Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 12

Sorrell had particular moments in the day when life was worth living. One of the moments was when he got to his attic at night, and counted up the day's tips and entered the amount in a little black note-book; the other moment of happiness came to him with a daily glimpse of the clean, frank face of his boy.

Kit would come to the arched entry, and Sorrell would meet him there, and Kit would see his father in the old, familiar blue serge suit grown more shiny and less neatly creased about the trousers. There were times when Sorrell wore an apron, but he contrived to appear before Christopher minus the apron. His pride allowed itself this little satisfaction.

They would stand together for five minutes beside one of the white Ionic pillars supporting the bow window of the dining-room, the boy looking up into his father's face. He was an observant child, and his love for Sorrell had undergone a transfiguration. Christopher noticed changes in his father's face; it looked more waxy; there were little wrinkles as of a troublesome knot of effort lying between the eyebrows. Sorrell was thinner; he stooped more.

But Sorrell's eyes smiled.

"How's she feeding you, son?"

Christopher had no complaint to make of the food that Mrs. Barter gave him at No.13 Fletcher's Lane. She was a good woman.

"She's been mending my shirts, pater."

"Ha," said Sorrell, "has she!"–and glanced at the boy's suit. Yes, that fresh face contrasted with the shabby clothes.

"Time I took you to the tailor, my lad. I think I can manage it next week."

Christopher could not analyse all that lay behind his father's eyes, but he felt the warmth of the love in them. He noticed that his father's eyes had a filminess, a veiled and secret delight, a moment of deep dreaming. They were the eyes of a man who was thirsty, and to whom the boy brought pure, clean water. Christopher refreshed him. His candid eyes and the brown warmth of his clear skin were unblemished fruit after the rottenness of those squashed and purple souls, those men who made Sorrell think of faces trodden on by an ever-passing crowd of sordid and unclean thoughts. His boy had youth, a future, possibilities; he was the sun in the east.

And poor Palfrey!

"My God!" Sorrell thought; "one must hold on to something, even if it is nothing but a clean shirt and a piece of soap."

Christopher never asked questions, awkward and embarrassing questions. He accepted his father's job, and he understood the significance of it far more subtly than Sorrell knew. It reacted on the boy, and deepened his sensitive seriousness.

At school he was very careful of his clothes. He did not say much about the school. It was all right. Better than London. What did he do in the evenings? O,–went for walks, mostly. There were woods outside the town, and the river.

Those few minutes were very precious to Sorrell, but they tantalized him. His boy was so apart from him all through the day, and whenever they met he would look eagerly at that frankly radiant face for the shadow of any possible blemish.

He felt so responsible, greedily responsible. The boy's clean eyes made the life at the Angel possible.

On one occasion when he had walked a little way along the footpath with Christopher he became aware of a face at a window. The woman was watching them. He caught her bold, considering eyes fixed on the boy.

He went back rather hurriedly into the passage, and met her there.

"That your kid, Stephen?"

"Yes, madam."

"He's not a bit like you. The mother's dead, I suppose?"

"I divorced her," said Sorrell, pale and stiff about the lips.

Usually, it was about eleven at night when he went slowly up the narrow staircase to the top landing where the staff slept. He carried a candle. Sometimes he would hear giggling and chattering in one of the girl's rooms, but he always went straight to his own, shut the door, put the candlestick on the chair, sat down on the bed and turned out his pockets. At this hour he did his precious calculations. His little black note-book was a model of neatness, with credit and debit entries.

July 7. Wages £1 10 0 Christopher–Board £1 0 0 " 7. Tips 4 6 Tobacco 2 0 " 8. " 3 0 Tooth brush 1 0 " 9. " 0 Christopher–Boots 1 0 0 " 10. " 7 0 " 11. " 5 6 " 12. " 1 0 " 13. " 9 0

He found that his tips averaged about twenty-five shillings a week. He paid Mrs. Barter a pound a week for Christopher's keep. He spent a few odd shillings on himself. He was contriving to save about a pound a week. £52 a year? If his health held out?

Already he had a plan for his boy, an objective that showed like a distant light through the fog of the days' confusion.

"It's my business to do my job thoroughly," he thought, "in order to get Kit a better one. I'll save every damned penny."

Life, the life that should have appealed to the cruder of his own appetites, had ceased to attract him, and all his energy appeared to concentrate itself and to flow in one particular channel. He developed a peculiar passion for thoroughness, even though he might curse the inanimate things upon which he had to exercise this thoroughness. Queerly enough, much of his thinking and his philosophizing were done while he was cleaning the various pairs of boots and shoes left outside the bedroom doors. He did not mind this job,–though scrubbing the bar floor made his gorge rise. It was like cleaning out a pen where unclean animals had left their ordure. But boots–! Boots had character. He got into the way of estimating the owners of the boots by their footgear. He had a preference for neat brown shoes, gentlemen's shoes, and his favourites came in for more polish. Young women's shoes–were they ever so chic–gave him no thrills. The boots he detested were the boots worn by a particular type of middle-aged commercial traveller, men who trod heavily and whose waistcoats bulged. He never put a hand inside one of these "swine's trotters" as he called them.

But with a free hour each day snatched from the Lioness's rather jealous paws, Sorrell began to see more of Christopher. He took his hour off from eight till nine, for he had found that too many motorists arrived after tea and he was not there to handle the luggage and to carry it up from the garage. He wished to be in evidence because of the subsequent tips. But in these long summer evenings he and Christopher wandered together; sometimes they chose the Close, on other evenings they wandered out a little way into the country; if it was wet Mrs. Barter let them sit in her parlour. She was kind to Sorrell she offered to do his mending for him.

Christopher loved trees. There was a particular elm in the Close, a green giant with a ring seat round its bole, under which the boy liked to sit. Nor was Sorrell sorry to sit. It conserved boot leather, and rested his tired feet. Kit had noticed on their short country rambles that his father walked as though his feet hurt him. He had noticed–too–that one of the boots was patched.

"Your turn next–pater?"

"What for, son?"

"Boots," said the boy.

He had fatherly moments towards Sorrell. He too had his plans, vague ambitions, and impulse that pushed him towards some magnificent job in the doing of which he would earn much money. He had sensed the effort in his father's life; he dreamed of taking his share of the effort.

"I can start work at fifteen, pater."

Sorrell was astonished.

"I hope not," he said, and glancing from the boy's face to the spreading branches of the elm he saw life and its effort symbolized.

"Most people grow like cabbages. Look at this tree. How many years–eh? O,–it was not in a hurry. We–are not going to be in a hurry."

The boy's eyes were questioning.

"Not as long as that–With you–sweating–and doing everything–"

"It's my job, Kit."

He looked mysterious.

"I've got plans. The thing is–Well, you don't know yet,–what you will want to do–I mean. No blind alleys, or office stools."

"You mean–dad–what I would like to be?"

"That's it."

"Seems–one's got to earn money."

"Wait a bit. There's something better: how you earn it. The real job matters more than the money."

"Yes," said Christopher very solemnly, "the sort of thing you love doing. Well,–I suppose I shall find out."