A little one was journeying to Mavis. A great fear, not unmixed with a
radiant wonder, filled her being. It was now three months since her
joyous stay with Perigal at Polperro. At the expiration of an
all-too-brief fortnight, she had gone back, dazed, intoxicated with
passion, to her humdrum work at the Melkbridge boot factory; while
Perigal, provided by his father with the sinews of war, had departed
for Wales, there to lay siege to elusive fortune. During this time,
Mavis had seen him once or twice, when he had paid hurried visits to
Melkbridge, and had heard from him often. Although his letters made
copious reference to the never-to-be-forgotten joys they had
experienced at Polperro, she scanned them anxiously, and in vain, for
any reference to his marrying her now, or later. The omission caused
her many painful hours; she realised more and more that, after the
all-important part she had suffered him to play in her life, it would
not be meet for her to permit any other man to be on terms other than
friendship with her. It was brought home to her, and with no uncertain
voice, how, in surrendering herself to her lover, she was no longer his
adored Mavis, but nothing more nor less than his "thing," who was
wholly, completely in his power, to make or mar as he pleased.
During these three months, she had seen or heard nothing of Windebank,
so concluded that he was away.
* * * * *
She was much perturbed with wondering what she should do with the
sumptuous dressing-case he had given her for a wedding present.
Directly there was no longer room for doubt that her union with Perigal
would, in the fulness of time, bear fruit, she wrote telling him her
news, and begging him to see her with as little delay as possible. In
reply, she received a telegram, curtly telling her to be outside
Dippenham station on Saturday afternoon at four.
This was on a Wednesday. Mavis's anxiety to hear from Perigal was such
that her troubled blood set up a raging abscess in the root of a tooth
that was scarcely sound. The least movement increased her torments; but
what troubled her even more than the pain, was that, when the latter
began to subside, one of her cheeks commenced to swell. She was anxious
to look her very best before her lover: her lopsided face gave her a
serio-comic expression. The swelling had diminished a little before she
set out on the bleak December afternoon to meet her lover. Before she
went, she looked long and anxiously in the glass. Apart from the
disfigurement caused by the swelling, she saw (yet strove to conceal
from herself) that her condition was already interfering with her
fresh, young comeliness: her eyes were drawn; her features wore a
tense, tired expression. As she looked out of the carriage window on
her train journey to Dippenham, the gloom inspired by the darkening
shadows of the day, the dreariness of the bleak landscape, chilled her
to the heart. She comforted herself by reflecting with what eager
cheerfulness Perigal would greet her; how delighted he would be at
receiving from her lips further confirmation of her news; how loyally
he would fulfil his many promises by making the earliest arrangements
for their marriage. Arrived at her destination, she learned she would
have to wait twelve minutes till the train arrived that would bring her
lover from Wales. She did not stay in the comparative comfort of the
waiting-room, but, despite the pain that movement still gave her,
preferred to wander in the streets of the dull, quaint town till his
train was due. A thousand doubts assailed her mind: perhaps he would
not come, or would be angry with her, or would meet with an accident
upon the way. Her mind travelled quickly, and her body felt the need of
keeping pace with the rapidity of her thoughts. She walked with sharp,
nervous steps down the road leading from the station, to be pulled up
by the insistent pain in her head. She returned so carefully that
Perigal's train was steaming into the station as she reached the
booking office. She walked over the bridge to get to his platform, to
be stopped for a few moments by the rush, roar, and violence of a West
of England express, passing immediately under where she stood. The
disturbance of the passing train stunned and then jarred her
overwrought nerves, causing the pain in her face to get suddenly worse.
As she met those who had got out of the train Perigal would come by,
she wondered if he would so much as notice the disfigurement of her
face. For her part, if he came to her one-armed and blind, it would
make no difference to her; indeed, she would love him the more. Perigal
stepped from the door of a first class compartment, seemingly having
been aroused from sleep by a porter; he carried a bag.
Mavis noticed, with a great concern, how careworn he was looking--a
great concern, because, directly she set eyes on him, she realised the
immensity of her love for him. At that moment she loved him more than
she had ever done before; he was not only her lover, to whom she had
surrendered herself body and soul, but also the father of her unborn
little one. Faintness threatened her; she clung to the handle of a
weighing machine for support.
"More trouble!" he remarked, as he reached her.
She looked at him with frightened eyes, finding it hard to believe the
evidence of her ears.
"W-what?" she faltered.
"Heavens!"
"What's the matter, dear?"
"What have you done to your face?"
"I--I hoped you wouldn't notice. I've had an abscess."
"Notice it! Haven't you looked in the glass?"
Mavis bit her lip.
"I shouldn't have thought you could look so--look like that," he
continued.
"What trouble did you mean?" she found words to ask.
"This. Why you sent for me."
She felt as if he had stabbed her. She stopped, overwhelmed by the blow
that the man she loved so whole-heartedly had struck her.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Nothing--only--"
"Only what?"
"You don't seem at all glad to see me."
She spoke as if pained at and resentful of his coldness. He looked at
her, to watch the suffering in her eyes crystallise into a defiant
hardness.
"I am, no end. But I'm tired and cold. Wait till we've had something to
eat," he said kindly.
Mavis melted. Her love for him was such that she found it no easy
matter being angry with him.
"How selfish of me! I ought to have known," she remarked. "Let someone
take your bag."
"I don't know where I'm going to stop. I'll leave it at the station for
the present."
"Aren't you going home?" she asked in some surprise.
"We'll talk over everything when I've got warm."
She waited while he left his bag in the cloak-room. When he joined her,
they walked along the street leading from the station.
"I could have seen what's up with you without being told," he remarked
ungenially.
"It won't be for so very long. I shall look all right again some day,"
she declared, with a sad little laugh.
"That's the worst of women," he went on. "Just when you think
everything's all right, this goes and happens."
His words fired her blood.
"I should have thought you would have been very proud," she cried.
"Eh!"
"However foolish I've been, I'm not the ordinary sort of woman. Where
I've been wrong is in being too kind to you."
She paused for breath. She was also a little surprised at her bold
words; she was so completely at the man's mercy.
"I do appreciate it. I'd be a fool if I didn't. But it's this
development that's so inconvenient."
"Inconvenient! Inconvenient you call it--!"
"This will do us," he interrupted, pausing at the doorway of the
"King's Arms Hotel."
"I'm not sure I'll come in."
"Please yourself. But it's as well to have a talk, so that we can see
exactly where we stand."
His words voiced the present desire of her heart. She was burning to
put an end to her suspense, to find out exactly where she stood. The
comparative comfort of the interior of the hotel thawed his coldness.
"Rather a difficult little Mavis," he smiled as they ascended the
stairs.
"I'm all right till I'm roused. Then I feel capable of anything."
"The sort of girl I admire," he admitted.
He engaged a sitting-room and bedroom for the night. Mavis did not
trouble to consider what relation to Perigal the hotel people believed
her to be. Her one concern was to discover his intentions with regard
to the complication which had arisen in her life. She ordered tea.
While it was being got ready, she sat by the newly-lit fire, a prey to
gloomy thoughts. The pain in her face had, in a measure, abated. She
was alone, Perigal having gone to the bedroom to wash after his
journey. She contrasted her present misery with the joyousness that had
possessed her when last she had been under the same roof as her lover.
Tears welled into her eyes, but she held them back, fearing they would
further contribute to the undoing of her looks.
When the tea was brought, she made the waiter wheel the table to the
fire; she also took off her cloak and hat and smoothed her hair in the
glass. She put the toast by the fire in order to keep it warm. She
wanted everything to be comfortable and home-like for her lover. She
then poked the fire into a blaze and moved a cumbrous arm chair to a
corner of the tea table. When Perigal came in, he was smoking a
cigarette.
"Trying to work up a domestic atmosphere," he laughed, with a faint
suggestion of a sneer in his hilarity.
Mavis bit her lip.
"It was the obvious thing to do. Don't be obvious, little Mavis. It
jars."
"Won't you have some tea?" she faltered.
"No, thanks. I've ordered something a jolly sight better than tea," he
said, warming his hands at the fire.
Mavis was too stunned to make any comment. She found it hard to believe
that the ardent lover of Polperro and the man who was so indifferent to
her extremity, were one and the same. She felt as if her heart had been
hammered with remorseless blows. They waited in silence till a waiter
brought in a bottle of whisky, six bottles of soda water, glasses, and
a box of cigarettes.
"Have some whisky?" asked Perigal of Mavis.
"I prefer tea!"
"Have some in that?"
"No, thank you."
While Mavis sipped her tea, she watched him from the corner of her eyes
mix himself a stiff glass of whisky and soda. She would have given many
years of her life to have loved him a little less than she did; she
dimly realised that his indifference only fanned the raging fires of
her passion.
"I feel better now," he said presently.
"I'm glad. I must be going."
"Eh!"
Mavis got up and went to get her hat.
"I wish you to stay for dinner."
"I'm sorry. But I must get back," she said, as she pinned on her hat.
"I wish you to stay," he declared, as he caught her insistently by the
arm.
The touch of his flesh moved her to the marrow. She sat helplessly. He
appeared to enjoy her abject surrender.
"Now I'll have some tea, little Mavis," he said.
She poured him out a cup, while he got the toast from the fender to
press some on her. He began to recover his spirits; he talked, laughed,
and rallied her on her depression. She was not insensible to his change
of mood.
When the tea was taken away, he pressed a cigarette on her against her
will.
"You always get your own way," she murmured, as he lit it for her.
"Now we'll have a cosy little chat," he said, as he wheeled her chair
to the fire. He brought his chair quite near to hers.
Mavis did not suffer quite so much.
"Now about this trouble," he continued. "Tell me all about it."
She restated the subject of her last letter in as few words as
possible. When she had finished, he asked her a number of questions
which betrayed a familiar knowledge of the physiology of her extremity.
She wondered where he could have gained his information, not without
many jealous pangs at this suggestion of his having been equally
intimate with others of her sex.
"Hang it all! It's not nearly so bad as it might be," he said presently.
"What do you mean?"
"Why that, if every woman who got into the same scrape did nothing to
help herself, the world would be over-populated in five minutes."
Mavis sat bolt upright. Her hands grasped the arms of her chair; her
eyes stared straight before her. There arose to her quick fancy the
recollection of certain confidences of Miss Allen, which had hinted at
hideous malpractices of the underworld of vice, affecting women in a
similar condition to hers.
"Well?" said Perigal.
The sound of his voice recalled her to the present.
Mavis rose, placed a hand on each arm of Perigal's chair, and leant
over so as to look him full in the eyes, as she said icily:
"Do you know what you are saying?"
"Eh! Dear little Mavis. You take everything so seriously," he remarked,
as he kissed her lightly on the cheek.
She sat back in her chair, uneasy, troubled: vague, unwholesome, sordid
shadows seemed to gather about her.
"Ever gone in for sea-fishing?" Perigal asked, after some minutes of
silence.
"No."
"I'm awfully keen. I'm on it all day when the wind isn't east."
This enthusiasm for sea-fishing struck a further chill to Mavis's
forlorn heart. She could not help thinking that, if he had been moved
by a loving concern for her welfare, he would have devoted his days to
the making of a competence on which they could live.
"Now about this trouble," said Perigal, at which Mavis listened with
all her ears. He went on: "I know, of course, the proper thing, the
right thing to do is to marry you at once." Here he paused.
Mavis waited in suspense for him to go on; it seemed an epoch of time
till he added:
"But what are we going to live upon?"
She kept on repeating his words to herself. She felt as if she were
drowning in utter darkness.
"I can tell you at once that there's precious little money in bricks.
I'm fighting against big odds, and if I were worrying about you--if you
had enough to live upon and all that--I couldn't give proper attention
to business."
"It would be heaven for me," she remarked.
"So you say now. All I ask you to do is to trust implicitly in me and
wait."
"How long?" she gasped.
"I can't say for certain. It all depends."
"On what?"
"Circumstances."
She did not speak for some moments, the while she repressed an impulse
to throw herself at his feet, and implore him to reconsider his
indefinite promise.
"Will you pour me out a little whisky?" she said presently.
"What about your face? It might make it throb."
"I'll chance that."
"Aren't you well, little Mavis?" he asked kindly.
"Not very. It must be the heat of the room."
She gulped down the spirit, to feel the better for it. It seemed to
give her heart to face her misfortunes. She could say no more just
then, as a man came into the room to lay the table.
Whilst this operation was in progress, she thought of the unlooked-for
situation in which she found herself. It was not so very long since
Perigal was the suppliant, she the giver; now, the parts were reversed,
except that, whereas she had given without stint, he withheld that
which every wholesome instinct of his being should urge him to bestow
without delay.
She wondered at the reason of the change, till the words he had spoken
on the day of their jaunt to Broughton occurred to her:
"No sooner was one want satisfied than another arose to take its place.
It's a law of nature that ensures the survival of the fittest, by
making men always struggle to win the desire of the moment."
She had been Perigal's desire, but, once won, another had taken its
place, which, so far as she could see, was sea-fishing. She smiled
grimly at the alteration in his taste. Then, an idea illuminated,
possessed her mind.
"Why not make myself desirable so that he will be eager to win me
again," she thought.
So Mavis, despite the pain in her face, which owing to the spirit she
had drunk was beginning to trouble her again, set out on the most
dismal of all feminine quests--that of endeavouring to make a worldly,
selfish man pay the price of his liberty, and endure poverty for that
which he had already enjoyed to the full. With a supreme effort of
will, she subdued her inclination to unrestrained despair; with
complete disregard of the acute pain in her head, she became gay,
light-hearted, irresponsible, joyous. There was an undercurrent of
suffering in her simulated mirth, but Perigal did not notice it; he was
taken by surprise at the sudden change in her mood. He responded to her
supposititious merriment; he laughed and joked as irrepressibly as did
Mavis.
"Quite like the old Polperro days," he replied to one of Mavis' sallies.
His remark reduced her to momentary thoughtfulness. The staple dish of
the extemporised meal was a pheasant. Perigal, despite her protests,
was heaping up her plate a second time, when he said:
"Do you know what I was dreading the whole way up?"
"That you'd got into the right train!"
"Scarcely that. I was funky you'd do the obvious sentimental thing, and
wear the old Polperro dress."
"As if I would!"
"Anyway, you haven't. Besides, it's much too cold."
He ordered champagne. Further to play the part of Circe to his Ulysses,
she drank a little of this, careless of the pain it might inflict.
Although she was worn down by her anxieties and the pain of her
abscess, it gave her an immense thrill of pleasure to notice how soon
she recovered her old ascendancy over him. Now, his admiring eyes never
left her face. Once, when he got up to hand her something, he went out
of his way to come behind her to kiss her neck.
"Little Mavis is a fascinating little devil," he remarked, as he
resumed his seat.
"That's what you thought when I met you at the station."
"I was tired and worried, and worry destroys love quicker than
anything. Now--"
"Now!"
"You've gone the shortest way to 'buck' me up."
Thus encouraged, Mavis made further efforts to captivate Perigal, and
persuade him to fulfill the desire of her heart. Now, he was constantly
about her on any and every excuse, when he would either kiss her or
caress her hair. After dinner, they sat by the fire, where they drank
coffee and smoked cigarettes. Presently, Perigal slipped on the ground
beside her, where he leaned his head against her knee, while he fondled
one of her feet. Her fingers wandered in his hair.
"Like old times, sweetheart!" he said,
"Is it?" she laughed.
"It is to me, little Mavis. I love you! I love you! I love you!"
Mavis's heart leapt. Life held promise of happiness after all.
"What have you arranged about tonight?" he asked, after a few moments'
silence.
"Nothing unusual. Why?"
"Must you go back?"
"Why?" she asked, wondering what he was driving at.
"I thought you might stay here."
"Stay here!" she gasped.
"With me--as you did in Polperro." Then, as she did not speak: "There's
no reason why you shouldn't!"
A great horror possessed Mavis. This, then, was all she had laboured
for; all he thought of her. She had believed that he would have offered
immediate marriage. His suggestion helped her to realise the
hopelessness of her situation; how, in the eternal contest between the
sexes, she had not only laid all her cards upon the table, but had
permitted him to win every trick. She fell from the summit of her
blissful anticipations into a slough of despair. She had little or no
hope of his ever making her the only possible reparation. Ruin,
disgrace, stared her in the face. And after all the fine hopes with
which she had embarked on life! Her pride revolted at this promise of
hapless degradation. Anything rather than that. There was but one way
to avoid such a fate, not only for her, but for the new life within
her. The roar and rush of the express, when she had crossed the
footbridge at the station, sounded hopefully in her ears.
"There's no reason why you shouldn't!" he repeated.
"Indeed?" she said mechanically.
"Is there? After all that's happened, what difference can it make?" he
persisted, as he reached for a cigarette.
"What difference can it make?" she repeated dully.
"Good! Dear little Mavis! Have another cigarette."
Unseen by him, she had caught up coat, gloves, and hat, and moved
towards the door. Here she had paused, finding it hard to leave him
whom she loved unreservedly for other women to caress and care for.
The words, "What difference can it make?" decided her. They spurred her
along the short, quick road which was to end in peaceful oblivion. She
opened the door noiselessly, and slipped down the stairs and out of the
front door with out being seen by any of the hotel people. Once in the
street, where a drizzle was falling, she turned to the right in the
direction of the station. It seemed a long way. She would have liked to
have stepped from the room, in which she had been with Perigal, on to
the rails before the passing express. She hurried on. Although it was
Saturday night, there were few people about, the bad weather keeping
many indoors who would otherwise be out. She was within a few paces of
the booking office when she felt a hand on her arm.
"Don't stop me! Let me go!" she cried.
"Where to?" asked Perigal's voice.
She pressed forward.
"Don't be a little fool. Are you mad? Stop!"
He forced her to a standstill.
"Now come back," he said.
"No. Let me go."
"Are you so mad as to do anything foolish?"
By way of reply, she made a vain effort to free herself. He tried to
reason with her, but nothing he urged could change her resolution. Her
face was expressionless; her eyes dull; her mind appeared to be
obsessed by a determination to take her life. He changed his tactics.
"Very well, then," he said, "come along."
She looked at him, surprised, as she started off.
"Where you go, I go; whatever you do, I do."
She paused to say:
"If you'd let me have my own way, I should be now out of my misery."
"You only think of yourself," he cried. "You don't mind what would
happen to me if you--if you--!"
"A lot you'd care!" she interrupted.
"Don't talk rot. It's coming down worse than ever. Come back to the
hotel."
"Never that," she said, compressing her lip.
"You'll catch your death here."
"A good thing too. I can't go on living. If I do, I shall go mad," she
cried, pressing her hands to her head.
Passers-by were beginning to notice them.
Without success, Perigal urged her to walk.
She became hysterically excited and upbraided him in no uncertain
voice. She seemed to be working herself into a paroxysm of frenzy. To
calm her, perhaps because he was moved by her extremity, he overwhelmed
her with endearments, the while he kissed her hands, her arms, her
face, when no one was by.
She was influenced by his caresses, for she, presently, permitted
herself to walk with him down the street, where they turned into the
railed-in walk which crossed the churchyard.
He redoubled his efforts to induce in her a more normal state of mind.
"Don't you love me, little Mavis?" he asked. "If you did, you wouldn't
distress me so."
"Love you!" she laughed scornfully.
"Then why can't you listen and believe what I say?"
He said more to the same effect, urging, begging, praying her to trust
him to marry her, when he could see his way clearly.
Perhaps because the mind, when confronted with danger, fights for
existence as lustily as does the body, Mavis, against her convictions,
strove with some success to believe the honeyed assurances which
dropped so glibly from her lover's tongue. His eloquence bore down her
already enfeebled resolution.
"Go on; go on; go on!" she cried. "It's all lies, no doubt; but it's
sweet to listen to all the same."
He looked at her in surprise.
"Your love-words, I mean. They're all I've got to live for now. What
you can't find heart to say, invent. You've no idea what good it does
me."
"Mavis!" he cried reproachfully.
"It seems to give me life," she declared, to add after a few moments of
silence: "Situated as I am, they're like drops of water to a man dying
of thirst."
"But you're not going to die: you're going to live and be happy with
me!"
She looked at him questioningly, putting her soul into her eyes.
"But you must trust me," he continued.
"Haven't I already?" she asked.
He took no notice of her remark, but gave utterance to a platitude.
"There's no love without trust," he said.
"Say that again."
"There's no love without trust," he repeated. "What are you thinking
of?" he asked, as she did not speak.
A light kindled in her eyes; her face was aglow with emotion; her bosom
heaved convulsively.
"You ask me to trust you?" she said.
He nodded.
"Very well, then: I love you; I will."
"Mavis!" he cried.
"More, I'll prove it. You asked me to stay here with you. I refused. I
love you--I trust you. Do with me as you will."
"Mavis!"
"I distrusted you. I did wrong, I atone."