Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/337



ORRELL, having purchased No. 107 Welbeck Street, had put in a firm of painters and decorators, and when these had departed, a vanload of furniture arrived by road from Winstonbury. A waiting patient looking idly out of a window of No. 106 saw "William of Winstonbury" painted in white upon the green van. For two-years or more Sorrell had been collecting the furniture for that portion of Kit's house which would matter, and it had been stored in the Winstonbury warehouse, beautiful eighteenth century pieces, much of it Queen Anne. China too, and prints, and needlework pictures, and old Sheffield plate and silver. Williams, now a partner in that very stirring business, had added to it a large shop in the High Street where the more modern minded could be supplied with everything from a mock-antique four post bedstead to a soap dish. The Young William and the Old William both flourished exceedingly.

The furnishing of this house was to Sorrell like the putting of a last and delicate polish upon the casket of his son's career. It was done lovingly, and with the sensitive satisfaction of a man who had come to realize that beauty in line and in texture has a mysterious and sweet permanence. The mellow sheen of the wood, and the gentle richness of the old colours were a perpetual delight, and in wandering over Kit's house Sorrell knew that most secret joy, the perfume rising from the full flower of accomplishment.

"I can do no more," he thought.

And so thought his son, touched and a little troubled, and perhaps in his heart of hearts vaguely self-critical. If ever a man had had the path of his career blazed for him and made easy! Yet, he understood his father's reasons, the shrewd and steady purpose of the old gladiator