Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/66

 errand. She spoke to him with a queer, intimate brutality. She was like a woman with a whip who found an elemental pleasure in flicking the man with it, tormenting him, as though just to see how much of it he would stand.

"Stephen, run around to Pavits. The fools have forgotten the fish. You'd better bring it back."

"Get down on your knees, man, and scrub that hall. It's a disgrace."

"Hallo.—Stephen. No. 7 has been complaining that one of the mudguards on his car has been buckled. What! You don't know anything about it? What do you think you are here for?"

She showed a sly unfairness in her persecution. She appeared to watch Sorrell's activities, and would then descend upon him and heckle him for not doing the very thing that he was always doing. She would sweep out of her den and discover a match and a cigarette end in one of the ash-trays.

"Stephen!"

"Yes, madam."

There would be something very like fear in the man's eyes.

"Why don't you empty these ash-trays? I've told you a dozen times."

"I emptied them ten minutes ago, madam."

"O, don't tell me! Look at that."

Roland wondered why Sorrell stood it. Also, it seemed to him that the woman's attitude was illogical. If she pretended to such a passion for detail why did she find fault with the one member of her staff who did this job thoroughly? Was it because he was a man, and a man obviously out of his station? Why didn't she go upstairs and stimulate the casual energies of the young wenches who swept the dust under the beds and crammed rubbish behind the grates? Or why didn't she supervise the cleaning of the table silver, and discover that one fork out of three had the remains of some previous meal between its prongs?

For five days Thomas Roland watched this piece of interplay without appearing to watch it. A tacit sympathy had sprung up between him and the Angel porter; the one man gave service and gave it with open hands; the other accepted that service and accepted it as it was given.

Some time after tea on the sixth day when the lounge