Читать книгу Sorrell and Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 15

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 substance front 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 men, 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.