Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 31
HAPPENING to pass a bookshop in Oxford Street on the Monday after his return from Millchester, Kit was reminded of Molly Pentreath and her excursions into literature. That little devil of a Molly taking up a pen and prodding with mischievous fierceness at all the Pentreath traditions! Kit, with his memories of her and her croquet mallet, could well imagine Molly doing it. Moreover, Mrs. Perdita's disapproval of her sister-in-law's books had put an edge to Christopher's curiosity, and he entered the bookshop and asked if they had a copy of Molly Pentreath's "Broken Pottery."
They had. The book was enclosed in a vivid wrapper, showing a green pot lying shattered upon a background of scarlet. Christopher bought a copy, and on opening the book under the very nose of Simon Orange, he happened to discover the dedication.
"To All Those Who Dare."
Characteristically combative! And then, Orange, with red slippers dangling, and his tie adrift above his waistcoat, showed an interest in Sorrell's purchase.
"What's that?"
"A book by a girl I used to know when she was a kid. Molly Pentreath."
"Broken Pottery?"
"Yes."
"I've read it. Damnably clever."
Kit, sitting down in one of Orange's ancient chairs, and turning over the pages of Molly's book, remarked that he did not know that Orange cared for novels.
"Do you good to read a few, Sorrell."
"Think I need it?"
"Well, a good novel is real, far more significant than most of the highbrow stuff—so called. It's like good surgery. Besides."
Kit looked at him with those clear and direct eyes of his.
"What?"
"You get at tendencies, social atmospheres, even hints of the latest social perversion or disease. What's brewing in the wild young blood. It's interesting."
"This book interested you?"
"It did. Shockingly honest—you know. Like a precocious child asking awkward questions."
Christopher was rather shocked by "Broken Pottery," and it is probable that the book would have shocked him even more forcibly had he been capable of reacting to its more esoteric meaning. He read about that absurd and somewhat repulsive person "Mr. Gulliver," who concealed a bullying uxoriousness beneath inches of sentimental fat, and whose one and only answer to the rebel woman's outcry was "O, put her to bed and give her plenty of children." The book was beyond Kit. He ploughed through it like the direct and rather simple creature that he was, a frontiersman blazing a trail, hacking his way, aware only of the very obvious trees and the general lie of the landscape. Molly was too subtle for him. He missed her park-like pieces, the little bosky thickets where the modern nymph twisted the tail of the unfortunate and bewildered faun. He was blind to her social vignettes, her little cameos of sophisticated colour, her raillery, her devilish mischievousness
"Well, I'm dashed!"
It seemed to him beside the mark, and he was inclined to sympathize with Mrs. Perdita, but when he came to discuss the book with Orange he was surprised to find that his friend did not agree with him.
"She thinks that she has written the epitaph on marriage. Supposed to be rather out of date, you know, the reaction against marriage."
"You mean that she is mocking at a thing—that is dead."
"In a way."
"But, good Lord, my dear man, what—is—the alternative?"
Orange, with his pale face bending down and brooding with its sombre irony, took a little time to answer.
"So much a question of temperament. Marriage is or was or should be a mere social arrangement for the begetting and rearing of children. That the luxury of sex should have got mixed up with it was all wrong. No desire for children, no marriage. If you want to cultivate the fine flower of sex? You see, Gulliver was a chap who wanted sex—like a cabbage rose, but he pretended to the woman that he wanted children."
"But—comradeship, Orange, the finer comradeship—and all that?"
"Sexual comradeship? Is there? Besides,—the new woman is quite logical. If sex is a mere incident and is to be treated as such by sophisticated people, marriage is superfluous."
"I can't follow that."
And Orange understood that Kit could not follow it. He was romantic. He had idealistic youth's vision of the one rose on the tree. He had not realized the other sex's errant and adventurous inclinations. He was not subtle. His very simplicity might some day compel some woman to love him very dearly, and perhaps to hide and imprison a part of herself that he would never divine or see.
"It's so much a question of temperament," said Orange.
"And character, surely?"
"The chemistry of character is organic."
Kit looked very serious.
"But that girl's temperament! I think I should be pretty well scared by it."
"O, like breaking the ice on the Serpentine on a frosty morning. The first plunge, a shock. After that, you might find it invigorating."
"I think I should prefer something gentler."
Christopher had maintained his friendship with John Kennard, now one of the senior surgeons, and when Kennard asked Kit to dinner, the younger man found himself one of a party of three. Sir Ormsby Gaunt was standing on Kennard's hearthrug, just as Kit had seen him facing a lecture room with a white-headed, easy dignity that no student had ever dared to challenge. He had eyes, deep under bushy eyebrows, that gave the world quick, acute and sidelong glances. When watching him Kit had always been struck by the perfect stillness of the great man's hands.
To Christopher old Gaunt was a great man. Sorrell's son had not that pettifogging type of mind, the mind of little facetious envies that must tie a sneer to the tails of a man's coat. Kit was sanguine and creative. He knew how hard it was to do the great things well, and that old Gaunt had done them well. The little people who tickled life with straws were not to his liking.
Old Gaunt held out a wholesome, fresh-coloured hand to Kit.
"Well, Sorrell,—here we are."
And Christopher blushed. He had a feeling that there was something in the air, a "Tinker Bell" of a nice conspiracy to set some disgraceful but pleasant piece of favouritism floating in through the windows of St. Martha's. But unlike Peter Pan Kit did not set great store by his own shadow. Other people saw to the length and the substance of Kit's shadow. Had not Thomas Roland said they would?
At dinner Sir Ormsby and Kennard talked about needlework pictures and Japanese ivories, and since Sorrell senior knew a good deal about needlework pictures, Kit was less voiceless than he might have been. He called Sir Ormsby "sir," with perfect naturalness, for to Kit the great man was eminently "sir." Later, they became less archaic, and talked "shop." Kennard was one of the pioneers of the new thoracic surgery, and while Sir Ormsby probed his methods and his results, Christopher sat and listened with the air of a young man who enjoyed every word of it; which he did. Later still, they arrived at hospital gossip, and it seemed to Kit that their gossiping concealed personal tendencies. Lawson was going to retire. Sandys would move up and become a senior. There would be a vacancy for an assistant surgeon.
Sir Ormsby, giving Kit one of his sidelong and shrewdly beneficent glances, supposed that Sorrell would apply for the post.
"A St. Martha's man. "One or two outsiders may be putting up."
It should have been obvious to Christopher that old Gaunt was completely ready to extrude the outsiders. Mr. Christopher Sorrell blushed, and felt a spasm of exultation.
"Of course.—If you think, sir."
"Quite inevitable, Sorrell, that you should apply. Don't you agree, Kennard?"
Kennard agreed. It was a base, male conspiracy, conceived not to keep out any particular man, but to introduce a particular one, for all-the-world-over favours, feminine and otherwise, are apt to go by liking. To be told by Sir Ormsby Gaunt that a certain line of conduct was inevitable was worth to Christopher more than any gold medal that he had won. Old men do not say such things to young ones without good reason. And as Kit sat there with that wise and serious face of his, he saw much of his own past pass rapidly before him, till it entered the doorway of this serene and stately room, and ended as a luminous halo that was the whiteness of old Gaunt's hair.
"It is very good of you, sir."
A vivid shyness attacked him. He wanted to be alone, to walk the empty streets almost like a lover to whom has come the amazing blessedness of a sacred smile. Also, he understood that these two Captains of Accomplishment were to be left together, and he suspected that when he had gone they would have things to say of him. And so, he left early, going out with such a shining of his young good will towards them that they were silent for a little while after he had gone.
"A good lad—that. Wise."
"Yes, very wise," said Kennard, "as some young things are; but also quite simple."
"The wise simplicity that gets there. I think nearly all the big men, Kennard, have had a vein of simplicity. Fatal to be too subtle."
"You think so?"
"Yes, for the doers. Subtlety belongs to the people who pull the wings off things. I suppose they are necessary. It is possible to drown in your own subtlety. Rather miserable people—too."
Carefully he removed the ash from his cigar.
"We will have that lad on the staff. You agree?"
"Oh, absolutely. I think he has some fine surgery in him."
"Character. Even—we—are a little short of it these days, Kennard. Some of our bright young men are just a little—dubious."
"I know."
Before six months had passed Mr. Christopher Sorrell was appointed to be one of the assistant surgeons at St. Martha's Hospital. Orange brought him the news, hot from that formal gathering where Sir Ormsby had taken shrewd care to make sure that it was his own pet cake that was put into the oven. Orange found Kit sitting by the window, looking abnormally serious.
"It is all right. You have it."
Kit remained very still in his chair. His seriousness seemed to increase.
"I hope I shan't let you down, Orange."
"My dear man!"
"All you good people. One never knows—quite—how one is going to react."
Orange looked at him with affectionate attention. Kit was finely strung, and no man who is capable of the big things faces the doing of them with complete complacency. Tremor, a dryness of the mouth, a sensitive agitation before the great speech or the picking up of the pen.
"I suppose I shall have to lecture."
"You'll do it very well."
Kit stared at his hands.
"I wonder what my first big op. will be like?"
Orange's face lit up with one of its deep and sombre smiles.
"The first hurdle is always the worst. I remember" He passed a hand over his forehead.
"I did not sleep much. I was to do a nephrotomy. But—then—you see—I had hatred and prejudice against me. I knew that the theatre would be packed with a lot of fellows who would be eager to see me fail. I think that is what gave me my nerve, the knowledge that I had to take the smirk off all those hostile faces. I hadn't one friend."
Kit looked at him suddenly.
"I should have liked to have been there. Yes, that is where guts come in, old chap. The first time that you are the central figure, wholly responsible."
"If it would not worry you I would like to see your first."
"Will you?"
"Yes. Because I know, Sorrell, that you won't funk it."
In the winter and the spring Stephen Sorrell slept with the blind up and the curtains undrawn, and when he woke to see blue smoke drifting through and over the flower buds of the old pear tree, he knew that the under-porter had lit the sitting-room fire, and that the wind was in the north. Therefore, he began the day feeling combative. His mellowness was not proof against a raw north-easter in the late days of March or the first week in April, and however seasonable this wind might be he resented its ugly interference. It was a bitter wind, the enemy of his flowers, making the grass look a starved yellow, and the soil like grey ash, a wind that combed unsuspected rubbish out of hedge bottoms and corners and distributed it over the lawns and the flower beds. So, Sorrell would feel combative, and as likely as not cut himself when he was shaving, for a bleak north wind blowing when his hyacinths and hepaticas and polyanthus were in bloom, and his wallflowers were showing red and gold, reminded him that man is born to suffer interference. This north wind said "Yah, I'll show you! Talk of teleology! What about me?" And even though there were soft things to be said of this north wind, how it pulverized and prepared the heavy soil ridged up in the vegetable garden, and helped towards granulation, Sorrell scowled at it as at an enemy over whom he had no control.
He would go out to see that the protecting bracken had not been blown away from sheltering some delicate child, or that the osier hurdles were standing up to that blustering beast of a wind. He would find Bowden looking black as thunder, glowering like some old English archer lusting to lant an arrow in the deeps of the north-wind's midriff.
"Pretty beastly, Bowden. Good for the soil."
"My soil's all right. That b—y wind ain't no use to me."
"Keeping the fruit buds back."
"O,—that may be. Don't owe it no thanks for that. B—y lot it cares about fruit buds."
Effort,—always effort, a man's little contrivings flouted by forces that blow through all his neat, teleological schemings. The managing of an hotel was a far simpler affair than managing a garden, provided you got the human element well trained; and in these days the Pelican ticked like a good chronometer. No trouble at all, thanks to Fanny Garland, and Mrs. Marks, and Hulks, and the rest of them. But a north-east wind! Wow! And the wallflowers looking miserable, and the little daisies braving it with pinched, red noses. It was his garden that kept alive in Sorrell the combative spirit. You might tame men and money and machines, and terrorize marauding children, but Nature—she fought you with teeth and finger-nails. Well,—well!
About eleven o'clock, when Sorrell was checking the store of wine in the Pelican cellars Hulks brought in a telegram. It was from Christopher.
"Expect me this afternoon."
Sorrell stood holding the telegram in his two hands. The paper trembled very slightly. The north-east wind had planted in him one of those restless and vaguely expectant moods when the heart of man is ready to be troubled. Why was his son coming down so suddenly? For all that he knew God was in Kit's heaven and all was well with his world. Assistant-surgeon at St. Martha's! An appointment gloriously celebrated and just ten days old, and the firm of house-agents offering Sorrell the opportunity of purchasing a house in Welbeck Street.
Even in the warm deeps of the cellar Sorrell seemed to feel the bitter interference of that north-east wind.
"All right. You might tell Mrs. Marks to send one of the girls over to have Mr. Christopher's room prepared."
"Yes, sir."
And Sorrell stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket.
Mr. Christopher Sorrell arrived about tea time. The Pelican motor-bus had been dispatched to Winstonbury station to meet him and Hulks carried Mr. Christopher's suitcase to the cottage. Father and son met there, in the garden, under the old pear tree where pale gold buds flickered in a moment of transient and windy sunlight. Kit looked cold, far colder than his father who was muffled up in an old ulster.
"All right, old chap?"
Sorrell's eyes were affectionately observant. He thought Kit had less than his usual colour, that he looked rather like a man just recovered from an attack of 'flu. But of course it was a beast of a day, ugly. Even the garden looked ugly.
Kit smiled, but it was a self-conscious smile.
"It's jolly cold."
"Tea's ready."
"Good."
Sorrell felt that somehow or somewhere all was not well. He knew his Christopher even better than he knew his garden, and therefore said the less, and became busy with the fire and the dish of buttered toast on the trivet, and the brass kettle on the hob. Kit drew up his chair and spread his hands to the fire, and his face seemed to relax a little. Something had stiffened it; worry or that infernal wind.
They had tea. Their pipes came out, and while Kit filled his and paused to stare at the fire, his father put a match to the bowl of his long "briar," and with an air of attentive unconcern.
"Ever had 'wind up,' pater?"
Sorrell remained very still, restraining an impulse that would have made him look at his son.
"Often. One does. Inevitable—you know."
Kit lit his pipe, and the hand that held the match was very steady. Sorrell noticed that.
"How did it take you?"
"O, various ways. Quite silly—at times. Like going on parade the first time you have to handle a company. Sort of speechlessness, feeling sure you are going to give a wrong order,—make a fool of yourself. But—one doesn't."
"You didn't."
"Just missed it—somehow. And then again,—like your first day in the trenches, in a devil of a funk and afraid of it; feel you must do some silly thing just to show the men—quite unnecessary, but quite natural. Always—before some new big or strange occasion. Especially if you happen to be sensitive"
He ceased, and puffed steadily at his pipe, while Kit, drawing forward on his chair, with his elbows on his knees, seemed to absorb the warmth of the fire and another warmth that was his father's understanding sympathy.
"I had it badly last night."
"O," said Sorrell, "how's that?"
"Good for my conceit,—I suppose. Simply took me like an attack of gastric 'flu. It is my first big 'op.' to-morrow."
Sorrell nodded a slow, wise head.
"Yes,—Kennard is laid up,—and I have to do the thing for him. A pretty tricky case, a papilloma of the bladder,—apparently. Depends a bit on what you find,—and on your fingers. The idea did not worry me at first—and then—suddenly"
He bit hard on the stem of his pipe.
"Realized I should be the centre of everything, responsible, in the big theatre, full of students, critical, with that hard-eyed old tough of an instrument sister—Nurse Biggar—squinting at my hands. It came on me suddenly,—supposing I make a fumbling mess of it, get stage fright. Men do,—you know."
Again Sorrell nodded.
"Some. I suppose there is always this first test; elimination. The climber has to face his first nasty bit of flycrawling. But—you—will be all right."
He looked at his son.
"How do I know? Because I feel sure of it,—somehow. After all these years—it wouldn't be possible. Not for me"
"Pater!" said Kit suddenly,—and held a sidelong hand towards his father.
"Not for me—old chap. Impossible"
"To let you down."
"O,—not that—only."
He sat and stared at the fire, and his face seemed to grow luminous.
"I should like to be there."
"Pater,—would you?"
"I should."
The wind changed in the night, and when Sorrell looked through his window and saw that no smoke was drifting over the branches of the pear tree he claimed the omen to be good. Yes, there was a soft moist breathing from the south-west, a movement with balm and beauty in it, and as he stood at his window he saw that the face of the earth had relaxed. No longer was it grey and embittered, but dewy and gentle; the birds were singing, and as he stood there Sorrell's heart uttered an inarticulate prayer. "O, blind and incalculable malice, and all cold, interfering circumstance, go where the north wind has gone—this day."
Descending early to breakfast he heard Kit spiashing in his bath. A cheerful sound—that, not suggestive of nerves and morbid self-consciousness, and while waiting for his son, Sorrell strolled out into the garden and exchanged a few words with his flowers. They were looking happy, and the hyacinths were scenting the air. He bent down and propped with twigs two or three brilliant heads that had had to bow before the wind.
He heard his son's voice.
"Shall I make the tea, pater?"
"I'm ready. What have they sent us over?"
"Porridge, and kidneys and bacon. I'm hungry."
Sorrell turned to go in, smiling back at his garden. A bath and a good hunger, and the sun shining upon the grass, and the birds singing! Well,—well. He had a feeling that he need not be afraid.
Sorrell walked with his son up the long, white-tiled corridor out of which other brilliantly white spaces opened. They came to a brown stairway going up in the whiteness of the wall, and here Kit paused.
"Up there, pater."
He smiled.
"One of the middle rows. Suppose you will be all right?"
Sorrell smiled back into his son's eyes.
"I think so, old chap."
Leaning upon the metal rail half-way up the tier of polished wooden steps Sorrell became all eyes and ears, and expectant consciousness. He was aware of the extraordinary stillness of the theatre, a warm and polished stillness. Something was making a queer, humming sound, like a kettle purring on a hob, and the sound was pleasant. Young men slipped into the places about him and remained silent or spoke to each other in undertones. How impartial they all seemed! He watched Nurse Biggar of the instruments, a tall, lean woman, with a buttoned-up mouth and eyes like black currants, whose every movement seemed automatically precise. The other nurses were mere shadows beside her. She was the genius of the place, mistress of those glass cabinets with all their surgical glitter. He was conscious of the soft, moist heat. The arteries at his temples throbbed slightly. His mouth felt dry, and under his ribs a knot of twisted suspense made him keep biting at his moustache or stroking it with a thin first finger.
A voice whispered near him.
"A tricky bit of work for one's first. Shouldn't like it."
Someone whispered back.
"O, Sorrell's all right,—a man who has boxed for the 'Varsity. Stout stuff."
And Sorrell reached out a glowing invisible hand towards the whisperer.
Then he saw his son in that space below, swathed in white, masked, talking to a grotesque figure with an immense head that looked too heavy even for his thick body. It was Orange. Sorrell had met Orange. Those intelligent brown eyes looked up at him for a moment and filled with a flicker of light. Kit's eyes glanced upwards in the same direction, and smiled. Sorrell nodded, and wondered what his own smile was like.
A reclining figure was wheeled in, with the anæsthetist holding a mask over its face. A quiet and orderly activity commenced. House-surgeons and nurses got busy; the two surgical dressers waited; someone had brought the anæsthetist his stool and table. Sorrell saw all this but vaguely, for his eyes were on his son who was standing with his two gloved hands together like the effigy of a devout knight in a church. He was talking quietly to Simon Orange.
Other things were happening; figures were busy about the figure on the table. Its legs were being trussed up, an irrigator prepared. Kit and Orange stood by and observed all that the lesser people were doing. Biggar, the instrument-sister, came and fitted a little electric lamp to Kit's forehead, and to Scrrell it seemed to glow like a jewel above that intent and quiet face. Kit was pale, but not so pale as his father felt.
Sorrell gripped the rail and prayed, not consciously, but with a kind of yearning, an outpouring of his will-force, his pride and love.
It began. A white blade drew a steady line that grew red upon the pale abdomen. Sorrell watched. The incision deepened; swabs were at work, retractors; forceps were clipped on; the unconscious and gently palpitating figure seemed surrounded by grave and interested faces, and calm, purposeful hands. To Sorrell Kit's hands seemed to move slowly, with a blessed deliberation. Never had his father seen so intent and absorbed a face. He thanked God for it! He kept very still.
The work went on. Kit's right hand was in that red and white cleft; he was feeling something, his eyes at gaze over the curly black head of the house-surgeon who stood opposite him. He smiled faintly, and said a few words to Orange who was behind him. Orange nodded.
"Difficult!" thought Sorrell, "O, Lord!"
Christopher introduced a speculum. He had to enlarge the wound, and cut one of the rectus muscles. Everyone was very still, critically and interestedly still. Orange's big head seemed to hang forward as though the whole force of him was concentrated upon something. Sorrell never saw his lips move. Difficult! And to Kit's father it seemed that his son was bending for hours over a hole in a body, groping, niggling with a knife, peering, a man absorbed. And Sorrell wanted the end, the result. His arteries were buzzing. He felt that he had no legs. He leaned heavily upon the rail.
Presently there was a species of stir, a sort of rustling amid those intent figures. Something had happened; something critical, and for a moment Sorrell closed his eyes.
When he opened them again Orange was smiling, luminous and sombre, and a substance was lying on a dish. And Kit was peering into that dim, warm interior.
Suddenly he straightened, as though to stretch his muscles and to ease his back. He turned, and his eyes sought a face. He smiled at his father.
Sorrell stumbled up the steps and along a gallery, and down another flight of steps into the white corridor. A sudden blindness came upon him. He fainted.
But Kit never knew of that fainting fit.