Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/104

 were times when he was so intensely irritable that he had to hold himself in, grip something. It was the irritability of over-tiredness and dyspepsia. His impulses could be murderous. He would find himself looking at the back of Buck's head and neck; Buck had one of those round flat heads with the pink skin showing at the crown, and a great broad neck that bulged slightly over his collar. An axe, a hammer,—and one smashing blow on that pink, bald patch!

Sorrell had to suppress these murderous rages. He reasoned with himself.

"Hang on. Violence won't help you. The only way to balk the beast is to refuse to be broken."

But these rages tired him, for intense self-suppression is exhausting. He had an air of bored calmness. But he was beginning to feel bitter against Thomas Roland. He had imagined a possible friendship only to discover that he was of so little importance that Roland remained blind to his martyrdom. Self-absorbed, like most other humans!

Well,—why not complain?

There was a morning when Sorrell paused with his hand on the handle of Roland's door. Buck had been teasing him before the women, making a mock of him, and Sorrell was raging.

"I'll give notice."

He stood there for nearly half a minute, fighting his anger, and trying to convince himself that this anger was a wound that should be hidden. He was about to do the very thing that George Buck intended him to do.

He overcame the impulse. He was moving away when the door opened, and Roland came out. He looked inquiringly at Sorrell.

"Oh,—Stephen,—you might get that grey suit of mine pressed."

"Yes, sir."

"How's the boy?"

"Very well, sir."

Sorrell's answers were tense and abrupt, like sentences snapped out by an automaton. His face had a pale rigidity.

"You haven't borrowed any books lately."

"Not much time, sir."

He was aloof, haughty, but Roland did not appear to notice Sorrell's attitude, or if he noticed it he hid his aware-