The Pandervils (6 page)

The weight of these affairs, in so far as the farm contributed to them, fell now, in Willy's absence, on Algernon and Egg, though their father too, waking somewhat belatedly to a sense of danger, began to take an active part in the farm's administration. Algernon resented being dragged away from the service of Dr Wilson; to Egg it seemed that his brother feared to lose that cosmopolitan glamour which daily intercourse with the outside world had imparted to him. For many weeks he did his farm-work grudgingly, and under Egg's direction; but one day he seized the reins of government and asserted his seniority. ‘To-morrow, my lad,' said Algernon, ‘we'll finish that bit of ploughing back there.' Had his appetite for authority been satisfied with such a statement of the obvious, all would have been well; but before long Algernon began to get ideas about farming, and then, for all his good intentions, he was a dangerous fellow. He appalled Egg one day by proposing that Flinders, the best grazing land for twenty miles round, should be ploughed and sown with wheat. ‘And where shall we graze the sheep then?' asked Egg. Algernon, with a mulish look,
replied that the sheep could graze where they pleased, adding: ‘Back up the hill. They'll be out of the draught there. You and your precious sheep!' ‘Where should we 'a been last year without sheep?' demanded Egg, ‘with corn harvest ruined as it was? Too busy washing bottles to notice, you were! And there's this about my precious sheep—they're sheep, not goats. Maybe you didn't know the difference. There's not enough grass on the scrubby hillside to keep a rabbit healthy, let alone a few score sheep!' Encounters of this kind made for strained relations between the brothers, for, though neither of them was disposed to cherish anger, they fell into the habit of disagreement and so were perpetually wrangling. It made matters no better that Mr Pandervil, when intervention was necessary, always decided on the conservative policy; for this strengthening of Egg's hand made Algernon, smarting with humiliation, fall back on the fiction that he was a man in advance of his time, a pioneer whom nobody was quick enough to appreciate; and such a notion did not help to make him more lovable. Yet Algernon, when his ill-defined itch of ambition ceased for a while to trouble him, showed himself pathetically eager not to be shut out of Egg's confidence. Perhaps his sense of having been always excluded from the unspoken affection subsisting between Egg and Willy had set up in his mind a conflict of which his stubbornness, his singular self-assertiveness, were but symptoms. Egg, who as he grew older became quick in divination of such disorders,
half-guessed the truth about Algernon and began to make allowances for him. He did, indeed, everything for Algernon except the one thing that Algernon unconsciously—or perhaps consciously, if we but knew—demanded of him. He did not, because he could not, accept him as a substitute for the absent Willy. And on the day he learned that Willy had been killed at the front——

It was a sharp winter's morning. Algernon, with the evil message on his tongue, found Egg in the orchard tending a sick cow.

‘Bad news, Eggie,' said Algernon.

Egg looked up idly. ‘Well?'

‘Bad news about our Willy,' said Algernon, beginning to flush and stammer, poor fellow, as though he felt that he was to blame for everything.

Egg's glance wavered, and he moved a step or two away from the cow. All the physical details of the world about him became shockingly vivid and strident, leaping one by one into startling prominence, then rushing together in his consciousness with the effect of sudden assault. He looked at nothing, but sights crowded importunately upon him—the bare orchard trees rigid and black, their limbs twisted into gestures of pain; the cloud of his own breath, solid like marble, tangible, cold; and that monstrous unsignifying shape, that bright pattern of colour, the mutely suffering cow. He noticed, too, with a kind of sick curiosity, that the frozen turf was soft, elastic, spongy, and that it crackled under his feet with the sound of torn
satin. All these things, these objects and these perceptions, were blindingly, deafeningly, prodigiously real and urgent; they offered to a mind eager for distraction from its enemy a thousand minute and curious details each one of which, accorded its share of attention, would serve to postpone by one degree the dreadful, the inevitable moment—the moment when he must turn from this bright feverish little drama and look into the face of the fear that stood at his elbow, watching, leering, biding its time. When at last, after an instant crammed with experience, it became imperative that Algernon should be answered, Egg said quickly, his words following Algernon's with no appreciable delay:

‘Willy's wounded.'

He had the air—he was conscious of having it, he was conscious of everything in the universe—of offering this proposition, not as a question, but as a statement which he challenged Algernon to deny. And he knew himself to be gazing at Algernon in a fashion half-accusing, half-defiant, as if daring him to pretend that any news could be worse than that. In Algernon's answering look he saw that his brother's eyes were tortured with a compassion of which he, Egg, was the object. Algernon took a step towards him, mouth agape, hands pleadingly extended.

‘Willy's wounded,' repeated Egg woodenly.

‘Nay, my dear … ' stammered Algernon. ‘Not wounded, Willy isn't. Not wounded, boy. He's … killed, poor butty!' He tried to add: ‘Don't
hate me for it, Eggie!' His voice broke on the words.

Algernon's heart, in all its misery and loneliness, was naked to Egg's sight, but the mind of Egg was filled with a vision in which Algernon had no part. Algernon was heartbroken for Egg's sake, and Egg could feel only a dull resentment that the fellow valued Willy so little as to have emotion to spare on a merely vicarious sorrow. Tearlessly, coldly, he met his brother's mournful, timid, solicitous scrutiny; but indeed he was now but vaguely aware of it. The objective world had ceased to be vivid. The orchard trees, the cow, Algernon himself— these were flat figures on the backcloth of a new series of images, visible and audible, that slid across the stage of his mind. A battlefield, sleek and glossy and full of bright bad colours like the picture of Waterloo in the kitchen, yet horrible with a horror of its own, a nightmare region. Snorting horses, thundering hoofs, the roar and smoke of cannonry, swords flashing, martial music; yes, drums beating, trumpets sounding, everything right and proper, except that above it all Egg could hear the voice of a man hideously screaming, and that in the foreground he could see human faces, scattered limbs, trodden into the mud. He saw, too, a goose hanging upside down, blood dripping from its beak, with children gazing and giggling; young Mr Fox, the auctioneer's clerk, briskly licking the point of his pencil; Jinny Randall in church, singing psalms (seen with a sidelong glance) or reciting prayers (seen covertly between
half-closed fingers); the Recruiting Sergeant munching his meat, a vein palpitating in his temple and his eyes growing big as blood alleys; Jinny Randall again—that fool bitch, said Egg bitterly. And always there was Willy himself: Willy digging a dog's grave; Willy stamping cakes of mud from his boots; Willy in the hayfield tipping back his head to drink cider from a black horn cup; Willy leaning on a rake astride a loaded wagon; and Willy, red-coated, mutilated, misshapen, staring glassily at the moon, alone with his brother corpses. No, said Egg's mind.
No
. NO. But on the face confronting him—for Algernon couldn't for ever be ignored—the truth was clearly written, not to be argued or blustered away. And in that face, in those eyes already brimmed with compassion, dawned a new anxiety.

‘Steady, lad, steady!' Algernon's hands were still imploring his. ‘Don't take it that way!'

Egg stepped back a pace, mutely declining to be touched. ‘Willy's wounded,' he said, for the third time. And, after a moment's staring silence, he turned his back on Algernon and walked slowly woodenly away. …

And not for some weeks did Algernon dare to mention Willy again, although, as Egg couldn't but be aware, there was nothing he wanted more than to talk the matter out. For a while, intimidated by Egg's savage silent grief, he kept a strict guard on his speech, so that—in the consciousness of both brothers—whenever they were together it was as if the ghost of Willy stood between them.
Yet finally, when what had to be said was said, the words fell naturally enough on ears that had forgotten to expect them.

‘'Twas just such another day as this,' said Algernon, ‘when Willy came home in his regimentals. You 'member, Egg?'

‘Ay.'

‘Sort of far away, he was, like a stranger,' said Algernon.

Egg gave no sign of being astonished. But astonished he was. It was a shock to him to discover that Algernon had perceived Willy's absent-mindedness. Willy had listened and talked as of old; had eaten with his accustomed gestures; and had slipped back, after perhaps an hour of stiffness in his gait, into the slow swinging stride of one who has spent his life crossing ploughed fields. To all chaff he replied with his old grin; and once, when sharp-eyed Flisher had spoken the name of Jinny Randall, he had blushed. Yet in spite of these familiar manifestations Egg had been conscious that Willy was absent from them; that bull-necked Sergeant, or his like, had done something to change Willy, or rather to drive the real Willy into hiding; and while others admired and clapped their hands and said, ‘You do look a smart one!' Egg held his peace, hating the red coat of servitude. He hated it still more in retrospect, believing that it had in part obscured his last sight of Willy. His mind set moving by what Algernon had said, what part, he asked himself, had Jinny played during that brief leave? The question lingered with him
for some days, and at last, as if in answer to it, Jinny herself appeared. They met down the road, a few yards from the house: he in his working clothes, she in bonnet and crinoline.

‘Arfnoon, Miss Randall,' said Egg. And was for passing on; but Jinny lingered, and he could not quite bring himself to snub her.

‘Oh, Egg, I wanted to speak to you.'

He waited for her to continue. He was ill at ease, for he was still nursing anger against her, the more resolutely because she had not died of grief. Moreover her dress made the occasion a formal one; she was no longer the familiar Jinny Randall, of Randall's Stores, nor yet the Miss Randall he and Willy had watched in church: she was a call-paying lady.

‘I wanted … ' faltered Jinny again, ‘to speak to you.'

‘Mother's up at the house,' suggested Egg. For it was impossible that Jinny should want him.

‘Yes, I'm paying a call on Mrs Pandervil. But … but you first, because …' He noticed that her usually sallow face was flushed, and that there were dark rings under her dark eyes. She was, to his view, more definitely a woman than she had ever been before; he was aware of some force in her which, had it not faintly repelled, might have fascinated him; but being a few months short of eighteen against Jinny's mature twenty-three, he was at a loss to understand why Willy had loved her. ‘Because,' stumbled Jinny, ‘because Willy said …'

At the mention of that name Egg tried to harden his heart against her. ‘Never mind,' said he shortly. ‘Mother's up at the house if you'm wanting her.'

The rebuff made Jinny widen her eyes in wonder. ‘But won't you do something for me?' Her tone was humble, almost pleading. ‘Willy said you would. He thought a terrible lot of you, Willy did. It was always Egg this and Egg that,' These last words carried a hint of weariness, even a hint of resentment; and Egg, seeing her to have been once jealous of him and feeling her to be no longer so, was conscious that in himself, too, anger had suddenly died. That Willy had loved this woman was still matter for astonishment, but that she had loved Willy brought her within range of Egg's understanding. He could not, however, find any answer for her.

‘I was to come to you in any trouble,' Jinny breathlessly added. ‘That was one of the very last things he said to me.'

‘Are you in trouble now?'

She nodded. ‘And I want you to take me to your mother, Egg, please. And stay in the room with us.'

‘Why?' asked Egg, with a look as unsympathetic as his voice.

A blush began flooding her face; she put up her hands to hide it. Egg, thinking she was about to weep, at once repented of his harshness.

‘Won't you tell me why?' he said mildly.

She faced him again, saying: ‘It's just a whim,
Egg. I don't want to be alone with your mother. I'm nervous of her, but if you're there I shan't mind so much, because you and Willy understood one another.'

‘Mother won't eat you,' said Egg.

‘Will you do this for me?' she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, all right. But if Mother asks me to go out of the room I shall have to, shan't I?' He was, indeed, acutely uncomfortable at the thought of overhearing a conversation the purport of which could already be guessed. But to refuse her request, in the face of all that had been said, would have made him more uncomfortable still. In his heart he said: Why am I so soft about things?

The visitor was received in what Mrs Pandervil called her parlour, a sunless intimidating room that was so seldom used as to have entirely escaped the beneficent infection of humanity. Two stuffed birds in glass cases stood one each side of the mantelpiece, with a clock, a pair of tall vases, and two glass lustres coming between them. These objects were reflected in the large overmantel mirror, but it might be urged in its defence that the reflection was not accurate. The walls with their dark blue pattern of which the recurring theme was a bunch of grapes twining round the stalk of a peony, were plentifully sprinkled with family records—a greatly enlarged photograph of Mr Pandervil at twenty-five, another of Mrs Pandervil nursing her first baby, silhouette portraits of Mrs Pandervil's parents, and a sampler done by Sarah Pandervil at
the age of eleven and a half—but these human evidences singularly failed to alleviate the spiritual deadness of the room.