Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/334

 Sorrell smiled back into his son's eyes.

"I think so, old chap."

Leaning upon the metal rail half-way up the tier of polished wooden steps Sorrell became all eyes and ears, and expectant consciousness. He was aware of the extraordinary stillness of the theatre, a warm and polished stillness. Something was making a queer, humming sound, like a kettle purring on a hob, and the sound was pleasant. Young men slipped into the places about him and remained silent or spoke to each other in undertones. How impartial they all seemed! He watched Nurse Biggar of the instruments, a tall, lean woman, with a buttoned-up mouth and eyes like black currants, whose every movement seemed automatically precise. The other nurses were mere shadows beside her. She was the genius of the place, mistress of those glass cabinets with all their surgical glitter. He was conscious of the soft, moist heat. The arteries at his temples throbbed slightly. His mouth felt dry, and under his ribs a knot of twisted suspense made him keep biting at his moustache or stroking it with a thin first finger.

A voice whispered near him.

"A tricky bit of work for one's first. Shouldn't like it."

Someone whispered back.

"O, Sorrell's all right,—a man who has boxed for the 'Varsity. Stout stuff."

And Sorrell reached out a glowing invisible hand towards the whisperer.

Then he saw his son in that space below, swathed in white, masked, talking to a grotesque figure with an immense head that looked too heavy even for his thick body. It was Orange. Sorrell had met Orange. Those intelligent brown eyes looked up at him for a moment and filled with a flicker of light. Kit's eyes glanced upwards in the same direction, and smiled. Sorrell nodded, and wondered what his own smile was like.

A reclining figure was wheeled in, with the anæsthetist holding a mask over its face. A quiet and orderly activity commenced. House-surgeons and nurses got busy; the two surgical dressers waited; someone had brought the anæsthetist his stool and table. Sorrell saw all this but vaguely, for his eyes were on his son who was standing with his two gloved hands together like the effigy of a devout