"Do you know anything of Mr. Charlie Perigal?" asked Mavis of Miss
Toombs and Miss Hunter the following day, as they were sipping their
afternoon tea.
"Why?" asked Miss Hunter.
"I met him yesterday," replied Mavis.
"Do you mean that you were introduced to him?" asked Miss Hunter calmly.
"There was no occasion. I knew him when I was a girl."
"I can't say I knew him when I was a girl," retorted Miss Hunter. "But
I know this much: he never goes to church."
"What of that?" snapped Miss Toombs.
Miss Hunter looked at the eldest present, astonished.
"Is that you talking?" she asked.
"Why, what did I say?"
"You spoke as if it were a matter of no consequence, a man not going to
church."
"I can't have been thinking what I said," remarked Miss Toombs, as she
put aside her teacup to go on with her work.
"I thought not," retorted Miss Hunter.
"You haven't told me very much about him," said Mavis.
"I've never heard much good of him," declared Miss Hunter.
"Men are scarcely expected to be paragons," said Mavis.
"When he was last at home, he was often about with Sir Archibald
Windebank."
"I know him too," declared Mavis.
"Nonsense!"
"Why shouldn't I? His father was my father's oldest friend."
Miss Hunter winced; she stared fixedly at Mavis, with eyes in which
admiration and envy were expressed. Later, when Mavis was leaving for
the day, Miss Hunter fussed about her with many assurances of regard.
To Mavis's surprise, Miss Toombs joined her outside the
factory--surprise, because the elder woman rarely spoke to her, seeming
to avoid rather than cultivate her acquaintance.
"I can say here what I can't say before that little cat," remarked Miss
Toombs.
Mavis stared at the plainly clad, stumpy little figure in astonishment.
"I mean it," continued Miss Toombs. "She's a designing little
hypocrite. I know you're too good a sort to give me away."
"I didn't know you liked me well enough to confide in me," remarked
Mavis.
"I don't like you."
"Why not?" asked Mavis, surprised at the other woman's candour.
"Look at you!" cried Miss Toombs savagely, as she turned away from
Mavis. "But what I was also going to say was this: don't have too much
to do with young Perigal."
"I'm not likely to."
"Don't, all the same. You're much too good for him."
"Why? Is he fast?" asked Mavis.
"It wouldn't matter if he were. But he is what some people call a
'waster.'"
"He admits that himself."
"He's a pretty boy. But I don't think he's the man to make a woman
happy, unless--"
"Unless what?"
"She despised him or knocked him about."
"I won't forget," laughed Mavis.
"Good day."
"Won't you come home to tea?"
"No, thanks," said Miss Toombs, as she made off, to leave Mavis gazing
at the ill-dressed, squat figure hurrying along the road.
As might be expected, Miss Hunter's and Miss Toombs' disparagement of
Charlie Perigal but served to incline Mavis in his favour. She thought
of him all the way home, and wondered how soon she would see him again.
When she opened the door of her room, an overpowering scent of violets
assailed her nostrils; she found it came from a square cardboard box
which lay upon the table, having come by post addressed to her. The box
was full of violets, upon the top of which was a card.
She snatched this up, to see if it would tell her who had sent the
flowers. It merely read, "With love to Jill."
Her heart glowed with happiness to think that a man had gone to the
trouble and expense of sending her violets. Before sitting down to her
meal, she picked out a few of the finest to pin them in her frock; the
others she placed in water in different parts of the room. If Mavis
were inclined to forget Perigal, which she was not, the scent of the
violets was enough to keep him in her mind until they withered.
She did not write to acknowledge the gift; she reserved her thanks till
their next meeting, which she believed would not long be delayed. The
following Saturday (she had seen nothing of Perigal in the meantime)
she called on Mrs. Trivett at Pennington Farm. The farmyard, with its
poultry, the old-world garden in which the house was situated, the
discordant shrieks which the geese raised at her coming, took the
girl's fancy. While waiting for the door to be opened, she was much
amused at the inquisitive way in which the geese craned their heads
through the palings in order to satisfy their curiosity.
The door was opened by a homely, elderly woman, who dropped a curtsey
directly when she saw Mavis, who explained who she was.
"You're kindly welcome, miss, if you'll kindly walk inside. Trivett
will be in soon."
Mavis followed the woman to the parlour, where her hostess dusted the
chair before she was allowed to sit.
"Do please sit down," urged Mavis, as Mrs Trivett continued to stand.
"Thank you, miss. It isn't often we have such a winsome young lady like
you to visit us," said Mrs Trivett, as she sat forward on her chair
with her hands clasped on the side nearest to Mavis, a manner peculiar
to country women.
"I can't get over your husband being a farmer as well as a musician,"
remarked Mavis.
Mrs Trivett shook her head sadly.
"It's a sad pity, miss; because his love of music makes him forget his
farm."
"Indeed!"
"And since you praised his playing in church, he's spent the best part
of the week at the piano."
"I am sorry."
"At least, he's been happy, although the cows did get into the hay and
tread it down."
Mavis expressed regret.
"You'll stay to tea and supper, miss?"
"Do you know what you're asking?" laughed Mavis.
"It's the anniversary of the day on which I first met Trivett, and I've
made a moorhen and rabbit-pie to celebrate it," declared Mrs Trivett.
Mavis was a little surprised at this piece of information, but she very
soon learned that Mrs Trivett's life was chiefly occupied with the
recollection and celebration of anniversaries of any and every event
which had occurred in her life. Custom had cultivated her memory, till
now, when nearly every day was the anniversary of something or other,
she lived almost wholly in the past, each year being the epitome of her
long life. When Trivett shortly came in from his work, he greeted Mavis
with respectful warmth; then, he conducted his guest over the farm.
Under his guidance, she inspected the horses, sheep, pigs and cows, to
perceive that her conductor was much more interested in their physical
attributes than in their contributive value to the upkeep of the farm.
"Do 'ee look at the roof of that cow barton," said Trivett presently.
"It is a fine red," declared Mavis.
"A little Red Riding Hood red, isn't it? But it's nothing to the roof
of the granary. May I ask you to direct your attention to that?"
Mavis walked towards the granary, to see that thatch had been
superimposed upon the tiles; this was worn away in places, revealing a
roof of every variety of colour. She looked at it for quite a long time.
"Zomething of an artist, miss?" said Trivett.
"Quite uncreative," laughed Mavis.
"Then you're very lucky. You're spared the pain artists feel when their
work doesn't meet with zuccess."
They returned to the kitchen, where Mavis feasted on newly-baked bread
smoking hot from the oven, soaked in butter, home-made jam, and cake.
"I've eaten so much, you'll never ask me again," remarked Mavis.
"I'm glad you've a good appetite; it shows you make yourself at home,"
replied Mrs Trivett.
After tea, they went into the parlour, where it needed no second
request on Mavis' part to persuade Mr Trivett to play. He extemporised
on the piano for the best part of two hours, during which Mavis
listened and dreamed, while Mrs Trivett undisguisedly went to sleep, a
proceeding that excited no surprise on the musician's part. Supper was
served in the kitchen, where Mavis partook of a rabbit and moorhen pie
with new potatoes and young mangels mashed. She had never eaten the
latter before; she was surprised to find how palatable the dish was. Mr
and Mrs Trivett drank small beer, but their guest was regaled with
cowslip wine, which she drank out of deference to the wishes of her
kind host and hostess.
After supper, Mr Trivett solemnly produced a well-thumbed "Book of
Jokes," from which he read pages of venerable stories. Although Mrs
Trivett had heard them a hundred times before, she laughed consumedly
at each, as if they were all new to her. Her appreciation delighted her
husband. When Mavis rose to take her leave, Trivett, despite her
protest, insisted upon accompanying her part of the way to Melkbridge.
She bade a warm goodbye to kindly Mrs Trivett, who pressed her to come
again and as often as she could spare the time.
"It do Trivett so much good to see a new face. It help him with his
music," she explained.
"We might walk back by the canal," suggested Trivett. "It look zo
zolemn by moonlight."
Upon Mavis' assenting, they joined the canal where the tow-path is at
one with the road by the railway bridge.
"How long have you been in Pennington?" asked Mavis presently.
"A matter o' ten years. We come from North Petherton, near Tarnton."
"Then you didn't know my father?"
"No, miss, though I've heard tark of him in Melkbridge."
"Do you know anything of Mr Perigal?" she asked presently.
"Which one: the old or the young un?"
"Th--the old one."
"A queer old stick, they zay, though I've never set eyes on un. He
don't hit it off with his zon, neither."
"Whose fault is that?"
"Both. Do 'ee know young Mr Charles?"
"I've met him."
"H'm!"
"What's the matter with him?"
Mr Trivett solemnly shook his head.
"What does that mean?"
"It's hard to zay. But from what I zee an' from what I hear tell, he be
a deal too clever."
"Isn't that an advantage nowadays?"
"Often. But he's quarrelled with his feyther and zoon gets tired of
everything he takes up."
Trivett's remarks increased Mavis' sympathy for Perigal. The more he
had against him, the more necessary it was for those who liked him to
make allowance for flaws in his disposition. Kindly encouragement might
do much where censure had failed.
Days passed without Mavis seeing more of Perigal. His indifference to
her existence hurt the little vanity that she possessed. At the same
time, she wondered if the fact of her not having written to thank him
for the violets had anything to do with his making no effort to seek
her out. Her perplexities on the matter made her think of him far more
than she might have done had she met him again. If Perigal had wished
to figure conspicuously in the girl's thoughts, he could not have
chosen a better way to achieve that result.
Some three weeks after her meeting with him, she was sitting in her
nook reading, when she was conscious of a feeling of helplessness
stealing over her. Then a shadow darkened the page. She looked up, to
see Perigal standing behind her.
"Interesting?" he asked.
"Very."
"Sorry."
He moved away. Mavis tried to go on with her book, but could not fix
her attention upon what she read. Her heart was beating rapidly. She
followed the man's retreating figure with her eyes; it expressed a
dejection that moved her pity. Although she felt that she was behaving
in a manner foreign to her usual reserve, she closed her book, got up
and walked after Perigal.
He heard her approaching and turned round.
"There's no occasion to follow me," he said.
"I won't if you don't wish it."
"I said that for your sake. You surely know that I didn't for mine."
"Why for my sake?"
"I've a beastly 'pip.' It's catching."
"Where did you catch it?"
"I've always got it more or less."
"I'm sorry. I've to thank you for those violets."
"Rot!"
"I was glad to get them."
"Really, really glad?" he asked, his face lightening.
"Of course. I love flowers."
"I see," he said coldly.
She made as if she would leave him, but, as before, felt a certain
inertness in his presence which she was in no mood to combat; instead
of going, she turned to him to ask:
"Anything happened to you since I last saw you?"
"The usual."
"What?"
"Depression and rows with my father."
"I thought you'd forget your promise."
"On the contrary, that's what all the row was about."
"How was that?"
"First of all, I told him that I had met you and all you told me about
yourself."
"That made him angry?"
"And when I told him I wanted to have another shot at something, a
jolly good shot this time, he said, 'I suppose that means you want
money?'"
"What did you say?"
"One can't make money without. That's what all the row's been about.
He's a fearful old screw."
"As well as I remember, my father always liked him."
"That was before I grew up to sour his life."
"Did you tell him how you saved Jill's life?" asked Mavis.
"I'd forgotten that, and I'm also forgetting my fishing."
"May I come too?"
"I've a spare rod if you care about having a go."
"I should love to. I've often thought I'd go in for it. It would be
something to do in the evenings."
She walked with him a hundred yards further, where he had left two rods
on the bank with the lines in the water; these had been carried by the
current as far as the lengths of gut would permit.
"Haul up that one. I'll try this," said Perigal.
Mavis did as she was told, to find there was something sufficiently
heavy at the end of her line to bend the top joint of her rod.
"I've got a fish!" she cried.
"Pull up carefully."
She pulled the line from the water, to find that she had hooked an old
boot.
Perigal laughed at her discomfiture.
"It is funny, but you needn't laugh at me," she said, slightly
emphasising the "you."
"Never mind. I'll bait your hook, and you must have another shot."
Her newly baited line had scarcely been thrown in the water when she
caught a fine roach.
"You'd better have it stuffed," he remarked, as he took it off the hook.
"It's going to stuff me. I'll have it tomorrow for breakfast."
In the next hour, she caught six perch of various sizes, four roach,
and a gudgeon. Perigal caught nothing, a fact that caused Mavis to
sympathise with his bad luck.
"Next time you'll do all the catching," she said.
"You mean you'll fish with me again?"
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Really, with me?"
"I like fish for breakfast," she said, as she turned from the ardour of
his glance.
Presently, when they had "jacked up," as he called it, and walked
together across the meadows in the direction of the town, she said
little; she replied to his questions in monosyllables. She was
wondering at and a little afraid of the accentuated feeling of
helplessness in his presence which had taken possession of her. It was
as if she had no mind of her own, but must submit her will to the
wishes of the man at her side. They paused at the entrance to the
churchyard, where he asked:
"And what have you been doing all this time?"
She told him of her visit to the Trivetts.
His face clouded as he said:
"Fancy you hobnobbing with those common people!"
"But I like them--the Trivetts, I mean. Whoever I knew, I should go and
see them if I liked them," she declared, her old spirit asserting
itself.
He looked at her in surprise, to say:
"I like to see you angry; you look awfully fine when that light comes
into your eyes."
"And I don't like you at all when you say I shouldn't know homely,
kindly people like the Trivetts."
"May I conclude, apart from that, you like me?" he asked. "Answer me;
answer me!"
"I don't dislike you," she replied helplessly.
"That's something to go on with. But if I'd known you were going to
throw yourself away on farmers, I'd have hung after you myself. Even I
am better than that."
"Thanks. I can do without your assistance," she remarked.
"You think I didn't come near you all this time because I didn't care?"
"I don't think I thought at all about it."
"If you didn't, I did. I was longing, I dare not say how much, to see
you again."
"Why didn't you?" she asked.
"For once in my life, I've tried to go straight."
"What do you mean?"
"You're the sort of girl to get into a man's blood; to make him mad,
reckless, head over ears--"
"Hadn't we better go on?" she asked.
"Why--why?"
She had not thought him capable of such earnestness.
"Because I wish it, and because this churchyard is enough to give one
the blues."
"I love it, now I'm talking to you."
"Love it?" she echoed.
"First of all, you in your youth, and--and your attractiveness--are
such a contrast to everything about us. It emphasises you and--and--it
tells me to snatch all the happiness one can, before the very little
while when we are as they."
Here he pointed to the crowded graves.
"I'm going home," declared Mavis.
"May I come as far as your door?"
"Aren't you ashamed of being seen with me?"
"I'm very, very proud, little Mavis, and, if only my circumstances were
different, I should say much more to you."
His vehemence surprised Mavis into silence; it also awoke a strange joy
in her heart; she seemed to walk on air as they went towards her
lodging.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked presently.
"You."
"Really?"
"I was wondering why you went out of your way to give people a bad
opinion of you."
"I wasn't aware I was especially anxious to do that."
"You don't go to church."
"Are you like that?"
"Not particularly; but other people are, and that's what they say."
"Church is too amusing nowadays."
"I'm afraid my sense of humour isn't sufficiently developed."
"It's the parsons I'm thinking of. Once upon a time, when people went
in for deadly sins, it gave 'em something to preach about. Now we all
lead proper, discreet lives, they have to justify their existence by
inventing tiny sins for their present congregations."
"What sins?" asked Mavis.
"Sins of omission: any trifles they can think of that a more robust
race of soul-savers would have laughed at. No. It's the parsons who
empty the churches."
"I don't like you to talk like that."
"Why? Are you that way?"
"Sometimes more than others."
"I congratulate you."
She looked at him, surprised.
"I mean it," he went on. "People are much the happier for believing.
The great art of life is to be happy, and, if one is, nothing else
matters."
"Then why don't you believe?"
"Supposing one can't."
"Can't?"
"It isn't given to everyone, you know."
"Then you think we're just like poor animals--"
"Don't say 'poor' animals," he interrupted. "They're ever so much
happier than we."
"Nonsense! They don't know."
"To be ignorant is to be happy. When will you understand that?"
"Never."
"I know what you're thinking of--all the so-called mental development
of mankind--love, memory, imagination, sympathy--all the finer
susceptibilities of our nature. Is it that what you were thinking of?"
"Vaguely. But I couldn't find the words so nicely as you do."
"Perhaps I read 'em and got 'em by heart. But don't you see that all
the fine things I mentioned have to be paid for by increased liability
to mental distress, to forms of pain to which coarse natures are,
happily, strangers?"
"You talk like an unpleasant book," she laughed.
"And you look like a radiant picture," he retorted.
"Ssh! Here we are."
"The moon's rising: it's full tonight. Think of me if you happen to be
watching it," he said.
"I shall be fast asleep."
"And looking more charming than ever, if that be possible. I shall be
having a row with my father."
"I daresay you can hold your own."
"That's what makes him so angry."
Mrs. Farthing, upon opening the door, was surprised to see Mavis
standing beside young Mr Perigal.
"I think you can get home safely now," he remarked, as he raised his
straw hat.
"Thanks for seeing me home."
"Don't forget your fish. Good night."
Mavis thought it well not to enter into any explanation of Perigal's
presence to her landlady. She asked if supper were ready, to sit down
to it directly she learned that it was. But she did not eat; whether or
not her two hours spent in Perigal's company were responsible for the
result, it did not alter the fact that her mind was distracted by
tumult. The divers perplexities and questionings that had troubled her
with the oncoming of the year now assailed her with increased force.
She tried to repress them, but, finding the effort unavailing,
attempted to fathom their significance, with the result of increasing
her distress. The only tangible fact she could seize from the welter in
her mind was a sense of enforced isolation from the joys and sorrow of
everyday humanity. More than this she could not understand.
She picked her food, well knowing that, if she left it untouched, Mrs
Farthing would associate her loss of appetite with the fact of her
being seen in the company of a man, and would lead the landlady to make
ridiculously sentimental deductions, which would be embarrassing to
Mavis.
When she went upstairs, she did not undress. She felt that it would be
useless to seek sleep at present. Instead, she stood by the open window
of her room, and, after lighting a cigarette and blowing out the
candle, looked out into the night.
It was just another such an evening that she had looked into the sky
from the window of Mrs Ellis' on the first day of her stay on Kiva
Street. Then, beyond sighing for the peace of the country, she had
believed that she had only to secure a means of winning her daily bread
in order to be happy. Now, although she had obtained the two desires of
her heart, she was not even content. Perigal's words awoke in her
memory:
"No sooner was a desire satisfied, than one was at once eager for
something else."
It would almost seem as if he had spoken the truth--"almost," because
she was hard put to it to define what it was for which her being
starved.
Mavis looked out of the window. The moon had not yet emerged from a
bank of clouds in the east; as if in honour of her coming, the edge of
these sycophants was touched with silver light. The stars were growing
wan, as if sulkily retiring before the approach of an overwhelming
resplendence. Mavis's cigarette went out, but she did not bother to
relight it; she was wondering how she was to obtain the happiness for
which her heart ached: the problem was still complicated by the fact of
her being ignorant in which direction lay the promised land.
Her windows looked over the garden, beyond which fields of long grasses
stretched away as far as she could see. A profound peace possessed
these, which sharply contrasted with the disquiet in her mind.
Soon, hitherto invisible hedges and trees took dim, mysterious shape;
the edge of the moon peeped with glorious inquisitiveness over the
clouds. Calmly, royally the moon rose. So deliberately was she
unveiled, that it seemed as if she were revealing her beauty to the
world for the first time, like a proud, adored mistress unrobing before
an impatient lover, whose eyes ached for what he now beheld.
Mystery awoke in the night. Things before unseen or barely visible were
now distinct, as if eager for a smile from the aloof loveliness soaring
majestically overhead.
Mavis stood in the flood of silver light. For the moment her distress
of soul was forgotten. She gazed with wondering awe at the goddess of
the night. The moon's coldness presently repelled her: to the girl's
ardent imaginings, it seemed to speak of calm contemplation,
death--things which youth, allied to warm flesh and blood, abhorred.
Then she fell to thinking of all the strange scenes in the life history
of the world on which the moon had looked--stricken fields, barbaric
rites, unrecorded crimes, sacked and burning cities, the blackened
remains of martyrs at the stake, enslaved nations sleeping fitfully
after the day's travail, wrecks on uncharted seas, forgotten
superstitions, pagan saturnalias--all the thousand and one phases of
life as it has been and is lived.
Although Mavis' tolerable knowledge of history told her how countless
must be the sights of horror on which the moon had gazed, as
indifferently as it had looked on her, she recalled, as if to leaven
the memory of those atrocities (which were often of such a nature that
they seemed to give the lie to the existence of a beneficent Deity),
that there was ever interwoven with the web of life an eternal tale of
love--love to inspire great deeds and noble aims; love to enchain the
beast in woman and man; love, whose constant expression was the
sacrifice of self upon the altar of the loved one.
Then her mind recalled individual lovers, famous in history and
romance, who were set as beacon lights in the wastes of oppression and
wrong-doing. These lovers were of all kinds. There were those who
deemed the world well lost for a kiss of the loved one's lips; lovers
who loved vainly; those who wearied of the loved one.
Mavis wondered, if love were laid at her feet, how it would find her.
She had always known that she was well able to care deeply if her heart
were once bestowed. She had, also, kept this capacity for loving
unsullied from what she believed to be the defilement of flirtation.
Now were revealed the depths of love and tenderness of which she was
possessed. They seemed fathomless, boundless, immeasurable.
The knowledge made her sick and giddy. She clung to the window sill for
support. It pained her to think that such a treasure above price was
destined to remain unsought, unbestowed. She suffered, the while the
moon soared, indifferent to her pain.
Suffering awoke wisdom: in the twinkling of an eye, she learned that
for which her being starved. The awakening caused tremors of joy to
pass over her body, which were succeeded by despondency at realising
that it is one thing to want, another to be stayed. Then she was
consumed by the hunger of which she was now conscious.
She seemed to be so undesirable, unlovable in her own eyes, that she
was moved in her passionate extremity to call on any power that might
offer succour.
For the moment, she had forgotten the Source to which in times of
stress she looked for help. Instead, she lifted her voice to the moon,
the cold wisdom of which seemed to betoken strength, which seemed
enthroned in the infinite in order to listen to and to satisfy
yearnings, such as hers.
"It's love I want--love, love. I did not know before; now I know. Give
me--give me love."
Then she cried aloud in her extremity. She was so moved by her emotions
that she was not in the least surprised at the sound of her voice.
After she had spoken, she waited long for a sign; but none came. Mavis
looked again on the night. Everything was white, cold, silent.
It was as if the world were at one with the deathlike stillness of the
moon.