The Pandervils (43 page)

‘Five of 'em,' he said, glancing down at the girl.
He had forgotten his shyness. ‘Aren't they rummy things?' He grinned delightedly. ‘They think everyone's their mother.'

She smiled. ‘Little sillies!'

Nicky got down from the steps, feeling that he was on the threshold of heaven. The moment's perfection made him tremble. The sun was going down; the grass, to his senses, was darker than it had been five minutes earlier; and against that greenness Jane's white frock seemed to glow with her own light. The evening was full of those small remote sounds that are the breath of silence. Jane, her eyes big with listening, gazed at distance. Nicky gazed at her. He knew in this moment that hitherto his being in love with her had been three-parts make-believe: now it was real beyond question. Excited by the discovery he suddenly blurted out: ‘I hope you didn't mind my speaking to you like that?' The question was not quite sincere, for he felt pretty sure she hadn't minded. And yet … he wasn't sure: he dared not be sure of anything but that she was perfect and he a clumsy fellow. A clumsy fellow indeed, he thought, and wished he hadn't asked her that stupid question, by which, he feared, he had thrown away his advantage, detroyed at a touch the intimacy that a shared pleasure had brought naturally into being. She glanced at him without answering, as though she didn't understand or as though his silliness had disappointed her. He could not be sure which of these two things her glance meant, but goaded by it into justifying himself he became filled with the
courage of madness and said:' It may have seemed a bit cheeky. But it wasn't really, because I'm in love with you.'

She looked at him quickly, and as quickly looked away. ‘What a funny thing to say!'

‘Why?' demanded Nicky. He was bolder than ever now, for he saw that though taken by surprise she was not angry; above all, she didn't disbelieve him.

She shrugged her shoulders, half turning her back on him. There was a hint of petulance in the movement. ‘Well, it
is
. That's why.'

Had he made a fool of himself? The fear added a suggestion of sulkiness to his voice. ‘Funny or not, it's true. I'm most fearfully in love with you.' He wished the statement had not sounded so much like an ultimatum, a take-it-or-leave-it. He wanted above all to be eloquent, to tell her how beautiful she was, and how she had transfigured the world for him; he wanted to say that if he won her he would go crazy with joy, and that if he lost her she would still remain always the only meaning life could have for him. He could not say these things; his sense of having spoken too soon, and ineptly, robbed him of the power to do anything but blunder into a kind of quarrelsomeness. He felt as though he were made of wood: ungainly in movement, jerky in speech, incredibly clumsy in tactics. ‘I say, do you believe me?' No answer. ‘Hang it all, what's funny about it! I
am
in love with you, I tell you.'

Even then she delayed answering. She stood and stared at the ample curves of the horizon; interlocking and unlocking her fingers; and listening, but not, apparently, to what he said. From the church came the sound of chanting, to add one more touch of unreality to this experience, which was yet, in spite of everything, the most real experience Nicky had ever known.

He had all but lost hope of getting an answer out of her when she turned to him suddenly. ‘But it's absurd. You don't know me. And I don't know you.'

Her voice was impatient, but behind the impatience there was something else, something in her tone and in her look that gave him hope.

‘I
do
know you,' he protested. ‘I've known for a month, exactly a month, that you're lovelier than anything else I've ever seen. What more is there to know than that!' She began studying the hills again. ‘And I know your name too. It's Jane!' He made the statement excitedly, as though challenging her to deny it. ‘So you see I do know you. And this evening we've talked, and we looked at those birds together, so why can't we be friends? Well, we
are
friends, anyhow.'

‘There's no call to be so cross about it,' said Jane. She gave a little laugh that set his heart dancing. ‘Who told you my name?'

‘No one told me. I found out. I simply had to find out. And mine's Nicky. Nicholas Pandervil.'

Now that she stood face to face with him, smiling amusedly, he lost his courage and could think
of no more that he dared say. Her laugh, by opening the door to friendship, had made her mistress of the situation; and her smile made him blush for the impulsive storm of words that had provoked it. He felt that she was a good deal older and wiser than he, though he swore that she couldn't be a day over twenty and he was well over twenty-two.

The White Hart was the older, if not the better, of Keyborough's two inns; and the room chosen for the accommodation of Egg and Nicky was the landlord's special pride: a large low-ceiled room very rich in old oak, mellow with history, and slightly conscious, thought Nicky, of the handsome brick fireplace with which its present master had provided it. An illustrious somebody had once slept in this room, either a runaway king or a popular highwayman, for the story varied; and that deep cut in the window-sill had been made by the sword of Prince Charlie himself. Egg liked the room: its spaciousness impressed and delighted him. He liked the two neat little beds, and the log fire (such an extravagance at this time of the year); and he liked, above all, the prospect of sleeping here in the company of Nicky, who was at this very moment watching him out of his eye-corner, as they said in Mershire, and waiting anxiously for a sign of pleasure from him.

‘A fine room, upon my word!'

‘D'you like it, Dad?'

‘Like it? Should think I do! Never slept in such a room in all my life. And a racketting big charge they make for it, I'll be bound.'

Nicky grinned with satisfaction. ‘Not so much. Yes, it's a good room. But there are some pretty good rooms at the Ridge, aren't there?'

‘I dare say. Me and y'r Uncle Algy had a biggish one between us, I seem to remember. But it's more than a bit since I saw the place. Hardly know it, I shan't.'

Egg became lost in silence, ruminating upon the marvel of this return to the scene of his boyhood. Two hours ago he had stepped out of the London train at Mercester station, whence he had been brought in a taxi—for this was a day of joyous and unbridled extravagance—to the White Hart; and tomorrow, in the same or another taxi, he would be taken to see over his son's farm. It was three months since his brother Algy's death, and he had not yet shaken off the load of melancholy it had burdened him with. It had made him think of all the other losses he had suffered in recent years, particularly those of his old friend Farthing, neighbour Pummice, and Carrie. The loss of Algy was less grievous than those, for indeed he had never been on very intimate terms with Algy, and the two for so many years had lived each his separate life that they met, and met rarely, almost as strangers, with only family sentiment and a sense of old times to bind them together. Perhaps that was why Egg had failed—foolishly, as he now thought—to expect
his brother's death. He reproached himself for not having taken the trouble to see Algy oftener, and felt a bitter compunction when he remembered how, the summer before, spending a fortnight at that Old Vicarage of Algy's, he had found his exuberance a little trying, his heartiness monotonous: his company, in fine, a tax on patience. But it don't matter now. Nothing matters. Nothing matters except Nicky. The puzzle of it was that he had always had, in his absence, a real affection for Algy; at a distance that geniality had always been heart-warming, irresistible; it was now a poignant memory.

‘I can't realize it even now,' said Egg, speaking his thought. ‘Y'r Uncle Algy being gone I mean. It don't seem to make sense somehow. So full of fun as he was! Such a talker!' (For we persist in our naive habit of expecting Death to be more discriminating in his choice of victims than he has ever yet been.) ‘I wish I'd seen a bit more of him, poor old chap.' Meeting Nicky's glance Egg was startled to think by how little he himself was younger than Algy. They call
me
a poor old chap, I shouldn't wonder. But I've got Nicky, and Nicky's got a farm. He stretched his thin hands towards the fire, for he suddenly felt cold, or thought he did, although it was summertime. ‘So everything's settled to rights, my boy?'

‘Yes,' said Nicky. ‘There's been a lot of fuss and palaver, but everybody's been pretty decent about things, from Ambrose down to the solicitor johnny.' He began telling his father in detail the
story that he had summarized in his letters: how, within an hour of Uncle Algy's death, Ambrose the auctioneer had whispered with a sympathetic and deprecating grimace: ‘Mr Nicholas Pandervil, would you mind stepping this way, sir? … I think I understood the late deceased gentleman to say that you were his heir. Yes? Ah yes. And my clerk is under the impression that this purchase was being made on your behalf. Is that so? Splendid. I have to ask these questions, Mr Pandervil, for in the ordinary way we might have to put up the property again in a case like this, if you see what I mean. Now may I take it, Mr Pandervil, that you intend to see the matter through? Ah you do. Very happy I'm sure. And your legal adviser would be …?' Uncle Algy's solicitor proved to be ‘a very good friend of ours, Mr Pandervil. Very happy I'm sure.'

Egg listened attentively to the story. ‘Generous fellow y'r uncle. If only he coulda seen you settled down in y'r own farmhouse, he'd a bin as pleased as pleased … It's a queer feeling,' he went on, meaning it was queer to think that to-morrow he would be seeing the old place again. Some shyness made him leave the sentence unfinished, and he filled the gap by saying, half to himself: ‘Well now you've a farm you'll be wanting a wife I spose, eh?'

Nicky parried with a grin. ‘Better go to the Cattle Show to-morrow and see if we can find a likely one.' Egg took the chaff goodhumouredly, and Nicky couldn't resist elaborating his theme.
‘A tall girl, don't you think? And strong of course —lots of work she'll have to do. Tall, about five feet six or five feet seven, what d'you say, Dad? Not too plump and not skinny. And black hair, or dark at any rate. None of your auburn stuff: it might clash with the butter. Black hair drawn back from the forehead and done up into a jug handle at the nape; rather prim and Quakerish, you know, but eyes very lively when they want to be.' He broke off, fearing that he was giving himself away.

‘I see you've got the right idea,' said Egg, entering into the game. ‘Ay, I like the sound of that well enough. But looks aren't everything, Nicky. Make sure you get a kind one, boy. It's a long business, is marriage.'

‘Is she kind as she is fair?' quoted Nicky, still grinning so that he should not look as solemn as he felt. ‘For beauty lives with kindness.'

Egg nodded, giving his son a searching glance. ‘That's true. Who told you that now? It's true enough, I'm sure.'

‘Shakespeare said it first. Let's have another log on the fire, shall we?'

Egg's eyes kindled. ‘First fire I've ever seen in June. Tisn't a cold day either. You can't call it really cold. Yes I like that bit you said just now. I knew a bit of Shakespeare myself once. Got it by heart I did.' There was pride in him now.

‘Did you?'

‘Ay. Something about the lily, pause to mark the lily, and praise the deep … something in the
rose: it's gone now these many years. But I had it by heart once.' A feeling of tiredness came suddenly upon him. ‘Well, I rather think I'll be turning in to bed. How d'you feel, my boy? Not ready for bed yet, I spose.'

‘Oh, ready enough. I expect you're tired, Dad, after the journey.'

The old man was already getting out of his clothes. ‘Not really tired. Well, p'raps a little. But not sleepy.' And, when presently he climbed into his bed, he repeated almost anxiously: ‘I'm not sleepy, you know. We can go on talking, there's plenty to say yet. I shan't go to sleep for an hour or two, I fancy. But I just want to have a lie down.'

Nicky sat still for five minutes longer, finishing a cigarette. ‘How do Harold and Lily hit it off together nowadays?' he asked, rising from his chair at last. There was no answer. Tiptoeing across the room, he saw that Egg was fast asleep.

He himself was soon in bed, thinking of Jane and wondering whether her mother, that time he went to tea with them, had liked him or not. He was alive to the importance of being liked by Jane's mother. She had seemed friendly enough, but could appearances be trusted? And what of Jane herself? There was no serious doubt in his mind of her friendliness, but beyond that he knew nothing. She was always serenely pleased to see him, and that, so far as he could see, was the beginning and end of it. Comparing Jane with her mother, a small brown-haired woman quiet
but alert, he decided that the girl must take after her father, a prosperous farmer of whom nothing more was known to Nicky than that he had been killed in the Boer War after serving six months as a Volunteer. For the twelve years since his death they had lived quietly at Upridge in a house whose atmosphere, created by Mrs Marsh, was that of old-fashioned and modest gentility. Nicky had never experienced anything quite like it before; it had for him the charm of an old print, the musty but evocative fragrance of pressed flowers; but he was vaguely uneasy to observe how Jane seemed to be assimilated by this atmosphere and so become less accessible to him. This quiet feminine world in which she lived with her mother, this world serene and a little sleepy—it had undeniable charm for a spectator, but it was no place, thought Nicky jealously, for a fine strong lovely girl like Jane, whose filial devotion at once enchanted and angered him. It made him guilty to know that he was trying to break into this domestic peace, bringing division where there was now nothing (it seemed) but placid affection; and the shame of that guilt made him the more fierce in his determination to steal the girl from her mother. He thought of marriage as though it had been a kind of treachery he was planning, for the urgency of his love made him impatient that anyone else should have a claim on her. And now he began wondering how much or how little of his hopes he should confide to his father, who couldn't, he felt, be expected to understand. He must have been in love
some time or another, but he'll have forgotten what it feels like by now, and say I'm too young or some stuff. I wonder what he'd think of Jane if he saw her. With these last thoughts he drifted into sleep and did not wake until roused by strong sunlight and the sound of water being splashed into a basin.