The Pandervils by Gerald Bullet Read Free Book Online

Algernon; nearer, indeed, than Egg and Algernon were to each other. Egg was obscurely aware of this; and since he had never given it a moment’s conscious thought it seemed a perfectly natural thing calling for no explanation.
    Willy’s remark amounted to an avowal of affection; so Egg asked quickly: ‘What did the lambs fetch?’
    Willy stared in surprise—‘Didn’t you hear the bidding?’
    Egg confessed that he had been wool-gathering; and when Willy told him the lambs’ price he madean eager show of interest. Meanwhile the two brothers had turned into The Farmer’s Rest and now sat down to the regulation market-day dinner. The place was already filled with men, and with the noise of men eating and talking together.
    Willy nudged his brother. ‘There he is—just the chap I want.’
    Following his brother’s indication, Egg saw that a stranger was come amongst them, a fellow conspicuously not of the farming fraternity who wore, for all the world as if it belonged to him, the bright scarlet uniform of the 17th Mershires. He was a very peacock among sparrows. With his gleaming buttons, his fine moustache, his loud voice and the proud chevrons of his rank, he looked like the illustration to a patriotic song. Before many minutes were passed everyone in the place was sharply aware of him. His brilliant presence struck so peremptory a note in that homespun company that was like a fire alarum, or the clangour of a brass bell commanding silence. He was the magnet for all eyes. Mouths gaped admiration; voices were lowered; there was a great deal of nudging and whispering and winking; and the serving-wenches went scarlet with a sense of the occasion. The only living thing in the room that seemed unconscious of the Sergeant was the Sergeant himself. Knife and fork held perpendicularly in the two fists planted one each side of his plate, he sat magnificently at ease, waiting his turn as though he had been an ordinary man. Proud, having such a presence, he could not help being:to call him proud is but to call him human. But haughty he was not; nor domineering. If he knew that his long mustard moustachios were the finest in Mershire, he did not flaunt the knowledge; if he knew himself physically a match for any three of these sleepy agriculturalists, he was not puffed up on that account. His manners were loud and civil. He said: ‘I’ll thank you for the salt, sir … Greatly obliged, sir!’ He was respectfully gay with the girls, rising to receive his plate of meat from the eager hands of one of them with a gallantry that almost translated boiled beef and carrots into a nosegay for his buttonhole; and twinkling kindly with his prominent russet-coloured eyes at the lass who brought him his tankard of ale. For a while, thereafter, he ministered faithfully to his appetite, quite unaware, you could have sworn, that all the world was covertly, and with an air of high expectation, watching for what he would do next. If he had been swallowing swords or munching glass they could not have found in him a more fascinating spectacle. And presently their vigilance was rewarded. He leaned towards his nearest neighbour and remarked: ‘They’re a savage lot, sir, them Roosians!’ Flattered and embarrassed by the honour of being taken into the Army’s confidence the man addressed could do no more than nod gravely, as if to say that he had already suspected as much.
‘But,’
added the Sergeant, raising his voice, ‘our lads are a match for them, never fear!’ In tribute to that sentiment all civilian tongues ceased to wag: and theSergeant, continuing in a loud deliberate voice, yet with an air so heavy with secret meaning as to be almost conspiratorial, remarked to the world at large: ‘Though I’m not saying they couldn’t do with an ’elping ’and, gentlemen! No, no; I’m not saying that!’ And then, having got on good terms