Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/268

 Kit turned and faced his friend.

"I have been married six months."

"Who to?"

"Oh, a girl I met down there where I keep. I felt—I had to get married"

He was sitting up now, his long arms rigidly extended, and his hands clasped between his knees. He looked about the most broken thing that Kit had ever seen, and yet Kit was wondering. Marriage, at twenty-three! The sensitive Pentreath,—shivering at the shadow of his own sex! But why?

"You have something to tell"

"Good God," said the man in the chair, bending forward as in agony; "something to show you,—Sorrell. What will I do?"

The irony of it, that his friend should be his first patient, polluted in body, and shamed in soul! Kit stood by him, gripping Pentreath's shoulder, shocked and angry, feeling himself rather helpless in the face of this sordid horror.

"Steady—old chap. Keep a grip on things. Of course—you have left her?"

Pentreath made a movement.

"What a scene,—Sorrell,—what a scene! I thought I was saving myself,—and she has pushed me into a filthy hell. And she had such innocent eyes. I thought"

"Do your people know?"

"Sorrell!"

"About the marriage,—I mean?"

"I kept it secret. And then—when the smash came—how could I?"

"Smash! What smash?"

"My father's business. You must have heard. It was in the papers. The bankruptcy proceedings."

"I'm not much of a paper man, old fellow. I'm sorry, most damnably sorry. What happened? But don't talk about it—unless"

Pentreath wanted to talk. The secret soul of him, cracked and overstrained, seemed to break in Christopher's room. He became pathetically garrulous, letting his emotional state expand itself in excited declamation. Kit could see the retinal redness of Pentreath's dark and sensitive eyes.