Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/394

 Kit. Christopher's death would have been a tragedy. But dying was not tragic, when one had obtained one's results. Just sleep, the rounding off of the life's effort.

He relit his pipe and thought of Kit's coming marriage early in June. He was glad of it. Five years ago he might have grudged him to Molly, but now he had come to look on life as a flowering and a setting of the fruit, a beautiful mystery to be shared in and not hindered. Let them be happy. Let Kit cleave to his wife. Some things are unforgettable and perhaps Sorrell understood almost without realizing it, that as his son came nearer to the final maturity, the memory of his father would grow more vivid and more significant, an ever present nearness. To be felt and remembered—in that way—years hence—would matter. It would be shining out of a life's afterglow.

The happiest hour of Sorrell's day was before him. He left the seat under the tree, and going to the red brick out-house where he kept his tools, he took a Dutch hoe from the wall, and a trug and a weeding fork from the potting table. The soil in the rose beds needed stirring,—and there were young weeds among the violas. The hoeing he did first, taking his coat off and hanging it over the bough of a fruit tree. With the soil of the rose beds broken up into a brown and powdery mulch, he set to work among the violas. The viola beds had been dressed the previous autumn with heavy loam, and the weeds of the old turf that had not rotted were thrusting up, docks, bulbous rooted buttercups, and here and there a blade of couch. It was a job that needed thoroughness and patience, and Sorrell crouching and working away with the weeding fork, forgot everything but the intruding weeds and the blue and yellow and purple faces of the flowers.

Suddenly, he sat back upon his heels and remained quite still for some seconds with a look of attention that also expressed anxiety. Not fear, but disquietude. It was not the first time that this twinge of pain had gripped him, like a hand twisting something at the pit of his stomach. Queer, disturbing, a nuisance. He had noticed that stooping seemed to bring it on. But hang it all, half gardening is stooping!

In a minute or so the pain had passed, and Sorrell resumed his weeding. He had cleared half the bed, and he was in the act of changing his position when the pain caught him