Free The Pandervils by Gerald Bullet Page B

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 neverthelessaware 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.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜I might,’ she said, and in her lovely exciting singsong she added: ‘Or I mightn’t.’
    â€˜To the orchard, I mean. Will you?’
    â€˜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 … ’
    â€˜Monica. Monica Wrenn.’
    â€˜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 withindividuality. 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, ploughingwith 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