Free The Pandervils by Gerald Bullet Page A

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 itsplace. 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 ofdivision 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 wildly 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