Mr Pierce was a youngish man with a great mane of brown hair, eagle eyes, and a voice like an American organ. Egg’s friend Farthing didn’t, he said, care for the fellow’s look. ‘Actressy!’ said Mr Farthing. ‘Besides, there’s too much of him. Arms and legs like an octopus. Wants taking in a tuck or two, does your Reverend Pierce.’ But by his own denominationalists Mr Pierce was considered to be a great Force for Righteousness; and there could be no disputing that he had ‘got on’. He was militant in his Dissent. Instead of being content, as his predecessors had been, with a congregation of sixty or seventy redeemed souls, he went into the highways and hedges and compelled alien religionists to come in. By sensational preaching, and by visiting the tents of the ungodly as well as those of the faithful, he filled his little chapel to bursting-point. Carrie Pandervil, who for years had been ailing and peevish, found great satisfaction in the flash of his eyes, the deep rich drawl of his voice, and the dexterity with which he supplied a spiritual lesson for her every need. He persuaded her to come and hear him preach a sanguinary sermon on ‘The Blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin’; she listened with absorbed, gluttonous, hot-eyed attention; and so she was won for the Lord from the vain pomp and worldly ambitions and wicked papist ritual of the Church of England. Egg, as we have seen, was won by other means. He did not positively like the Reverend Shadrach; and, though he had become lax in church attendance (greatly to the scandal of his neighbours), he still cherished sentimental memories of Keyborough Parish Church. But these dissenting folk were such hearty handshakers, and made so much of a man who looked in for a Sunday or two out of mere curiosity, that it was difficult to rebuff them; and young Mr Pierce himself was so touchingly confident of always getting his own way that Egg had not the heart to disappoint him. Before he quite knew where he was, he had ‘joined the church’, a ceremony that reached its triumphant conclusion in a series of questions and answers, after this fashion:
‘As I understand you, Mr Pandervil, you have expressed a spontaneous desire to enter the Lord’s communion?’
‘Er … that’s right!’ agreed Egg cheerfully.
‘And you would wish me, his unworthy servant, to extend to you the Right Hand of Fellowship at our next divine service?’
‘That’s right!’ said Egg again. ‘Whatever’s usual.’
‘Mr Pandervil,’ said the Pastor, ‘this is a wonderful moment. There is great rejoicing in heaven at this moment. Hark!’ Mr Pierce raised his hands and eyes to the ceiling. ‘Hark! I can almost hear the singing of the heavenly host, Mr Pandervil.’ He gazed tenderly at his convert. ‘Come let us thank the Lord together, for that he hath dealt mercifully with one who has been a great sinner.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Egg modestly. ‘Not really much in the great sinner line, you know.’
‘Let us pray!’ intoned the reverend gentleman, sliding round into a kneeling posture and propping his elbows on the chair he had just vacated. ‘Let us pray, brother!’
‘Oh, right you are!’ said Egg, with cheerful alacrity. He hoped by this demeanour to conceal his momentary surprise and dismay. He was disappointed to find in himself nothing that responded to Mr Pierce’s mood. He had experienced—perhaps half-a-dozen times in his life—moments of a rare strangeness and beauty: high impersonal moments touched with a degree of wonder that made him feel as though great music were being wrought in him. But the sight of Mr Pierce burrowing into his chair like a rabbit, the sight of Mr Pierce’s black-trousered legs propped up on the toes of his large-booted feet—this did not recall those moments. Mr Pierce, an accredited agent of heaven, was addressing the Lord in prayer; and Egg, whose thoughts had broken beyond all decent control, could do nothing but hope that the Lord would not notice how extremely comical he and the parson, nosing the seats of their chairs, must look. He became hot with a confusion of shame and reverence. He tried to echo in his own heart the prayer that was being said for him. And when it was over he remained kneeling for some moments out of sheer self-consciousness.
So it was that Egg Pandervil became a member of Ebenezer Chapel and a voice in Ebenezer choir. If he did not sing bass, he at least sang something that was not treble, not alto, and not tenor. He could master a simple tune without much trouble. After a month or two among the Ebenezerites he could (but would not) have sung you the air of any one of his dozen favourite hymns. But it was just the air that he must not sing; for him, a low baritone, there was more subtle work to be done. Having no sense of harmony he was hard put to it to hold his own against the three rival parts— especially the dangerous top-part—going on around him; and the musical score did not help him much, though he understood that here you must go up a bit and there you must go down, and that at the end of the verse you wait, if necessary, for the others to catch up with you. His brother-basses, though a feeble lot, were on the whole more help than the music. When he lost touch with them, it seemed safest to stick to two notes, or even, at a pinch, to groan his way through a whole hymn on one alone, provided that one was well-chosen—a low note, and not too loud.
After these vocal exercises he found it easier and pleasanter to spin his private reveries than to follow the Reverend Shadrach Pierce on his racketing expeditions to hell and back. The fate of the wicked was the preacher’s constant theme, and he eked out his shreds and tatters of doctrine with a gorgeous patchwork of histrionics. By way of illustration he one day pretended that his pulpit was a red-hot cage, and in trying to escape from it he burnt his hands so often and so convincingly that Egg could almost smell the roasting flesh. ‘And that,’ said Mr Pierce, ‘will be the fate of the wicked—the idolater, the fornicator, the unbeliever—not for an hour, not for a day, not for a week, not for a month, not for a year—nay, not for a century only, but for all eternity!’ It was dismal hearing, but Egg took it very little to heart, perhaps because he had never encountered any of these ‘wicked’ people of whom just lately he was hearing such sad accounts. He couldn’t imagine any of the simple sinners of his acquaintance falling into that category or provoking such anger on the part of their Maker. No confessed unbeliever had ever come his way; not one of his neighbours had been caught bowing down to idols; and as for ‘the fornicator’, Egg had no precise notion of what the word meant, though he knew it to mean something unspeakable, bizarre, and utterly remote from ordinary experience. No doubt, in his mild way, he believed in hell, for he was none of your atheists; but he thought of hell as permanently empty—except perhaps for a devil or two by way of staff—empty and existing only as a warning to doubters and other desperadoes. He spent little time on this branch of theology, a science in which, as we see, he had made no perceptible progress since boyhood. More often he thought of heaven, of family gatherings after death where he would find brother Willy, straight and smart in his red coat and grinning with happiness; and Mother, pouring out tea for everybody; and Father, still absent from them in mind, still looking wistfully for something beyond the horizon; and Algernon and all the sisters. Yes, and others would be there, others who even in heaven couldn’t be fitted into any plausible scheme. Heaven would be better than nothing, but it would fall very short of his heart’s desire.
At other times—for the tedium of the sermon had to be avoided somehow—he let his fancy stray as far as the Lord God himself. He thought of God as an old man, scholarly, gentle, and preoccupied—a man, indeed rather like his own father. Pictures of God’s life in heaven floated to him unbidden and uncensored upon the tide of Mr Pierce’s disregarded eloquence. God, in this fantasy of Egg’s, spent his eternal day wandering about a large room lined with books, a rather stuffy room smelling of leather; wandering up and down, peering over his spectacles at this title or at that, taking down a book here, a book there, and at last, the choice made, sitting at the table with it to read it from end to end. It was Egg’s old Sunday game, this fantasy, and it repeated itself, with variations, week after week. And one day, out of nowhere, there came the odd thought that these thousands of books were s
imply the lives of all the people in the world, and that God was their author. Why does he read them, asked Egg, if he wrote them all himself? P’raps he’s got a bad memory. I wonder what he thinks of us all? … But of course it was only fancy. God wasn’t really like that at all. God was really—‘Let us conclude the morning’s worship by singing together Hymn Number …’ The responsibility of being in the choir made it impossible for Egg to come to any definite conclusion about the true nature of God.
All things considered, the Ebenezer Chapel could certainly be counted among the pleasures of his life. And, if it did nothing else, it provided him with a sanctuary from Carrie. During that blessed hour-and-a-half every Sunday morning and evening, Carrie could not call out to him (in a voice so like her mother’s! ): ‘Eggie dear! I’m in dreadful pain. But of course you don’t care whether I live or die.’ In chapel he was immune from this persecution; and Carrie, sitting in a pew with Mabe and Bobby and Harold, forgot her own sufferings in the enjoyment of her Saviour’s. Mabe was now ‘quite the young woman’; Bobby was fifteen and a winner of scholarships; Harold was ten and suety. Their mother took pride in them, if only the pride of possession; but their father continued to catch himself, in moments of unwariness, wondering why he had begotten them. He couldn’t recall having wanted a wife, still less a family; yet here he was, amply provided with both. It’s queer, the way things happen, he said to himself. Very queer it is. Now who’d a thought …?
Egg was a chorister of twelve months’ standing, and very much at home with the brethren though still shy of their peculiar religious idiom, when a fourth child was born to him. The affair was so ridiculous as to be almost a scandal; and it was just like Egg, said Carrie bitterly, to get her another at her age. For nearly ten years she had been ‘lucky’, and now, when a body might have supposed all danger past, she was ‘caught’. The child was a boy, and they decided to call him Nicholas.
‘Why Nicholas?’ demanded old Mrs Noom, to whom Egg had been bidden carry the news.
‘Why not Nicholas?’ retorted Egg.
‘Nicholas Noom or Nicholas Huggins?’ asked she.
‘Neither,’ said Egg. ‘Nicholas Pandervil. That’s all. Now keep your hair on, Ma! You’ve had your turn. You’ve had it twice, as I see things. There’s Mabel Noom Pandervil, and there’s Robert Huggins Pandervil, and there’s Harold Richard, called after his poor grandpa.’
‘Nicholas!’ Mrs Noom had lost all her teeth but one, and this last survivor lent a certain imbecile emphasis to her sneers. ‘I never heard of such a name. But bless my soul, Egg Pandervil, the poor mite must be named after someone! You woont ’ave ’im a heathen, would you?’ She brooded in silence for a while; then broke into grumbling speech again. ‘Nicholas! There’s never bin no Nicholas in our family, that I will say. And if I can’t speak my mind to my own son-be-law, things ’ave come to a pretty pickle. Nicholas!—why, Old Nick ’imself is the only one I knows of.’ She giggled, baring her one fang again. ‘Hark at me!’ she said, self-admiringly, with shrill laughter. ‘Swearing I am, and me a granny four times over!’
Nicholas began life as a puny child, and his mother had a grudge against him. She had contracted a permanent ill-temper which obliged her to take to her bed a week after her recovery from the effects of the confinement. And once back in bed she gave every sign of intending to stay there, doing unto others as she—in her own mother’s reign—had ‘been done by’, filling the house not with the sound but with the nervous expectancy of dramatic crisis and lamentation. She would call in a weary singsong tone to husband or to daughter, and, when one of them came to find out what she wanted, she would smile sourly and give this respondent a piece of her mind. It was not, we must hope, a large piece; for there was kindness and courage somewhere dormant in her, and Egg had seen flashes of both, though not so many as he chose both privately and publicly to pretend. Ah, she knew she was a nuisance, she would say, and she prayed that God would forgive them for wishing to be rid of her, for it was only natural, but meanwhile, if she could have a little food sometimes, it would help her to bear up. You’re more like your Ma every day, thought Egg—not for the first time, nor yet for the second. And he could hardly be blamed for feeling that young Nicky, the cause of this last manifestation, had put in a most untimely appearance. Nor did the child make any visible effort to get himself beloved. He cried a great deal; and with Carrie so tiresome, and Mabe gluttonous of sleep after drudging in house and shop all day, the burden of getting out of bed two or three times a night, to feed the baby or rock the baby or carry the baby up and down the room, fell upon Egg’s shoulders. The more of these attentions Nicky got, the more regularly and confidently did he demand them; and as time went on, Egg found himself becoming quite unexpectedly and preposterously fond of his torturer. When Nicky reached the age of two it became evident to a discerning eye that he was a Pandervil, the first in this family. One day that comical knob in the middle of his tiny face would become a straight, small, delicately shaped, Pandervil nose. He’s going to be like Father to look at, thought Egg; and the flame of vicarious ambition kindled in him. Perhaps the boy would be brainy like Father, too; a scholar, a reader of books. Egg derided himself for daring to entertain such ill-founded hopes. What chance had the son of a struggling grocer!
From bitterness such as this the Ebenezer Chapel was something of a refuge, and for that reason he was shy of anything that might seem to imperil his position as a respected chapel-going citizen. This makes it all the more surprising that he should have behaved as he did to the glossy gentleman who kindly came down from London with the most generous proposals to him. He appeared, this glossy gentleman, on the morning following a particularly disturbed and unhappy night; and he was received in the parlour, while Mabe attended to customers. He was the most radiant person Egg had ever seen. His boots sparkled; his eyes glinted behind gold-rimmed pince-nez; his teeth flashed goldenly; and his speech was like honey from the honeycomb.
‘I see,’ said Egg. ‘If you’ll excuse me a minute I’ll just have a word with my wife about it. But I’m sure she’ll say no, same as I do.’
‘That would be very misguided policy,’ returned the glossy gentleman, staring tenderly at the crease in his trousers. ‘If I might suggest, as a friend. …’
Egg did not much like his visitor. ‘I won’t keep you more than a minute,’ he said. And in very little more than a minute he was back reiterating his decision not to sell Pandervil’s Stores to the large and important firm represented by the glossy gentleman.
‘You won’t even consider the matter?’ The glossy gentleman couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Let me persuade you.’ Egg shook his head, and moved suggestively towards the door. ‘I could mention a figure that would interest you.’
Egg led the way back into the shop, where his visitor was forced to follow him. ‘No figures would interest me. Thanks all the same.’
‘Then I shall be put to a great deal of trouble,’ murmured the glossy gentleman, in a sad, insinuating tone. ‘Do you know what I shall do, Mr Pennyvil? I shall take a note of all your prices. At whatever sacrifice I shall procure other and better premises uncomfortably near to you. And I shall undercut you. We are a very big organization, and we can afford to lose money for ten years. Does that amuse you, Mr Pennyvil?’
Egg stared in surprise at the smiling face that so blandly interrogated him. The meaning of what was being said to him slowly cohered in his mind. And then he experienced, for the third time in this history, one of those rare moments of release from his world of diffidence and hesitancy into a kind of madness.
‘And I tell you what I’ll do, mister,’ he said, in rising tones. ‘I tell you what I’ll do.’ he repeated excitedly. His eyes were blazing, his fists clenched. ‘I’ll PUNCH YOU ON THE NOSE!’
He punched, and punched mightily, feeling that he was somehow, by this violence, taking a sort of revenge on all the circumstances that had tricked and trapped him into becoming what he was become. The glossy gentleman roared an
d backed away; his pince-nez clattered to the floor. Then Egg’s brain cleared; the mists rolled away; and he perceived that he had behaved in a ridiculous, an undignified, indeed a criminal way. He was suddenly ashamed. Yet in the midst of this shame he recalled, with exultation, that absurd battle-cry: I’ll punch you on the nose. And for the life of him he couldn’t help grinning. But the grave face of Mr Farthing checked his mirth. How long had Farthing been in the shop?
‘You saw!’ spluttered the glossy gentleman. ‘I claim you as a witness.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Farthing was surprisingly ready to oblige. ‘I saw everything. I saw this man here punch you on the nose. And a right hard punch it was, if I’m any judge.’
‘I shall charge him,’ said the stranger. ‘You saw everything. You saw everything. You’re my witness.’
The Pandervils Page 20