The Pandervils Read Online Free PDF Page A

Father’s a beast. But it’s not my fault.’
    Mrs Pandervil, with a mournful cry, sank down into her chair. ‘The Lord forgive me, I’ve borne a son without grace. He hates his own father!’
    Egg, the centre of this storm, stared at his stricken mother, heard Flisher’s sobs, was conscious of his brothers’ bewildered eyes upon him. He felt himself to be alone in a hostile world, and with no histrionic sense such as might have solaced a more egoistical Satan, he was forlorn indeed. Forlorn and near to tears; but against that surrender he struggled bitterly, for at last, at last, he had realized whom he must hate, whom he must blame. Without question his father was a beast; there could be no going back on that.
    The unhappy woman spoke again, sadly but with decision: ‘Willy, my boy, you must whip your brother.’
    Willy shrugged his shoulders, and after a pause he remarked with unwonted spirit: ‘Seems I’m to have all the dirty work to-day. Can’t I have a rest same’s other folk?’
    Being now in control of herself Mrs Pandervil answered quietly: ‘Willy, are you going to obey your mother?’
    Willy grunted. ‘Oh well, we must do as you say, Mother. Egg knows that ’swell as me.’ He got slowly out of his chair.
    â€˜No!’ said Egg. He had suddenly remembered that revelation on the way down Stally Pitch; he stood again in the sunshine and watched Willy’s face crumple up, comically, heartrendingly, like a a baby’s; at all costs Willy must be protected from this further ordeal. ‘No, Mother. Willy needn’t whip me. Let Father whip me. Let me go to Father now and tell him that he’s … and tellhim what I said.’ An astonished silence followed this speech. ‘I’ll tell him, Mother,’ said Egg eagerly. ‘Honour bright I will!’
    They held their breath, these Pandervil children, till their mother should announce her decision. At last she said: ‘Very well. Likely it is best so.’
    Egg stood up. His heart beat wildly, his face was pale, and his lips were stiffly set. Watched by all eyes he walked self-consciously to the door, and there, unable to bear the silence a moment longer, he remarked, with his fingers on the door-handle: ‘He’s in the study, I suppose?’ Before it occurred to anyone to answer the superfluous question, he was gone.
    He tapped on the study door. Hearing no response he tapped again. He was now on the verge of tears, and this delay was unendurable. What he had to do must be done quickly or it could not be done at all. His courage was at the ebb, and he was afflicted by a sense of the sheer silliness of this anticlimax. He tapped a third time, and still hearing nothing opened the door softly.
    William Pandervil’s study was a country foreign and frightening yet in some unfathomable way attractive to Egg. It was the only room in the house that contained books, and it contained little else. Books lined three of the four walls, from the floor to within two feet of the ceiling; and the smell of their leather hung palpable in the air, an intimidating smell that started a long train of forgotten associations in Egg’s nether consciousness. In the presence of so much learning Egg felt himselfto be a bumpkin, a clodhopper; at such times he shared his mother’s sense of inferiority. He was dimly aware that in these books were recorded the thoughts and discoveries of dead or distant men, but if he felt a moment’s curiosity it died at once in face of the assumption that such things were not for him. At school he had acquired a rudimentary knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, together with a list, necessarily incomplete, of the kings and capes of England. He knew that Alfred had burnt some cakes, that Charles the First had been beheaded, and that— some time between these two equally important events—Queen Elizabeth had sunk the Spanish