The Pandervils by Gerald Bullet

was the only other member of the family who could claim to have seen her.
    â€˜Here’s Egg,’ cried Algernon. ‘He’ll tell you all about it. Now, Egg, speak up, lad! What’s the wench like?’
    â€˜Do you mean the girl from the Vicarage?’ asked Egg innocently. ‘Oh, she’s well enough.’
    â€˜What did she talk about?’ demanded Flisher.
    â€˜Talk about?’ Egg looked indignant. ‘Didn’t talk at all. Asked for a pint of milk. Nothing to talk about in a pint of milk.’
    Jinny Randall intervened to ask: ‘Is she good-looking?’
    Egg shrugged his shoulders. ‘All depends on what you call good-looking.’ He listened no longer. Retiring into his private dream he lost touch with the conversation going on around him. But presently he emerged to hear Flisher say: ‘Well, I had a peep at her.’ Flisher gave him a sidelong spiteful glance. ‘And she’s awfully
fat
. That I
will
say.’
    Egg stared at his sister in mild surprise, wondering of whom she could be speaking. But hedid not trouble to ask. …
    All that day, indeed, he lived and moved in a dream. He was excited, even feverish, but infinitely content with his excitement and his fever. Next morning, however, waking into this transfigured world, his agitation became painful. In the company of brothers and sisters he found that to behave normally, as though to-day were no different from other days, was a difficult and exhausting task. Surely this inward tumult must find some witness in his face! Surely his blessedness and his hunger, his past glory and his present clamorous need, must be evident to everybody! Below all the surface activity of his mind, which was kept busy with this necessity of being natural, was the thought that this very day, this very morning, he might see her again. He was afraid to look at that thought lest (though he didn’t indeed reason it out) it should thereby become visible for all to read, audible for all to hear. Had she not confessed that she ‘might’ come to the orchard again? And though no hour had been named, was it possible to choose any other hour than the one made memorable yesterday? Egg, at once a more simple and a more complicated being than the dull fellow he had supplanted, was divided against himself, yet scarcely conscious of the division. In one part of him he knew that before morning had reached her zenith he would see Monica Wrenn again; in another he was in terror of being disappointed. He knew, but he instinctively pretended to doubt; taking, quite unconsciously, apleasure in the consequent alternation of torment and bliss. And at other moments, when fear became too sharp to be endured, he pretended to a greater degree of certainty than he possessed. He was in a state of exquisite incessant commotion; hope never hardened into assurance, and fear stopped just short of crazy despair. Never before had he been so excruciatingly alive.
    By the time he reached—after much contriving subterfuge—the orchard, he was well-nigh worn out with emotion, and incredibly, for one instant, a sick weariness assailed him, so that he felt scarcely able to endure the excitement of opening the gate and walking in and putting an end to his suspense. It seemed to him in that dreadful moment that he could almost have brought himself to turn back and seek rest in oblivion. But only for a moment. Having swallowed, half-chokingly, the excitement that rose in his throat, he forced himself to enter the orchard at a brisk pace. And there, standing under the same tree as before, was Monica.
    This moment of realization gave him, necessarily, a shock. For nearly twenty-four hours past she had been a dream to him, a symbol, a religion. Now she was actual, crudely actual; and though her beauty suffered no diminution, and though he had hungered to be near her, it was yet perhaps disconcerting to find her existing, located, solid. He noticed that