Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 29

Mr. Roland turned up one day without any warning. The Sorrells, returning from one of their councils of state upon Castle Hill, found the red car standing outside the entrance to Vine Court. Roland himself was sitting in Mrs. Garland's parlour, and Mrs. Garland was telling him about the Sorrells and how she had agreed to board the boy.

"Oh, he has arranged that, has he?"

"Yes, sir."

Roland felt relieved. He had made up his mind to show no favouritism, and he had half expected Sorrell to ask him to allow Christopher to live with him at the Pelican. Sorrell's decision had saved him the effort of a refusal, for Roland knew that his own particular weakness was a too sensitive good-nature.

"Well, my lad, getting ready to go to school?"

He held Kit by the arm.

"I am going to the council school, sir."

"You are? And I hear you have been up Mrs. Garland's apple tree."

"Only once, sir. And she knew about it."

Kit's three elders laughed, and he wondered why.

Mr. Roland was staying at the Pelican, and he took Sorrell back with him to show him over the hotel, and in the hotel garden as they were passing through an archway in one of the yew hedges Roland paused with a question.

"That boy of yours? What's your idea?"

"In what way, sir?"

"About the school?"

"The town school. He decided it himself. I had thought of trying the Grammar School,–but I think the boy realized–"

"Did he?"

"We agreed on our motto: no humbug. He won't have to apologize for me–at the town school."

"I don't look at it in that way, but the boy's right. I rather envy you, Sorrell."

"He is the only thing I have got, sir."

They walked on, and Roland stopped to look at an old mulberry tree the trunk of which had had to be trussed up with a chain.

"Don't push him too much."

"I know what you mean."

"Education; damned rot–most of it. The healthy young idlers often do best in the end. They don't get all their individuality compressed into a mould. If I had a boy–"

He smiled at Sorrell.

"We bachelors and spinsters–! Well, we do see something of the game. I'd let my boy play hard! I'd have him taught to box; I wouldn't have him crammed. Natural growth. Later I should give him the best tutor who was to be had."

"And what about his career?"

"Leave it to his natural appetite. In a clean, straight boy who has been treated healthily the appetite is bound to develop. Surely? And then let him go ahead. Tell him to go ahead like blazes."

So, the autumn came and Christopher went to school, and Sorrell, in his blue coat with the brass buttons, began to carry luggage up and down the stairs of the Pelican. He carried it more easily than he had carried it up the stairs of the Angel Inn at Staunton, for his heart was lighter. The new world was a beneficent world because of the man who ruled it. And Sorrell, piling logs and coal upon the fire in the hall, felt the glow and the cheerfulness of it. In the garden the old trees were magnificently coloured, and the vivid grass was flaked with gold.

One of Sorrell's most pleasant memories was of walking in the garden just as the sun was setting at the end of a still October day. Robins were singing, and from the window of a sitting-room came the sound of music. Roland was playing Chopin's First Prelude. The slanting sun poured through the trees. The robins sang.