Crossing the farmyard one crisp May morning, his arm hooked under the handle of a bucket half full of bran mash, his eyes staring at the sunlit cobblestones, Egg Pandervil moved unconsciously into his new life. A shadow fell across his path; a voice greeted him, cool and clear as running water; and he looked up to see a young girl standing before him—dark, cool, and neither tall nor short, the plump oval of her face shadowed by a sunbonnet. Yes, she was visibly a girl, an ordinary mortal young woman; young and dark, younger than himself; young and dark and seductively soft, like a warm summer night spent lying in long grass naked and abandoned, drowsily aware of the rise and fall of earth’s ample bosom. He was bewildered as by unexpected music poignantly sweet, so that for a moment he could do nothing but stand and stare at her, stupid with wonder.
She, as if to explain her presence, held out for his inspection a milk-can. She repeated the request he had been too deeply shaken to notice. ‘May I have an extra pint, please, for Mrs Wrenn?’
Egg put down his bucket with a clang. ‘Pint of milk, did you say?’
‘Please. It’s for the Vicarage. I’m their niece.’
‘Oh, yes. Certainly. A pint of milk.’ He did not offer to take the milk-can from her. He stood quite still, not knowing what to do, and not caring, being empty of thought. He wanted nothing; he was content. But presently, after a perceptible hiatus, it came upon him, piercing his armour of bliss, that something had to be done. Already he had realized the propriety of not staring too boldly into the kingdom of heaven, and had glanced, with guilty abruptness, at his boots. And now there was this other matter—a pint of milk. ‘You did say a pint, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, a pint. We’ve had our usual quart, but Auntie sent me to get a pint more. Ought I to call at the house for it? I expect I ought. How stupid of me!’
‘Oh, no!’ He took the milk-can from her hand. ‘I’ll … I’ll fetch it for you. Won’t you … ’ He nearly said: ‘Won’t you sit down?’ And he blushed for the absurdity, as though she had read the words in his mind. Seeing his confusion she could not but smile faintly and lower her eyes. The universe burst into song.
In the dairy, which was cool and dim after the brightness outside, he found his sister Flisher. He handed the milk-can to her, for it was understood that, in the dairy, men were definitely subordinate not merely to their mother but even to their sister, if it were Sarah or Flisher. ‘Someone from the Vicarage wants a pint of milk.’
‘Who is it?’ asked Flisher, as she filled the can.
‘Someone from the Vicarage,’ said Egg.
‘Yes, I know, silly. But who?’
‘How should I know? A girl. Vicar’s niece or something.’
‘That’ll be the Monica Wrenn they were telling of,’ said Flisher. ‘I’ll take it to her. Where is she?’
Egg was already at the dairy door, with a pint of milk for which he would if necessary have paid with an equal quantity of his life’s-blood. ‘She’s waiting outside. I’ve got to go that way.’
He stepped quickly out of the dairy, in terror lest the apparition called Monica Wrenn should have vanished, leaving the earth desolated. But no, she was still there, incredibly actual. She stood gazing intently at distance, her chin resting on a long white forefinger; but at Egg’s approach her attitude stiffened with a hint of delicious awkwardness.
‘Thank you very much. And Auntie says will you please put it to the account.’
Egg, with great difficulty, blurted out the speech his mind had been busy preparing for him. It was neither a long nor a bold speech; yet he stammered in its delivery and went very red in the face, and almost forgot his words. ‘Did you … I mean, did you come through the orchard… the orchard way?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. And, marvellously, her voice rose on the second word, instead of falling as that of a Mershire girl would have done. It rose in a heavenly flight; rested for an instant; and then vanished—a melody in two notes, delicately and excitingly inconclusive, so that Egg, filled with longing to find some way of making her say ‘Oh, yes’ again, had hardly wit enough to understand her when she added: ‘It’s the only way, isn’t it, except by the road? … Good morning!’
And not until she was gone, leaving tumult behind her, did he interpret her remark as an ironical comment on his question. Since she had approached the farmhouse through the yard she could have come only by way of the orchard. He stood convicted of making idle conversation; and perhaps, he thought, she already guessed what secret compulsion it was that had put him to that trouble. This alarming and delicious possibility inspired him with the notion of leaving his bucket where it stood and boldly following her …
He overtook her in the orchard, where indeed she lingered, as she could not but do; for in that entranced and softly breathing world, that momentary embodiment of an ideal loveliness, nothing was easier than to lose all sense of affairs in contemplation of the incredible blossom, the cool live grass sprinkled with sundrops, and the delicate clear pattern of song spun by birds and bees. Egg’s heart was beating noisily and his mind was busy trying to invent plausible excuses for this pursuit of her; so that he plunged into the orchard with no thought for its beauty, awkward, eager, self-conscious, and troubled by a hundred doubts and fears. But when he saw her standing quietly reflective under a tree, his agony diminished; and when he saw that she was aware of him and yet did not take flight, he with a sense of infinite release forgot himself. He approached her slowly, easily, drawing life from the glance of her intent dark eyes; and, as he moved forward, the orchard grew up around him, glowed into life in his consciousness as though it were but an emanation of herself. He saw her indeed as the meaning of the orchard, and its sufficient cause; saw her as the meaning and epitome of all the loveliness he had ever seen, and of all the greater loveliness he had sometimes—and with a pang like that of home-sickness—dimly desired. She was, quite simply, everything; she had destroyed his world and created a new one in its place. His belief in her perfection, his sense of her as the fulfilment of life, was profound and irrational and unassailable; he was lost, lost in heaven; he was dead and buried and risen again, seeing the eternal light and walking the fields of blessedness. But this moment could not endure for ever; sooner or later, speech must ensue, and with speech would come back all the old hesitancies and humiliations. He was afraid to speak, but the fear did but heighten his bliss by setting upon it the seal of impermanence. He approached within three feet of her, saying not a word; and they exchanged a long wondering look, in which love was not so much confessed as innocently assumed and marvelled at. It was as if looking in each other’s eyes they saw not themselves, not each other, but a vision of so great beauty that they stood appalled, speechless. For Egg, this moment and the moment after—the moment of shy first love, when becoming again conscious of each other they fell into confusion—were indeed real life, the purest rapture that he was ever to know; for this his heart had waited and hungered, and in this scale—unconsciously—all alien joys were to be weighed and found wanting. Yet what was happening between them these two hardly knew; they were glad or bewildered, their minds lagging behind their intuitions. No specific thought of love had as yet come to disturb the peace in which they were united. But he noticed in her eyes, the next instant, a hint of trouble, the shadow of sweet pain; and in that same pulse of time he was aware of the sword of division flashing between them. They had been made one for an eternal moment; and all the song and heartache and pulsing radiance of spring were darkness and death compared with that moment. But now they were back again, he and she, in time and circumstance, in a world where young men and maidens could not stand for ever wordless, on so short an acquaintance, taking their heart’s fill from each other’s eyes. Their mutual scrutiny had been, in fact, not long but deep; infinite beatitude crammed into a few seconds of the clock. And now, compelled to say something, Egg said: ‘May I carry the milk for you?’ And he took the can from her. She turned to continue on her way, and he walked, with downcast eyes and wi
ldly beating heart, at her side. Daisies were in the grass, and buttercups; which, with the bright grass itself, made music in his heart. There was suddenly too much beauty in the world; it snatched his breath away; it assaulted his strength, so that his knees trembled and he found himself unable to speak even when words offered themselves to his dry lips. The vivid orchard that stabbed him with bright colours—this he tried resolutely to fend away. It hurt him to remember that the minutes were flowing undeviatingly into the past, and that in a little while there would be nothing left of this experience but memory; yet that, too, was an exciting and mysterious thought, within which, if only one could deeply penetrate it, reality itself, the very stuff and secret of life, lies hidden. Egg, unaware of the problem, was nevertheless aware of an excitement induced by its proximity; and so, though the half of him protested like a child, he felt it to be exquisitely fitting that she should turn to him at the orchard’s edge and say: ‘You mustn’t come any further.’
‘Why?’ he answered.
She half-smiled. ‘Because I say so. Give me the milk, please.’
The ecstasy of being commanded by her! The ecstasy of obeying her and hurting himself by that obedience! ‘Will you come again some day?’
‘I might,’ she said, and in her lovely exciting singsong she added: ‘Or I mightn’t.’
‘To the orchard, I mean. Will you?’
‘Perhaps.’ Her eyes shone with laughter, though her lips were demure. ‘I’m not telling you.’
He was entranced; his spirit was crying out with happiness; but he didn’t know what next to say or do. After an awkward pause he said: ‘You’re the Vicar’s niece, didn’t you say? You’re … ’
‘Monica. Monica Wrenn.’
‘I’m Egg Pandervil. Funny name, isn’t it?’
She laughed. ‘Is it funny? … Egg Pandervil. Yes, it’s rather funny.’ And then, without saying goodbye, she was gone.
She was gone, and the brightness of the morning, being so greatly diminished, became endurable. This was visibly, none the less, the first morning of creation, with the gold of the sun new-minted, and the air fresh and the grass green as never before. Everything in the world was aflame for him with individuality. The process of lifting the gate open and feeling it swing back; the spring of the turf, elastic under his feet; the rustle of his own footsteps in long grass—each of these things possessed a quality and a joyous significance. And in the shelter of the hedge he found a cowslip, startling as a miracle.
He strode back to the yard, from which he had been absent for but a few minutes; and, taking up his bucket again, yielded its contents to the hungry pigs. Then, with an unexplained grin at Algernon, who happened across his path at that moment, he put a bridle on Daisy, the most vigorous of the mares, and led her out to the plough.
Egg addressed himself to his task with a queer exultation. The field was to lie fallow for this year; it was, as Algy had said, a stubborn bitch of a field, for it would grow nothing but quitch and charlock; but this morning Egg loved it. He admired Daisy too—her glossiness, her strength, the intelligent resignation in her oily brown eye; and as he made ready to cut the first furrow his glance noted appreciatively her straining leg-muscles and shaggy hocks. He gripped the handles of the plough and spoke a word to the mare. She moved forward; the revolving world kicked at the plough, making it rattle; but the next moment the shares bit deeply, and rich parings of earth began multiplying at the side of the lengthening furrow. The field rose in a gradual convex curve towards the steep hillside that mounted to Saffron Ridge; and Egg, as he crested its convexity, ploughing with a glad passion such as he had never known before, was uplifted with a sense of conquest, fancying himself aware of the earth as a many coloured globe rotating under him. His energy seemed inexhaustible; and as the day grew hotter he felt its radiance pulsing in his veins. At noon, returning late for dinner, he found that Monica, the centre of his universe, was even here the centre of discussion, notwithstanding that Flisher was the only other member of the family who could claim to have seen her.
‘Here’s Egg,’ cried Algernon. ‘He’ll tell you all about it. Now, Egg, speak up, lad! What’s the wench like?’
‘Do you mean the girl from the Vicarage?’ asked Egg innocently. ‘Oh, she’s well enough.’
‘What did she talk about?’ demanded Flisher.
‘Talk about?’ Egg looked indignant. ‘Didn’t talk at all. Asked for a pint of milk. Nothing to talk about in a pint of milk.’
Jinny Randall intervened to ask: ‘Is she good-looking?’
Egg shrugged his shoulders. ‘All depends on what you call good-looking.’ He listened no longer. Retiring into his private dream he lost touch with the conversation going on around him. But presently he emerged to hear Flisher say: ‘Well, I had a peep at her.’ Flisher gave him a sidelong spiteful glance. ‘And she’s awfully fat. That I will say.’
Egg stared at his sister in mild surprise, wondering of whom she could be speaking. But he did not trouble to ask. …
All that day, indeed, he lived and moved in a dream. He was excited, even feverish, but infinitely content with his excitement and his fever. Next morning, however, waking into this transfigured world, his agitation became painful. In the company of brothers and sisters he found that to behave normally, as though to-day were no different from other days, was a difficult and exhausting task. Surely this inward tumult must find some witness in his face! Surely his blessedness and his hunger, his past glory and his present clamorous need, must be evident to everybody! Below all the surface activity of his mind, which was kept busy with this necessity of being natural, was the thought that this very day, this very morning, he might see her again. He was afraid to look at that thought lest (though he didn’t indeed reason it out) it should thereby become visible for all to read, audible for all to hear. Had she not confessed that she ‘might’ come to the orchard again? And though no hour had been named, was it possible to choose any other hour than the one made memorable yesterday? Egg, at once a more simple and a more complicated being than the dull fellow he had supplanted, was divided against himself, yet scarcely conscious of the division. In one part of him he knew that before morning had reached her zenith he would see Monica Wrenn again; in another he was in terror of being disappointed. He knew, but he instinctively pretended to doubt; taking, quite unconsciously, a pleasure in the consequent alternation of torment and bliss. And at other moments, when fear became too sharp to be endured, he pretended to a greater degree of certainty than he possessed. He was in a state of exquisite incessant commotion; hope never hardened into assurance, and fear stopped just short of crazy despair. Never before had he been so excruciatingly alive.
By the time he reached—after much contriving subterfuge—the orchard, he was well-nigh worn out with emotion, and incredibly, for one instant, a sick weariness assailed him, so that he felt scarcely able to endure the excitement of opening the gate and walking in and putting an end to his suspense. It seemed to him in that dreadful moment that he could almost have brought himself to turn back and seek rest in oblivion. But only for a moment. Having swallowed, half-chokingly, the excitement that rose in his throat, he forced himself to enter the orchard at a brisk pace. And there, standing under the same tree as before, was Monica.
This moment of realization gave him, necessarily, a shock. For nearly twenty-four hours past she had been a dream to him, a symbol, a religion. Now she was actual, crudely actual; and though her beauty suffered no diminution, and though he had hungered to be near her, it was yet perhaps disconcerting to find her existing, located, solid. He noticed that she was slightly freckled, that her mouth was large; and being emotionally exhausted he could not at once be sure that these accidental things, so far from being matter for regret, supplied the last pure drop in his cup of romance. But the next instant he knew this with all his heart, so that he rejoiced not merely in the idea of her but in the glorious bodily fact, and for the first time he entertained—shyly, rapturously—the possibilit
y of touching her. An agitation too profound for happiness troubled his spirit; but presently—in perhaps ten seconds from the moment of meeting —the healing comfort of her presence flowed into him, filling him with peace
She was the first to speak. ‘It’s lovely this morning, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘As lovely as yesterday. Have you been here long?’
The Pandervils Page 6