallelism. What's that, Sorrell?"
"Don't know, sir."
"As a matter of fact it's rot. To be able to realize that a theory is rot saves one a lot of trouble. Now, what about ten minutes' boxing? You haven't hit me yet."
The table would be pushed back, and Christopher—wearing gloves that looked half as big as his head, would be given the most practical of demonstrations. In spite of his fifty-five years Mr. Porteous was very quick on his feet.
"Better than quadratic equations, Sorrell?"
"A bit, sir."
"Even when I tap you on the nose—like that! You ought to have blocked that blow."
So far as Christopher was able to discover there was only one living creature that could annoy Mr. Porteous and make him lose his smiling poise, and that creature was the common house-fly. In his attitude to the house-fly Mr. Porteous was a thorough pragmatist. The pink sheen of his bald head seemed to attract the unclean insects, and with words of wrath he would rise to vigorous attack. The windows would be closed, and yesterday's paper folded into a swatting stick, and Mr. Porteous would bound about the room, flapping and slamming and declaiming.
"Filthy things, Sorrell. They wipe their feet on your food, and are sick on your sugar. Take that, Beelzebub. Ha, you carrier of germs!"
He kept it up until no single fly was left alive in the schoolroom, and then he would sit down with a beaming smile and the air of having accomplished something, and peace would return. It was a peaceful room, a happy room, in spite of its austerity.
For Christopher was very sensitive to atmospheres, even more so than was his father. He had inherited his mother's strong physique and his father's temperament, and in after years he often looked back to that bare room with its uncarpeted floor and its kitchen chairs and deal table. He would remember the ink marks on the table, and the cracked pane of glass in the window overlooking the yard—the result of some devastating blow with yesterday's Daily Mail,—the green mould on the bricks of the yard, the greenish light that seemed to filter down through the great elm. Mr. Porteous's room—and the life therein—coincided with the last months of Kit's rather impersonal outlook on life. The atmosphere was clear and happy, but a little colourless and cold, for as yet sex was but vaguely present, no more than a faint glow rising above the boy's horizon.
Mr. Porteous had attained to mental and physical celibacy. He lived in his work and his books and his rotund enthusiasms, in the Boys' Club which he ran, and to which Christopher was introduced. As a social force in the polite sense Mr. Porteous was a failure, for he was not pleasing to women, but in his setting of Kit's feet upon the path of true knowledge, and in his influence upon many of the Winstonbury boys, the curate did great work.
He made Christopher play football with the Club boys, and encouraged him to box with them, and with the gloves Mr. Porteous taught him a lesson. Sorrell's son was apt to flinch, not from the blows, but from physical contact with a less sensitive human. He was fastidious, proud, a creature of vivid impressions and strong feelings.
Porteous noticed it. There was one particular boy whom Kit seemed quite unable to tackle—a little, loutish youngster with a face like a frog.
"Sorrell,—what's the matter with you—when you box with Bugson?"
Kit flushed.
"I don't quite know. I think it's his face, sir."
"Ugly. I tell you what it is—you don't like the idea of being hit on the nose by a boy—well—what shall we say—a boy whom you despise."
Kit's colour deepened.
"That's true, sir. It's silly,—but directly you put me up to box Bugson I feel helpless."
"You flinch, or rather—the pride in you flinches. You must get over that, Sorrell. Personally I don't like young Bugson; I don't like his name or his face or his nature. But we have to put up with the Bugsons. They are here—there—everywhere. You'll meet cohorts of them—later. But don't you see, Sorrell—that it is foolish to let oneself be upset by the Bugsons? Go in—and hit. Don't flinch from a thing because it's ugly—and makes you feel squeamish. We oughtn't to give way to the Bugsons."
Christopher took these words of wisdom to heart. He boxed the frog-faced boy two nights later, and though smiling, he let his natural hatred overcome his sensitive impulse towards recoil. Kit was a strong boy, and capable of explosive and emotional bursts of vigour. After that evening he had no fear of Bugson. He had punched the frog face, and punched it hard.
To his father he drew even closer during these months. Sorrell had each alternate Sunday free, and he and Christopher would start off on some expedition into the country or to some neighbouring town. They did a great deal of talking. Mr. Porteous had brought no overclouding of the happy candour with which they could look into each other's eyes.
"No secrets, Kit."
"No, pater."
"Porteous tells me you are getting on very well."
"He makes things look different,—interesting. He'll tell you a funny tale in the middle of the 5th Prop."
"Jam on the bread."
"Besides—he seems so keen, pater, that he makes one keen."
As to the future Sorrell was very frank with the boy. He discussed it with him,—not as a father—but as a fellow of Kit's own age who had had the benefit of a man's experience.
"It is no use being a smug. When you have found out what you want to do—then go at it like blazes."
"It will come,—I suppose," said Kit. "Mr. Porteous says I'm not to trouble my head—beyond letting him fill it. But—then—you see, pater,—I know you want me to be good at something."
"I want you to be good at the thing which will pull you. Lots of chaps don't get the chance to do the thing they want to do. Just bread-and-butter jobs."
There were occasions when Sorrell went to smoke a pipe with Robert Porteous, and the more he saw of the man the more he liked and respected him. As yet the tutor had not discovered any special aptitude in Christopher, or as he put it "No monkey tricks," but he had discovered virtues that were much more important.
"The boy can't help doing well, my dear chap. He's got grit. He doesn't slink. He is one of those boys who develop—an early sense of responsibility. It's quite quaint in him,—no—not a bit priggish. He realizes what you are doing,—and I believe the ruling thought at the back of his mind,—no—don't let's say 'thought'—let's say feeling—is that he is not going to let you down. You are a great man to him."
"I'm an hotel porter!"
"The time will come when he will think even more of the hotel porter."
"I hope he will."
"Sorrell," said Mr. Porteous with emphasis, "surely—you don't doubt it?"
Sorrell was looking out of the window into the dusky little garden.
"Women," he said, "one has to remember—that some day—there may be a woman."
For he had been fore-feeling these possibilities very strongly during the last few months. Lying with Kit on some hillside or under a tree, he would become aware of the boy as a vigorous and separate personality. He was on the edge—too—of the great adventurous sea of sex.
"I suppose that some day," Sorrell thought, "a woman will take him away from me. That's life. Have I any right to complain? Isn't it my job to make life as full and as rich for him as I can? But what sort of woman will it be? That's his affair. I'm not going to be the fool father, throaty and pompous. But I hope it will be a'woman who won't want to leave the hotel porter at the bottom of the back stairs."
Needless to say he did not speak of this to Christopher, for when sex dawns certain reticences are born with it. The fig leaf is symbolical.
Late in the autumn the most unexpected of coincidences emphasized Sorrell's sense of the imminence of woman.
About four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon a big silver-coloured car with red wheels turned into the space behind the posts and chains. It had been raining and the hood of the car was up. A man in a leather coat emerged, a man with a ginger-coloured moustache, blurs of redness on each cheek, and the angry eyes of the heavy drinker. Sorrell, who was standing by one of the lounge windows, went out to meet him.
"Got a room here?"
"Double or single, sir?"
"Double."
"Yes,—on the first floor, sir."
"Right. Where's the garage?"
"Round to the left, sir. Shall I bring in the luggage?"
"Yes,—I'll go and have a look at the room."
"There is the office, sir. I expect it will be No. 7."
Sorrell went out towards the car. A woman was seated in it, but it was dark under the hood, and he had begun to speak to her before he realized who she was.
"The gentleman has decided to stay, madam. The luggage"
The woman in the car was Christopher's mother.
She was the least embarrassed of the two. In fact she had recognized Sorrell and had adjusted herself to meet the situation while he was approaching the car. She appeared amused.
"Well—fancy meeting—you—here! Are you the porter?"
"I am."
She had changed very little, save that she looked more highly coloured, and more expensively dressed. Fatter, too, but Dora Sorrell had always been a solid creature. He remembered in a flash that it was her fine solidity, her glow, the fineness of skin and flesh that had first attracted him. She was beautifully built. In the old days he had often thought of her as a ship cleaving life with her bosom. And now her blue eyes locked at him ironically, yet with just a trace of compassion.
"Do you want to be introduced to my second?"
He retorted with a question.
"How long are you staying?"
"O,—just the night. Don't get windy, Stephen. Arthur does not know you from Adam. We can leave it at that. He's coming."
Sorrell got hold of the two leather suit-cases, and carried them into the hotel. His successor, in passing him, had spoken of a trunk on the luggage grid, and Sorrell sent Hulks out for the trunk. The incident had disturbed him, perhaps because of the surprise of it, though emotionally this chance meeting with Christopher's mother had been negative.
But the rampant sex of her! Those bold, clear eyes, the nose broadening slightly at the nostrils, the luscious yet shrewd mouth! She was the very essence of sex, and in the mother Sorrell had seen the physical prototype of the son, and it was this impression of her sex, forced upon him after all these years, that had disturbed him. Would Kit inherit those impulses from his mother, that mixture of passion and shrewd, worldwise contriving?
The second husband had entered his name in the visitors' book.
"Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Sampits—London."
Some time after tea Sorrell strolled across to the garage and looked at the silver-coloured car with the red wheels. It was a Heartwell, one of the de luxe machines, and most sumptuously fitted. Ponds,—the garage man, came and stood at Sorrell's elbow.
"Some 'bus?"
Sorrell nodded a meditative head.
"How much would that cost?"
"Round about twelve hundred. Don't she glisten?"
It was evident that Dora had not mismanaged the business side of her second romance. She had obtained material self-expression, and it had been the lack of it that had caused the inevitable rift in her first marriage. She was not a bad woman, only a highly sexed one, and Sorrell had never satisfied her sex and its various desires; he had realized that there had been much that had seemed lovable in Dora. For the first four years they had been very happy together.
Yet her second husband was obviously a hard liver; a full-fleshed, damn—your-eyes sort of man. Generous, no doubt, ostentatiously generous. They suited each other.
It occurred to Sorrell to wonder whether they had any children?
Also, did the mother ever think of the boy?
He hoped not.
Sorrell saw nothing more of the pair until half an hour before dinner. He was putting coal on the lounge fire when he heard a woman's voice behind him.
"Can you sell me some stamps!"
He turned quickly.
"Certainly, madam."
She was in evening dress, a black and gold affair, and her fine throat and shoulders showed soft and white. The big lounge was nearly empty. Her sang-froid was perfect. She watched Sorrell take out his pocket-book. No one was very near to them. She threw one sweeping and easy glance around her.
"Thank you. A nice place you have got here. Is he—here?"
Sorrell's eyes met hers.
"No, madam."
"At school—perhaps?"
"Yes."
She smiled faintly, instantly divining his antagonism and the cause of it.
"Of course—it is no use my asking you."
"None at all."
Sampits came into the lounge to find the porter putting away his pocket-book, and his wife placing stamps on two or three letters. Sampits' shirt front bulged: The sides of his trousers were widely braided.
"I say—can you get us a couple of drinks?"
"Certainly, sir."
"What's it to be, Do? An orange cocktail?"
"Yes, that will do me."
"Very good, sir."
Sorrell had no further speech with Kit's mother, and the silver car carried them off next day, yet when Sorrell placed the two suit-cases in the back seat and Sampits was paying Ponds for petrol, Dora beckoned to her first husband. She slipped a five-pound note into his hand, and nodded meaningly. Her nod meant "The boy."
Sorrell went in thoughtfully, with the note crumpled in his hand. He met Hulks' rosy face clapped against the side of a trunk that was balanced on his shoulder. Hulks had just taken unto himself a girl, one of the waitresses.
When Hulks returned from strapping the trunk on to a car Sorrell gave him the five-pound note.
"A swanker gave me this. You can have the lot, Bert."
"Me? Why?"
"My contribution to the ring, you know. And the best of luck, old lad."
Hulks stared at him.
"Was it the bloke with the silver car?"
"Yes."
"Why, he gave me five bob. He starts getting squiffy pretty early. But—I say"
"You keep it, Bert. It's a little return for the way you have backed me up." Some time in November news that was more disturbing than the meteoric passing of his divorced wife brought back the little intent frown to Sorrell's forehead. Mr. Roland called him in one evening into his sitting-room. There was whisky, a siphon, and glasses on the table, and two armchairs were drawn up before the fire.
"I want to talk about things, Stephen. Help yourself and sit down."
Roland's room was full of bachelor comforts, but Sorrell, as he helped himself to whisky and soda, had a feeling that Mr. Roland was about to speak of uncomfortable things. For there were certain doubts that of late had grown to a distant shadowiness in his mind. Sorrell was a man of detail. He kept in his little note-book a daily record of the number of people who passed through the hotel.
"We are not paying our way, Stephen."
"I wondered, sir."
The soda from the siphon hissed into Mr. Roland's glass. He was as deliberate as usual, but his quiet blue eyes had a calculating look. Sorrell, in front of the fire, felt a chilly sensation trickling down his spine.
"You are a man with a head. Besides, one wants to talk sometimes. Have you any idea?"
"We have never been quite full up, sir."
"No."
"And the figures have been dropping."
"I expected that. Look here,—I have been working out a table of averages. A statistician could draw a nice series of curves from them. Anyhow—it shows our position pretty clearly."
He picked up a paper, and crossing to the fire, sat down, his glass in his hand.
"I find that with forty out of our sixty rooms occupied we cover expenses. Our summer average was 47, our autumn 36, our present 29. Take three four-monthly periods. That gives an average of 37, which means that we are losing roughly at the rate of three rooms a day."
"Do you count double and single rooms, sir?"
"I have allowed for that."
"Well, is that so bad, sir, for the first year?"
"No,—but is our winter average going to stand at 29? I look at it like this. We ought to be full for six months, and half full for the other six months. That would give an average of 45. Five—daily—on the right side."
"I see that. But—next—season?"
"That's the problem."
"What about cutting expenses?"
"I don't want to do that. Cheese-paring. All wrong. One ought to go out for the generous success. I hate doing things meanly."
Sorrell sat staring at the fire, as though to pluck inspiration from the glow of it. He heard Mr. Roland say that he had contemplated the possibility of running the Pelican at a loss for two years, but if at the end of two years the balance was still against him he would have to consider ending the adventure.
Sorrell seemed to see the old gulf opening again, and swallowing himself and all those dearly conceived schemes. Kit's education sacrificed. Yes, and after all the desperate fights that he had fought upon the stairs, and his hard-won victories over the lioness and the bull.
"What about more advertising, sir?"
"I shall try it."
"The slack time in the winter is the trouble. Couldn't you run the place for hunting people?"
Roland's blue eyes seemed to focus the idea.
"Sorrell,—that's worth thinking about. But—what we want is something original,—even though it is something quite silly."
"Yes,—something original, sir—something to get the place known."
Sorrell went to his room in a gloomy mood, worried by the thought of slipping back from the foothold he had established.
A startling advertisement! If only it were possible to erect a huge stentophone somewhere, and set it shouting "Stop at the Pelican, Winstonbury."
But would the public listen? Were people such sheep as they seemed? Was not the Englishman still somewhat of a person who resented being shouted at?
There might be subtler ways,—but what were they?