Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/167

 "Isn't it true? The world has entered on a period of envy and bitterness. Industrialism and education—of a sort—have bred it."

"So you think of sending him to school"

"Where he will not be exposed to class hatred. My idea is to keep him there two years. Then he can come back to you for another year or so, before he tackles the real adventure."

"Doctoring?"

"That seems to hold."

"A University first?"

"I don't know—yet."

"That will expose him to the sneers of the new young working-class intellectuals—'A college man.

"I think that he will be exposed to that—in any event. As I see it—the social war is going to grow more and more bitter. You will be damned by the crowd class—even for having a certain sort of voice and face."

"Rather a gloomy view!"

"No,—not gloomy,—but a little grim. Life is bound to sort people out, and the envious fools will always end up as the under-dogs. I don't mean my boy to be an under-dog."

Yet, the incident that finally decided both father and son in the choice of the path that Christopher was to follow, was a trivial one, and yet to Sorrell convincingly significant.

The incident occurred at a boys' football match in which Mr. Porteous's boys' club was playing the Winstonbury council school. Kit was playing for the boys' club, and Sorrell was watching the game. He had a knot of noisy youngsters near him who began to jeer at one particular player.

They called him "Collars and Cuffs." They mocked him every time he came near them or when he had the ball.

"Now then—Nosy."

"Haw—Mr. Fellah."

What was more Sorrell saw that the boys of the council school team had Christopher marked. They made a dead set at him; he was something alien; he did not belong to their class pack. He was different.

Sorrell saw his son "fouled," on more than one occasion, and the boys near him gloated and laughed, but when Kit