Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 26
CHRISTOPHER, having put the second part of the Cambridge M.B. behind him, and sailed through the Anatomy and Physiology of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, now moved in the thick of his hospital training. There were the lectures on medicine and surgery, pathology and bacteriology, and gynecology, also the clinical lectures on the same subjects. He rolled bandages and applied splints. He served as out-patient clerk and dresser, and later as clerk and dresser in the wards. In the out-patient departments of St. Martha's he was brought into touch with the realities of sickness and disease, and having more vision than the ordinary medical student he began to understand what was at the back of these realities. He saw what London did to people, and what people did to themselves and to each other. He saw the blotched bodies, the sores, the rottennesses, the stigmata stamped there by poor festering souls. He saw men and young girls filthy with venereal disease; and the blurred and shiny faces and angry eyes of the drunkards. Often it seemed to him that Fate herded these people like cattle into the white-tiled galleries and the out-patient rooms, poor stupid cattle sinned against, ignorantly sinning. It was the problem of the ignorant, of the unfit, of the people with uncontrolled lusts and greeds, of ugly lives and ugly souls and bodies growing out of them, of children who should never have been born.
"What a mess!" was Kit's feeling about it.
Sometimes pity moved him, sometimes nausea.
He began to have a profound respect for Mr. Kennard, the particular assistant surgeon to whom he was attached as dresser, and in a little while Kennard returned that respect. Sorrell had a reputation in the hospital. He was keen, deliberate, ready to accept small responsibilities. Most young men funk their responsibilities, but Kit did not. Keenness saved him from being fooled by his self-consciousness.
Kennard impressed upon Kit an example of impartial thoroughness. Soon there was a tie of sympathy between them, and Kit, staying to the very last, and after the senior students had drifted away, would sit on the chair next to the surgeon and be allowed to enter into a more intimate fellowship.
They talked.
One particular talk they had stuck in Kit's memory. Kennard had been examining a pretty French girl who had come with a certain hideous condition, and the blemishes had shocked Kit.
"It's rather damnable, sir."
"It's life, a side of life. There's something to avoid, Sorrell."
Kit was frowning.
"It's a question of stopping it, sir."
"Exactly."
"The Socialists"
Kennard gave him a quick shrewd smile.
"Environment,—O—yes! And education! But turning life into an orderly cabbage patch won't cure appetites. It might make it worse. Life drives us"
"Well,—what would you do, sir?"
"Try to see that half the babies are not born. You don't let a garden get overcrowded with a lot of weedy rubbish."
"But the Socialist cabbage-patch?"
"We are not—all—cabbages, Sorrell. The world wants cleaning and replanting,—but the drive of life is different in different plants. You have to allow for that. I would halve the population, and try to see that the half that remained had a better chance."
"But what about industry,—labour?"
"Ah,—industry! It may be a question of choosing between trade—and health—the higher health. Waste products. We manage to use them—sometimes,—but the waste is always ahead of the use. Your feet clogged with the mud of the world's haste and greed and foolishness. Stick to the job."
But his contact with the sick and the diseased and the polluted bred in Kit a seriousness that took unto itself a desire to understand. The scope of the healing craft enlarged itself, and it seemed to him that there could be no finer and more satisfying work than the surgeon's. It was not a mere question of skill with the knife and the knowledge of how and when to use it, but a sympathetic searching out of causes that cut deeper than the knife. He felt himself up against the bigness of life and its human distortions. His attitude towards it was far more subtle and mature than the attitude of the ordinary student who was facetiously interested in disease as a something out of which he would make money. Kit saw much of the humour and the pathos, but he did not see them as his fellows saw them. He saw much deeper. He was the son of his father, that father who had struggled with men and things in order that he—the son—might follow the craft that called him.
Kit had one quarrel at St. Martha's. It came upon him in the person of a fellow named Syme, a fat, sallow, and unclean hulk that rolled about the place emitting gulps of obscene and husky humour. And one day Kit fell foul of it.
"Shut up,—you low beast."
Syme was a powerful brute, and demanding honour, was taken on with gloves in the common-room of the college. Kit smote him with exultation and hatred. He floored the great, sodden fleshly thing, and was liked the better for it. Syme stayed away from the hospital for three days.
A man who could hit as Kit could hit, had every right to be keen, and to carry off the Caley Medal, and the Jonathan Taylor Prize. No one quarrelled with his seriousness, especially when it was a smiling seriousness. Sorrell, coming up to the Opening of the Session, and sitting on a fauteuil and listening to a learned address, saw red gowns and black gowns upon the platform. The prizes were presented by a famous legal luminary, and Kit had to cross the platform twice, collecting his triumphs.
He was cheered and cheered loudly, and Sorrell felt an mward glow, a mother and father pride mingled. The job had been worth it.
They dined at Thomas Roland's, with Cherry at the head of the table, and when they had had music, Cherry told Sorrell's hand. She laoked very wise over it, with a wisdom that brought little humorous crinkles round Roland's happy eyes.
"You and your son's hands are curiously alike. But he will do more—with his."
"I hope so," said Sorrell, while Kit, who was standing behind his father's chair, laid a hand on Sorrell's shoulder.
"If so—it's because of his hands. He has given me the chance."
Christopher went often to the house in Chelsea, for it offered him the contrasts that he craved, music, colour, understanding, a glimpse of a beautiful feminine thing, and talks with a man who had outgrown his crudities. You hadn't to explain yourself to Thomas Roland, and Kit was finding that it was possible to spend half your life trying to explain things to people who seemed to have gramophone records inside them instead of souls.
Roland lent him books and gave him an occasional theatre ticket. Also Kit met people in the Chelsea house, people who mattered, who had done things. He was not a great talker; in fact he listened better than he talked, but Thomas Roland's friendship gave him an entry into another world, the world of art and music, and of affairs.
He was asked to other houses and to dances, and he came to know Norah Fast and her circle, and Viner the essayist, and Phyllis Compton the actress. He fell in love with Phyllis Compton, and fell out of it when he came to realize the extent of her vanity. Women were troubling him not a little, but he kept his troubles to himself. Only once did he speak of them to his father.
"I can't help it, pater, but women are the very devil. It didn't worry me much up at Cambridge,—but London!"
"Yes," said Sorrell, "I know. It's like going about hungry, and seeing a basket of fruit at every corner."
"You don't think me a beast?"
"I have been through it, old chap. Besides—it isn't beastly. It's the meanness and the concealment and the treacheries that make it beastly."
They were out walking and had paused at the end of a woodland path where bracken grew, and the ground fell away into a deep green valley. Sorrell paused to light a pipe, while Kit's glances seemed to sink into the landscape.
"I see the beauty in woman, pater. It can't be wrong—somehow, and yet one is so tied up."
"It's just—woman," said his father; "and it is natural. I can't advise you. But half the women one wants aren't the women one could live with. Sex is an incident. It has gained an artificial importance from the fact that we have to suppress it."
"You did?"
"Mostly. Not always. One can't always. But I don't think that I ever hurt anybody. Mutual agreement. And then—of course"
His face looked deeply lined.
"I went and married the wrong woman. And yet she gave me you. The whole thing is such a muddle. We get hustled through life almost before we realize it. If I had it again I should always say to myself—'Don't hurry,' It's the hurry that lands one, our hungry haste. Besides—there must always be the one—right woman."
"I suppose so," said Kit thoughtfully, "and I have a sort of feeling, pater, that one owes something to her."
Kit had one of Thomas Roland's songs running in his head.
It was the month of June, and seven o'clock in the evening, and in Tottenham Court Road Kit had bought three red roses from a flower seller. He saw the sunlight upon the trees and shrubs of the square, and it seemed to him that they were very green for London trees. The sky looked more blue. Four girls were playing tennis in the garden, and one of the girls wore a yellow silk jumper, and had black hair. The girl in Roland's song had black hair, and so had the imagined girl who haunted Christopher's heart.
Kit slipped his latchkey into the door. It seemed a pity to go in and shut the door, and he knew that if he sat at the window and tried to read he would find himself watching those girls.
"Oh, it's you, Mr. Sorrell."
Mrs. Gibbins, grown grey, and standing in her doorway like a grenadier in a sentry box, brought Kit to a pause. Kit had come to respect Mrs. Gibbins as a plain and capable woman who did her job, and who had not turned a sour face upon him when he had been laid up for a fortnight with an acute attack of "flu."
"I'm glad you have come in. A gentleman has been waiting to see you,—since four."
"O," said Kit, appreciating the solemnity of Mrs. Gibbins's face.
"Behaving most queerly too,—banging things about. Ada went up and found him sobbing."
"Who is it?"
"He wouldn't give a name, said you'd know."
"What age?"
"Oh,—about your age, Mr. Sorrell."
Kit sprinted upstairs, to find the blinds of his room drawn, and Pentreath extended in the big arm-chair, a long, stiff, desolate figure, all eyes and ruffled hair. He did not move, but lay looking at Kit with a curious and aggressive shame-facedness. And Kit, in the out-patient department, had seen women with that look upon their faces.
He closed the door.
"Hallo,—old chap."
He had not seen Pentreath for three months, but the Pentreath whom he saw in his chair had a slovenly, unshaven, frightened air.
"What's wrong, old chap?"
Kit had the three roses in his hand, and as he came round the table he noticed that Pentreath's eyes fixed themselves upon the roses. They were dilated eyes, full of an inward horror.
"Don't—Sorrell"
He made a movement with one hand, an hysterical and jerky movement.
"Don't bring those flowers near me. I can't bear it. They are so clean."
"My dear old chap,—what's the matter?"
He turned to place the flowers behind a pile of books on a side-table, and he heard the creaking of Pentreath's chair.
"I'm married."
"Married!"
Kit turned and faced his friend.
"I have been married six months."
"Who to?"
"Oh, a girl I met down there where I keep. I felt—I had to get married"
He was sitting up now, his long arms rigidly extended, and his hands clasped between his knees. He looked about the most broken thing that Kit had ever seen, and yet Kit was wondering. Marriage, at twenty-three! The sensitive Pentreath,—shivering at the shadow of his own sex! But why?
"You have something to tell"
"Good God," said the man in the chair, bending forward as in agony; "something to show you,—Sorrell. What will I do?"
The irony of it, that his friend should be his first patient, polluted in body, and shamed in soul! Kit stood by him, gripping Pentreath's shoulder, shocked and angry, feeling himself rather helpless in the face of this sordid horror.
"Steady—old chap. Keep a grip on things. Of course—you have left her?"
Pentreath made a movement.
"What a scene,—Sorrell,—what a scene! I thought I was saving myself,—and she has pushed me into a filthy hell. And she had such innocent eyes. I thought"
"Do your people know?"
"Sorrell!"
"About the marriage,—I mean?"
"I kept it secret. And then—when the smash came—how could I?"
"Smash! What smash?"
"My father's business. You must have heard. It was in the papers. The bankruptcy proceedings."
"I'm not much of a paper man, old fellow. I'm sorry, most damnably sorry. What happened? But don't talk about it—unless"
Pentreath wanted to talk. The secret soul of him, cracked and overstrained, seemed to break in Christopher's room. He became pathetically garrulous, letting his emotional state expand itself in excited declamation. Kit could see the retinal redness of Pentreath's dark and sensitive eyes.
"Of course—the mater has a little money. The old place is sold. They have taken a cottage in the wilds of Sussex. Elsie is married—you know. Freda is at home; no servant, so she does things. They are trying to keep Molly on at school; she's sixteen now. And of course—my allowance. And I'm in debt; she left me debts. O, my God—Sorrell, what am I to do?"
Kit pondered a moment. Then he opened the door, and going to the head of the stairs, called down them to someone below.
"Ada. Oh, are you there? My friend is going to have supper with me. Can you manage something? Yes. Splendid. Very good of you."
He returned to Pentreath,—and pulling up the blinds, let in the slanting sunlight.
"No need to keep the blinds down, old chap. Face the light; light's good. I'll look after you."
Pentreath burst into tears.
"You are the only friend, Sorrell"
"That's all right. We have got to fix things up. I can treat you. No need for anybody to know. As a matter of fact, too, I don't spend all that my pater allows me, so I can manage to let you have a little."
Kit took Pentreath back to that back street in Clapham and stood in Pentreath's poor little room where the gas spluttered through a worn-out gas mantle, and the atmosphere of a woman still lingered.
Pentreath had flared into a sudden, futile rage.
"The scent she used. Beastly! I've had the windows open. Of course—I know now"
"What was she, old chap?"
"In a shop. I thought. She had such a baby face. Damn it,—I can't know anything of women!"
Christopher turned away. He saw that all the Pentreath photographs had been arranged upon the mantelpiece,—they were great people for photographs—the Pentreaths, and Maurice began to tell him that after the last vile denouement with his wife, he had got out all his photos.
"She wouldn't have them about. Said they looked like a whole row of snobs, and of course—after the smash and we began to quarrel. I put them away. Yes, it happened yesterday; I don't know where she has gone wished her dead. And then—I got out those photos, Sorrell; I wanted to feel that I had decent people. The poor old mater."
He crumpled down in a chair, and Kit pretended to look at the faces of the Pentreaths, Sir George with that air of tired and disillusioned dignity, Maurice's mother smiling as at an audience of working mothers, Elsie sentimental and pensive, Freda rather like a sandy kitten.—And Molly! Kit found himself looking more attentively at Molly Pentreath. Hers was a recent photo, and it seemed to him that she looked older than her sisters. He was interested. He saw the broad yet shapely face, two little half-moons of black hair showing under the brim of the hat, the dark yet fiery eyes, that wavy and mischievous mouth. Attractive, yes, a problematical little devil of a girl, with something of the gloss of browned steel in her eyes.
"Molly's at school," he found himself saying.
"If Molly knew!" said the voice from the chair.
"She needn't know."
And yet Kit had a feeling that he had such a sorry story to tell he would rather have told it to Molly than to any other of the Pentreaths. She was alive. She might flay you, but it was better to be flayed with understanding than to feel that you had wounded people who would refuse to understand.
"Look here,—old chap, you will have to stay in for a week or two. I'll come along each day."
"But the hospital! I'm one of Sir John Durrant's dressers."
Kit's answer was grave, and unanswerable.
"Write to your house-surgeon and say—O,—say your people wanted you down with them. And what about money?"
Pentreath would not reply.
"You must have some sort of allowance."
"A pound a week,—from the mater. And an aunt is going to help."
"All right,—I think I shall be able to let you have a pound a week."
"I'll pay you back."
"When you like. It is between friends."
On the following evening Christopher took a late train to Winstonbury. He had wired to his father, and Sorrell met him at the station, a rather anxious Sorrell.
"All right, old chap?"
"Quite," and Kit's hand-grip was steady and reassuring.
They sat up till late, talking over Pentreath's tragedy, though Kit's opening words had disturbed his father.
"I wonder if I might have a little more money, pater. You know,—you let me"
"Of course. How much?"
"It's not for myself. Pentreath has got himself into a mess."
Christopher thought that he had never seen his father looking so happy and so well. A great man, his pater! There were times when you felt a kind of inward glow spreading from him and warming you. He had no fussiness. Kit looked across at him sitting so much at his ease in the big chair, one leg crooked over the other, a hand clasping the bowl of his pipe, so ready to listen, so understanding in his judgments.
"We can manage it, Kit. You are absolutely right about wanting to help Pentreath. I can do it without docking you of your money."
"But that's too generous. You see,—I'm not spending much."
"Quite so. I'm banking it for you. You can open an account of your own—if you like."
"No. I would rather you sent me so much extra, and I can pass it on to Maurice. He wants looking after. Not quite enough sand."
Sorrell smiled. He was thanking the unknown God for the blessing of ballast, and for this sturdy structure that was his son. It was good to be able to feel as he was feeling.
Manage it? Of course he could. The Roland Hotels were paying thirty per cent., and the profits made by "Williams of Winstonbury" had risen by some hundreds of pounds above the Grapp level.
Sorrell curled himself up comfortably in bed.
"Life's good. Thank God it was the other man's boy. How damned selfish we are."