Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/214

 "Buck up, Sorrell; you're late."

Christopher gave the little man a solemn and tolerant smile.

"All right, Peaby; I'm a bit slow in the water to-night."

Stroke, on Christopher's right, a ruddy, dark lad with roving eyes, grinned affectionately.

"Sorrell's doing calculations. I can feel him doing 'em behind me before we reach Grassy. Like this. If we row thirty, and gain two inches each stroke on Emmanuel 2, and Emmanuel 2 are rowing thirty-three, whereabouts in the Long Reach do we bump them?"

"We'll bump them before Ditton," said Kit; "you give us ten good ones, Skinny, when we get round Grassy."

And he relapsed into mysterious obscurity.

Strolling alone across the Great Court Kit considered the problem of his mother. For nine years she had been less than a shadow, and suddenly she had appeared before him as a woman of strange yet mature liveness. Never in his life had he felt more rigid and less impulsive than during those few minutes when he had stood looking down at her, feeling himself most strangely full of his father. The logic of youth can be very merciless, and Kit was not a sentimentalist. He was too big and vital to be sentimental. And what were the facts as he saw them? His mother had deserted his father at a time of wounds and misfortune. She had gone away with another man. Nine years had passed, and Sorrell had been both mother and father to him.

And she had talked of sportsmanship. What right had she? He had been utterly ill at ease with her, and through the haze of his astonishment he had felt himself groping in the presence of someone who had an illusive motive, a cleverness that was strange to him, something plump and persuasive. And yet, after all, she was his mother. She might be expected to feel some interest in him. But what sort of interest? After nine years? Rather late in the day,—surely? And he did not think that he needed her interest. It roused no response in him. The man that was Christopher took sides, and his nascent manhood was on the side of his father.

Christopher passed through the Great Court, and across Sydney Street into Jesus Lane. The long May evening