The Pandervils (11 page)

‘Aren't you coming in, boys?'

Sarah was radiant; her eyes sparkled and birds sang in her voice. In years verging upon thirty, she now looked twenty-five, all her ordinariness transfigured by a sudden unexpected blossoming of the spirit. Her joy, telling its own story, was communicated to Egg; and being released from his own fear he forgot his hope as well, and a brotherly affection filled him. Good old Sarah, he thought; and then he said his thought aloud and, shaken out of habitual shyness, got out of his chair and flung himself upon Sarah, boyishly, and gave her the kind of playful bear's hug he had sometimes given her as a child and never since.

‘Why, Eggie!' said Sarah, blushing with pleasure. ‘What's come over the boy!' Grinning, and already confused, he saluted her cheek with a loud half-comical kiss. ‘Great silly!' she said fondly. ‘But aren't you boys coming in? We've been having music and I don't know what all. Have you finished your suppers, both?'

Now that he was within an ace of seeing Monica again, Egg was frightened. He looked down at his clothes. ‘I'm too dirty for company.'

‘Oh, never mind. They'll not notice that. You coming, Algy?'

‘Bed for me,' said Algernon. ‘Give my love
to Ernest, old gal.' He winked at his sister.

‘Get along with you!' said Sarah rosily.

The men went to their shared bedroom. Egg began diligently scrubbing himself and brushing his clothes, watched silently by his brother who had lost no time in undressing and getting into bed.

‘What d'you want to go to bed for, Algy? It's early yet.'

‘Nine o'clock nearly. Late enough for me. I'm tired. Come to that, what d'you want to doll yourself up for at this time o' night?'

Egg shrugged his shoulders. ‘Something to do.'

His next operation made Algernon sit up in bed with staring eyes. ‘Good sakes alive! You're never going to clean your teeth
now!
'

‘Looks like it,' said Egg, wishing he dared be so eccentric as to shave the golden down from his cheeks and chin.

‘What, at bedtime!'

‘Why not?'

‘Well I'm—' Algernon sank back on the pillow, apparently in despair of ever understanding his queer young brother. During the next few minutes he must have indulged in unwonted mental exercises, for when finally, the toilet completed, Egg lifted the latch of the bedroom door, a loud chuckle from the bed advertised Algernon's discovery of a new idea. It was an aggressive chuckle, not to be ignored.

‘Well,' said Egg, pausing. ‘Let's have it.'

‘Hullo, Egg!' cried Algernon, shooting up in
bed again. ‘Not gone yet? He grinned. ‘Well, good luck, boy!'

‘What do you mean?' Egg demanded.

‘Perhaps I'm not so blind as you think,' remarked Algernon. ‘And you're a gay young spark, you are, to be sure! Got a clean handkerchief?'

Egg, putting a bold face on it, came back into the room and opened a drawer. ‘Thanks for reminding me. Have to be a bit particular with parsons about.'

‘Better put some scent on it,' advised Algernon. And, intoxicated by his own wit, he burst into a roar of laughter.

Egg, though embarrassed and confused, was glad to find Algernon in a friendly mood again, for he knew that there was now no malice in his chaff. ‘Well, look here, Algy,' he said. ‘Don't go talking to anyone, will you?'

As if pleased and flattered by the appeal Algernon at once became sober. ‘Not a word. Trust me, lad… Goo' night.'

‘Night!' said Egg gratefully, from the passage. He closed the door, and made his way downstairs.

As he passed through the kitchen a new obstacle appeared in his thoughts. ‘Martha!' His voice was sharp with nervousness. Martha, as he could hear, was washing the supper things. Hearing no answer from her, he ran to the scullery door. ‘Martha, did anyone do the milking?'

‘There now!' said Martha. ‘I wonder if our
Sarah—no, she couldn't have! Reverend Twigg's been here for
hours
, he has. Ever since tea,
and
before.'

‘Oh, all right.' Egg's voice was dull with despair. ‘Just tell 'em in the drawing room that I've gone to do it, will you?'

Without another word he clumped into the yard where, in the dim light, he could see the cows— fabulous sculptured beasts with the moon rising behind them—grouped near the gate in the field beyond, mutely waiting to be admitted. He opened the gate, called intimately to the cows, and watched them lurch past him, one by one, into their shed. Only five in milk, thank God! But five was enough to prevent his seeing Monica again that night.

He lost himself in an unhappy dream, his head resting against a cow's flanks, his fingers mechanically working the teats, his mind drowsed by the rhythmic resonant sound of the milk spurting into the pail. ‘Come up, Blossom! Come round, lass! Steady now!' He lost sense of time and place, thinking only of Monica and Sarah and the Reverend Twigg and a hundred other distant things. And he went on milking cow after cow… until his attention was caught by a ray of light moving across the wall of the shed, a faint glow that with every passing moment grew more golden. He heard steps on the cobbled yard, and a voice speaking. It was Martha's voice. The next moment Martha came to the door of the shed carrying a storm lantern.

‘Hullo, Egg! You haven't finished yet, have you?'

Egg grunted. ‘All but one.' He did not look up.

‘He says he hasn't finished yet,' said Martha, over her shoulder. ‘He's got one more to do.'

At that he turned quickly on his stool. In the darkness behind Martha something moved. His breath came fast; he stood up eagerly. Monica stepped delicately into the circle of light.

‘Miss Wrenn,' explained Martha, ‘hasn't ever seen a cow milked, Egg. Fancy! Isn't it funny!'

‘So I've come to see you now,' said Monica. There was a ripple of laughter in her voice. ‘I hope you don't mind being watched?' While he was stammering an answer she interrupted him to say: ‘I mustn't stay long. Mr Twigg will be waiting to go. It's very late.'

‘Mr Twigg can go,' said Egg. ‘I mean,' he hastily added, ‘Mr Twigg needn't wait. I can see you back to the Vicarage if you'll let me.' He hoped his face was in shadow, so that young Martha could not read its expression.

Monica made no reply, but presently she said: ‘How soon will you be finished? Five minutes? Well, perhaps your sister wouldn't mind telling Mr Twigg.' She turned to Martha. ‘Would you be awfully nice, Martha, and run and tell Mr Twigg that I'm watching a cow being milked and that afterwards your brother is kindly going to see me back to the Vicarage?'

‘Yes, Miss Wrenn.'

‘Perhaps Mr Twigg will catch up with us?
We'll go round by the road, shall we?' she asked him.

The way by road was four times as far as the way by the fields. ‘Yes, by the road,' agreed Egg, eagerly.

‘Please tell him, will you?' said Monica. ‘Goodnight, Martha!'

Martha hesitated. ‘Shall I say good-night for you to Mother?'

‘Oh, I spoke to Mrs Pandervil before I came out,' said Monica.

When his young sister was gone, Egg ventured to look at Monica. He was brimming with joy in the thought that perhaps—her having said goodbye to his mother made it probable—she had not only made this milking an excuse for seeing him, but had even counted on his taking her home. Of course it was no more than kindness in her, a sweet maidenly pity for a need he had been unable to hide; but none the less his heart sang, and he could have fallen at her feet in gratitude.

The last cow was now all but drained of her milk. Her udder was empty, but despite his eagerness to be gone, he remained to urge a few reluctant drops from each teat in turn, the teats being held at the top, where they joined the udder, with his left hand, and squeezed slowly downwards—so that they looked limp and elastic—between three fingers and the thumb of his right hand. Then he carried his pail of milk to the dairy, shouted to Martha in the house, and without waiting for an answer rejoined Monica Wrenn.

They stood facing each other in the dim light of a newly-risen moon, the farmyard smells—an earthy exhalation—rising about them. Egg's fever left him. He had found her again and he was content. For all the agonies of the day this moment, this surpassing peace, richly atoned.

‘Are you ready?'

She answered: ‘Yes.' Her voice was as cool and confident as his own.

‘We'll go to the orchard,' said Egg; and they began walking side by side.

For a while there was silence between them, but as they reached the gate of the orchard, Monica abruptly stopped and said: ‘Oh, dear! I've just remembered something.'

‘What is it?' he asked.

‘I told them we'd go by the road.'

‘Never mind,' said Egg. After a pause he grew bolder and added: ‘So much the better. He'll not overtake us now.'

The orchard received them in a silence made magical, and left unbroken, by the trickle of the brook and the occasional movement of a wakeful sheep. The young apples clustering above their heads were silvered by moonlight; and, except where the wooded hillside cast its strong shadow over the valley, the whole orchard was flecked with a delicate, a ghostly radiance. At intervals there were little cheepings and flutterings—a rabbit, a night bird, some warm secret life; the grass rustled softly underfoot, the ground seeming billowy like smoke, undulating like a green and
silver sea; and the moon, a bright extravagant wonder, breaking free of the net of trees in which it had seemed to be caught, floated slowly up the sky. In this unsubstantial world the boy and the girl move unconstrained, for a while, like disembodied spirits, being one with the beauty about them, and breathing with every breath an intoxication that made speech of no account. But presently, his mortal sense awakening, that sense of passing time which goads man from pure ecstasy to action, he stretched out an arm and seized her hand. They stood once more, he and she, on solid earth, her large eyes, grown larger with wonder, gravely regarding him. What could he say? He tried to say that he loved her; but the words, so insignificant compared with this invisible reality vibrating between them, failed of utterance. He could get no further than her name. ‘Monica … Monica.' Her gaze faltered at sight of his worshipping eyes; and instinctively, without coquetry, she made as if to hide her eyes. ‘Ah, no! Let me look at you!' His fingers reverently stroked her cheeks. ‘Monica! Darling!' With a shudder of delight he let his hands fall gently on her shoulders, and murmured her name once more. And then he had reached her lips, and the world was annihilated in bliss.

When they released each other and stood apart, dazed and trembling, a hundred half-formed doubts and fears beat feebly in his brain. How had he so dared! What must she think of him! But to such things he paid no attention.

‘Let's sit down.'

He took off his coat and spread it on the dewy grass for her to sit on. His arm encircled her shoulder, against which she confidingly nestled. With his free hand he fell again to stroking her soft, rose-petal cheeks, long shuddering sighs marking the rhythm of his adoration.

Presently she remarked, with a comical frown: ‘What sticky fingers!'

‘The milk's dried on them,' he said ruefully. ‘I ought to have washed again.' His hand dropped despondently to his lap.

‘Darling
sticky fingers!' she cried, and snatched at them and pressed her lips against them.

She was laughing fondly at him; and laughing, but with laughter that quickly dissolved in compassionate tenderness, she suffered him again to enfold her, and met bravely, with sweet candour, the lips that craved her own. Without thought or intention he urged her gently backwards till she was lying full length on the ground. He flung himself down beside her, and, leaning on his elbow, crooked his left arm to make a pillow for his head. Bewildered with bliss, he gazed down upon her face, of which the essential character, the eternal sign, seemed luminously defined in this dim, strange, quietly breathing night. She was strong and proud and generous, and she loved him; nobly proportioned; innocent and ardent. She was womanhood, she was a woman, and she was Monica. Lying so still she might have been a sculptured goddess; but humanity shone in her great dark eyes and stirred in her bosom; her warm breath
fanned his cheek. All the heaped treasure of the world, more than all that life had ever promised him, lay in this little space; all heaven was caught, and crystallized, in this arrest of time. She smiled up at him, kindly, confidingly; and his lips grew hungry again.

With this third kiss, the longest and the deepest, a new pain quickened into life. ‘Oh, I wish …' He sighed and sighed again. ‘I wish we could be married soon, quite soon.'

‘Do you? Poor little boy!'

He stared at his dismal prospects. ‘It will be years and years. And could you bear to marry a poor farmer? Of course you couldn't!'

‘Of course not!' she said, tenderly ironical.

‘But really!' He looked dolorously at her. ‘It will be awful to wait so long.'

‘Don't think about it,' said Monica. ‘Think about Now. We've got Now, haven't we? And nothing can ever take this away, nothing ever, whatever happens.'

‘Nothing,' he declared fervently.

After that they were silent—whether for a long or for a brief while they neither knew nor troubled to inquire, for they had found a world in which time had no meaning. The quietude enclosing them—moonlight and rich shadows, the smell of grass and the sound of running water, all blended in one brimming cup—was unbroken by any rumour of what they had left behind. Monica's hair became loosened and fell at a touch of Egg's delighted fingers. She sat up with a little cry. ‘Oh,
my hair! How dreadful!' Blushing faintly, with startled eyes, she gazed at him; and the hair fell about her shoulders, a dark cascade, darker than night, and gave a new and exquisite definition to her face. Framing this revelation between his cupped hands Egg kissed her broad white brow, and kissed with small impetuous kisses that white middle path where the hair divided. And presently, with rising ardour, he gathered all her responsive loveliness into his arms, and again they fell back together into the grass, mouth yearning to mouth. His caresses became more eager and more fierce; imagination burst into flame; he stroked her breasts, and his hands and lips became eager, importunate.