Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/398

 back to the smiling occasion when he could bear to smile with the crowd.

It was Tom Roland who saw Sorrell make that surreptitious yet hurried move towards a table where a waiter was filling champagne glasses. Sorrell almost snatched at a glass and drank it, one hand bearing heavily upon the table. He reached for a second glass and drank that also with little painful gulps.

Roland went quietly up to him.

"Feeling a bit—faint, old man?"

Sorrell's jaw was set hard. His hand reached for Roland's shoulder.

"Let me hold on a moment. Shall be all right in a moment. Don't want to be a ghost at the feast."

"What's wrong!"

"Nothing. A bit faint. Regular old woman, Tom. I'm all right now."

The wine had worked, and the spasm of unbearable pain was dwindling; some of the colour came back to his face. He looked flushed and smiling when Kit's voice was heard in the crowd.

"I'm looking for my father. He seems to have got lost"

Roland put up a hand.

"Here, drinking healths"

Kit came pushing through. He looked happy, so very happy, and Sorrell's heart yearned fatally towards him.

"Pater,—I have been looking for you everywhere."

Smiling, Sorrell led his forlorn hope forward.

"Tom and I, a couple of bibulous old fogies"

"Molly is going to cut the cake,—and she wants you"

"Right, old chap," and Sorrell took his son's arm.

Half an hour later he saw them make their escape through a crowd of excited women and showers of rose petals. He stood on the lowest step under the red and white awning. Rose petals showered on him. Kit paused with a very flushed face, and eyes that had a slight dimness.

"Good-bye, dear old pater"

"Good-bye, old chap, good luck and God bless you."

He gripped Kit's hand. He felt the soft warmth of his son's wife's lips as she kissed him. Then, they were gone.