Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/395

 with an abruptness that made him hold his breath. He dropped the trug, and stood up, pressing his hand to his body, conscious of this pain as of something menacing and strange. It brought on a feeling of faintness and of slight nausea.

He went to the seat and sat down. He was conscious of a sense of stillness, not of fear, but of disturbing curiosity. Instinctively his hand explored that part of his abdominal wall under which the pain knotted itself. It was rather high up, in the V-shaped space between the ribs. He could feel nothing but a tenseness of the muscles.

"Indigestion," he thought; "stooping after a meal,"—but at the back of his mind more than a suspicion had crystallised itself that this pain betokened something very different. He had suffered from indigestion in the old days, but this thing was not the same. It stabbed you suddenly, and remained as a knot of gnawing anguish, just as though a claw were digging into your vitals.

He sat attentive and wondering, drawing his breath very lightly. The pain was passing, leaving him conscious of physical relief, but the sense of mental tension remained. He was aware of a vague menace.

A voice came from close beside him.

"What's the matter, Stephen?"

He found himself looking up into Fanny Garland's clear but anxious face. Maturity had come upon her with kindness; a pleasant and mellow shrewdness lived in the blue eyes.

"O, nothing,—indigestion. Stooping about too soon after a meal. Getting old."

He gave her a whimsical little smile.

"I had better try China tea."

She looked at him gravely.

"You had better see someone,—Kit"

"O, it's nothing. If I get much more of it,—perhaps. I have some weeding to finish."

Two weeks before Christopher's wedding the pain under Sorrell's ribs grew more persistent. It had been intermittent