Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/396

 and elusive; there had been one whole week when it seemed to have disappeared. He had called in one of the Winstonbury men who had happened to be attending a visitor at the Pelican.

"I am getting some indigestion. I dare say you will be able to give me something to stop it."

The doctor had looked at Sorrell's tongue, asked him a few questions, advised him what not to eat, and had prescribed a simple mixture.

"If that does not put you right—let me know."

A week or two of amelioration had been followed by a disturbing recrudescence. Not only was the pain more persistent and more frequent, but Sorrell had a queer feeling that something had arrived there under his ribs, an alien thing, obscure yet growing more definite. Lying in bed at night, and pressing his hand gently against his body he fancied that he could feel a resistance that was almost but not quite a new substance. He was not afraid, but he would lie awake feeling chilled and troubled, conscious of a sudden sense of insecurity, and: the nearness of the unknown.

Well,—what of it? His mind was full of Christopher's wedding, that new and adventurous phase. He was going up to Welbeck Street a few days before the affair, and it was no wish of his to carry a sick, face to his son's wedding. The future was full of their mutual plans. They were keeping on the bungalow at Marley, and the top floor at No. 107 was to be Molly's. They had faced the problem of two workers in one house. At Marley Kit's wife could take her temperament into retreat. Kit would go down for week-ends, and bathe, and sun himself on a punt, while she—full of her creating—would draw the curtain aside and come to him out of the midst of it. "Let's play—now. It's down on paper, and I'm happy."

Sorrell lay awake with a tense forehead, and that alien thing gnawing its greedy way under his ribs. He faced the potential reality. Two or three weeks of stoicism, and a mood of soldierly resignation! He was not going to whimper, and if the thing was what he thought it was, well—he would have to face the finality of it. He did not want to be fussed or messed about. As for the Winstonbury doctor-man Sorrell decided to leave him to think that that bottle of physic had done the trick.