Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/304

 worse than infamous—unknown. Kit was less greedy than most young men, and his vision of fame was both human and fine, but he felt the hustling and contemptuous shoulders of the great city, saw its placards and its sky-signs, read its names, heard its trumpet cries. There were nights when he felt fierce.

There were other nights when he knew melancholy. He would wander round Brunswick Square and recall those seemingly more romantic days. He thought of Pentreath, Dr. Pentreath, solidly established at Milchester as third partner in an old practice. Pentreath—the sensitive Pentreath—was earning his own living. He thought of Mary Jewett; he felt her, and there were nights when he yearned Poor, sensuous, dark-eyed Mary! He would go wandering over the ground, gathering memories, memories of arms and lips, and clouding hair in the midst of the warm darkness.

"If she were here," he thought, "I might feel less restless."

Sometimes he faced the thought of failure, comparative failure. He saw himself hanging on and at St. Martha's watching other men snapping up the hospital appointments, while he would end by drifting into some provincial sideshow where as a junior partner his adventurous excursions into surgery would be carefully curtailed. Competition was so fierce.

There were other eager young men shrewdly watching for future niches at St. Martha's, men who went purring softly about the place and rubbing themselves ingratiatingly against the legs of their seniors.

Roland had advised him to hang on, and Christopher,—being older than his years, supposed that his seniors had a wisdom of their own, and a way of looking at things that might differ from the young man's view. Older men were less in a hurry; they had not the same need to hurry; they could afford to be deliberate.

One morning Sorrell was walking along the main corridor with one of his registrar's books under his arm when he saw Simon Orange come limping out of the board-room and stand there looking to and fro like a saturnine ape. Orange was an oddity. Irreverently known as the "Orang" and "Septic Simon," he held the appointment of surgeon to the out-patient department of the hospital. He was