Read Online The Pandervils by Gerald Bullet - Free Book Online Page B

Pandervil, a mother newly restored to him, murmuring: ‘There, there, my lamb! We’ve got you safe! Mother’s got you!’ And he realized with a pang that indeed something living, something that was marvellously and mysteriously Willy, was struggling to be born into the world of light.

Chapter the Second
Monica
1
    During all that winter he had been from time to time aware of the little prickings of a new revelation, of something struggling—as the child had struggled in Jinny’s womb—to be born in his consciousness; and when orchards flowered again, and hedges became warm with the first scent of hawthorn, the world of sense seemed burdened for him with a secret message whose purport he could not as yet surmise. Jinny’s child, although it bore traces of being Willy’s too, ceased, soon after it was born, to hold any strong interest for him. It was a baby like other babies. It lacked teeth; it lacked hair; it was very small; and it was called, inevitably, Billy. Egg liked the creature well enough and would have done anything in reason for its comfort and safety, but he was aware of it as an organism rather than as an individual. He took pleasure, however, in observing Jinny’s maternal infatuation; and was satisfied that there would be no more talk of turning Jinny out. Mrs Pandervil—not maliciously, perhaps not willingly, but rather as a matter of plain duty—had advertised her sense of the danger of exposing her daughters to such moral corruption as Jinny stood for. Butthe balance of opinion was against her; even Sarah, plain and precise and in imminent danger of becoming an old maid, begged her not to mention the matter again, lest it should reach the ears of the young mother herself. In fact, against all the canons of decency and justice, the sinner was made much of, and the child of sin waxed fat. The Pandervil girls competed jealously for its favour; Mr Pandervil, on one occasion, made an indulgent clucking noise at it; and even Algernon, now a fervent farmer, had his sentimental moments. Egg alone, Egg who had first championed its cause, appeared but mildly interested in the child. He already, in a sense, was settling down into the routine of hard healthy drudgery, eating, sleeping, working. Everything that happened, happened; he had almost ceased to wonder why; and he had, for the time being, quite ceased to bother his head with those queer speculations about other people’s lives, other creatures’ lives, which had once occupied his private thoughts. He had become self-absorbed, troubled by a sense of something beyond, something just out of reach, to which he was perhaps moving. Anonymous expectancy agitated his few reflective moments.
    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 standingbefore 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?’
    â€˜Please. It’s for the Vicarage. I’m their niece.’
    â€˜Oh, yes. Certainly.