Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 5

by George Warwick Deeping

V

1

SORRELL was leaning against one of the white Ionic pillars that supported the bow window when the claret-coloured car drew up outside the Angel Hotel. The car was a two-seater, and in it sat a man wearing a grey suit and a soft grey hat. He was very brown. He beckoned to Sorrell.

"Any rooms here?"

"Yes, sir."

The quality of Sorrell's voice surprised the man, and he showed his surprise by looking at Sorrell for half a second longer than was necessary.

"Right. The car won't be in the way here?"

"No, sir. Would you care to go straight into the garage?"

"Presently," said the man.

He climbed out and stood on the pavement, glancing up at the windows of the hotel. He appeared to be about Sorrell's age, one of those square men, but not too square, with a fresh brown skin, blue eyes, and a firm but human mouth. He moved easily, and you gathered from his steady eyes and his rather measured movements that he was a deliberate person, no great talker, a man with courage, but one who never rushed at life haphazard. There was something about the man that attracted Sorrell, his freshness, his obvious strength, the calm way his eyes looked at you and then gave you a sudden and pleasant smile. Sorrell had known one or two such men in the war. They had made good soldiers.

The man entered the hatel, and Sorrell remained by the car. He liked the colour of it, and the compact brightness of the dash-board, and the neatly covered leather hood. He himself would have liked to possess such a car, but he did not grudge the man in grey the possession of it.

Sorrell heard the pleasant and deliberate voice at his elbow.

"All right. I'll drive in."

From the way the newcomer looked about him in the Angel yard, Sorrell divined his disapproval. Nor did Sorrell approve of the yard.

"No lock ups?"

"No, sir."

"I want an inner tube mending."

"I'll take it round to a garage for you, sir. Luggage in the dicky?"

"Yes."

Sorrell extracted the luggage, a massive leather kit-bag, a suitcase, and an attache case.

"Do you know the number of your room, sir?"

"Fifteen."

The visitor paused at the office window to sign his name in the registration book, while Sorrell carried the luggage upstairs. No. 15 was no better and no worse than the average bedroom at the Angel, and though Sorrell had grown accustomed to the rooms, there were moments when he appreciated their depressing casualness. He unfastened the straps of the kit-bag, and went downstairs, to find the visitor talking to Mrs. Palfrey, and Sorrell came by the impression that it was the woman who had begun the conversation.

He turned to Sorrell.

"Which way?"

"This way, sir. First floor, second room on the left."

The man disappeared up the stairs, and Sorrell glanced at the visitors' book.

"Thomas Roland. London."

The handwriting was like the man, broad and deliberate and without affectation.

Five minutes later Sorrell, who was rearranging the magazines and papers in the lounge, fancied that he heard a bell ringing with aggressive persistency. It was an upstairs bell, and on going to investigate he found Mr. Roland standing outside the door of No. 15.

"Isn't there a maid on duty?"

"There should be, sir."

"I have no towels and no soap, and no one has brought me any hot water."

"Sorry, sir."

"And look here—at this."

Sorrell looked, and gave a little lift of the shoulders.

"These confounded wenches——. I'll see to it myself, sir."

He went out on to the landing calling "Maggie—Maggie," but no Maggie materialized, for she was somewhere below at one of the many back doors, and busy with the other sex, so Sorrell went to the chambermaid's closet, and collected towels and hot water, and purloined a new cake of soap from another bedroom my.

Mr. Roland was unpacking his kit-bag, and had thrown a pair of orange and blue striped pyjamas on the bed.

"Thanks."

That was all he said, but he smiled at Sorrell and gave him one of those quietly observant glances, and Sorrell went below feeling warmed by something pleasant and human and wholesome in the man. He wondered who Thomas Roland was, and what he did.

Meanwhile, Roland had paused in his unpacking, and was sitting on the bed and examining the room as though it interested him. Its deficiencies, its perfunctory slipshodness interested him. He happened to be interested in rooms, and he was a man of detail.

His mental comments followed immediately upon his visual perceptions.

"No wardrobe. Now—where the devil? Faded green paint,—dirty paper—strings of pink roses between black and white lines. One hook off door. Carpet—h'm—, I wonder what a vacuum cleaner would fetch out of it. Brass bed, one knob missing. Yellow chest of drawers, one handle missing."

He got up.

"I bet the drawers stick, and that the paper inside them is last year's Daily Mail."

He was right.

His observations ran on.

"Swing mirror plugged into place with a wad of paper. Blind torn. Japanese mats on floor need burning. Slop pail minus a handle. Marble top of wash-hand stand stained. Tooth glass smeary. Over washing-stand advertisement of Jeyes' Fluid. Over mantelpiece—tariff and advertisement of local tradesmen. Sheets need mending. Blankets,—yes,—just so!"

He resumed his unpacking and his meditations, —

"How many of these places have I stayed in during the last month? A dozen—I suppose. And only one decently run place in the dozen. Slovenly holes, especially in these cathedral places. Here's a great opportunity under the noses of our inn-keepers, and all they seem to think of is the booze and the 'bar'!"

He put out his boots.

"The cheek of them—too. Give you every sort of slovenliness and inattention, and bad food, and then charge you top prices. Now take this place. Nobody seems to care a damn, except that porter chap. No supervision, no discipline, no conscience."

His sponge-bag was extracted from a brightly polished cavalry mess tin, the two halves of which found receptacles for his sponge, washing gloves, nail-brush and tooth-brush. He glanced at the cracked sponge-basin belonging to the inn.

"No thanks! Obviously—no. Now—if that tow-headed female downstairs did her job properly instead of——. O, well, that's the curse of these places; a lot of soaking fools, and yellow-headed women. But what I never can understand is—why—if people take on a job—they can't do it properly. And yet—not three in ten can. Socialism! What rot!"

He lit a cigarette and looked out of the window into a back yard that contained the rotting relics of an old brougham, a pile of bottles, and a derelict dog-kennel.

"Cheerful prospect! I wonder what that porter fellow is doing here? Queer chap. Takes trouble, but looks ill. A gentleman's voice—and eyes. Does his job."

It was five o'clock, and Mr. Roland went downstairs into the lounge, and rang for the waitress, for he desired tea. He had to ring twice before a girl appeared as though the oeing in the world she was expected to do was to answer a bell.

"Tea, please."

"For one?"

"For one."

She went away, and Mr. Roland waited twenty minutes, and when the tea tray did arrive he noticed that the girl had forgotten to fill the milk jug.

"I take milk with my tea."

She whisked the jug away. Sorrell was tucking letters under the tapes on the green letter-board, and he happened to turn and catch Mr. Roland's eye. A faint, sympathetic and understanding smile seemed to pass between them.

"You haven't forgotten that tube?"

"No, sir. It has been done. I put it in the dicky."

"Did you pay?"

"Yes, sir. Two shillings."

"Thanks."

A two-shilling piece passed from Roland's hand to Sorrell's, and again their eyes met and smiled.

Sorrell felt cheered, though he had no great reason for feeling cheered. He went upstairs to No. 15, possessed himself of Mr. Roland's brown shoes, two pairs of them, and cleaned them as they had not been cleaned for a month.

2

Dinner was late.

Roland was chatting in the lounge with a big and genial person who had grown suddenly testy with hunger. The genial man was asking his casual acquaintance to explain to him how it was that a certain stereotyped piece of work that was done day by day could not be made to keep pace with the clock.

"We abuse machines,—but hang it all—they have rhythm."

Roland laughed softly.

"Well,—I don't suppose it will be anything great when it does come. And I think I could give you the menu."

"Guessing?"

"No, the law of averages. We shall begin with tomato soup, go on to tough chops—boiled potatoes and cabbage, pass thence to fruit salad, tinned apricots and stewed prunes. And we shall finish with rather bad cheese."

"I don't care what it is," said the testy man. "I feel inclined to go and hammer that gong."

The gong sounded at ten minutes to eight, and Roland, strolling into the dining-room, saw the usual number of small tables arranged under the window and along the wall. Each table had a cruet stand from which most of the plating had long ago been worn away, and a vase of perfunctory flowers. A long table occupied the centre of the room.

Roland waited for the waitress, his pose that of the interested observer.

"One, sir?"

"Please."

The waitress indicated the long table, and Roland smiled.

"I prefer a table to myself."

"We have only tables for two or four, sir."

"Are all these tables reserved?"

"No."

He smiled again.

"If I can get a bedroom for one—I suppose I can get a table. You don't put me in a dormitory—thank you."

He was one of those unusual men who not only thought of things to say, but actually said them, and said them with a smile.

He was given his table.

"Have you a menu card?"

"No, sir."

"What are we going to have?"

"Tomato soup. Roast beef and veg. Fruit salad."

Roland caught the eye of the testy man who was unfolding his napkin at the next table.

"I gave you the menu. There is only one alteration."

"What's that?"

"Roast beef instead of chops."

"Ah——!"

"And 'veg.' A vague and comprehensive word that—veg."

Wandering out afterwards in the cool of the summer evening under a tumultuous yet quiet sky Roland saw the great trees of the Close all edged with gold. He passed in, and stood looking at the cathedral's western façade, the magnificent window recessed between two towers, the arcades and niches, and all that grey and delicate silence in stone. The lawns, like rich old velvet, sheltered by the trees, and refreshed by the mists from the moat of the palace, were vividly green in spite of the heat of the past week. Roland could see the gilded cupola and the clock above the Tudor gateway of the palace. He strolled upwards along the canons' gardens, pausing to look in through the old gateways, and his chance strollings brought him to the great elm where a man and a boy were sitting.

Sorrell had been talking to Christopher of Thomas Roland, though he himself was puzzled by the impulse that moved him to speak to the boy of a man who was a mere passing stranger. But he let the impulse have its way, and the spread of it had surprised him. "So I cleaned his shoes, my son, put such a polish on them." Kit had noticed a sort of shine in his father's eyes. "Strange—how your heart and your hand go out to some people. He made me suddenly feel good, and smooth. I knew that I could do anything for him, and that he would never ask me to do anything dirty. Instinct. He looks as though he had come straight out from swimming in the sea, when it's all blue and the sun makes a glare on the yellow sand."

Roland recognized Sorrell before Sorrell was aware of his nearness, for Sorrell was leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees, and his eyes on the ground. Roland went towards them, and Sorrell, sensing a presence, looked up, startled but smiling.

"Your boy?"

"Yes, sir. This is Mr. Roland, Christopher."

Kit stood up and lifted his cap, and he and Mr. Roland took a steady look at each other.

"Are you at the Angel?"

"No,—I have him boarded out," said Sorrell; "we get an hour together—when I'm off duty."

"So you get an hour!"

"Yes."

Sorrell was looking at Roland's shoes. He was wondering whether the other man had noticed the polish that had been put on their comrades in No. 15. Roland sat down on the seat, and laid a big brown hand on Kit's shoulder.

"Sit down, old chap."

He filled a pipe.

"Pretty peaceful here. Do you ever go to any of the services down there?"

"Not often."

"I've been," said Kit. "If you want to be alone—when the organ is playing."

Roland made a slow movement of the head.

"I know. Service; a full choir, half a dozen priests, three lonely women, a verger and a forest of empty chairs. And the organ notes quaking, and a boy's voice soaring up to the grey roof like a bird. Perhaps a few spectators cee at the west end of the nave. It always makes me fee queer."

Kit was watching him with solemn eyes.

"Queer? How?"

"Oh,—as though I had fallen suddenly through a trapdoor into another world. Not our world. Men saw the sunset through trees in those days. I suppose they looked at the stars. Do you ever look at the stars?"

His eyes were on Sorrell.

"No,—hardly ever. Never thought about it."

"Quite so."

"Too busy or too tired, and under a roof. I used to look at them a lot in the trenches."

"Ah,—you were there too," said Roland, lighting his ipe.

And when he had lit it he got up, stood a moment, smiled at the Sorrells, and tilted his head slightly in the direction of the moat where the water was dappled with gold.

"Think I'll wander down there. They still keep the swans—I suppose?"

"And there are two peacocks, sir."

"In the bishop's garden. I remember. So—like us—they survived the war. Good night."

The Sorrells watched him go down the path to the water, holding himself very square and straight, and yet moving with an air of lightness.

"I like that man," said the boy, "he's—he's——"

Kit searched for some particular word.

"How do you call it, pater, when you feel right up close against someone you've never met before?"

"Sympathy?"

"No, not quite that. I can't get it."

"I think I know what you mean," said his father.

3

On the first floor of the Angel Inn, and at the end of a dark passage there was a little, dim drawing-room, musty and sad, with engravings of Landseer's pictures on the walls, and a Kidderminster carpet on the floor. On the hearth, behind the brass fender, stood a cheap Japanese screen in black and gold, the centre piece between a mock-mahogany coal purdonium on the one hand, and an occasional table on the other. The wallpaper displayed faded pink roses blooming a strangely detached way on a dull grey background. There were a few books on an octagonal table, a Dunlop guide, bound copies of the Illustrated London News twenty years old, Tennyson's poems and a Latin grammar. How the Latin grammar had got there—heaven alone knows, but it remained there because no one troubled to remove it. A gilt clock that had not ticked since Queen Victoria died, escaped the dust by standing on the white marble mantelpiece under a glass case. Two bronze gentlemen on horseback, mailed and armed, menaced each other from opposite ends of the mantelpiece. The armchairs were of that bastard breed in which each wooden arm bears an excrescence of padding covered tightly' with a material that is reminiscent of a footman's breeches sixty years ago.

People rarely entered this room. The windows remained closed, and it lived shut up in its own dark mustiness. Occasionally some lone woman sat in it, and knitted, and looked at the books and put them back again, but the women who sat in this room had no men attached to them. Any man chancing to open the door, looked in, stared, and, feeling the room's unwedded deadness, fled. No one ever left the door of this room open. They closed it carefully, as though the room's emptiness were best sealed up.

Sorrell was coming down the stairs when he heard strange sounds drifting from the dark passage. There was a piano in the drawing-room and someone was playing it, and playing it extraordinarily well, feelingly, and with a strong, rich touch. Sorrell paused. Music, such music was so unknown in this haphazard house that he felt like a man in a factory yard who suddenly hears a blackbird singing. It gave him a moment of exquisite pain. He stood with quivering throat, and a sense of strange and deep emotion stirring in him.

The pianist was playing Chopin. He or she was in the midst of the First Prelude when Sorrell first paused to listen. Then came the Berceuse, and after the Étude in A Flat. Sorrell, leaning against the wall, felt his memories going back to the days of his youth when he had sat and dreamed in Queen's Hall. Romance. Those days when he had imagined——

But who was the pianist? A car with two or three women in it had arrived an hour ago, and Sorrell had carried up their luggage, but these ladies had suggested rag-time rather than Chopin. He felt curious. He approached the drawing-room door, telling himself that it would be easy for him to enter the room as though in search of some visitor. He could wait for an interlude.

Leaning against the wall opposite the door, he let the surge of those sweet sounds go through him. A pause came. He was about to slip across the passage when the door opened.

It was Mr. Roland who opened the door. His face had a kind of radiance, a happy rapture.

"Hallo!"

Sorrell had straightened up.

"Sorry, sir. I was listening. Was it you?"

"Yes."

The two men looked at each other, and the light on Thomas Roland's face seemed to have spread to Sorrell's. They were together for a moment in a transcendental world of mystic sounds and symbols. And life was drawing them nearer.