Mavis and Jill stood outside Mrs Gowler's, in the late evening of the Wednesday after the day on which Miss Nippett had commenced her long, long rest. Mavis had left the trunk she was bringing at the station (a porter was trundling it on), but before opening the gate of No. 9 Durley Road, she instinctively paused to take what she thought might prove a last look at the world.
The contented serenity of the summer night enhanced the meanness of the little street; but Mavis's imagination soared over the roofs, not only of the road in which she stood, but of countless other roofs, till it winged its way to Melkbridge. Instead of the depressing road, with its infrequent down-at-heel passers-by, Mavis saw only the Avon as she had known it a year ago. The river flowed lazily beneath the pollard willows, as if complaisant enough to let these see their reflection in the water. Forget-me-nots jewelled the banks; ragged robin looked roguishly from, clumps of bushes; the scent of hay seemed to fill the world. That was then.
Now—! Before she had set out for Durley Road, she had penned a little note to Perigal. In this she had told him of the circumstances in which she was writing it, and had said that if it proved to be the last letter she should send him, that she would never cease to love and trust him in any world to which it might please God to take her. This was all she had written; but the moving simplicity of her words might have touched even Perigal's heart. Besides writing to her lover, Mavis had given Mrs Scatchard the address to which she was going, and had besought her, in the event of anything untoward happening, either to take Jill for her own or to find her a good home. Mrs Scatchard's promise to keep and cherish Jill herself, should anything happen to her mistress, cheered Mavis much.
Mavis took a last long look of the June night, sighed and entered the gate of No. 9: her nerves were so disordered that it seemed as if it shut behind her with a menacing clang. She knocked at the door, but, upon no one coming, she knocked again and again. She knew there was someone in the house, for the wailing of babies could be heard within. For all anyone cared, her baby might have been born on the step. After knocking and waiting for quite a long time, the door was opened by a sad-faced girl, who, with the remains of a fresh complexion, looked as if she were countryborn and bred.
"Mrs Gowler?" asked Mavis wearily.
Without making any reply, the young woman left the door open and disappeared up the stairs. Mavis, followed by Jill, dragged herself into the passage. The puling and smell of unwashed babies assailed her ears and nostrils to such an extent, that, to escape from these, she walked into the kitchen and closed the door. This room was empty, but, as on her last visit, a fire roared in the kitchener, before which innumerable rows of little garments were airing. Overpowered by the stifling heat, Mavis sank on a chair, where a horde of flies buzzed about her head and tried to settle on her face. She was about to seek the passage in preference to the stuffy kitchen, when she heard a loud single knock at the front door. Believing this to be the porter with her luggage, she went to the door, to find that her surmise was correct.
"Which room shall I take it to, miss?"
"It will do if you put it in the hall," replied Mavis.
When she had paid the man and shut the door, she sat upon her box in the passage. Jill nestled beside her, whilst Mavis rested with her fingers pressed well against her ears, to deaden the continual crying of babies which came from various rooms in the house.
As Mavis thus waited, disconsolate and alone, her heart sank within her. Her present case seemed to foreshadow the treatment she would receive at Mrs Gowler's hands during her confinement, which might now occur at any moment. As she waited, she lost all count of time; her whole being was concerned with an alteration in her habits of thought, which had been imminent during the last few months, but which needed a powerful stimulus to be completely effected. This was now supplied. Hitherto, when it became a question whether she should consider others before herself, she had, owing to an instinct in her blood, chosen the way of self-abnegation. She often suspected that others took advantage of this unselfishness, but found it hard to do otherwise than she had always done. Whether it was owing to all she had lately endured, or because her maternal instinct urged her to think only of her as yet unborn little one, she became aware of a hardening of heart which convinced her of the expediency of fighting for her own hand in the future. Mrs Gowler's absence was the immediate cause of this manifestation. Had she not loved Perigal so devotedly and trusted him so completely, she would have left the miserable house in Durley Road and gone to an expensive nursing home, to insist later upon his meeting the bill. For all her awakened instinct of self, the fact of her still deciding to remain at Mrs Gowler's was a yet further sacrifice on the altar of the loved one. Perhaps this further self-effacement where her lover was concerned urgently moved her to stand no trifling in respect of others. Consequently, when about half-past ten Mrs Gowler opened the door, accompanied by her idiot son, Oscar, who looked more imbecile than ever in elaborate clothes, she was not a little surprised to be greeted by Mavis with the words:
"What does this mean?"
"What does what mean?" replied Mrs Gowler, bridling.
"Keeping me waiting like this."
"Wot do you expect for wot you're payin'—brass banns and banners?"
"I don't expect impertinence from you!" cried Mavis.
"Imperence! imperence! And oo's Mrs Kenrick to give 'erself such airs! And before my Oscar too!"
"Listen to me," said Mavis.
"I wonder you don't send for your 'usband to go for me."
"But—"
"Your lovin' 'usband wot's in Ameriky a-making a snug little 'ome for you."
Mavis was, for the moment, vanquished by the adroitness of Mrs Gowler's thrust.
"I'm not well enough to quarrel. Please to show me my room."
"That's better. An' I'll be pleased to show you what you call 'my room' when I've given my Oscar 'is supper," shouted Mrs Gowler, as she sailed into the kitchen, followed by her gibbering son, who twice turned to stare at Mavis.
Alone in the unlit, stuffy passage, Mavis whispered her troubles to Jill. Tears came to her eyes, which she held back by thinking persistently of the loved one. While she waited, she heard the clatter of plates and the clink of glasses in the kitchen. Mavis would have gone for a short walk, but she had a superstitious fear of going out of doors again till after her baby was born.
The sharp cry, as of one suddenly assailed by pain, came from the floor overhead. Then a door opened, and footsteps came to the top of the first flight of stairs.
"Mrs Gowler! Mrs Gowler!" cried a woman's voice frantically. But the woman had to call many times before her voice triumphed over the thickness of the kitchen door and the noise of the meal.
"Oo is it?" asked Mrs Gowler, when she presently came from the kitchen, with her mouth full of bread, cheese, stout, and spring onions.
"Liz—Mrs Summerville!" replied the woman.
"'Arf a mo', an' I'll be up," grumbled Mrs Gowler, as she returned to the kitchen, to emerge a few seconds later pinning on her apron.
"You finish yer supper, Oscar, but don't drink all the stout," she called to her son, as she went up the stairs. Before she had got to the landing, the cry was heard again and yet again. It sounded to Mavis like some wounded animal being tortured beyond endurance. The cries continued, to seem louder when a door was opened, and to be correspondingly deadened when this was closed. Mavis shuddered; anticipation of the torment she would have to endure chilled the blood in her veins; cold shivers coursed down her back. It was as if she were imprisoned in a house of pain, from which she could only escape by enduring the most poignant of all torture inflicted by nature on sensitive human bodies. The cries became continuous. Mavis placed her fingers in her ears to shut them out. For all this precaution, a scream of pain penetrated to her hearing. A few moments later, when she had to use her hands in order to prevent Jill from jumping on to her lap, she did not hear a sound. Some quarter of an hour later, Mrs Gowler descended the stairs.
"A quick job that," she remarked to Mavis, who did not make any reply. "Let's 'ope you'll be as sharp," added the woman, as she disappeared into the kitchen.
Mavis gathered from these remarks that a mother had been delivered of a child during Mrs Gowler's brief sojourn upstairs. The latter confirmed this surmise by saying a little later, when she issued from the kitchen drying her hands and bared arms on a towel:
"The worst of these here nursing 'omes is that yer never knows when you're going to be on the job. I didn't expect Liz till termorrer."
Mavis made no reply.
"Would you like a glass of stout?" asked Mrs Gowler.
"No, thank you."
"I'm going to open another bottle an' thought you'd join, jes' friendly like, as you might say. What with the work an' the 'eat of the kitchen, I tell yer, I can do with it."
"I'm tired of sitting in this horrible passage. I wish you would show me to my room."
"Wait till it's ready," retorted Mrs Gowler, angry at her hospitality being refused.
"It ought to be ready. What else did I arrange to come for?"
"You can go up if you like, but Mrs May is bathing her baby, an' there's no room to move."
"Does—does that mean that you haven't given me a room to myself?" cried Mavis.
"Wot more d'ye expect for wot you're payin'?"
Mavis made up her mind.
"If you don't give me a room to myself, I shall go," declared Mavis.
"And 'ave yer baby in the street?"
"That's my affair."
Mavis rose as if to make good her words.
Seeing that she was in earnest, Mrs Gowler said:
"Don't be a mug. I'll see what I can do."
Mavis was much relieved when Mrs Gowler waddled up the stairs, taking with her an evil-smelling oil lamp. The woman's presence was beginning to inspire her with a nameless dread, which was alien to the repulsion inspired by her appearance and coarse speech. Now and again, Mavis caught a glimpse of terrifying depths of resolution in the woman's nature; then she seemed as if she would stick at nothing in order to gain her ends.
"This way, please, Mrs 'Aughty," Mrs Gowler presently called from the landing above Mavis's head.
Mavis walked up the two flights of stairs, followed by Jill, where she found Mrs Gowler in the passage leading to the two top-back rooms of the house. One of these was small, being little larger than a box-room, but to Mavis's eyes it presented the supreme advantage of being untenanted by any other patient.
"We'd better 'ave most of the furniture out, 'ceptin' the bed and washstand," declared Mrs Gowler.
"But where am I to keep my things?" asked Mavis.
"Can't you 'ave your box jes' outside the door? If there ain't no space, you might pop off before I could hop round the bed."
"Is it often dangerous?" faltered Mavis.
"That depends. 'Ave you walked much?"
"A good deal. Why?"
"That's in yer favour. But I 'ope nothin' will 'appen, for my sake. I can't do with any more scandals here. I've my Oscar to think of."
"Scandals?" queried Mavis.
"What about gettin' your box upstairs?" asked Mrs Gowler, as if wishful to change the subject.
"Isn't there anyone who can carry it up?"
"Not to-night. Yer can't expect my Oscar to soil 'is 'ands with menial work. I'm bringing him up to be the gent he is."
"Then I'll go down and fetch what I want for the night."
"Let me git 'em for yer," volunteered Mrs Gowler, as her eyes twinkled greedily.
"I won't trouble you."
Mavis went down to the passage, taking with her the evil-smelling lamp: the spilled oil upon the outside of this greased Mavis's fingers.
To save her strength, she cut the cords with which her trunk was bound with a kitchen knife, borrowed from Mrs Gowler for this purpose. She took from this box such articles as she might need for the night. Amongst other things, she obtained the American clock which had belonged to her old friend Miss Nippett. Mr Poulter, to whom the accompanist had left her few possessions, had prevailed on Mavis to accept this as a memento of her old friend.
Mavis toiled up the stairs with an armful of belongings, preceded by Mrs Gowler carrying the lamp, the woman impressed at the cut and material of which her last arrival's garments were made.
When Mavis had wound up the clock and placed it on the mantelpiece, and, with a few deft touches, had made the room a trifle less repellent, she saw her landlady come into the room with three bottles and two glasses (one of these latter had recently held stout) tucked under her arms.
"I thought we'd 'ave a friendly little chat, my dear," remarked Mrs Gowler, as if to explain her hospitality.
Just then, Mavis's heart ached for the sympathy and support of some motherly person in whom she could confide. A tender word, a hint of appreciation of her present extremity, would have done much to give her stay for the approaching dread ordeal. Perhaps this was why, for the time being, she stifled her dislike of Mrs Gowler and submitted to the woman's presence. Mrs Gowler unscrewed a bottle of stout, poured herself out a glass, drank it at one draught, and then half filled a glass for Mavis.
"Drink it, my dear. It will do us both good," cried Mrs Gowler, who already showed signs of having drunk more than she could conveniently carry.
Mavis, not to seem ungracious, sipped the stout as she sat on the bed.
"'Ow is it you ain't in a proper nursing 'ome?" asked Mrs Gowler, after she had opened the second bottle.
"Aren't I?" asked Mavis quickly.
"I've 'eard of better," answered Mrs Gowler guardedly. "Though, after all, I may be a better friend to you than all o' them together, with their doctors an' all."
"Indeed!" remarked Mavis, wondering what she meant.
"But that's tellin's," continued Mrs Gowler, looking greedily at Mavis from the depths of her little eyes.
"Is it?"
"Babies is little cusses; noisy, squally little brats."
"Not one's own."
"That's what I say. I love the little dears. Gawd's messages I call them. All the same, they're there, as you might say. An' yer can't explain them away."
"True," smiled Mavis.
"An' their cost!" grumbled Mrs Gowler, as she drained the second bottle by putting it to her lips. "They simply eat good money, an' never 'ave enough."
"One must look after one's own," remarked Mavis.
"Little dears! 'Ow I love their pretty prattle. It makes me think of 'eavens an' Gawd's angels," said Mrs Gowler. Then, as Mavis did not make any remark, she added: "Six was born 'ere last week."
"So many!"
"But onny three's alive."
"The other three are dead!"
"It costs five bob a week an' extries to let a kid live, to say nothin' of the lies and trouble an' all. An' no thanks you get for it."
"A mother loves and looks after her own," declared Mavis.
"Little dears! Ain't they pretty when they prattles their little prayers?" asked Mrs Gowler, as her lips parted in a terrible smile. "Many's the time I've given 'em gin from me own bottle to give the little angels sleep."
She said more to the same effect, to pause before saying, with a return to her practical manner:
"An' the gentlemen! They're always 'appy when anything 'appens to baby."
Mavis looked at the woman with questioning eyes; she wondered what she meant. For a few moments Mrs Gowler attempted to lull Mavis's uneasiness by extravagant praise of infants' ways, which culminated in a hideous imitation of baby language. Suddenly she stopped; her little eyes glared fiercely at Mavis, while her face became rigid.
"What's the matter?" asked the girl.
Mrs Gowler rose unsteadily to her feet and said:
"Ten quid down will save you from forking out five bob a week till you're blue in the face from paying it."
Mavis stared at her in astonishment. Mrs Gowler backed to the door.
"Told yer you'd fallen on your feet. Next time you'll know better. No pretty pretties: one little nightdress is all you'll want. But it's spot cash."
Mavis was alone; it was, comparatively, a long time before she gathered what Mrs Gowler meant. When she realised that the woman had as good as offered to murder her child, when born, for the sum of ten pounds, her first impulse was to leave the house. But it was now late; she was worn out with the day's happenings; also, she reflected that, with the scanty means at her disposal, a further move to a like house to Mrs Gowler's might find her worse off than she already was. Her heart was heavy with pain when she knelt by her bedside to say her prayers, but, try as she might, she could find no words with which to thank her heavenly Father for the blessings of the day and to implore their continuance for the next, as was her invariable custom. When she got up from her knees, she hoped that the disabilities of her present situation would atone for any remissness of which she had been guilty. Although she was very tired, it was a long time before she slept. She lay awake, to think long and lovingly of Perigal. This, and Jill's presence, were the two things that sustained her during those hours of sleeplessness in a strange, fearsome house, troubled as she was with the promise of infinite pain.
That night she loved Perigal more than she had ever done before. It seemed to her that she was his, body and soul, for ever and ever; that nothing could ever alter it. When she fell asleep, she did not rest for long at a stretch. Every now and then, she would awaken with a start, when, for some minutes, she would listen to the ticking of the American clock on the mantelpiece. Her mind went back to the vigil she had spent during Miss Nippett's kit night of life. Then, it had seemed as if the clock were remorselessly eager to diminish the remaining moments of the accompanist's allotted span. Now, it appeared to Mavis as if the clock were equally desirous of cutting short the moments that must elapse before her child was born.
The next morning, she was awakened soon after eight by the noise of a tray being banged down just inside the door, when she gathered that someone had brought her breakfast. This consisted of coarsely cut bread, daubed with disquieting-looking butter, a boiled shop egg, and a cup of thin, stewed tea. As Mavis drank the latter, she recollected the monstrous suggestion which Mrs Gowler had insinuated the previous evening. The horror of it filled her mind to the exclusion of everything else. She had quite decided to leave the house as soon as she could pack her things, when a pang of dull pain troubled her body. She wondered if this heralded the birth of her baby, which she had not expected for quite two days, when the pain passed. She got out of bed and was setting about getting up, when the pain attacked her again, to leave her as it had done before. She waited in considerable suspense, as she strove to believe that the pains were of no significance, when she experienced a further pang, this more insistent than the last. She washed and dressed with all dispatch. While thus occupied, the pains again assailed her. When ready, she went downstairs to the kitchen, followed by Jill, to find the room deserted. She called "Mrs Gowler" several times without getting any response. Before going to her box to get some things she wanted, she gave Jill a run in the enclosed space behind the house. When Mavis presently went upstairs with an armful of belongings from her box, she heard a voice call from the further side of a door she was passing:
"Was you wanting Piggy?"
"I wanted Mrs Gowler."
"She's gone out and taken Oscar with her."
"When will she be back?"
"Gawd knows. Was you wanting her pertikler?"
"Not very," answered Mavis, at which she sought her room.
For four hours, Mavis sat terrified and alone in the poky room, during which her pains gradually increased. They were still bearable, and not the least comparable to the mental tortures which continually threatened her, owing to the dreariness of her surroundings and her isolation from all human tenderness. Now and again, she would play with Jill, or she would remake her bed. When the horror of her position was violently insistent, she would think long and lovingly of Perigal, and of how he would overwhelm her with caresses and protestations of livelong devotion, could he ever learn of all she had suffered from her surrender at Looe.
About one, the door was thrust open, and Mrs Gowler, hot and perspiring, and wearing her bonnet, came into the room, carrying a plate, fork, knife, and spoon in one hand and a steaming pot in the other.
"'Elp yerself!" cried Mrs Gowler, as she threw the plate and spoon upon the bed and thrust the pot beneath Mavis's nose.
"It's coming on," said Mavis.
"You needn't tell me that. I see it in yer face. 'Elp yerself."
"But—"
"I'll talk to you when I've got the dinners. 'Elp yerself."
"What is it?" asked Mavis.
"Lovely boiled mutting. Eat all you can swaller. You can do with it before you've done," admonished the woman.
Six o'clock found Mavis lying face downwards on the bed, her body racked with pain. Mrs Gowler sat impassively on the only chair in the room, while Jill watched her mistress with frightened eyes from a corner. Now and again, when a specially violent pain tormented her body, Mavis would grip the head rail of the bed with her hands, or bite Perigal's ring, which she wore suspended from her neck. Once, when Mrs Gowler was considerate enough to wipe away the beads of sweat, which had gathered on the suffering girl's forehead, Mavis gasped:
"Is it nearly over?"
"What! Over!" laughed Mrs Gowler mirthlessly. "I call that the preliminary canter."
"Will it be much worse?"
"You're bound to be worse before you're better."
"I can't—I can't bear it!"
"Bite yer wedding ring and trus' in Gawd," remarked Mrs Gowler, in the manner of one mechanically repeating a formula. "This is what some of the gay gentlemen could do with."
"It's—it's terrible," moaned Mavis.
"'Cause it's your first. When you've been here a few times, it's as easy as kiss me 'and."
Very soon, Mavis was more than ever in the grip of the fiend who seemed bent on torturing her without ruth. She had no idea till then of the immense ingenuity which pain can display in its sport with prey. During one long-drawn pang, it would seem to Mavis as if the bones in her body were being sawn with a blunt saw; the next, she believed that her flesh was being torn from her bones with red-hot pincers. Then would follow a hallowed, blissful, cool interval from searing pain, which made her think that all she had endured was well worth the suffering, so vastly did she appreciate relief. Then she would fall to shivering. Once or twice, it seemed that she was an instrument on which pain was extemporising the most ingenious symphonies, each more involved than the last. Occasionally, she would wonder if, after all, she were mistaken, and if she were not enjoying delicious sensations of pleasure. Then, so far as her pain-racked body would permit, she found herself wondering at the apparently endless varieties of torment to which the body could be subjected.
Once, she asked to look at herself in the glass. She did not recognise anything resembling herself in the swollen, distorted features, the distended eyes, and the dilated nostrils which she saw in the glass which Mrs Gowler held before her. She was soon lost to all sense of her surroundings. She feared that she was going mad. She reassured herself, however, because, by a great effort of will, she would conjure up some recollection of the loved one's appearance, which she saw as if from a great distance. Then, after eternities of torment, she was possessed by a culminating agony. Sweat ran from her pores. Every nerve in her being vibrated with suffering, as if the accumulated pain of the ages was being conducted through her body. More and even more pain. Then, a supreme torment held her, which made all others seem trifling by comparison. The next moment, a new life was born into the world—a new life, with all its heritage of certain sorrow and possible joy; with all its infinite sensibility to pleasure or pain, to hope and love and disillusion.
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