Although, as time went on, Mavis became used to her griefs, and although she got pleasure from the opulent, cultured atmosphere with which she was surrounded, she was neither physically nor spiritually happy. It was not that the mutual love existing between herself and Harold abated one jot; neither was it that she had lost overmuch of her old joyousness in nature and life. But there were two voids in her being (one of which she knew could never be filled) which were the cause of her distress. A woman of strong domestic instincts, she would have loved nothing better than to have had one or two children. Owing to her changed circumstances, maternity would not be associated with the acute discomforts which she had once experienced. Whenever she heard of a woman of her acquaintance having a baby, her face would change, her heart would be charged with a consuming envy. Illustrations of children's garments in the advertisement columns of women's journals caused her to turn the page quickly. Whenever little ones visited her, she would often, particularly if the guest were a boy, furtively hug him to her heart. Once or twice, on these occasions, she caught Windebank's eye, when she wondered if he understood her longing.
Her other hunger was for things of the spirit. She was as one adrift upon a sea of doubt; many havens noticed her signals of distress, but, despite the arrant display of their attractions, she could not find one that promised anchorage to which she could completely trust. Her old-time implicit faith in the existence of a Heavenly Father, who cared for the sparrows of life, had waned. Whenever the simple belief recurred to her, as it sometimes did, she would think of Mrs Gowler's, to shudder and put the thought of beneficent interference with the things of the world from her mind.
At the same time she could not forget that when there had seemed every prospect of her being lost in the mire of London, or in the slough of anguish following upon her boy's death, she had, as if by a miracle, escaped.
Now and again, she would find herself wondering if, after all, the barque of her life had been steered by a guiding Hand, which, although it had taken her over storm-tossed seas and stranded her on lone beaches, had brought her safely, if troubled by the wrack of the waters she had passed, into harbour.
Incapable of clear thought, she could arrive at no conclusion that satisfied her.
At last, she went to Windebank to see if he could help.
"What is one to do if one isn't altogether happy?" she asked.
"Who isn't happy?"
"I'm not altogether."
"You! But you've everything to make you."
"I know. But I'll try and explain."
"You needn't."
"Why? You don't know what troubles me."
"That's nothing to do with it. All troubles are alike in this respect, that the only thing to be done is to mend what's wrong. If you can't, you must make the best of it," he declared grimly.
After this rough-and-ready advice, Mavis felt that it would be futile to attempt a further explanation of her disquiet.
"Thanks; but it isn't so easy as it sounds," she said.
"Really!" he remarked, not without a suggestion of sarcasm in his exclamation.
About this time, Mavis saw a good deal of Perigal. He rented from her husband the farm that Harold had purchased soon after his marriage, and in which he had purposed living. Perigal had long since spent the ten thousand pounds he had inherited from his mother; he was now living on the four hundred a year his wife possessed. If anything, Mavis encouraged his frequent visits; his illuminating comments on men and things took her out of herself; also, if the truth be told, Mavis's heart held resentment against the man who had played so considerable a part in her life. Whenever Mavis was in London, the sight of a fallen woman always fed this dislike; she reflected that, but for the timely help she had enjoyed, she might have been driven to a like means of getting money if her child had been in want. Another thing that urged her against Perigal was that she constantly noticed how negligently many of the married women of her acquaintance interpreted their wifely duties, and, in most cases, to husbands who had dowered their mates with affection and worldly goods. She reflected that, by all the laws of justice, Perigal should have appreciated to the full the treasure of love and passion which she had poured out so lavishly at his feet.
Perigal, all unconscious of the way in which Mavis regarded him, went out of his way to pay her attention.
One summer afternoon, while Harold rested indoors, Mavis gave Perigal tea beneath the shade of a witch-elm on the lawn. She was looking particularly alluring; if she were at all doubtful of this fact, the admiration expressed in Perigal's eyes would have reassured her. They had been talking lightly, brightly, each in secret pursuing the bent of their own feelings for the other, when the spectre of Mavis's spiritual troublings blotted out the sunlight and the brilliant gladness of the summer afternoon. She was silent for awhile, presently to be aware that Perigal's eyes were fixed on her face. She looked towards him, at which he sighed deeply.
"Aren't you happy?" she asked.
"How can I be?"
"You've everything you want in life."
"Have I? Since when?"
"The day you married."
"Rot!"
"What do you mean?"
"I can tell you after all that" (here he caught Mavis's eye)—"after we've been such friends—as far as I'm concerned, my marriage has been a ghastly failure."
"You mustn't tell me that," declared Mavis, to whom the news brought a secret joy.
"I can surely tell you after—after we've been such dear friends. But we don't hit it off at all. I can't stick Vic at any price."
"Nonsense! She's pretty and charming. Everyone who knows her says the same."
"When they first know her; then they think no end of a lot of her; but after a time everyone's 'off' her, although they haven't spotted the reason."
"Have you?"
"Unfortunately, that's been my privilege. Vic has enough imagination to tell her to do the right thing and all that; but otherwise, she's utterly, constitutionally cold."
"Nonsense! She must have sympathy to 'do the right thing,' as you call it."
"Not necessarily. Hers comes from the imagination, as I told you; but her graceful tact chills one in no time. I might as well have married an icicle."
"I'm sorry," remarked Mavis, saying what was untrue.
"And then Vic has a conventional mind: it annoys me awfully. Conventions are the cosmetics of morality."
"Where did you read that?"
"And these conventions, that are the rudiments of what were once full-blooded necessities, are most practised by those who have the least call for their protection. Pity me."
"I do."
Perigal's eyes brightened.
"I'm unhappy too," said Mavis, after a pause.
"Not really?"
"I wondered if you would help me."
"Try me."
Perigal's eyes glittered, a manifestation which Mavis noticed.
"You know how you used to laugh at my belief in Providence."
"Is that how you want me to help?"
"If you will."
Perigal's face fell.
"Fire away," he said, as he lit a cigarette.
Mavis told him something of her perplexities.
"I want to see things clearly. I want to find out exactly where I am. Everything's so confusing and contradictory. I shan't be really happy till I know what I really and truly believe."
"How can I help you? You have to believe what you do believe."
"But why do I believe what I do believe?"
"Because you can't help yourself. Your present condition of mind is the result of all you have experienced in your existence acting upon the peculiar kind of intelligence with which your parents started you in life. Take my advice, don't worry about these things. If you look them squarely in the face, you only come to brutal conclusions. Life's a beastly struggle to live, and then, when subsistence is secured, to be happy. It's nature's doing; it sees to it that we're always sharpening our weapons."
Mavis did not speak for a few moments; when she did, it was to say:
"I can't understand how I escaped."
"From utter disaster?" he asked.
"Scarcely that."
"I hope not, indeed. But you were a fool not to write to me and let me have it for my selfishness. But I take it that at the worst you'd have written, when, of course, I should have done all I could."
"All?"
"Well—all I reasonably could."
"I wasn't thinking so much of that," said Mavis. "What I can't understand is why I've dropped into all this good fortune, even if it's at your expense."
"You owe it to the fact of your being your father's daughter and that he was friendly with the pater. Next, you must thank your personality; but the chief thing was that you are your father's daughter."
"And I often and often wished I'd been born a London shop-girl, so that I should never long for things that were then out of my reach. So there was really something in my birth after all."
"I should jolly well think there was. It's no end of an asset. But to go back to what we were talking about."
"About nature's designs to make us all fight for our own?"
"Yes. Look at yourself. You're now ever so much harder than you were."
"Are you surprised?" she asked vehemently, as she all but betrayed her hatred.
"It's really a good thing from your point of view. It's made you more fitted to take your own part in the struggle."
"Then, those who injured me were the strong preying on the weak?" she asked.
"It's the unalterable law of life. It's a disagreeable one, but it's true. It's the only way the predominance of the species is assured."
"I think I'll have a cigarette," said Mavis.
"One of mine?"
"One of my own, thanks."
"You're very unkind to me," said Perigal.
"In not taking your cigarette?"
"You ignore everything that's been between us. You look on me as heartless, callous; you don't make allowances."
"For what?"
"My cursed temperament. No one knows better than I what a snob I am at heart. When you were poor, I did not value you. Now—"
"Now?"
"Can you ask?"
A joy possessed Mavis's heart; she felt that her moment of triumph was near.
Perigal went on:
"Still, I deserve all I get, and that's so rare in life that it's something in the nature of an experience."
Mavis did not speak. She was hoping no one would come to interrupt them.
"There's one thing you might have told me about," he went on.
"What?"
Perigal dropped his eyes as he said:
"Someone who died."
Mavis's heart was pitiless.
"Why should I?"
"He was mine as much as yours. There are several things I want to know. And if it were the last word I utter, all that happened over that has 'hipped' me more than anything."
"I shall tell you nothing," declared Mavis.
"I've a right to know."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I tell you, no. You left me to fight alone; it was all so terrible, I daren't think of it more than I can help."
"But—"
"There are no 'buts,' no anything. I bore the sorrow alone, and I shall keep to myself all the tenderness that remains: nothing can ever alter it."
"You say that as if you hated me. Don't do that, little Mavis. I love you more than I do my mean selfish self."
"You love me!"
"I do now. I wanted you to know. Once or twice, I hoped—never mind what. But from the way you said what you said just now, I see it's utterly 'off.'"
"You never said anything truer. And do you know why?" she asked with flaming eye.
"Because I left you in the lurch?"
"Not altogether that, but because you were a coward, and, above all, a fool, in the first place. I know what I was. I see what other women are, and it makes me realise my value. I realise my value as, if you'd married me, I'd have faced death, anything with you. Pretty women with a few brains who'll stick to a man are rather scarce nowadays. But it wasn't good enough for you: you wouldn't take the risk. You've no—no stuffing. That is why, if you and I were left alone in the world together for the rest of our lives, I should never do anything but despise you."
Perigal's face went white. He bit his thin lips. Then he smiled as he said:
"Retributive justice."
"I'm sorry to be so candid. But it's what I've been thinking for months. I've only waited for an opportunity to say it."
"We've both scored," he said. "You can't take away what you've given, and that's a lot to be thankful for—but—but—"
"Well?"
"I'm dependent for my bread and butter on a woman who bores me to death, and have to look to a family for any odd jobs I may get—a family that, whatever they may do for me, I should always despise. That, and because I see what a fool I've been to lose you, is where you've scored."
As he strolled away, wondering how Mavis could be so indifferent to him after all that had happened, she did not trouble to glance after his retreating form.
Henceforth, Mavis was left much to herself. Perigal avoided her; whilst Windebank, about this time, to her annoyance, discontinued his frequent visits. Having so much time on her hands, Mavis returned to her old prepossessions about the why and wherefore of the varied happenings in her life.
Looking back, she found that her loving trust, her faith in her lover, her girlish innocence of the ways of sensual men had been chiefly responsible for her griefs; that it was indeed, as Perigal said, that she in her weakness had been preyed upon by the strong. Thus, it followed that girlish confidence in the loved one's word, the primal instinct of abnegation of self to the adored one, whole-hearted faith—all these characteristics (which were above price) of a loving heart were in the nature of a handicap in the struggle for happiness. It also followed that a girl thus equipped would be at a great disadvantage in rivalry with one who was cold, selfish, calculating. Mavis shuddered as she reached this conclusion.
Her introspections were interrupted by an event that, for the time, put all such thoughts from her mind.
One morning, upon going into Harold's room, she found that he did not recognise her. The local doctor, who usually attended him, was called in; he immediately asked for another opinion. This being obtained from London, the remedies the specialist prescribed proved so far beneficial that the patient dimly recovered the use of his senses, with the faint promise of further improvement if the medical instructions were obeyed to the letter. Then followed for Mavis long, scarcely endurable night watches, which were so protracted that often it seemed as if the hand of time had stopped, as if darkness for ever enshrouded the world. When, at last, day came, she would make an effort to snatch a few hours' sleep in order to fit her for the next night's attendance on the loved one. The shock of her husband's illness immediately increased her faith in Divine Providence. It was as if her powerlessness in the face of this new disaster were such that she relied on something more than human aid to give her help. Always, before she tried to sleep, she prayed long and fervently to the Most High that He would restore her beloved husband to comparative health; that He would interfere to arrest the fell disease with which he was afflicted. She prayed as a mother for a child, sick unto death. At the back of her mind she had formed a resolution that, if her prayer were answered, she would believe in God for the rest of her life with all her old-time fervour. She dared not voice this resolve to herself; she believed that, if she did so, it would be in the nature of a threat to the Almighty; also, she feared that, if her husband got worse, it would be consequently incumbent on her to lose the much needed faith in things not of this world. Thus, when Mavis knelt she poured out her heart in supplication. She was not only praying for her husband but for herself.
But Mavis's prayer was unheard. Her husband steadily got worse. One night, when the blackness of the sky seemed as a pall thrown over the corpse of her hopes, she took up a chance magazine, in which some verses, written to God by an author, for whose wide humanity Mavis had a great regard, attracted her.
The substance of these lines was a complaint of His pitiless disregard of the world's sorrow. One phrase particularly attracted her: it was "His unweeting way."
"That is it," thought Mavis. "That expresses exactly what I feel. There is, there must be, a God, but His ways are truly unweeting. He has seen so much pain that He has got used to it and grown callous."
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