The Pandervils (16 page)

I'm very fond of a social glass.
And so am I!
               And so am I!
It makes the time so pleasantly pass,
But it must he filled with water
.

And, at Egg's side, Mr Farthing was urgently, almost desperately, nudging and winking, first preliminaries to the process known as ‘sending us all into fits'. Egg grinned perfunctorily, and then with a quick glance renewed his sense of Fanny Hunt. A pretty girl … dark, slim … oh, a pretty girl, and any man would be lucky who got her. Mr Farthing was making it known to Egg, by means of silent mouthing and other facial exercises, that he proposed to return to the Green Man. ‘For a social glass,' he whispered, rapturously smacking his lips over the new rich flavour this phrase had acquired. Egg shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, all right.' Perhaps the spell of Fanny Hunt would be more powerful in absence from her. ‘But we mustn't make a row,' he whispered back. Good night, Miss Hunt. Would you mind very much if … Good night, Fanny—dear Fanny.

In the Green Man they found, among others, Pummice and Wimmett; and Farthing won great applause by relating and imitating what had happened at the Band of Hope. Egg, though rallied from time to time for his absentmindedness— ‘Regular old oyster, eh Mr Pummice? Regular jolly old native oyster, what do
you
say, Mr. Wimmett?'—was left for the most part with his private thoughts. Fanny, I've been dying to talk to you. Ever since I first saw you, in the post office it was (or was it in the street? He didn't know at all), I've wanted to—well, to sort of talk to you, and tell how much I … Fanny, do you think that some day you might get to sort of … like me?

‘Patience on a monument, eh Mr Pandervil?' said Pummice.

Egg smiled a vague response, his hand closing eagerly on darling Fanny's. ‘Let's have another pint all round,' he suddenly blurted out, eager to atone for his silence. ‘Some of that good old strong stuff, Mrs Hemp.' And after a few mouthfuls of the good old strong stuff his fancies flowed more easily and happily. Soon they were married, he and Fanny, after a short and passionate courtship. They were alone together for the first time in their little home. She was so precious to him that he couldn't leave go of her hand, couldn't stop stroking her smooth flushed cheek, and noting one by one, with quick glancing eyes, her several points of charm—items in a delicious feast. ‘Well, friends, the same again all round?' But the feast was not delicious. Even here, in this dark alley of the imagination, he was pursued by that which reduced all his careful cunning make-believe to a handful of sour dust. He emptied his glass and gazed stupidly at the approach of another. When he rose to greet it, the room was filled with a faint haze through which he could see walls and furniture and men swaying in a curious and rather unpleasant manner. Being sure that his friend Mr Pummice was about to fall, he thrust out a helping hand, and then, with some suddenness, sat down. His brain cleared a little. He felt better. But now he was lying in the long cool grass of an orchard, with Monica, lovely Monica, bending over him. One instant in heaven; then, cast out and damned.

‘I think I'd better be
getting along
back,' he heard himself say. But no one else seemed to hear him. He repeated the remark in a louder tone, and was angry to see the conversation go on, the mouths open and shut, the faces grin and sway towards each other, as though nothing had happened. He rose unsteadily, threateningly, and roared at the top of his voice: ‘C-c-curse you for a lot of louts!' There was silence, an abrupt silence followed by discreet laughter. Mrs Hemp bustled forward indignantly. ‘Why, Mr Pandervil, I'm surprised at you!' The truth burst in upon his fuddled intelligence: O Lord, I'm drunk! And at once he was sober.

He was sober, that is to say, as to the intelligence. Abdominally he was drunk, and he found as he lurched through the streets with Farthing as a prop one side of him, and Wimmett the other, that he had all but lost control of his legs. But at least his personality was no longer submerged; he was gloomily aware of his condition, and with the night air fanning his brow he was even clearheaded enough to begin retracing the steps that had led him into this pit of folly. To begin, but not to go on to the end; for try as he might he could not get past Monica. The night with its billowing road and reeling stars was a cup in which he tasted again —proud now to be so compelled, and a hero but for that ungovernable nausea in the stomach—the anguish of his lost love. He seized Farthing by the arm and said intensely: ‘Farthing, old boy! Dear old boy Farthing! I wanta tell you about
—' But he checked the sacred name in time, and a spasm of self-disgust shook him.

They piloted him to the shop and waited with him until, in response to a timid knock, light footsteps could be heard approaching. It was very late; he had never been so late before; but not until the door was opened did he begin to consider what this escapade might mean to him. Certainly disgrace, perhaps dismissal. He heard a cheerful voice saying: ‘That you Egg? Come in, do! It's cold.' Relief and gratitude took shape in the fog of his brain. It was Carrie, good old Carrie, in an overcoat not quite concealing her nightdress, and with a candle in her hand.

He stepped carefully across the threshold. ‘Awf'lly sorry wake you up,' he said.

‘Oh, I wasn't asleep. That don't matter.' Her voice was intimate, confidential, a pleasant husky whisper. ‘I sat up—in my bedroom, you know, reading and what not. But I say, Egg, you're a fine old cup of tea to stay out till this time of night. You won't half catch it, I reckon, from Par'n'Ma! … Shut the door, do! It's cold as charity.'

Something of this reached him. He shut the door with a bang. Something reached him, and he would have got it all in time; but just now a particular question was urgent in him. ‘You waited up. Kind of you. Kind Carrie. Very kind.' She moved nearer to him, saying ‘Hush!', and pulling at his sleeve to persuade him to hurry to bed. In the candlelight he saw a new Carrie, her familiar face—young, elfish, with a comical little
nose—touched with strangeness. He put his question. ‘Thad old man, Carrie. Is he good old man, or bad old man?'

‘What do you mean? Go to bed, do!'

‘I mean your father. Mist' Noom. He's not a wicked rascal, is he?'

She seized him by the arm and stared up into his face. ‘Oh, Egg!' she said, with grief in her voice, ‘you've been drinking too much!' The forgotten candle, held carelessly, dripped grease on the floor. ‘Lor! Just look at that!'

Why should she care what he did? He didn't know. But she did care; and, hating himself for what he had done, he averted his face in shame and pushed her away. Conscious of her gaze following him he made a blundering ascent of the stairs, and lurched his way into his bedroom. Safely there, he fell into a sitting posture on the bed and began drowsily watching the phantasmagoria of his thoughts.

‘Egg, are you all right?' Carrie paused with her candle at his half-open doorway.

He grunted thanks, whereupon she ventured to look in.

‘Can you … undress yourself?'

‘Um.' He nodded. ‘Um.'

Taking this for an affirmative, she said ‘Good night!' and went away, shutting the door behind her. He was left alone with his darkness …

Darkness it was, and sickness, both of body and mind. He woke at some indeterminate hour of the night to find himself huddled on the floor, very
cold and still fully dressed. The darkness was heaving about him. Yet he struggled into a sitting posture, and his hands, swimming as it were through waves of cold nausea, found at last the laces of his boots. He began undressing—a difficult and tedious business. So this was what Carrie had meant. Kind Cannie. Kind Farrie. Kind Fanny. Ah, Fanny! He must keep on thinking about Fanny. And he got into bed thinking about her, a bed that at first floated round and round the room, and then up and up and up to the ceiling, but came at last to a standstill so that he fell asleep, fell into a landscape slashed with bright colours and filled with a heavenly voice, from which, fingers in ears, eyes streaming, he ran and ran to the very edge of the world. At the edge of the world he found his bed and his bedroom and the militant light of day. Someone was thumping on the door. ‘It's late, Egg. Get up, do!' He sat up and stared about. A repellent heap of clothes lay on the floor. ‘All right. Getting up.' The atmosphere of the bedroom was sour. Himself tasted vile. And as he washed and dressed, he tried to calculate the chances of dismissal. Was I very bad last night? Did I make a noise? And who saw me?

‘Do you feel better, Egg?'

He looked, with awkward gratitude, at Carrie, who lingered, friendly and anxious, at the bottom of the stairs. It was evident that she had been waiting there to intercept him. The only friend left in this household, he thought, and more of a
sister to him, in this crisis, than his own sisters had ever been. With her hair drawn up into a bun and revealing a small ear and very pretty nape, Carrie looked very definitely a young woman, and not, as she had seemed three months ago, a schoolgirl. Excitement had changed her appearance, and her relation to Egg; the managing young person very conscious of knowing more about the business than this new assistant had given place to the admiring handmaiden. Her glance was awe-struck, as well as solicitous. Egg was already an event and might at any moment become a scandal; and he himself, although his head was aching and his brain dazed with anxiety, did not fail to read as much in her eyes.

‘I'm all right now. Have they said anything about me?'

‘No,' said Carrie. ‘I don't think they know. Well, not everything, I mean.'

Breakfast passed without incident. He was so late that the others had left the table. For this alone he deserved grave censure, since it was part of his duty to sweep the shop out before breakfast, while Carrie was lighting fires and preparing the meal. But he was glad of his solitude because it relieved him of the bother of pretending to eat. He ate nothing. A cup of tea, very hot and rather weak, made him feel more ready to face the hazards of the morning.

He was at his post a bare ten minutes before the shop opened—unprecedented negligence. Mr Noom, bespectacled and aproned, did not look up
at his entry, but continued making calculations on the lid of a biscuit-tin with the help of a short stub of pencil the point of which he thoughtfully licked from time to time. Was it possible that the old man knew nothing, or that, knowing, he intended to overlook the offence? ‘Sorry I'm late, sir,' said Egg. But he spoke so hastily and indistinctly that he was not surprised to receive no answer. The shop was opened and the customers trickled in. At eleven o'clock Mr Noom sauntered into the street, to return ten minutes later with clouded face. It's coming, thought Egg; I'm going to catch it. He felt Mr Noom's stern gaze upon him.

‘Now what's the meaning of this, young man! I hope you're ashamed of yourself.'

Feeling like a little boy, Egg stammered: ‘Very sorry I was late in, sir. Shan't happen again.'

He was ashamed of the equivocation even as he uttered it. Moreover it did not deceive Mr Noom.

‘Late in! Late in! Don't try to trick
me!
You were the worse for liquor, sir, that's what you was. And don't think I don't know because I do know. Understand that. I do know. I know more than you think I know. I'm not a blind bat, let me tell you. Drunk you was. Shouting and brawling in a public house, and had to be carried home. That's fine goings-on for a lad in your position. You'll empty my shop for me before you done.' With scathing irony he added: ‘Late in indeed!'

‘Now then, Daddy!' Mrs Noom, catfooted, had glided in. ‘Now then, Daddy! That's
enough and to spare. Egg Pandervil's
my
boy, and I won't have him bullied I won't.”

‘But
drunk
, my dear!' Mr Noom's air was half angry, half pleading. ‘We're not going to have that, surely to goodness!'

‘And he's said he's sorry. So that's enough. And
I'm
no friend to drink, as well you know, Richard Noom. It's a pity if you must take away my character in front of strangers. But there, it's all of a piece.'

To see Mr Noom turn away defeated, and to know himself to have been the whip that scourged him, was the bitterest punishment for Egg that could have been devised. He was uncomfortable, unhappy, and ashamed; and the new unhappiness distracted him from the old. Indeed it filled him, and grew to morbid proportions, till at last, unable bear it any longer, he launched a desperate attack upon Mr Noom's silence.

‘Please, Mr Noom!'

‘What is it?'

‘Please, Mr Noom, you won't take any notice of what … of what … of what
she
said, will you?'

His employer stared in surprise. ‘Meaning Mrs Noom?'

‘Yes, sir. Mrs Noom. No call for her to stick up for me. None at all that I can see. I know I was wrong to do what I did. But it was an accident. It sort of happened.'

‘I daresay, I daresay. We'll forget about it,' said Mr Noom. ‘As for Mrs Noom, we'll forget
what she said too. Sometimes, you know, she says things she don't quite mean. High-spirited, gets carried away. But a better woman, let me tell you, never breathed. Ah, she's been a good wife to me, has Mrs Noom. Where I'd have got to without her I
don't
know.' He stared thoughtfully at distance, a wealth of reminiscence in his china-blue eyes. ‘Things would have been different, I fancy,' said Mr Noom, half to himself, ‘very, very different.' He sighed, but whether with satisfaction or with regret was more than Egg could tell. And still there seemed to be something on his mind craving utterance. ‘I suppose, young Pandervil, you haven't hardly known what it is to have aches and pains?'

‘Aches and pains, sir?' Egg was at a loss.

‘No, of course not!' said Mr Noom hastily. ‘A young feller like you. My time of life, we get these little things. When you're young you don't notice 'em. Snap your fingers at 'em. Me, I'm not so … so snappy as I was, that's about the truth of it. Ha ha ha! That's a good one, that is!'