Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/103



ORRELL'S second persecution had lasted for two months.

The year gave an unusually beautiful spring, the spring that a gardener prepares for and so rarely enjoys, but to Sorrell the green budding of the year was a—season of strife and of humiliation. George Buck, flourishing like an elm tree, sucked all the sustenance and the moisture from his weaker rival.

"Saul,—luggage for number twenty-seven."

Sorrell was enduring blindly, but not so blindly as he believed. The work was now incessant, for the majority of the visitors stayed only one night, and their baggage had to be carried up one day and brought down the next. A strong lad would have thought nothing of the work, but to Sorrell it was travail and anguish and bitter sweat. There were times when his heart and lungs laboured so heavily that he imagined his old wounds to be bursting, and the healed tissues tearing themselves apart. At night he would look ghastly, and crawl up to his bed with shadows under his eyes. The old pain was coming back; he was afraid of food; he would lie awake with his heart labouring under his ribs.

But he would not surrender. Buck's trumpeting voice was an eternal challenge, and Sorrell felt that the struggle between them was physical, though their bodies never came into contact. The man meant to wear him out, to drive him to some outburst, to so vex and madden Sorrell that he would fly at him like a tormented animal. The rest would be so easy. One punch of the big fist on that sallow face, and a solemn report made to Mr. Roland. "Saul's assaulted me, sir. I had to hit him. I think he is a bit touched in the head. Queer. He won't do the place any good, sir."

Certainly, Sorrell was growing quick-tempered. There