Читать книгу Sorrell and Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 34

During the winter months Sorrell had had time to make the acquaintance of a number of books, for Roland's sitting-room was full of them and he had allowed Sorrell to borrow. Sorrell's reading was various. It included Shaw, Edward Carpenter, Maurice Hewlett, the local history of Winstonbury and its surroundings, and the Michelin Guide. He kept a note-book. In it he had jotted down the distances between Winstonbury and all the places of note within a hundred miles of the town. He knew all the inns. He would go to the garage daily and extract from the chauffeurs any information as to the state of the different roads.

For, if a touring owner-driver appealed to him for information Sorrell felt a pleasing sense of efficiency when he was able to reel off the necessary facts.

"Quendon, sir? Forty-three miles. Forty-seven if you go by Langton. The Langton road is in better condition. On the other road they are laying a new water-main at Foxley."

Or–

"Hohndale House, sir? Open every Thursday from ten till twelve. You present a card at the lodge. The Italian gardens and the Vandykes are worth seeing. But–of course you know that, sir."

Somewhere in one of Mr. Roland's books he had read that with the subtilizing of consciousness the field of man's eternal struggle had changed. The contest had ceased to be physical and had become mental, psychical. Man no longer contended with external forces and with other men; the struggle was with himself.

He agreed, and he disagreed.

It seemed to him that in his own case the struggle was a double one. He had to fight himself, that more primitive part of himself that wanted to break out into rages, to despair, to grow moody or cynical, or to run for comfort to some woman. On the other hand his battle with the physical and natural forces was only too real. There was the luggage, and there was ex-Sergeant-Major Buck.

There was tacit war between them from the beginning.

It was most natural.

Each saw in the other a complete representation of all that was disliked, a collection of characteristics that caused the opposing prejudices to bristle. Sorrell was a brain, Buck a voice. One man's objective lay twenty years ahead; the other's was immediate and physical, the satisfying of the grosser appetites. Their contrasts did not attract; they repelled.

The struggle began at once, though there was no apparent struggle, for Buck, like many men of his type, had a good deal of cunning. He could truckle. He went about with an air of bluff cheeriness.

"Now then–my lad–."

He took control on the very first day. There was to be no doubt as to who was head-porter and who was second. His bulk rolled briskly about the place. In the army he had learned how to convey an impression of immense activity, while in reality he did nothing. He used his voice on the others.

He began by being genial to Sorrell, but his geniality was contemptuous, and intended to be contemptuous. There was shrewd malice in the blue eyes.

For to Buck, Sorrell was a type, the type of the over-educated, sly, argumentative, sullen, weedy, mutinous recruit. A clever, circuitous, insolent devil. Uncomfortably quick, too, a fellow who needed watching.

If Sorrell found Buck's self-confident bluster offensive, his own quietness and his reticences were equally offensive to the other man.

Buck had his own justifications.

"Nasty,–weedy,–supercilious chap. Ex-officer. I'll teach him a thing or two. Jealous of me. Of course. He'll need watching. He's not the sort of man I want under me, no, not by a long chalk. Some big, good-natured chap, quick with the luggage, and not too quick with anything else. Well,–I think I know a thing or two."

At the back of his mind was a wish to get rid of Sorrell. He realized that in spite of the other man's weediness he was a competitor who was to be respected.