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."
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