Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 20
SORRELL was writing letters. He had finished his weekly report to Thomas Roland, and had begun a letter to his son, but when he had covered the first page his thoughts began to wander. Kit's last letter lay upon the desk, a grave yet gossipy chronicle of Christopher's moods and doings, for he was able to write to his father with a happy frankness.
"You understand things, pater."
Precious words from a son, and Sorrell had taken them to his heart with a smiling humility. So, he understood things. His sensitiveness responded to the sensitiveness of his son. Like all individuals,—lone fighters, he had hated interference, intolerance,—but unlike so many men of a proud temper, he hated imposing himself upon others. "Neither to rule, nor to be ruled" was his ideal, though life had taught him the necessity of imposing himself—his will—upon others. But with Kit it was different, and Sorrell had fought all impulses towards autocracy, and his wisdom had served him well. In refusing to possess his son like a tyrant he had come to possess him in the only way that mattered. Kit had no fear of his father; Sorrell had remained the one person on earth to whom he hurried to tell things. Their intimacy had grown deeper, as Kit's roots went deeper.
This last letter of Kit's was responsible for Sorrell's wandering thoughts. There was one most significant paragraph in it.
"They want me to row in the 3rd May boat. Of course—I have felt rather bucked about it, because our lot did rather badly in the Lents. But I have decided that it can't be done. It isn't that I don't feel sure of pulling through the first M.B. in June. I'm out for a place. Don't you agree with me?"
Sorrell was not quite sure whether he did agree, because he was not quite sure what Kit wanted. His son was a creature of intelligence, and capable of choosing.
Sorrell bit the end of the pen, with his eyes on the flower beds under his window. Yes, the choice was with Christopher.
He began to write.
"Do just what you wish to do. I know that it is not wise—at times—to split one's energy. The thing is to concentrate. You know that as well as I do, old chap. But sometimes one can compromise. I'm pulled both ways. I'd like to see you rowing in one of the May boats,—and I'd like you to get a place in the M.B. Greedy parent! But it is a question of how you feel. It is not my business to coach your feelings."
It made Sorrell happy to realize that he could write to his son with such easy frankness, and that the invisible tie between them seemed to be growing stronger. His whole wish was to play the man to the man in Christopher. He raised his head and let his eyes rest upon the garden, for with the mellowing of his middle age he was becoming more of a garden lover, for there is no more pleasant place than a garden for the ripening of a man's thoughts. To be able to see the massive old tree trunks rising from the sweep of well-cared for grass, and to watch the play and pattern of the shadows, and the ebb and flow of the light among the leaves,—such contemplation pleased him. It gave him the same smooth feeling as did the glaze on an exquisite piece of old china, or the silky warmth of the skin of a woman's arm. It was good to enjoy such beauty, not greedily, but with magnanimous insight.
The Pelican's visitors made use of the garden, and occasionally the soul of it was offended, but since a lover of flowers increases as Adam and Eve grow older, and the Pelican's visitors were mostly mature people, Sorrell had little cause to complain. It is the child who is a garden's natural enemy, and Sorrell did not encourage children. The Pelican was so proudly placed that she could refuse children. They were a nuisance. This serenely efficient rest-house had no use for childishness.
Blessed maturity!
And at this very moment maturity presented itself before Sorrell's eyes in the shape of a voluminous lady dressed in black who was trailing slowly across the lawn in the direction of a seat under one of the chestnut trees. He had a view of her broad back, and her robust curves defying the most cunning of corsages. A Rubenesque figure, sumptuous and solid, with masses of blonde grey hair swathed under a black flower-pot hat! A visitor, obviously, and a recent arrival.
She turned and seated herself, and Sorrell's eyes suddenly hardened. He realized that she was looking across the lawn in the direction of his window, and that she could see him sitting at his desk.
He lowered his head and pretended to go on writing, while he considered the significance of this unwelcome appearance, this abrupt recrudescence of an unfortunate past. He scribbled nothings on a sheet of paper, occasionally glancing under ominous eyebrows at the figure on the seat. She sat there, wholly at ease, her broad face turned towards him. He fancied that she smiled.
He got up with a "Damn the woman," and went out of the room. At the foot of the stairs he met Hulks with a big leather trunk on his shoulder, and he made inquiries as to the trunk and its owner.
"Lady just arrived in a big Murchester saloon, sir. Booked for a week. Miss Murdoch has put her in No. 3."
Sorrell was scanning the trunk. It was plastered with Riviera hotel labels, and on its lid was painted in big black letters "D. Duggan."
He walked out to the garage and looked at the car. Its chauffeur, dressed in black livery, was reversing the big, dark blue machine into one of the lock-ups.
Sorrell spoke to him. "Is that Mrs. Duggan's car?"
The chauffeur replied, without troubling to look at him, elias.
Sorrell went back to his sitting-room, and sat down at his desk. The woman had not moved from the seat, but as he drew up his chair he saw her rise and advance diagonally across the grass. Her movements appeared very deliberate and unselfconscious, but Sorrell knew that however circuitous her movements might appear they were directed towards his window.
"I suppose it's inevitable," he thought; "but she won't get any change out of me."
He set himself to finish his letter to Kit, compelling himself to concentrate upon it, and he had arrived at the "Yours affectionately" when the figure in black appeared at the window. She had followed the path between the beds planted with standard roses, tulips, myosotis, and violas, and to a casual observer she would have appeared as a lover of flowers, strolling at her leisure. Her poise was one of interest; her back ignored the window.
Sorrell scribbled his signature, blotted it,—and began folding up the sheet ready for its envelope. He had decided that he would leave her the initiative. His wisest course was to sit tight and to allow her as few openings as possible.
She turned to look at the flower-bed under his window, and he could not but admire her deliberation and her poise. Her eyes rose with a natural inevitableness to his. He was pressing down the flap of the envelope.
She smiled. He noticed that her blonde hair was powdered with grey. Knowing her of old he would have expected her to have had those grey hairs treated. Her acceptance of this greyness seemed to make her more dangerous.
"Still here."
He gave her an almost imperceptible nod and a steady stare of the eyes, and she drew up like a fine ship ready to use her guns or to parley.
"You have changed."
He turned the envelope over, and proceeded to address it.
"One does. Both of us. Married again?"
The leisureliness of her reply balanced his casualness.
"Let us see,—I was Sampits. Now I am Duggan. Mr. Duggan died last December. I suppose I shall remain Mrs. Duggan."
Sorrell raised steady eyes, and seemed to observe her.
"Is it necessary?"
She smiled.
"Really—that is very gallant of you."
"Not at all."
In their historic quarrels of ten years ago Kit's mother had nearly always bested Sorrell, and had sailed out of action leaving him with his more sensitive temper shot to pieces. She had controlled her fire more coolly; she had cared less; she had carried heavier guns. Her serene and healthy selfishness had given her a notable advantage over a worried and highly strung man, a scrupulous idiot, and a failure. But the woman who stood there, scanning him with an air of amused slyness, had a kinder outlook upon life, because life had given her much that she had desired. She was the mature cat on the cushion. She had an air of comfortable softness. Almost, she could refer to herself playfully as an old woman.
"I am greyer than you are, Stephen."
"You are older than I am."
"That's not quite so gallant."
She was firing blank shot at him, and the battle between them was now more restrained and less vivid, but Sorrell was aware of it as a battle. He was waiting for her to ask the inevitable question, and the fact that she did not ask it left him to meditate upon her tactics. He felt pretty sure of her objective.
"Have you been running this place for long?"
"About a year."
"You do it pretty well. I know something about hotels."
Judging by the labels on her trunk she did. Moreover, she could afford to stay at de luxe hotels. Messrs. Sampits and Duggan had behaved very generously.
"What time's dinner here, Stephen?"
Her voice was friendly. Her whole attitude suggested that they should agree to regard life as a humorous and ironical experience.
"Seven-thirty."
"Thanks."
Sorrell rose from his chair.
"Just a word,—do you mind addressing me as Mr. Sorrell."
"Not in the least. I am much more easy to get on with than I used to be. And you?"
He stood with his hands resting on the desk, and looking at her with deliberate steadfastness.
"I'm the boy's father."
An hour later returning from a wander in the Abbey beechwoods, Sorrell decided that he had acted wisely in hoisting his flag.
"Just as well let her know that I'm an enemy. I suppose it is fairly obvious what she is after. That grey in her hair. No,—I'm damned if I will let her meddle."
During dinner Sorrell went and stood in the passage, and reconnoitred the dining-room through the doorway. Mrs. Duggan had a little table by one of the windows. Her back was towards him. She was in evening dress, black velvet, with a rope of pearls round her throat, looking a very handsome person, carrying her years with graceful resignation. If it was a pose it was admirably conceived, and as admirably adopted. He saw her give one of the waitresses a pleasant upward smile. The girl smiled back at her.
Sorrell retired to his sitting-room. He had asked Fanny Garland to postpone the serving of his dinner, and he sat on the window-ledge and sorted out his impressions.
Yes, Dora Duggan had mellowed. She had become something of the smiling duchess, an opulent and handsomely self-assured person. She dressed well. She had some exquisite jewellery, and a sense of humour. Dangerous creatures,—women! He divined the dangerousness of Kit's mother, the subtle interference she might exert, the seductions she could employ.
Fanny came in with his soup. She noticed his narrowed, intent face, and the way he looked at her as though all women were under suspicion.
"Shut the door, Fanny, will you."
His eyes swept the garden. He stood a moment, smoothing his moustache.
"Noticed No. 3?"
Fanny had.
"What do you think of her? As a woman"
She was puzzled,—defensive.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I'll tell you,—when you have told"
"She looks rather a good sort. But—of—course A bit of an old soldier—too."
"A good sort!"
He sat down with the briskness of impatience.
"You and I—understand each other. Not a word to anybody, old girl. That—is Kit's mother."
He glanced up at her, meaningly.
"Married twice—since she left me. Widow. Pots of money. Not bothering about her grey hair. Sails down here in her two thousand pound car. What do you make of that?"
Fanny's shrewd fresh face was solid with thought.
"Well—if you ask"
"I'm asking you—as a woman"
"She's after the boy."
"Exactly," said Sorrell, picking up his soup spoon.
Life happens less crudely than our descriptions of it suggest, and the human diagrams that we draw lack the subtlety of colour and movement. It was easy for Sorrell to rush at a conclusion, and to make a sketch of Dora Duggan as he saw her, and to compare it with the Dora Sorrell of his married days. In his mental diary he wrote her down a vampire, a woman, who, having had all the satisfactions she desired from men and sex, was seeking other satisfactions. That red mouth of hers was ready to feed upon the young vitality of her son.
The thought enraged him. He was offended by the infernal audacity of her intriguing reappearance. To return, smiling, after a digression that had lasted ten years, sleekly and handsomely prosperous and self-assured, and ready to claim the inevitable flesh-bond.
He could hear her saying—"After all, Stephen, I am his mother." She would say it deliberately, flaunting her grey hairs and her glowing, maternal maturity, suggesting that both he and she had arrived at that autumnal season when life ripens to a bland magnanimity. "I'm growing an old woman, Stephen. I'm through with my adventure. Why not let bygones be bygones?"
Had she other children, young Sampits or young Duggans? Or, now that her wildness was passing, was Christopher to be the one creature to be desired, a young man to be debauched by the maternal passions of a woman who was growing old?
Well, he had hoisted his flag, and he would wait for her to attack. She had engaged her bedroom for a week. Obviously there would be developments in the course of those seven days.
Sorrell decided that he would neither seek nor avoid her. He would order his life as though she had not reappeared on the figure of it with her perilous, easy opulence.
On the first day of the seven they had no speech with each other. Sorrell passed Kit's mother in the lounge, wrapped up in a magnificent musquash coat, and waiting for her car. She was going out for the day.
He gave her a vague, stiff bow, and she smiled at him, pulling on her gloves.
"Good morning, Mr. Sorrell. What do you think of the weather?"
"The glass is high."
"I am driving over to Bath to lunch with some friends."
Sorrell received the information with the impersonal politeness of a hotel manager. He hoped that her drive would be a pleasant one; he was in motion while he expressed this formal wish; his courtesy was the Parthian politeness of a busy man in a hurry.
On the evening of the same day he had a glimpse of Kit's mother sitting in a corner of the lounge, and looking up over a book at Albert Hulks. She was talking to Hulks, who had taken to himself all the Sorrell traditions. Hulks kad an ash-tray in one big hand, and with the other he was feeling for his wallet.
"Stamps!" thought Sorrell; "I remember that day when she bought stamps from me,—and tried to find out. Of course—she can make Hulks talk."
It would be easy for Kit's mother to discover the facts about her son. All that she had to do was to involve Hulks or Bowden in a friendly gossip, and ask what had become of that nice boy—Mr. Sorrell's son. "I remember him when I was here before." And she would be told that Christopher had won a scholarship at Cambridge, and that he was up at Trinity.
Two more days passed, and Sorrell was compelled to discover in her an aloofness that equalled his own. They saw each other in the distance, and while appearing to ignore the presence of the other, were not deceived by this mutual disregard. They appeared to avoid all opportunities of meeting.
Her presence in the hotel made Sorrell restless. He felt her about him, watching without appearing to watch, insinuating even in her aloofness. She was like a cat who sat and stared and seemed to see nothing; while nothing was lost upon her. He was unpleasantly aware of her as a creature gliding about in the jungle, leaving him to guess at her movements and her motives. By sitting still he had presented her with the initiative, and the power of holding him in suspense.
He was considering the question of writing to Kit, or of making a sudden descent upon him at Cambridge.
"But what could he say?
"The woman—who was your mother—is staying here at the Pelican. I think she would like you to resume your sonship. Personally, I do not wish you to have anything to do with her."
But would such frankness be wise? His whole purpose had been to perfect a complete comradeship between himself and his son, and to eliminate the shadow of the paternal tyranny. He had chosen the part of friend and counsellor; he had renounced the self-sufficient privilege of issuing orders. Christopher was very dear to him, and he believed himself to be very dear to Christopher. Why not trust to this mutual confidence and affection? Play the new Adam, and let Eve try her wiles? All life is willing and choosing, and Christopher would have to will and to choose.
On the fourth day something happened. The woman came and sat on the seat under the chestnut tree when Sorrell was sitting at his desk. She had a book. She pretended to read, while he made a pretence of writing letters, but the space between them was crossed by their mutual consciousness of an inevitable and approaching skirmish.
Sorrell rose from his chair. She saw his figure disappear from the window, but when he came out by way of the garden door, and crossed the grass towards her, her head was bent over her book. She allowed him to believe that she was unaware of his approach.
He paused in front of her.
"How do you find this place? Comfortable?"
Her quick and upward smile assured him that she had been taken unawares.
"Oh, it's you! Yes,—I'm very comfortable. So far as my experience goes—it is the best-run country hotel in Engand."
Her smile continued. She moved to one end of the seat,—and the space left was an invitation.
"But a hotel is always a hotel."
Her book was closed and laid upon the seat, and the upward glance she gave him still had the edge of a smile.
"Do you ever suffer from curiosity?"
She divined his guardedness towards her.
"Funny thing, life! Here—we are—like a couple of strangers. You and I. Do you remember those days at Shanklin?"
"Nearly twenty years ago." He sat down.
"O,—well, we were incompatibles. I'm afraid I gave you some bad times. I was much more greedy for life."
He was looking towards his window, and not at her.
"So you are never curious?"
"About what?"
"What sort of success or failure I made of things—afterwards. Never thought?"
"Why should I?"
"He felt that she was smiling."
"So you never forgave me. Poor old Stephen! You married an explosive person. But when one comes to a certain stage"
His silence neither encouraged nor repulsed her. He was letting her make all the thrusts.
"One begins to look back—instead of forward."
"You think so?"
"Well, I do. Of course—it depends. A woman grows rather lonely."
She observed his profile. She had dropped one little stone into the pool of his silence, but so far as she could judge it had stirred no ripples.
"Suppose you just drift about now?" he said.
"I? Not a bit of it. I'm the comfy cat, my dear man. A house in South Audley Street. Three months at Cannes—perhaps,—and a few days in my car. Friends,—yes. A busy old bachelor like you—doesn't bother. I'm so well off."
He remained utterly irresponsive, a man with a blank yet alert face, and a judicial manner. She gave a little humorous sigh, observed him ironically with her fine eyes, and diverged to other topics. He had shown no sign of reacting either to sentiment or to the hint of her prosperity. It seemed to her that he took himself with the same old, desperate seriousness. And he was desperately serious in his desire to keep her and Christopher apart.
"Hopeless—as ever—with women," she decided. "No idea of compromise."
She began to talk about the late Mr. Sampits, and when she had exhausted her second husband, she went on to speak of the late Mr. Duggan. She told Sorrell the most trivial and intimate details of her two subsequent marriages, overwhelming him with the steady and self-interested loquacity of the hotel-bore, and she did it so naturally that, Sorrell, growing bored, began to wonder at himself for sitting there and listening to her. He heard how Sampits had died of alcoholic nephritis, and how Duggan's chief characteristic had appeared to be a prejudice in favour of the old-fashioned night-shirt. He heard what sort of clothes they wore, and what they ate, and what they would not eat, and he found himself yawning with immense surprise at her banal confidences.
Why—on earth—was she telling him all this? She began to appear to him as little more than a stout and rather immodest person, just like dozens of other elderly women who loved to hold some helpless listener blockaded in a gossip's corner. She seemed to become less and less dangerous the more she bored him with her crude outpourings. The world was full of such women. He had seen them by the score in the lounge of the Pelican, sitting down solidly to exhaust the patience of some too good-natured listener.
After half an hour of it he glanced at his watch.
"I'm sorry—but I have to"
She drew her breath and smiled upon him.
"Of course. You must be such a busy man. We have had quite a nice talk, haven't we? And, O, before I forget, my friends at Bath have asked me to go on there to-morrow. Will it inconvenience you—if I give up my room?"
"Not in the least. We are turning people away every ay."
It was not till he had smoked a pipe after tea that Sorrell grasped the curious fact that she had never mentioned Christopher. She had talked of no one but herself and her dead men-folk. Curious! Had he been an alarmist, and was she just a fat commonplace egoist who asked for nothing but an audience? People grew fat in mind as well as in body. It seemed to him that he had exaggerated her significance.