Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 19
FANNY GARLAND opened Sorrell's door.
"Bowden has sent these in," she said.
Sorrell turned in his chair. He was sitting at his desk, and Fanny had surprised him in a moment of meditation. She had her arms full of flowers, purple and white iris, wallflowers, rose-red pyrethrum lig round and pleasant face smiled at him over them. Fanny was growing plump and mature; she had little wrinkles under her eyes, but even her wrinkles had kindness.
"Flowers.—Bowden sent them"
"Yes,—for the table,—Kit's dinner."
"Good of Bowden.—You are all being very good to us."
He rose, and stood looking at the flowers, but with an air of inattention, for the coming of Fanny Garland had not broken the current of his thought. Indeed, a double stream was running through his mind, each with its separate emotion, and as a result his eyes were happily yet gravely vague.
"They are being very good to us."
But the other current was the stronger. He had been sitting there alone, seeing Kit in mortar-board and gown crossing the Great Court of Trinity, Kit the son of an hotel porter, and Sorrell's wish had been that the hotel porter might be blotted out. Was it snobbery? He did not think so. The world of men—of young men—values accomplishment. Half our democratic posing is fulsome humbug. The captain matters more than the deck steward.
He became aware of Fanny's smiling eyes.
"What are you laughing at?"
Her smile became kind laughter.
"I don't wonder," she said,—"I don't wonder. I bet—you are up in the clouds a bit. And quite right too. But I want to decorate the table."
Sorrell stared.
"Well,—why not do it?" said his stare.
She pressed her round, fresh face against the flowers.
"I don't like to go in. Fact is—he's singing one of those songs of his, the songs in the new piece he is writing. If there is one thing that riles him"
Sorrell pulled out his watch.
"Half-past six. I don't think he'll mind. Not to-night."
"Well,—you come and open the door for me."
"All right. I will."
They paused in the passage to listen to Thomas Roland's singing. He was in a gaillard mood, and his deep voice seemed to carry more than the mere burden of the song, for it was the voice of a man who was happy. A generous voice, it swept Sorrell back in a flash to the day when Roland had arrived in that claret-coloured car, and to his own struggles with Florence Palfrey and the confusion of the Angel Inn. Thomas Roland sang as though he had no regrets, and with the voice of a sea-rover.
Sorrell raised a hand,—but Fanny Garland held up a finger. She wanted to hear the whole of the song.
On a hill—on a hill.
Its walls were white and its windows blue,
And round about it orange trees grew,
Above the sea—so still—so still."
The great posy of flowers breathed on Fanny Garland's bosom. She looked at Sorrell, and moved a hand in time to the music, but Sorrell's eyes were not seeing her. The memories of the past were winding upwards to the triumphant peak of the day's good hope, and through all these memories of uplift and endeavour Thomas Roland's voice sounded like the voice of a romantic rover. Some men brought good luck, a happy concatenation of circumstances. They willed good things.
Fanny was nodding at him.
"Now—you dreamer—now," said her smile.
There was a pause in the singing, and Sorrell knocked.
"Come in."
Roland sang the words, and the opening door showed him sitting at the piano, with the old gold curtains framing the green of the garden. He seemed to glow, and as he looked at Sorrell his eyes had a mischievous tenderness.
"What's this?"
"Flowers, sir."
"It is twenty to seven, sir,—and I want to lay the table—for our Mr. Christopher's dinner."
Roland stood up, gaillard and sly.
"Did you pick all that, Fanny? My word, there will be a storm!"
"Bowden picked them himself, sir."
"Marvellous! Well,—I had better go and pick the champagne. And,—Stephen"
He paused with a hand on Sorrell's shoulder.
"Will you warn everybody that I want them all to come in here after dinner and drink Kit's health."
He was looking into Sorrell's eyes as though he had other news for him, but was holding it back until the end of the feast.
"A real 'bump' supper, Stephen. Yo-ho!"
The drinking of Kit's health was only a part of the Pelican parade. Kit made a speech of five words. "Thanks—awfully—all of you." He blushed, and all the women wanted to kiss him. They drank Sorrell's health, and Mr. Porteous's health, and Mr. Porteous made a speech and flourished his serviette like a victorious flag. They drank Mr. Roland's health, with musical honours, Mr. Porteous crashing at the piano. They drank the staff's health, and good luck to the Pelican. Bells rang and were ignored.
It was the happiest of evenings, but for Sorrell the crowning happiness was yet to come.
Christopher had gone to bed, and Roland and Sorrell had seen Mr. Porteous fifty yards along the Winstonbury road, and were strolling back under the stars. The night was full of the smell of new-mown hay, and about the Pelican the great trees were asleep.
Roland,—breathing deeply because of the night's fragrance, paused, and in pausing looked up at the shadowy shape of the Pelican hanging from the cross-beam.
"Good bird, excellent bird."
His voice seemed to vibrate with concealed laughter.
"The wise people won't allow us to believe in luck, Stephen. I should like to drown some of the wise people in champagne."
The paying portion of the Pelican had gone to bed, and the windows were dark. Roland, slipping a hand under Sorrell's arm, walked with him so that they entered the door together, like partners and equals.
"We had better lock up. And then a pow-wow and a last pipe."
He locked the door, while Sorrell shot the bolts, and though the evening had passed Sorrell had a feeling that it would revive and rise to a second climax. He had divined in Thomas Roland the almost roguish reticence of a man who was hiding a dramatic finale. Yes,—and enjoying it, gloating over it.
Roland's room showed deserted chairs, and empty glasses, old Porteous's table-napkin trailing across a dish of fruit, and Bowden's flowers a splash of colour in the centre of the whiteness. Roland closed the door. He edged towards the sideboard with an attentive glance at Sorrell.
"Have a whisky,—Stephen."
His teeth showed white in his brown face.
"I'm going to. All right. Fill your pipe. It has been a great evening."
He filled the glasses, and transferring himself and his to the hearthrug, watched Sorrell packing tobacco into the bowl of a pipe. Yes, the fellow's fingers were just a little jetky and excited. Had he any idea:
"Sit down, old chap."
Sorrell sat down on the edge of one of the big arm-chairs.
"I haven't thanked you"
"Leave it at that."
There was silence between them, and Sorrell, glancing up, found Roland looking down at him over the edge of his glass.
"I suppose you have saved a little money, Stephen?"
Sorrell struck a match.
"An odd thousand. It's for the boy."
"Just so. Well,—let's talk business. That New Forest place is going to boom. I told you that I have had my eye on an hotel in Salisbury,—and on another at Bath."
"I think you did."
"I'm simply spilling with money. Obviously, the thing is to turn the whole show into a company, with the shares held by three or four interested people. 'The Roland Hotels.' How's that strike you?"
Sorrell sat very still, staring at the bowl of his pipe.
"It should be a sound idea."
"So—I think. And as you will be running the Pelican—I shall want you on the board. I have another man in mind. The three of us should do."
Sorrell's eyes rose slowly to Roland's face. He was very ale.
"You mean—me, to manage here?"
"Exactly. You know the business inside out by now. You are the very man for it. Obviously."
Again, there was silence between them, and the silence was understandable. It said more than words. They had worked together for six years.
Sorrell was smiling, but his smile had a glimmer as of tears.
"It's just like you. To tell me—on an evening like this. My dear chap—I"
Roland pretended to drink.
"Rather a good stroke of business for me, Stephen, getting you as manager, and co-director. I think so."
"Roland," said Sorrell, getting up suddenly out of his chair,—"I think I'm a little—drunk. If you had known"
He went and stood at the open window.
"It is what. Well,—the boy. I'm not a snob,—but perhaps you can understand—when he goes up to Trinity—this autumn. To be able to say"
He paused,—and half turning, looked at Roland with shining eyes.
"You are trusting me. You are giving me my chance. You shan't regret"
"My dear chap!"
"Oh,—I know"
"Good God, man,—I'm getting something out of it,—too, a friend and a partner. We are white men, Stephen. What's money but a means to an end. You can put just as much or as little as you please into our show. The Roland Hotels, Limited.—What!"
He laughed, and raised his glass.
"Here's to the old Pelican." It pleased Thomas Roland to speak of their enterprise as an Elizabethan gentleman adventurer spoke of his ships, lovingly, and with a feeling for the roll of the sea and the names of the ships that sailed it. The Pelican, whose master was Captain Sorrell, the Royal Oak, the White Hart, the Lion. The Royal Oak had been launched at Brockenhurst in the Forest, and Roland was sailing with her for a season to see that all was shipshape. The Lion was to be launched at Salisbury in the spring. The White Hart was still upon the stocks. Meanwhile, Roland had taken a little house at Chelsea, engaged an ex-service man and his wife, proposing to make the Chelsea house his headquarters.
"In memory of 'Cherry,' my dear Steve. The young lady is still earning me a great deal of money."
Whether Cherry existed in the flesh was a question that did not trouble Stephen, though he could imagine her existence, the insouciant, red-lipped love of a man who did not choose to marry. Perhaps Cherry was sharing in the building and staging of the next colour fantasia, The Blue Box, which was to be produced at the "Pelargonium" in the autumn. Certainly, Thomas Roland had his head and his hands well filled—and between bursts of song, was to play the rover in his car, visiting his ships and surveying their cargoes.
Christopher had gone up to Trinity, and was in rooms in Jesus Lane. Sorrell had seen him lodged there, had bought him two immense armchairs, and had had a long talk with Kit's tutor. Christopher's immediate objectives were the Science Tripos, and the first two parts of the M. B. Mr. Porteous, who could have taught a dog with no hind legs to walk, had grounded Kit in physics and chemistry. Also, Kit had elected to box and to row, and could be seen strolling down to the First Trinity boat-house in striped trousers and dark-blue blazer, to be tubbed and lectured by eloquent and serious young men. He weighed twelve stone three, and he received his notice to row in one of the scratch eights at the end of a fortnight's tubbing.
Sorrell, captain in a double sense, and in occupation of Roland's little suite at the Pelican, felt that life had enlarged itself. His salary as manager was £500 a year, with a bonus of ten per cent. on the Pelican's profits. He had sold out all his War Stock, and had taken a share in the capitalization of the Roland Hotels. How much the enterprise would bring him he did not know. The Pelican was a little gold mine; the Royal Oak was finding fair weather, and Roland was talking buoyantly of twenty per cent.
Roland was a solid man now, very solid, and so ballasted with capital that nothing could blow him over. He was a proof of the old saying that—"Money breeds money," but Roland had used his imagination. He could meet any tooth-brush merchant and smile in his face.
"O, Roland, the chap who writes that musical stuff."
But Roland was proof against the commercialists' envious patronage, for there were the Roland Hotels. The tooth-brush merchant had to swallow them; they were not musical stuff; they stuck in the unimaginative man's gizzard.
Exactly!
Sorrell had picked up one or two of Roland's characteristic words. It was obvious that his son was up at Trinity, and could refer to his father as "Captain Sorrell. Interested in hotels, a director. In with Roland,—you know,—the Roland. Quite a big show."
Kit could speak with the voice of a sea-captain. There was no need for him to hand out basins.
At times a man's outlook on life is so narrowed by the press of circumstance that his consciousness peers through a slit at the immediate happenings that concern him. Like a gunner in a steel turret, a part of the machine, he lays his gun upon the obvious target. So it had been with Sorrell for many years, but now he had become aware of an enlarging of his consciousness. He had leisure. The sky had grown more spacious above his head. He could sit on his quarter-deck and look about him, and see his ship moving, swinging her prow against blue horizons. He issued orders, and the urge of every proud man is to issue orders.
A deep contentment took the place of the facile cheerfulness of the good-natured slave.
He was a person. Other people knew that he had to be considered. Moreover, he was popular, whatever that may mean. He had never bothered himself about popularity; he had bothered about his job.
Good food was brought him with great punctuality. Fanny Garland, sonsy and smiling, saw to that. He had flowers on his table. Albert Hulks treated the sitting-room fire as though it were a sacred flame in a temple. He had a green and gold quilt on his bed; and tea and thin bread and butter were brought him in the morning.
Someone else cleaned his boots.
And he liked it. Years of sweat had made him so honest about the realities that he was quite ready to desert his philosopher's tub when something pleasanter and more sweetly smelling offered itself.
He began to allow himself little relaxations, small human luxuries, and he found that he could work harder when the bearings of life were oiled. He bought an occasional book, and began to collect china, and old prints. Winstonbury had its "antique" shop, run by a depressed little man who suffered from chronic dyspepsia, and whose face suggested that he lived on sulphur tablets. His name was Grapp. The antique trade offered chances that he was too congealed to seize.
Sorrell was often in the shop, and it was not long before he, came to realize that it was a dead business. Grapp had no enterprise.
But there were times when Sorrell pondered the problem of Grapp, and the opportunities that Grapp was missing.
"A fellow with energy could turn that business inside out within six months. Fill up the shop with good stuff,—and swank a bit. If I had a share in it I should put up a case of photographs in the Pelican lounge,—and push the Yankees along."
It was an idea, and Sorrell let it simmer.
Also, he had other outlets. The stern purpose in him had mellowed. He had friends in Winstonbury, houses in which he felt himself at home. He spent one evening each week with Robert Porteous. He kept up his friendship with old Mrs. Garland in Vine Court, for she had had a share in Kit's success, in that she had fed the boy well.
Sorrell found himself standing outside the red cottage in Vine Court on one autumn afternoon. Mrs. Garland had influenza, and Sorrell had come to inquire for her, and to leave her a bunch of grapes.
Fanny opened the door.
"Oh,—it's you! I came here early—to spoil her a little."
She held the door open, looking at him with a soft glimmer of the eyes. "I brought these."
"Grapes. How good of you. She's asleep just now, and I have sent Aunt Eva home."
The little sitting-room was just as Sorrell had first known it, save that Fanny had bought her mother a comfortable new sofa upholstered in green and blue. It stood under the window. Fanny was putting Sorrell's grapes on a plate. She was wearing a soft green jumper, with the sleeves rolled up, and Sorrell could not help noticing the pleasant plumpness of her arms. She had a comely neck, and her fair, bobbed hair hung over it.
"You'll stay and have tea."
They had tea together, sitting on the sofa. Kit's apple tree, full of yellow fruit, caught the light of the sunset. The greenness of it was enriched by the ripe apples, even as a woman is enriched by desire.
They talked of Kit, and then fell to talking of each other, softly, while the dusk began to fall. Fanny's hair became a shadowy wreath, and her arms and throat grew whiter.
The dusk seemed to draw them towards a pleasant, human intimacy. They discussed life, sitting sideways on the sofa, and looking into each other's faces. The body of each seemed to relax. Fanny's fair head drooped gradually towards the padded back.
"Sleepy?"
She smiled at him. "Are you?"
He found a cushion and placed it under her head, and their voices grew softer.
"I'm not a marrying man."
He was explaining himself to her, and she listened, with the inward smile of a woman who has learnt to laugh at an old-fashioned man's dear pomposities.
"Does it matter,—Steve? I'm not a marrying woman. In these days"
He saw her hand pull the curtains gently across the window.