Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/383

 "Good," said Sorrell, looking as he had looked sometimes during the war, and not knowing that he faced a forlorn hope with the eyes of death.

It was the simplest of meetings, so quiet and in its way so brave. Kit's face was both earthy and flushed. His left arm was a mass of dressings. Sorrell sat by the bed with a face that twitched very slightly, and eyes that hid their fear.

"My own fault, pater."

"O, no one's fault."

"But—I want you to say. Don't you agree? I'd rather go under fighting—than come out crippled."

Sorrell sat for a moment with his head in his hands.

"Life's good," he said.

"But one's job? Half a life."

"Let's take it fighting," said his father; "all or nothing."

He sat and held Kit's hand. He felt bewildered, and yet holding to some grim ideal, scared and sick and cold but obdurate. Almost he could remember the cold and clammy feel of a trench wall, with the sandbags close to his face. And death going over, and his feet numb, and his belly full of emptiness.

Then he understood that Kit wanted to say something.

"Pater, dear old pater."

Sorrell's head jerked stiffly.

"I should like to see her. Would you?"

"I'll go and find her."

"O, my dear, haven't you heard?"

Molly had come into Cherry's red and black room, as though life can be triumphant even when your enemy is only the weather. That rich, white skin of hers defied the cold, and her eyes glimmered with the wind. She wore black, a long coat with a collar of some mouse coloured fur. She had stood by the fire, throwing back the cloak like a sheath, hair and eyes gleaming.

"What? Not measles in the nursery?"

"No, Kit; he is dying. O, the poor father!"

There was a stillness. Molly had a hand on the black oak