Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/380



OME days seem made for tragedy, and on that bleak January morning when Hulks brought a telegram to Sorrell's office, and Sorrell read it and then sat looking at the rocking and complaining trees, he was conscious of fear. The telegram had been sent by Simon Orange from a post office in Berner's Street at half-past nine that morning.

"Your son ill. Come at once."

Sorrell caught the twelve o'clock train from Winstonbury, and with his eyes watching the grey country cowering under the bluster of the wind, he too felt his spirit cowering under the menace of fortuitous happenings. From the very first his intuition had reached out towards something that was to be feared. He had felt it in his soul's marrow, nor was there any comfort in the thought that Orange was no alarmist.

His taxi broke down in the Marylebone Road, and he left it, and carrying the suitcase into which he had tumbled a few things, he walked the rest of the way. And what a pinched world it was, blue of nose, and hurrying and fretful. The faces that passed him seemed to suggest that nothing good could happen. Fear and insecurity, and a helpless muffling of body and spirit against wind and circumstance. Sorrell hurried, but when he came to the door of No. 107 he found that he was afraid of that door. He looked at the brass plate with his son's name upon it, and was absurdly reminded of a name as a coffin. He pushed the bell, and rallied himself against panic. What was the use of panic? A man could receive a telegram and not tumble into emotional forebodings.

When the door was opened he entered with an air of confident briskness.

"What's this,—'flu or something?"

The woman in black looked cold and worried.