Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/90

 not quite know his man. There was an obligation, or what Roland conceived to be an obligation, and Sorrell found wisdom in reticence.

"I will do all I can to help him, sir."

"I'm sure you will. So far as I am concerned, Stephen, a man makes good or cuts his own throat. I observe things."

He began to play a piece of Debussy's, and Sorrell, after putting coal on the fire with careful noiselessness, went softly out of the room.

"Do your job and hang on," he thought. "Whatever that other man is he is not going to make me cut my own throat."

Ex-Sergeant-Major Buck arrived at the Pelican in the station bus. He wore a bowler hat and a blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and he travelled with a solid leather suitcase and a steamer trunk.

Sorrell had gone out to meet the bus, and he stood momentarily staring, et immense blue back emerging from the bus doorway. The figure separated itself, and turning showed a face that was like an uncooked round of beef, with two blue pebbles for eyes.

"Catch hold, my lad."

The man was holding out his suit case, and Sorrell, coming suddenly out of his trance, took the suit case.

"Are you Mr. Buck?"

"I am. Suppose you're the chap—under me."

Sorrell nodded. He was conscious of a sort of nausea. "Under me!" Yes, it seemed to him that those two words exactly expressed the situation. The man was all that his fears had pictured him to be, the big, raw-faced creature, all belly, voice, and blond moustache.

"You might fetch that trunk down."

"All right."

Buck's eyes rested on him consideringly for a moment, for he had divined in Sorrell something of that sulkiness that the private soldier's hatred had struggled to express without daring actual utterance. For Buck was less heavy in the uptake than he looked. "Dumb saucy! You are that sort,