The Pandervils Read Online Free PDF Page B

you were beaten. This, in Egg’s world, was a plain natural law. And so, impatient to get the ceremony finished, he said: ‘Shall I bend over?’
    He bent over. Mr Pandervil picked up a long ruler from his table and bestowed five sharp cuts upon the seat of regeneration. ‘That’ll do, my lad.’
    By Egg’s standards the punishment was light, even trivial. Even to him it was apparent that there was no conviction behind the castigation; and now, released from his obsession, he was at liberty to wonder what ailed his father.
    â€˜And now,’ said Mr Pandervil, ‘if you will kindly satisfy my curiosity,
why
did you call me a beast?’
    Remembering the reason all too bitterly, Egg answered, flushing: ‘Because you had Fang shot. Our dog Fang. Because I hated you.’
    Mr Pandervil smiled. It was a smile that betokened neither mirth nor bitterness—a queer heartrending smile that suddenly, for no reason at all, filled Egg’s eyes with the tears he had so stubbornly held in check. Looking on his father, as for the first time, he saw him as a suffering creature, mortal like Fang, simple like Willy, blundering and bewildered like himself. A sob gathered in the boy’s throat, and tears began streaming down his hot cheeks. …
    He returned red-eyed to the kitchen, where Algernon, noticing his state, came to him with brotherly sympathy, saying, with an arm flung about the youngster’s shoulder: ‘Bit of a stinger, was it, Eggie? Never mind, lad. ’Tis over now.’
3
    On Easter Day in each year Mr Pandervil went to church, because, as he explained to his wife, he took a peculiar interest in pagan festivals. Elizabeth, had she understood the remark, would have attached no importance to it; and in this she would have been right, for in fact Mr Pandervil was a firm believer in the Church of England, which he regarded as a necessary state department existing for the propagation of Christian mythology in the interests of good morals and good manners. Far though he was from being a family man, contriving when he could to forget that his family existed, he would have been troubled and indignant had the Pandervil womenfolk proved lax in church attendance. Fortunately no such disaster was possible with Elizabeth in command. She herself took turns with Sarah in cooking the Sunday mid-day dinner; one went to church, one stayed at home; but she saw to it that her younger daughters (except the baby), and as many of her sons as could be spared from the farm, never failed to set out in two decorous parties. Sarah in her Sunday bonnet and best crinoline, and linkedwith her sisters hand to hand, had such a matronly air, and in years was so far beyond her companions, that a stranger might have been excused for supposing her to be a young mother surrounded by her own children. In her left hand she carried the prayer-books; in her right she held the moist fingers of Martha’s left; and at the other end of the line was Flisher, between whom and Martha little Jane was supported. Mildred, at four, was left behind, her good behaviour being still a matter more for conjecture than for hope. At a decent distance behind the girls, followed two of their three brothers, sheepish, self-conscious, hands scrubbed and faces polished, and looking—in their ill-fitting, sober, Sabbath garments—pathetically gawky and anxious to please.
    To Egg, though he would perhaps rather have been out of doors, this necessary church-going was not an unmitigated misfortune. He did not, indeed, take pleasure in listening to the shrill, brisk, gabbled chanting of Hebrew psalms; to prayers nasally intoned; and to chapters from the Bible read with a dreary unction that invited nothing but open-mouthed, empty-minded reverence; and he did not like that incessant alternation of kneeling and sitting, sitting and standing, which we know to be peculiarly pleasing to the Holy Trinity. But, for the sermon, of which