Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/400

 On that day Sorrell began to take morphia.

He had received two letters from Thomas Roland and had evaded the direct answer to his old friend's question, and a week before the homecoming of Kit and Molly, Roland and Cherry came down by car. They arrived unheralded, and Roland saw Fanny Garland and Mrs. Marks before Sorrell knew of their arrival. The women had sad eyes.

Roland found Sorrell lying in a long cane chair in his garden, close to his roses. He had that peculiarly serene look of a man whose body is under the influence of morphia, and whose brain is calm and lucid. His eyes seemed to have grown bigger, perhaps because his face had begun tothin. They were extraordinarily intelligent eyes, keen, with a queer glassiness, eagerly interested, missing no detail.

Roland sat on the grass beside him, and looked at Sorrell's roses. He had been shocked by the change in Sorrell, by that sharpening profile and that yellowing skin. Even in the passing of two or three weeks those fatal signals had developed a striking emphasis.

"Heard from Kit—I suppose?"

"Yes, they will be back next week."

Roland seemed on the point of asking a question, and while he was hesitating over the asking of it, Sorrell told him the truth.

"I've got cancer, old man."

His voice was quite unemotional, and Roland saw his eyes fixed upon the flowers with a soft and melancholy tenderness.

"Glad I saw the roses out. And Kit—married. I think it is going to be a happy marriage"

But there was emotion in Roland's voice when he answered him.

"But—my dear old man—how long?"

"Some months—now—I suppose. Suspected it quite a long while. My doctor man pretended to hope that it might be gallstones or something,—but I felt pretty sure."

"Does Kit know?"

"He doesn't. I thought it would be time enough when he came back to work."

"But—surely—something can be done? Why didn't you tell people, take some steps?"