Sorrell and Son (Alfred A. Knopf, printing 9)/Chapter 4

by George Warwick Deeping

IV

1

AN incident that occurred about five weeks after Sorrell's arrival at the Angel startled him into a sudden aliveness towards the drift of other people's temperamental whimsies.

It was early in the morning, before the paying part of the hotel had descended to his breakfast, and Sorrell was down on his knees in the lounge cleaning Be the spilt contents of one of the ash trays. Someone had knocked it off the table the previous night. The two waitresses were busy in the coffee-room, and one of them, a little sallow girl, with a shock of black, bobbed hair, running out towards the kitchen with a serviette over her arm, saw Sorrell kneeling. He had had glances from the girl; she was always passing him in the passage, but Sorrell was too tired for life's little thrills. He had forgotten the fact that he might be attractive to women. Anyhow, the girl slipped the napkin over Sorrell's eyes,—and drawing it tight, bent down till her mop of black hair touched his head.

"Guess who it is——?"

She giggled, but before Sorrell had made any effort to free himself, the napkin was whisked away, and he had a glimpse of Millie's slim legs disappearing urgently down the passage leading to the kitchen. Some one had come down the stairs, and was passing behind him, and glancing round, he saw Florence Palfrey going towards the office.

It was the most trivial of incidents, a mere piece of hoydenish mischief, but when the staff of the Angel sat down to its midday meal Sorrell realized that the little dark girl was not present.

"What's become of Millie?"

The other waitress gave him a sour look.

"You—ought to know."

"But I don't know."

"She—sacked her."

"What for?"

"Romping."

Not much was said, though it was obvious that the other girls felt themselves injured by the peremptory ejection of a comrade, but they were afraid of the Lioness, and they mistrusted Sorrell—the man. He became aware of the mistrust; it made him uncomfortable; moreover he had felt a sudden, sordid tremor of fear.

That which had happened to Millie might happen to him, and he knew that for the boy's sake such a thing must not happen.

The keenness of his own anxiety was a humiliation, and he accepted the humiliation, explaining it to himself quite frankly as though he were explaining the wearing of a shabby suit of clothes. He was alarmed at the possibility of his being pushed out into the street, of losing his thirty shillings, his keep, and his tips. Yet this fear shocked him. That a man should be afraid of being evicted from such a caravanserie! He had not realized how much the Angel Inn had become his "straw," and that he was ready to cling to it with the instinctive terror of a man who feared the unknown.

That afternoon he spent himself in a passion of activity. He went about eagerly looking for work. He made work. He attacked the various slovenliness of the place.

He was aware of the constant nearness of the woman. She—too—appeared to be in a restless and active mood. She kept coming out of the office of the "Cubby Hole," going out or up the stairs and returning. She saw Sorrell in all sorts of postures and places, on his knees polishing the "surround" of the lounge, cleaning the glass panels of the doors, carrying out the aspidistras and washing them in the yard. She had one particular glimpse of him doubled up under the big walnut table in the passage, but what he was doing there she did not pretend to know.

Though she passed him a dozen times that afternoon she neither spoke to him nor appeared to look in his direction, but each of them was conscious of the other. The feline intuition of the woman divined Sorrell's fear. He was like some busy thing in a cage; propitiatory, eagerly turning a wheel. Also, she knew that he was cursing her, himself, and his activities.

Captain Sorrell, M.C.!

She was moved to brutal laughter, but her laughter was silent. There were thoughts in her too that purred. She had Sorrell on his knees, and she could tell him to get up or remain there, to come or go. And there were inclinations in her that were whetted by her sense of power.

"Damn the woman! Is she going to——?"

He had a queer feeling that her passings and repassings were not haphazard. They concerned him. She took notice of him by ignoring him; her seeming indifference had an intimate and veiled significance.

He had carried in a pair of steps and was polishing one of the big mirrors in the lounge. He saw himself in it, his anxious, sallow face, the sweep of the hand carrying the wash-leather. He threw silent abuse at his own reflection, that sedulously active and worried creature.

"You wretched failure,—you grovelling idiot! Rushing about to create a good impression——"

Suddenly, he saw her figure drift into the mirror. She was standing behind him, looking at him. He fancied that he detected amusement in her eyes, the kind of amusement a lioness might be expected to enjoy if a lioness had a sense of humour.

"Very busy to-day,—Stephen."

"Yes, madam."

He went on with his polishing, believing that he was going to hear about the silly incident of the morning. He waited. She stood and watched him for fully a minute, and he felt the back of his neck and his ears all flushed. Confound her! What did she want? Why didn't she go away, or stick her claws into him and have done with it?

He reached up to a far corner of the glass, and when next he searched for her reflection, he found that she had gone. He was conscious of relief, but the sense of relief was only partial. He felt her somewhere. Where?

The door of the "Cubby Hole" was wide open, and he could see a part of the interior reflected in the mirror, a strip of green carpet, a red cushion, part of the frame and glass of the window. She was in there, sitting on the sofa, watching him. He saw the gleam of her hair, and two eyes, very dark, like the eyes of a creature watching him from the gloom of a wood. He fancied that she smiled.

He tried to concentrate his senses upon the mere glassy surface of the mirror, and to keep his vision and its accompanying thoughts from passing through to the deeps of it where the woman was, but he could not help focusing her. She remained there, watching him, enigmatic, motionless, like a great tawny cat. Sorrell decided to leave the mirror. He came down the steps, and was folding them up when he heard her voice.

"Stephen——"

"Yes, madam."

"There is a glass in here. It hasn't been touched since—since——"

She laughed as he stood in the doorway with the steps and bucket.

"Since Adam and Eve."

Sorrell obeyed her with an air of great briskness. The mirror was over the mantelpiece, a gilt-framed thing of the "Regency" period, and when he got on the steps he found that the top of the frame was black with dust. Florence Palfrey had picked up a paper that had been lying on the sofa, but instead of reading it she fanned herself with it, for the day was hot.

"Anyone in the lounge?"

"No."

Sorrell came down the steps to dip his leather in the bucket.

"Very warm to-day."

She did not reply, but watched him get to work, and his movements told her that he was nervous. She was satisfied in a part of herself. And then she began to talk to him with an air of casual intimacy, and in a way that she had never talked before. He was both Captain Sorrell, and M.C., and her "boots" and porter.

"Rather different from the war, Stephen."

He agreed. He felt strangely alert.

"How did you get your M.C.?"

"I didn't know——"

"Oh,—I know most things. Well? How?"

"Oh, in a trench raid."

"Were you raiding the others?"

"No, madam, the others were raiding us."

He was working hard at the mirror, with his back to her, and somehow he felt that he had to keep a distance, though he could not analyse the feeling.

"Well,—what happened? Don't be so dashed modest."

"The Germans came into our trench."

"Yes."

"And they stuck some of our chaps. It's a nasty tool, the bayonet. And there was a bit of a panic. I was in a deuce of a funk."

"That's funny!"

"It wasn't at all funny. But something seemed to go off inside me—and I saw red."

She nodded her head. She was considering him, eyes half closed and fiercely languid.

"So you can see red. Well,—I shouldn't have thought it. It's rather—interesting. You must have been stronger then."

"I was. But it's not mere beef——"

"No. Not bullock's strength. Wounded—I suppose?"

"Twice."

"Badly?"

"A bit of H. E. in the chest—the second time. I had to come home—after that."

He both felt and heard the rustling of the paper as she fanned herself, a disturbing sound, like the rustling of leaves or lace. He had finished cleaning the mirror, and he came down the steps rather hurriedly, folded them up, and grabbed the bucket.

"Anything else, madam?"

She observed him steadily above the rustling paper.

"No. You are an odd fish, Stephen."

He stared, and she laughed.

"Odd as odd. Go and see if you can find anything else to polish."

2

From that day Sorrell began to perceive Florence Palfrey more and more vividly as the tawny creature, the lioness who had him shut up in her cage. She did not say much, but she managed to convey to him the impression that he was dependent on her, and that she had but to raise a paw——. Her way of dealing with him was both subtle and simple; it mingled moments of provocation and of caressing cruelty with sudden flashes of naked intimacy. Her badness was so unclothed at times that it frightened him.

For Sorrell was thinking of the boy, and his thoughts turned to escape from any entanglement, a shabby affair with a woman who was both elemental and cynical. He did not want it. He was tired of life as a merely personal adventure, and when this thing loomed over him he realized that he was living vicariously, and that the very roots of the will to live drew their sustenance from the youth of his boy.

He was frightened.

For he had a most absurd feeling that he was being kept and fed and played with in order to be devoured. He divined her ruthlessness, her ferocity, her stealthy, amused strength. For some reason he had piqued her, and he wondered why. Was she intrigued by the fact that he was a gentleman handling luggage and cleaning boots? Or had the obvious man, the blatant, butcherly people who stormed into her den ceased to pique her? He could imagine a lioness being bored and looking about her for some new sort of victim.

Moreover, Sorrell was helping poor old Palfrey up to bed, and though Florence Palfrey's husband might be no thing of loveliness, the very act of helping a man begets a sense of comradeship. John Palfrey was derelict; no one bothered about him now; he might shout feebly down the stairs with that husky voice of his, and no one would take any notice.

"Hallo,—hot water,—shaving water——"

On more than one occasion Sorrell found him standing on the landing in his old blue dressing-gown, weeping.

"I—want—my breakfast."

He had it in his bedroom, and it was Sorrell who took upon himself the duty of carrying up poor Palfrey's shaving water and his breakfast tray, for in Palfrey he saw the husk of a man, a man who had been devoured.

"You're a good chap, Steve. I'm of no account now. Who cares?"

"I do, sir."

Palfrey made a sudden clutch at his arm.

"Don't you ever marry, Steve; don't you ever let a woman get you. She'll eat you up."

And Sorrell understood.

It happened one evening when he had helped the dying man to bed that Sorrell found Florence on the landing outside the door. The landing was badly lit, and she was standing by the stairs with one hand on the rail as though in the act of pausing. She was in low-necked dress of black, with her arms bare to the shoulders.

Sorrell still had his hand on the handle of John Palfrey's door. Her sudden presence there agitated him; he felt that he had to get by her quickly and go downstairs. He could smell the particular scent she used.

He walked towards her,—and remaining where she was she closed the stairs to him unless he should push rudely past close to the wall.

"Put him to bed, have you?"

She looked Sorrell full in the eyes as though her stare could beat down any independence that was in him.

"He won't last long now."

Her tone was callously significant. It was as though she was trying to convey to him her appreciation of his soft-heartedness, to humour something childish in him, even while she conspired with him as to the future. O, well, she could lie sleekly in her cage and wait for this odd fish who boasted a sort of absurd integrity of his own.

Sorrell felt shocked. Something flamed in him; he could have struck her, thrown her down the stairs, with furious abuse, but behind her he seemed to see the face of his boy.

"It is pretty rotten for a man——" he said.

He felt ashamed before her. His eyes looked over into the well of the stairs, and then—with an abrupt and awkward "Excuse me," he pushed past her and went below.

He felt that he needed air, to be alone somewhere under the stars, and daring the desertion of his post he went out into the High Street, and along it into the Market Square. The place was deserted. He saw a great yellow moon hanging in the tops of the elms, and beside it the blackness of the cathedral towers. He walked up and down, hatless, and in his shirt sleeves. He felt that he wanted to rush round to Fletcher's Lane, and catch up Christopher and hold him.

"The one clean thing left to me," he thought.

His lips made a movement as of spitting.

"Good God! That a man should be left to die like that,—like a piece of rotting meat in a corner! If I should have to die like that? Damn her——!"

He was in a fever to escape,—but how? Necessity held him chained. If he broke the chain and plunged? He was saving money, just a little money, and if he could win a breathing space he might have time to look about him. It was the boy who mattered. If he the man—surrendered—and allowed himself to be cajoled and to be devoured——?

But why this niceness? How easy it would be for him——. She had hinted so broadly. But his soul's exclamation was a "Pah!" To step into that poor sot's shoes, and to be pushed eventually over the edge of all decencies when the feline creature was tired of him.

No. He struggled. The nature of the struggle was vague and elemental, and he did not visualize it as one of those primitive crises in a man's life when something that is stronger than his mere appetites pushes him a step higher up the precipice. He clung to a prejudice, and to the one human thing that mattered. He was not going down into the dubious muck, and to feel himself smeared with it when he met the eyes of his boy.

"Damn her," he said, "I'll fight through," and he went back to the hotel with his eyes staring as they had stared at horrible moments during the war.

3

Sorrell's frenzy of activity continued. It seemed as though he were trying to lose himself in a desperate combat with the multifarious slovenliness of the Angel Inn, to hide himself in the dust cloud of his own energy. He was never still. He ran round and round in his cage, sweeping, polishing, tidying, carrying things. His indefatigable activity itself even upon the loungers in the "Cubby Hole."

"That chaps of yours seems full of juice, Flo."

"Well,—why not? He doesn't belong to a Trade Union."

"Queer sort of beggar. Looks as though he thought your pub wanted a wash."

"That's not unlikely."

"Oh,—I say! That's a bit thick. Hallo, Bob, old bean. Crush in here. What's yours?"

In this vulgar world Sorrell's nausea became too chronic and too real. He began to be afraid of his meals, and to wake at night with a knotted pain under his ribs. He thought of going to see a doctor, but it was not a doctor that he needed, and he knew it, but he did arrive at the more economical expedient of slipping into a chemist's shop. There were no other customers, and Sorrell made his confession across trays of soap and washing gloves and tooth-brushes.

"I've got indigestion. Can you give me something?"

The chemist was a colourless little man with thin and peculiarly compressed lips.

"Pain after meals?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Oh, it varies."

He met the man's scrutinizing eyes.

"Looks as though you wanted a tonic. Run down. I'll give you something."

Sorrell sacrificed a precious three and ninepence for a bottle of tonic and some tablets.

"Help you to get rid of the wind, you know."

The stuff did him no good, for he was worried, and overworking himself, and eating bad food and rushing about after he had eaten it. The constant pain and the discomfort began to depress him; he felt less and less of a man, and more and more of a sick animal in a cage. He had mocds of melancholic apathy when a voice within him played tempter, saying—"What's the use? You are a failure. Even your wretched body is a failure. Why not give in, slide, go down the shoot? After all, what is the fuss about? A woman and a boy and an adventure that most men would laugh at? You're a fool."

Kit saw a change in his father. Sorrell's eyes looked strained, and the whites of them were muddy; he stooped more, and appeared uneasy when he was sitting on the seat under the elm. A discouraged figure. And yet Christopher did not like to ask questions.

"The work makes you rather tired, pater."

"Oh,—a bit. I shall get used to it."

"Couldn't there be—something else?"

"I've got a plan," said Sorrell.

He was always talking about that plan. The more difficult it seemed of attainment the more obsessed was he by the contemplation of it. His plan was like a hypothetical sun invisible during the greater part of an English summer, but there, and liable to shine some day next year. He forced himself to appear confident before the boy, for he realized that Christopher was the only living person who believed in him, and he wanted Christopher to go on believing in him, especially when he was in danger of ceasing to believe in himself. It was suggestion, the dear—trusting stimulus of youth.

One day he was sick, and he went about with a face all pinched and the colour of cream, making himself do things. He was tidying up a disorder of papers in the commercial room when the woman glided in.

"You don't look well, Stephen."

There was a seductive kindness in her voice, and he mumbled something about his dinner not having agreed with him.

"You fuss too much," she said.

He went on tidying the papers, feeling that her presence radiated a false sunlight.

"You—might—do much less—if you cared, you odd fish."

He understood her.

"It's my job," he said.

"As you please."

When she left him he sat down in one of the chairs, and held his head in his hands.'