"MONTAGUE S.T. DEVITT."

The faces about her faded from her view; the room seemed as if it were going round.

"What's the matter, ma'am?" asked Mrs Trivett anxiously.

"I can't give the guarantee," gasped Mavis.

Mr Hutton rose and buttoned his coat.

"What about Germany?" put in Mrs Trivett.

"I'd forgotten that," said Mavis. "I'll write a telegram at once."

Mr Hutton unbuttoned his coat.

"Here's ink and paper, ma'am."

Mavis took up the pen, at which Mr Hutton sat down. But she could not remember the address. With swimming head, she dived her hand into the pockets of her frock, but could not find Windebank's letter.

"I must have left it at the office," she murmured.

"What is it you want?" asked Mrs Trivett.

"His letter for the address."

Mr Hutton got up.

"What time is it?" asked Mavis.

"Just six o'clock."

"The factory would be locked for the night. Won't they take my word?" she asked. "I don't want to be parted from my child while I go to the factory."

Mr Hutton buttoned his coat.

Mavis made an impassioned appeal to the man in possession and his friend. She might as well have talked to the stone walls which lined the Dippenham Road for any impression she produced.

"This address will find me up to ten o'clock to-night, mum," said Mr Hutton, as he threw a soiled envelope on the table. "An' if I'm woke up arter, I charge it on the interest."

When Mr Hutton had taken his leave, Mavis fought an attack of hysterics. Realising that Gunner, the broker's man, would prove as good as his word in the matter of having her sick child removed, if the money were not forthcoming, Mavis saw that there was no time to be lost. She quickly wrote two notes, one of which was to Miss Toombs, the other to Charlie Perigal. In these she briefly recounted the circumstances of her necessity. Trivett was dispatched to Miss Toombs, whilst his wife undertook to deliver Perigal's note at his father's house.

Mavis waited by her beloved boy's side while the messengers sped upon their respective errands. Her child was doubly dear to her now that their separation was threatened. As his troubled eyes looked helplessly (sometimes it seemed appealingly) into hers, she vowed again and again that he should never be taken away to be nursed by strangers. Something would happen, something must happen to prevent such a mutilation of her holiest feelings as would be occasioned by her enforced separation from her sick boy. Of course, why had she not thought of it before? Her lover, the boy's father, would return with the messenger, to be reconciled to her over the nursing of the ailing little life back to health and strength. She had read much the same sort of thing in books, which were always informed with life.

The minutes of the American clock, which had belonged to Miss Nippett, laboriously totalled into an hour. Mavis could hear Gunner uneasily shuffling in the room below. The late August evening was drawing in. Mavis quite succeeded in persuading herself that this would prove the last night of her misfortunes.

Mr Trivett was the first to return. He brought six pounds from Miss Toombs, with a note saying that it was all she could lay hands upon. This, with the four which Mavis possessed, made ten. Gunner smiled amiably and set about collecting his clay pipes, which he had left in odd corners of the cottage. Then, after half an hour of weary waiting, Mrs Trivett came to the door, which Mavis opened with trembling hands. She was alone. Her face proclaimed the fruitlessness of her errand.

"Mr Charles Perigal was out for the evening and would not be back till quite late," she had been told.

This decided Mavis to act upon a resolve that, had been formulating in her mind while waiting for Mrs Trivett's return.

"Give me half an hour," she said to the sullen Gunner. "I'll make it well worth your while." She then went upstairs to kiss her baby before setting out.

"Where are you going, ma'am?" asked tearful Mrs Trivett, who had followed her upstairs.

"To Mr Devitt. He's kind at heart. I know, if I can see him, he'll give me what I want."

"But will he see you?"

"I'll see to that. Promise you won't leave baby while I'm gone."

Mavis took a last look of her darling as she went out of the door. She then let herself out and sped in the direction of the Bathminster Road. She scarcely knew, she did not care, what she should say when she came face to face with Devitt. She had almost forgotten that he had been informed of her secret. All she knew was that she was in peril of losing her sick child, and that she was fighting for its possession with the weapons that came handiest. Nothing else in the world was of the smallest account. She also dimly realised that she was fighting for her lover's approval, to whom she would soon have to render an account of her stewardship to his son. This gave edge to her determination. She knocked at the door of the brightly lit, pretentious-looking house in the Bathminster Road.

"I want to see Mr Devitt privately," she told the fat butler who opened the door.

He would have shown her into a room, but she preferred to wait in the hall, which, just now, was littered with trunks.

"I think he's with Mr Harold," said the man, as he walked to a door at the further end of the hall.

The trunk labels were written in a firm, bold hand, which caught Mavis's eye. "Harold Devitt, Esq., Homeleigh, Swanage, Dorset," was the apparent destination of the luggage.

"Mr Devitt must be in the drawing-room," said Hayter, as he reappeared to walk up the stairs.

Mavis, scarcely knowing what she was doing, followed the man up the heavily carpeted stairs, which did not betray her footfalls.

The man opened the door of the drawing-room.

As she followed close on his heels, she heard a terrific peal at the front door bell. Recollection of what she saw in the drawing-room is burned into Mavis's memory and will remain there till her last moment of consciousness.

Montague Devitt, in evening dress, was lolling before the fireplace. His wife and her sister were busily engaged in unpacking showy articles from boxes, which Mavis divined to be wedding gifts. Victoria Devitt, sumptuously dressed, was seated on a low chair. Bending over her shoulder in an attitude of unconcealed devotion was Charlie Perigal.

Mavis took in the significance of all that she saw at a glance. Her blood went ice cold. Something snapped in her head. She opened her lips to speak, but no words issued. Instead, one arm was uplifted to accuse. Then she became rigid; only her eyes were eloquent.

Perigal was struck dumb by the apparently miraculous appearance of Mavis in the room. Then, as her still body continued to menace him with a gesture of seemingly eternal accusation, he became shamefaced. A hum of voices sounded in Mavis's ears, but she was indifferent to what they were saying.

Next, as if from a great distance, she heard her name called by a familiar voice. She was impelled to turn in the direction from which it came, to see Mrs Trivett, tearful, distraught, standing in the doorway. Mavis's eyes expressed a fearful inquiry.

"Don't come back! don't come back," wailed the woman.

Thus, almost in the same breath, Mavis learned how she had lost both lover and child.



CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Mavis never left the still, white body of her little one. She was convinced that they were all mistaken, and that he must soon awaken from the sleep into which he had fallen. She watched, with never-wearying eyes, for the first signs of consciousness, which she firmly believed could not long be delayed. Now and again she would hold its cold form for an hour at a stretch to her heart, in the hope that the warmth of her breasts would be communicated to her child. Once, during her long watch, she fancied that she saw his lips twitch. She excitedly called to Mrs Trivett, to whom, when she came upstairs, she told the glad news. To humour the bereaved mother, Mrs Trivett waited for further signs of animation, the absence of which by no means diminished Mavis's confidence in their ultimate appearance. Her faith in her baby's returning vitality, that never waned, that nothing could disturb, was so unwaveringly steadfast, that, at last, Mrs Trivett feared to approach her. Letters arrived from Miss Toombs, Perigal, Windebank, and Montague Devitt, Mavis did not open them; they accumulated on the table on which lay her untasted food. The funeral had been fixed for some days later (Mavis was indifferent as to who gave the orders), but, owing to the hot weather, it was necessary that this dread event should take place two days earlier than had originally been arranged. The night came when Mavis was compelled to take a last farewell of her loved one.

She looked at his still form with greedy, dry eyes, which never flinched. By and by, Mrs Trivett gently touched her arm, at which Mavis went downstairs without saying a word. The change from the room upstairs to the homely little parlour had the effect of making her, in some measure, realise her loss: she looked about her with wide, fearful eyes.

"My head! my head!" she suddenly cried.

"What is it, dear?" asked Mrs Trivett.

"Hold it! Hold it, someone! It's going to burst."

Mrs Trivett held the girl's burning head firmly in her hands.

"Tighter! tighter!" cried Mavis.

"Oh, deary, deary! Why isn't your husband here to comfort you?" sobbed Mrs Trivett.

Mavis's face hardened. She repressed an inclination to laugh. Then she became immersed in a stupor of despair. She knew that it would have done her a world of good if she had been able to shed tears; but the founts of emotion were dry within her. She felt as if her heart had withered. Then, it seemed as if the walls and ceiling of the room were closing in upon her; she had difficulty in breathing; she believed that if she did not get some air she would choke. She got up without saying a word, opened the door, and went out. Trivett, at a sign from his wife, rose and followed.

The night was warm and still. Mavis soon began to feel relief from the stifling sensations which had threatened her. But this relief only increased her pain, her sensibilities being now only the more capable of suffering. As Mavis walked up the deserted Broughton Road, her eyes sought the sky, which to-night was bountifully spread with stars. It occurred to her how it was just another such a night when she had walked home from Llansallas Bay; then, she had fearfully and, at the same time, tenderly held her lover's hand. The recollection neither increased nor diminished her pain; she thought of that night with such a supreme detachment of self that it seemed as if her heart were utterly dead. She turned by the dye factory and stood on the stone bridge which here crosses the Avon. The blurred reflection of the stars in the slowly moving water caused her eyes again to seek the skies.

Thought Mavis: "Beyond those myriad lights was heaven, where now was her beloved little one. At least, he was happy and free from pain, so what cause had she, who loved him, to grieve, when it was written that some day they would be reunited for ever and ever?"

Mavis looked questioningly at the stars. It would have helped her much if they had been able to betray the slightest consciousness of her longings. But they made no sign; they twinkled with aloof indifference to the grief that wrung her being. Distraught with agonised despair, and shadowed by Trivett, she walked up the principal street of the town, now bereft of any sign of life. Unwittingly, her steps strayed in the direction of the river. She walked the road lying between the churchyard and the cemetery, opened the wicket gate by the church school, and struck across the well-remembered meadows. When she came to the river, she stood awhile on the bank and watched the endless procession of water which flowed beneath her. The movement of the stream seemed, in some measure, to assuage her grief, perhaps because her mind, seeking any means of preservation, seized upon the moving water, this providing the readiest distraction that offered.

Mavis walked along the bank (shadowed by the faithful Trivett) in the direction of her nook. Still with the same detachment of mind which had affected her when she had looked at the stars in the Broughton Road, she paused at the spot where she had first seen Perigal parting the rushes upon the river bank. Unknown to him, she had marked the spot with three large stones, which, after much search, she had discovered in the adjacent meadow. As of old, the stones were where she had placed them. Something impelled her to kick them in the river, but she forbore as she remembered that this glimpse of Perigal which they commemorated was, in effect, the first breath which her boy had drawn within her. And now—-! Mavis was racked with pain. As if to escape from its clutch, she ran across the meadows in the direction of Melkbridge, closely followed by Trivett. Memories of the dead child's father crowded upon her as she ran. It seemed that she was for ever alone, separated from everything that made life tolerable by an impassable barrier of pain. When she came to the road between the churchyard and the cemetery, she felt as if she could go no further. She was bowed with anguish; to such an extent did she suffer, that she leaned on the low parapet of the cemetery for support. The ever-increasing colony of the dead was spread before her eyes. She examined its characteristics with an immense but dread curiosity. It seemed to Mavis that, even in death, the hateful distinctions between rich and poor found expression. The well-to-do had pretentious monuments which bordered the most considerable avenue; their graves were trim, well-kept, filled with expensive blooms, whilst all that testified to remembrance on the part of the living on the resting-places of the poor were a few wild flowers stuck in a gallipot. Away in a corner was the solid monument of the deceased members of a county family. They appeared, even in death, to shun companionship with those of their species they had avoided in life. It, also, seemed as if most of the dead were as gregarious as the living; well-to-do and poor appeared to want company; hence, the graves were all huddled together. There were exceptions. Now and again, one little outpost of death had invaded a level spread of turf, much in the manner of human beings who dislike, and live remote from, their kind.

But it was the personal application of all she saw before her which tugged at her heartstrings. It made her rage to think that the little life to which her agony of body had given birth should be torn from the warmth of her arms to sleep for ever in this unnatural solitude. It could not be. She despairingly rebelled against the merciless fate which had overridden her. In her agony, she beat the stones of the parapet with her hands. Perhaps she believed that in so doing she would awaken to find her sorrows to have been a horrid dream. The fact that she did not start from sleep brought home the grim reality of her griefs. There was no delusion: her baby lay dead at home; her lover, to whom she had confided her very soul, was to be married to someone else. There was no escape; biting sorrow held her in its grip. She was borne down by an overwhelming torrent of suffering; she flung herself upon the parapet and cried helplessly aloud. Someone touched her arm. She turned, to see Trivett's homely form.

"I can't bear it: I can't, I can't!" she cried.

Trivett looked pitifully distressed for a few moments before saying:

"Would you like me to play?"

Mavis nodded.

"I don't know if the church is open; but, if it is, they've been decorating it for—for—Would you very much mind?"

"Play to me: play to me!" cried Mavis.

The musician, whose whole appearance was eloquent of the soil, clumped across the gravelled path of the churchyard, followed by Mavis. He tried many doors, all of which were locked, till he came to a small door in the tower; this was unfastened.

He admitted Mavis, and then struck a wax match to enable her to see. The cold smell of the church at once took her mind back to when she had entered it as a happy, careless child. With heart filled with dumb despair, she sat in the first seat she came to. As she waited, the gloom was slowly dissipated, to reveal the familiar outlines of the church. At the same time, her nostrils were assailed by the pervading and exotic smell of hot-house blooms.

The noise made by the opening of the organ shutters cracked above her head and reverberated through the building. While she waited, none of the sacred associations of the church spoke to her heart; her soul was bruised with pain, rendering her incapable of being moved by the ordinary suggestions of the place. Then Trivett played. Mavis's highly-strung, distraught mind ever, when sick as now, seeking the way of health, listened intently, devoutly, to the message of the music. Sorrow was the musician's theme: not individual grief, but the travail of an aged world. There had been, there was, such an immense accumulation of anguish that, by comparison with the sum of this, her own griefs now seemed infinitesimal. Then the organ became eloquent of the majesty of sorrow. It was of no dumb, almost grateful, resignation to the will of a Heavenly Father, who imposed suffering upon His erring children for their ultimate good, of which it spoke. Rather was the instrument eloquent of the power wielded by a pagan god of pain, before whose throne was a vast aggregation of torment, to which every human thing, and particularly loving women, were, by the conditions consequent on their nature, condemned to contribute. In return for this inevitable sacrifice, the god of pain bestowed a dignity of mind and bearing upon his votaries, which set them apart, as though they were remote from the thoughtless ruck.

While Trivett played, Mavis was eased of some of her pain, her mind being ever receptive to any message that music might offer. When the organ stopped, the cold outlines of the church chilled her to the marrow. The snap occasioned by the shutting up of the instrument seemed a signal on the part of some invisible inquisitor that her torments were to recommence. Before Trivett joined her, the sound of the church clock striking the hour smote her ear with its vibrant, insistent notes. This reminder of the measuring of time recalled to Mavis the swift flight, not only of the hours, but of the days and years. It enabled her dimly to realise the infinitesimal speck upon the chart of recorded time which even the most prolonged span of individual life occupied. So fleeting was this stay, that it almost seemed as if it were a matter of no moment if life should happen to be abbreviated by untimely death. Whilst the girl's mind thus struggled to alleviate its pain and to mend the gaps made by the slings and arrows of poignant grief in its defences, Trivett stumbled downstairs and blundered against the pews as he approached. Then the two walked home, where Mavis resumed her lonely vigil beside the ark which contained all that was mortal of her baby. No matter what further anguish this watch inflicted, she could not suffer her boy to be alone during the last night of his brief stay on earth.

The next afternoon, about two, when all Melkbridge was agog with excitement at the wedding of Major Perigal's son to Victoria Devitt, two funeral carriages might have been seen drawing up at a cottage in the Broughton Road. Under the driver's seat of the first was quickly placed a small coffin, which was smothered with wreaths, while a tall, comely, fair young woman, clad in deep mourning, stepped into the coach, the blinds of which were closely drawn. A homely, elderly man, accompanied by his wife, got into the next, and the two carriages drove off at a smart trot in the direction of the town. Soon after the little procession had started, a black spaniel might have been seen escaping into the road, where it followed the carriages with its nose to the ground, much in the same way as it had been used to follow the Pimlico 'buses in which its mistress travelled when she had carried her baby.

Mavis, white and drawn, lay back in the carriage that was proceeding on its relentless way. She did not know, she did not care, who had made the arrangements for this dismal ride. All she knew was that all she had left of life seemed confined in the glass case beneath the driver's seat.

During the morning, Mrs Trivett had brought in wreaths of flowers from Windebank, Miss Toombs, herself, and her husband. A last one had arrived, which bore upon the attached card, "From C.P., with all imaginable sympathy." Mavis, after glancing at the well-remembered writing, had trodden the flowers underfoot and then had passionately kicked the ruined wreath from the room.

He, at least, should have no part in her sorrowful lot. As she drove into the town, she was now and again met by gay carriages which were returning from setting down wedding guests at the church door. The drivers of these wore wedding favours pinned to their coats, while their whips were decorated with white satin ribbons. As each carriage passed, Mavis felt a sharp tugging at her heart. She guessed that she was not being driven to Melkbridge; she wondered with an almost impersonal curiosity whither they were bound. She had been told, but she had not listened. She had reached such depths of suffering—indeed, she had quite touched bottom—that it now needed an event of considerable moment to make the least impression on her mutilated sensibilities. When they reached the market-place and bore to the right, she gathered that they were going to Pennington.

The day was perfect—a day that in happier circumstances Mavis would have loved. The sun reigned in a cloudless sky, the blue of which was mellowed with a touch of autumn dignity. The grasses waved gladly by the road-side, and along the ditches; patches of sunlight played delightful games of hide-and-seek on hedge-rows and among the trees. Most of the bushes were gay with song, while the birds seemed to laugh in very defiance of winter when the sun was so warm. The unrestrained joy and vivacity of the day emphasised the gloom that rilled the first of the two funeral carriages. Mavis stared with dull surprise at the rollicking gaiety of the afternoon: its callousness to her anguish irked her. It made her think how unnecessary and altogether bootless was the loss she had sustained. She tried to realise that God had singled her out for suffering as a mark of His favour. But at the bottom of her heart she nourished something in the nature of resentment against the Most High. She knew that, if only life could be restored to the child, she would be base enough to forfeit her chances of eternal life in exchange for the boon. As she passed a by-lane, a smart cart, containing a youngish man and a gaily-clad, handsome, happy-looking girl, pulled up sharply in coming from this in order to avoid a collision. Mavis saw the gladness fade from the faces of the occupants of the cart as they realised the nature of the procession they had encountered. The man took off his cap; the girl looked away with frightened eyes.

Five minutes later, the two carriages entered the gates of Pennington Churchyard. The wind was blowing from Melkbridge, therefore she had not heard before the measured tolling of the bell, which now seemed, every time it struck, to stab her soul to the quick. The carriage pulled up at the door of the tiny church. After waiting a few moments, Mavis got out.

Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she walked up the church, to sit in a pew near the top. Although she never took her eyes from the flower-covered coffin, she was aware that Windebank was sitting at the back, whilst, a few moments later, Miss Toombs strolled into the church with the manner of one who had got there by the merest chance.

"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live."

Mavis stood up directly those words were spoken; otherwise, she paid no attention to the exquisite periods of the burial service: her heart was with her boy. The present was as much as she could endure; she was nerving herself for the time when she should leave the church. Till now, she felt that her baby was part of this life and herself; then, without further ado, he would be torn from her cognisance to be put out of sight in the ground.

The inexorable minutes passed. Mavis stood before the open grave. Miss Toombs, ashamed of her earlier timidity, stood beside her. Windebank, erect and bare-headed, was a little behind. As the box containing her baby disappeared, Mavis felt as if the life were being mercilessly drawn from her. It was as if she stood there for untold ages. Then it seemed as if her heart were torn out by the roots. Blinded with pain, she found herself being led by Miss Toombs towards the carriage in which she had been driven from Melkbridge. But Mavis would not get into this. Followed by her friend, she struck into a by-path which led into a lane. Here she walked dry-eyed, numbed with pain, in a world that was hatefully strange. Then Miss Toombs made brave efforts to talk commonplaces, while tears streamed from her eyes. The top of Mavis's head seemed both hot and cold at the same time; she wondered if it would burst. Then, with a sharp bark of delight, Jill sprang from the hedge to jump delightedly about her mistress. Mavis knelt down and pressed her lips to her faithful friend's nose. At the same moment, the wind carried certain sounds to her ears from the direction of Melkbridge. Mavis looked up. The expression of fear which Miss Toombs's face wore confirmed her suspicions. Suddenly, Miss Toombs flung herself upon Mavis, and clapped her hands against the suffering woman's ears.

"Don't listen! don't listen!" screamed Miss Toombs.

But Mavis thrust aside the other woman's arms, to hear the sound of wedding bells, which were borne to her by the wind.

Mavis listened intently for some moments, the while Miss Toombs fearfully watched her. Then, Mavis placed her hands to her head, and laughed and laughed and laughed, till Miss Toombs thought that she was never going to stop.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

A VISIT

Mavis's ride to Pennington was her last appearance out of doors for many a long day. For weeks she lay at Mrs Trivett's on the borderland of death. For nights on end, it was the merest chance whether or not she would live to see another dawn; but, in the end, youth, aided by skilful doctoring and careful nursing, prevailed against the dread illness which had fastened on her brain. As she slowly got better, the blurred shadows which had previously hovered about her took shape into doctor, nurses, and Mrs Trivett. When they told her how ill she had been, and how much better she was, despair filled her heart. She had no wish to live; her one desire was to join her little one beyond the grave.

A time came when the improvement which had set in was not maintained; she failed to get better, yet did not become worse, although Mavis rejoiced in the belief that her health was daily declining. Often, she would wake in the night to listen with glad ears to the incessant ticking of the American clock on the mantelpiece. If alone she would say:

"Go on, go on, little clock, and shorten the time till I again see my dearest."

As if in obedience to her behest, the clock seemed to tick with renewed energy.

Sometimes she would try and picture the unspeakable bliss which would be hers when the desire of her heart was gratified. She often thanked God that she would soon be with Him and her little one. She believed that He found His happiness in witnessing the joy of mothers at again meeting with their children from whom they had been parted for so long.

She had no idea who paid the expenses of her illness; she was assured by Mrs Trivett, whom she often questioned on the subject, that there was no cause for uneasiness on the matter. Her health still refusing to improve, a further medical adviser was called in. He suggested foreign travel as the most beneficial course for Mavis to pursue. But the patient flatly refused to go abroad; for a reason she could not divine, the name of Swanage constantly recurred to her mind. She did not at once remember that she had seen the name on the labels of the luggage which had cumbered the hall on the night when she had called at the Devitts. She often spoke of this watering-place, till at last it was decided that, as she had this resort so constantly in her mind, it might do her good to go there. Even then, it was many more weeks before she was well enough to be moved. She remained in a condition of torpor which the visits of Windebank or Miss Toombs failed to dissipate. At last, when a mild February came, it was deemed possible for her to make the journey. The day before it was arranged that she should start, she was told that a gentleman, who would give no name, and who had come in a carriage of which the blinds were drawn, wished to see her. When she went down to the parlour, she saw a spare old man, with a face much lined and wrinkled, who was clad in ill-fitting, old-fashioned clothes, fidgeting about the room.

"You wish to see me?" asked Mavis, as she wondered who he could be.

"Yes. My name's Perigal: Major Perigal."

Mavis did not speak.

The man seemed surprised at her silence.

"I—I knew your father," he remarked.

"I knew your son," said Mavis icily.

"More's the pity!"

Mavis looked up, mildly surprised. The man continued:

"He's mean: mean right through. I've nothing good to say of him. I know him too well."

Mavis kept silent. Major Perigal went on:

"A nice mess you've made of it."

The girl's eyes held the ghost of a smile. He continued:

"I did my best for you, but you thought yourself too clever."

Mavis looked up inquiringly.

"When I heard who it was he was going to marry, I wanted to do you a good turn for your father's sake, as I knew Charles could never make you happy. I forbade the marriage, knowing he wouldn't face poverty for you. He's hateful: hateful right through."

"And if we'd married?"

"I'd have come round, especially after seeing you. You're a daughter-in-law any man would be proud of. And now he's married that Devitt girl for her money."

"For her money?" queried Mavis.

"What little she has. Never mind her: I want to speak of you. For all your fine looks, you were too clever by half."

"What do you mean?" she asked, with dull, even voice.

"What I say. That for all your grand appearance you were much too knowing. Since you couldn't get him one way, you thought you'd have him another."

"You mean—-"

"By doing as you did."

"You insult me!" cried Mavis, now roused from her lethargy.

"Eh?"

"Insult me. And that is why you came. But since you're here, you may as well know I made a mess of it, as you call it, because I loved your son. If I'd the time over again, I suppose I'd be just such another fool. I can't help it. I loved him. I wish you good morning."

Major Pengal had never been so taken aback in his life. Mavis's words and manner carried conviction to his heart.

"I didn't know—I beg your pardon—I take hack my words," he said confusedly.

Mavis relapsed into her previous torpor.

"I didn't know there was such a woman in the world," he continued. "What you must have been through!"

Mavis did not speak.

"May I have the honour of calling on you again?" he asked with old-fashioned courtesy.

"It would be useless. I go away to-morrow."

"For good?"

"For some weeks."

"If you return, perhaps you would honour me by calling on me. I never see anyone. But, if you would permit me to say so, your friendship would be an honour."

"Thank you, but I don't know what I shall be doing," said Mavis wearily.

A few moments later, Major Perigal took his leave, but without recovering from his unaffected surprise at Mavis's honesty. He looked at her many times, to say, as he went out of the door of the parlour:

"I always believed Charles to have brains: now I know him to be a cursed fool."

The following day, Mavis, accompanied by Mrs Trivett and Jill, set out for Swanage. They took train to Dorchester, where they changed into the South-Western system, which carried them to Swanage, after making a further change at ancient Wareham. Arrived at Swanage station, they took a fly to the house of a Mrs Budd, where lodgings, at the doctor's recommendation, had been secured. On their way to Mrs Budd's, Mavis noticed a young man in a hand-propelled tricycle, which the fly overtook. The nature of the machine told Mavis that its occupant was a cripple.

If she had encountered him eighteen months ago, her heart would have filled with pity at seeing the comely young man's extremity: now, she looked at him very much as she might have noticed a cat crossing the road.

Mrs Budd was waiting on the doorstep in anxious expectation of her lodgers. To see her white hair, all but toothless mouth, and wrinkled face, she looked seventy, which was about her age; but to watch her alert, brisk movements, it would seem as if she enjoyed the energy of twenty. She ushered Mavis into her apartments, talking volubly the while; but the latter could not help seeing that, whereas she was treated with the greatest deference by the landlady, this person quite ignored the existence of Mrs Trivett.

It was with a feeling of relief that Mavis sat down to a meal after the door had been closed on Mrs Budd's chatter. The change had already done her good. Her eyes rested approvingly on the spotless table appointments.

"Poor dear!" exclaimed Mrs Trivett in pitying tones, who waited to see if Mavis had everything she wanted before eating with Mrs Budd in the kitchen.

"What's the matter?" asked Mavis.

"I knew something dreadful would happen. It's the anniversary of the day on which I had my first lot of new teeth, which gave me such dreadful pain."

"What's wrong?"

"That Mrs Budd. I took a dislike to her directly I saw her."

Mavis stared at Mrs Trivett in surprise.

"I do hope you'll be comfortable," continued Mrs Trivett. "But I fear you won't be. She looks the sort of person who would give anyone damp sheets and steal the sugar."

Mrs Trivett said more to the same effect. Mavis, remembering Mrs Budd's behaviour to her, could scarcely keep back a smile; it was the first time since her illness that anything had appeared at all amusing.

But this was not the sum of Mrs Trivett's resentment against Mrs Budd. After the meal was over, she rejoined Mavis with perspiration dropping from her forehead.

"The kitchen's like an oven, and I've nearly been roasted," complained Mrs Trivett. "And her horrid old husband is there, who can't do anything for himself."

"Why didn't you leave before you got so hot?" asked Mavis.

"It's that there Mrs Budd's fault. She's only one tooth, and it takes her all her time to eat."

"I meant, why didn't you leave so that you could finish eating in here?"

"I didn't like to, ma'am, but if you wouldn't very much mind in future—-"

"By all means, eat with me if you wish it."

"Thank you kindly. I'm sure that woman and me would come to blows before many days was over."

Mavis rested for the remainder of the day and only saw Mrs Budd during the few minutes in which the table was being either laid or cleared away; but these few minutes were enough for the landlady to tell Mavis pretty well everything of moment in her life. Mavis learned how Mrs Budd's husband had been head gardener to a neighbouring baronet, until increasing infirmities had compelled him to give up work; also, that as he had spent most of his life in hot-houses, the kitchen had always to have a big fire blazing in order that the old man might have the heat necessary for his comfort. It appeared that Mrs Budd's third daughter had died from curvature of the spine. The mother related with great pride how that, just before death, the girl's spine had formed the figure of a perfect "hess." Mavis was also informed that Mrs Budd could not think of knowing her next-door neighbour, because this person paid a penny a pound less for her suet than she herself did.

When Mavis was going upstairs to bed, she came upon Mrs Budd laboriously dragging her husband, a big, heavy man, up to bed by means of a cord slung about her shoulders and fastened to his waist. Mavis subsequently learned that Mrs Budd had performed this feat every night for the last four years, her husband having lost the use of his limbs.

After Mavis had been a few days at Mrs Budd's, she was sufficiently recovered to walk about Swanage. One day she was even strong enough to get as far as the Tilly Whim caves, where she was both surprised and disgusted to find that some surpassing mediocrity had had the fatuousness to deface the sheer glory of the cliffs with improving texts, such as represent the sum of the world's wisdom to the mind of a successful grocer, who has a hankering after the natural science which is retailed in ninepenny popular handbooks. Often in these walks, Mavis encountered the man whom she had seen upon the day of her arrival; as before, he was pulling himself along on his tricycle. The first two or three times they met, the cripple looked very hard at Jill, who always accompanied her mistress. Afterwards, he took no notice of the dog; he had eyes only for Mavis, in whom he appeared to take a lively interest. Mavis, who was well used to being stared at by men, paid no heed to the man's frequent glances in her direction.

The sea air and the change did much for Mavis's health; she was gradually roused from the lethargy from which she had suffered for so long. But with the improvement in her condition came a firmer realisation of the hard lot which was hers. Her love for Charlie Perigal had resulted in the birth of a child. Although her lover had broken his vows, she could, in some measure, have consoled herself for his loss by devoting her life to the upbringing of her boy. Now her little one had been taken from her, leaving a vast emptiness in her life which nothing could fill. God, fate, chance, whatever power it was that ruled her life, had indeed dealt hardly with her. She felt an old woman, although still a girl in years. She had no interest in life: she had nothing, no one to live for.

One bright March day, Mavis held two letters in her hand as she sat by the window of her sitting-room at Mrs Budd's. She read and re-read them, after which her eyes would glance with much perplexity in the direction of the daffodils now opening in the garden in front of the house. She pondered the contents of the letters; then, as if to distract her thoughts from an unpalatable conclusion, which the subject matter of one of the letters brought home to her, she fell to thinking of the daffodils as though they were the unselfish nurses of the other flowers, insomuch as they risked their frail lives in order to see if the world were yet warm enough for the other blossoms now abed snugly under the earth. The least important of the two letters was from Major Perigal; it had been forwarded on from Melkbridge. In his cramped, odd hand, he expressed further admiration for Mavis's conduct; he begged her to let him know directly she returned to Melkbridge, so that he might have the honour of calling on her again. The other letter was from Windebank, in which he briefly asked Mavis if she would honour him by becoming his wife. Mavis was much distressed. However brutally her heart had been bruised by the events of the last few months, she sometimes believed (this when the sun was shining) that some day it would be possible for her to conjure up some semblance of affection for Windebank, especially if she saw much of him. His mere presence radiated an atmosphere of protection. It offered a welcome harbourage after the many bufferings she had suffered upon storm-tossed seas. If she could have gone to him as she had to Perigal, she would not have hesitated a moment. Now, so far as she was concerned, there was all the difference in the world. Although she knew that her soul was not defiled by her experience with Perigal, she had dim perceptions of the way in which men, particularly manly males, looked upon such happenings. It was not in the nature of things, after all that had occurred, for Windebank to want her in a way in which she would wish to be desired by the man of her choice. Here was, apparently, no overmastering passion, but pity excited by her misfortunes. Mavis had got out of Mrs Trivett (who had long since left for Melkbridge) that it was Windebank who had insisted on paying the expenses of her illness and stay at Swanage, in spite of Major Perigal's and his son's desire to meet all costs that had been incurred. Mavis also learned that Windebank and Charles Perigal had had words on the subject—words which had culminated in blows when Windebank had told Perigal in unmeasured terms what he thought of his conduct to Mavis.

As Mavis recalled Windebank's generosity with regard to her illness, it seemed to her that this proposal of marriage was all of a piece with his other behaviour since her baby had died. Consideration for her, not love, moved his heart. If she were indeed so much to him, why did he not come down and beg her with passionate words to join her life to his?

Mavis made no allowance for the man's natural delicacy for her feelings, which he considered must have been cruelly harrowed by all she had lately suffered. Just now, there was no room in her world for the more delicate susceptibilities of emotion. She wholly misjudged him, and the more she thought of it, the more she believed that his letter was dictated by pity rather than love. This pity irked her pride and made her disinclined to accept his offer.

Then Mavis thought of Major Perigal's letter. It flattered her to think how her personality appealed to those of her own social kind. She began to realise what a desirable wife she would have made if it had not been for her meeting and subsequent attachment to Charlie Perigal. Any man, Windebank, but for this experience, would have been proud to have made her his wife. She believed that her whole-hearted devotion to a worthless man had for ever cut her off from love, wifehood, motherhood—things for which her being starved. Then she tried to fathom the why and wherefore of it all. She had always tried to do right: in situations where events were foreign to her control, she had trusted to her Heavenly Father for protection. "Why was it," she asked herself, "that her lot had not been definitely thrown in with Windebank before she had met with Charles Perigal? Why?" Such was her resentment at the ordering of events, that she set her teeth and banged her clenched fist upon the arm of her chair.

At that moment the crippled man wheeled himself past the house on his self-propelled tricycle. He looked intently at the window of the room that Mavis occupied. At the same moment Mrs Budd came into the room to ask what Mavis would like for luncheon.

"Who is that passing?" asked Mavis.

The old woman ran lightly to the window.

"The gentleman on that machine?"

"Yes. I've often seen him about."

"It's Mr Harold Devitt, miss."

"Harold Devitt! Where does he come from?" asked Mavis of Mrs Budd, who had a genius for gleaning the gossip of the place.

"Melkbridge. He's the eldest son of Mr Montague Devitt, a very rich gentleman. Mr Harold lives at Mrs Buck's with a male nurse to look after him, poor fellow."

Mrs Budd went on talking, but Mavis did not hear what she was saying. Mention of the name of Devitt was the spark that set alight a raging conflagration in her being. She had lost a happy married life with Windebank, to be as she now was, entirely owing to the Devitts. Now it was all plain enough—so plain that she wondered how she had not seen it before. It was the selfish action of the Devitts, who wished to secure Windebank for their daughter, which had prevented Montague from giving Mavis the message that Windebank had given to him. It was the Devitts who had not taken her into their house, because they feared how she might meet Windebank in Melkbridge. It was the Devitts who had given her work in a boot factory, which resulted in her meeting with Perigal. It was the Devitts, in the person of Victoria, who had prevented Perigal from keeping his many times repeated promises to marry Mavis. The Devitts had blighted her life. Black hate filled her heart, overflowed and poisoned her being. She hungered to be revenged on these Devitts, to repay them with heavy interest for the irreparable injury to her life for which she believed them responsible. Then, she remembered how tenderly Montague Devitt had always spoken of his invalid boy Harold; a soft light had come into his eyes on the few occasions on which Mavis had asked after him. A sudden resolution possessed her, to be immediately weakened by re-collections of Montague's affection for his son. Then a procession of the events in her life, which were for ever seared into her memory, passed before her mind's eye—the terror that possessed her when she learned that she was to be a mother; her interview with Perigal at Dippenham; her first night in London, when she had awakened in the room in the Euston Road; Mrs Gowler's; her days of starvation in Halverton Street; the death and burial, not only of her boy, but of her love for and faith in Perigal—all were remembered. Mavis's mind was made up. She went to her bedroom, where, with infinite deliberation, she dressed for going out.

"Mr Harold Devitt!" she said, when she came upon him waiting on his tricycle by the foolish little monument raised to the memory of one of Alfred the Great's victories over invading Danes.

The man raised his hat, while he looked intently at Mavis.

"I have to thank you for almost the dearest treasure I've ever possessed. Do you remember Jill?"

"Of course: I wondered if it might prove to be she when I first saw her. But is your name, by any chance, Miss Keeves?"

Mavis nodded.

"I've often wondered if I were ever going to meet you. And when I saw you about—-"

"You noticed me?"

"Who could help it? I'm in luck."

"What do you mean?" she asked lightly.

"Meeting with you down here."

Thus they talked for quite a long while. Long before they separated for the day, Mavis's eyes had been smiling into his.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

MAVIS AND HAROLD

"You're late!"

"I always am. I've been trying to make myself charming."

"That wouldn't be difficult."

"You think so?"

"I'm sure of it."

Mavis spoke lightly, but Harold's voice was eloquent of conviction.

"I'm sure of it," he repeated, as if to himself.

"Am I so perfect?" she asked, as her eyes sought the ground.

"In my eyes. But, then, I'm different from other men."

"You are."

"You needn't remind me of it."

"Isn't it nice to be different from others?"

"And wheel myself about because I can't walk?"

"Is that what you meant? Believe me, I didn't mean that. I was thinking how different you were to talk to, to other men I've met."

"You flatter me."

"It's the truth."

"Then, since I'm so exceptional, will you do something for me?"

"Perhaps."

"Never be later than you can help. I worry, fearing something's happened to you."

"Not really?"

"You are scarcely a subject I should fib about."

This was the beginning of a conversation that took place a fortnight after Mavis's first meeting with Harold by the sea. During this time, they had seen each other for the best part of every day when the weather was fine enough for Harold to be out of doors; as it was an exceptionally fine spring, they met constantly. Mavis was still moved by an immense hatred of the Devitt family, whom, more than ever before, she believed to be responsible for the wrongs and sufferings she had endured. In her determination to injure this family by making Harold infatuated with her, she was not a little surprised at the powers of dissimulation which she had never before suspected that she possessed. She was both ashamed and proud of this latent manifestation of her individuality—proud because she was inclined to rejoice in the power that it conferred. But, at times, this elation was diluted with self-reproaches, chiefly when she was with Harold, but not looking at him; then his deep, rich voice would awaken strange tremors in her being.

However much Mavis was occasionally moved to pity his physical misfortune, the recollection of her griefs was more than enough to harden her heart.

"Very, very strange that I should have run against you here," he went on.

"Why?"

"I was at home when your old schoolmistress's letter came about you. I remember she dragged in Ruskin."

"Poor Miss Mee!"

"I was always interested in you, and when I was in the South of France, I was always asking my people to do their best for you."

Mavis's eyes grew hard as she asked:

"You've kept your promise to me?"

"That I shouldn't tell my people I'd met you?"

"I made it because—-"

"Never mind why. You made it: that is enough for me."

Mavis's eyes softened. Then she and Harold fell to talking of Melkbridge and Montague Devitt; presently of Victoria.

"I hope she was kind to you at Melkbridge," said Harold.

"Very," declared Mavis, saying what was untrue.

"Dear Vic is a little disappointing. I'm always reproaching myself I don't love her more than I do. Have you ever met the man she married?"

"Mr. Perigal? I've met him," replied Mavis.

"Do you like him?"

"I scarcely remember."

"I don't overmuch. I'm sorry Vic married him, although my people were, of course, delighted."

"Why?"

"We're quite new people, while the Perigals are a county family. But, somehow, I don't think he'll make Vic happy."

"What makes you say that?"

"He's not happy himself. Everything he takes up he wearies of; he gets pleasure out of nothing. And the pity of it is, he's no fool; if anything, he's too many brains."

"How can anyone have too many?"

"Take Perigal's case. He's too analytical; he sees too clearly into things. It's a sort of Rontgen ray intelligence, which I wouldn't have for worlds. Isn't it old Solomon who says, 'In much wisdom there is much sorrow'?"

"Solomon says a good many things," said Mavis gravely, as she remembered how the recollection of certain passion-charged verses from the "Song" had caused her to linger by the canal at Melkbridge on a certain memorable evening of her life, with, as it proved, disastrous consequences to herself.

"Have you ever read the 'Song'?" asked Harold.

"Yes."

"I love it, but I daren't read it now."

"Why?"

"More than most things, it brings home to me my—my helplessness."

The poison, begotten of hatred, made Mavis thankful that the Devitt family had not had it all their own way in life.

When she next looked at Harold, he was intently regarding her. Mavis's glance dropped.

"But now there's something more than reading the 'Song' that makes me curse my luck," he remarked.

"And that?"

"Can't you guess?" he asked earnestly.

Mavis did not try; she was already aware of the fascination she possessed for the invalid.

For the rest of the time they were together, Mavis could get nothing out of Harold; he was depressed and absent-minded when spoken to. Mavis, of set purpose, did her utmost to take Harold out of himself.

"Thank you," he said, as she was going.

"What for?"

"Wasting your time on me and helping me to forget."

"Forget what?"

"Never mind," he said, as he wheeled himself away.

When Mavis got back to Mrs Budd's, she found a bustle of preparation afoot. Mrs Budd was running up and downstairs, carrying clean linen with all her wonted energy; whilst Hannah, her sour-faced assistant, perspired about the house with dustpan and brushes.

"Expecting a new lodger?" asked Mavis.

"It's my daughter, Mrs Perkins; she's telegraphed to say she's coming down from Kensington for a few days."

"She'll be a help."

Mrs Budd's face fell as she said:

"Well, miss, she comes from Kensington, and she has a baby."

"Is she bringing that too?"

"And her nurse," declared Mrs Budd, not without a touch of pride.

When Mrs Perkins arrived, she was wearing a picture hat, decorated with white ostrich feathers, a soiled fawn dust-coat, and high-heeled patent leather shoes. She brought with her innumerable flimsy parcels (causing, by comparison, a collapsible Japanese basket to look substantially built), and a gaily-dressed baby carried by a London slut, whose face had been polished with soap and water for the occasion.

After the dust-cloak had settled with the driver, it advanced self-consciously to the steps leading to the front door, the while it called to the London slut:

"Come along, nurse, and be careful of baby."

Mavis, who saw and heard this from the window of her sitting-room, noticed that Mrs Perkins greeted her mother, who was waiting at the door, with some condescension. When the last flimsy parcel had been taken within, Mrs Budd brought in Mrs Perkins and the baby to introduce them to Mavis. Mrs Perkins sat down and assumed a manner of superfine gentility, while she talked with a Cockney accent. Her mother remained standing. The dust-cloak lived in Kensington, it informed Mavis, "which was so convenient for the West End: it was only an hour's 'bus ride from town."

"Less than that," said Mavis to the dust-cloak.

"I have known it to take fifty-five minutes when it hasn't been stopped by funerals," declared Mrs Perkins.

Mavis looked at the dust-cloak in surprise.

"I always thought it took a quarter of an hour at the outside," remarked Mavis.

"For my part, when I go to London, I'm afraid of the 'buses," said Mrs Budd. "I always take the train to Willesden Junction. Florrie's house is only five minutes from there."

Mrs Perkins frowned, coughed, and then violently changed the subject. Mavis gave no heed to what she was saying. Her eyes were fixed on the baby, which Mrs Budd had put in her arms.

Passionate regrets filled her mind, while a dull pain assailed her heart. She held the baby with a tense grip as Mrs Perkins talked at her, the while the mother kept one eye self-consciously upon her offspring.

Baby that and baby this, she was saying, as Mavis continued to stare with dry-eyed grief at the baby's pasty face. Then blind rage possessed her.

"Why should this common brat, which, even at this early age, carried his origin in his features, live, while my sweet boy is beneath the ground in Pennington Churchyard?" she asked herself.

It was cruel, unjust. Mavis's rage was such that she was within measurable distance of dashing the baby to the ground. Perhaps the dust-cloak's maternal sensibilities scented danger, for, rather abruptly, it got up to go, giving as an excuse that it must rest in order to fulfil social engagements in Swanage. When Mrs Budd, her daughter and grandson, had gone, Mavis still sat in her chair. Her hands grasped its arms; her eyes stared before her. If, at any time, Harold's personality had caused her hatred of his family to wane, the sight of Mrs Perkins's baby was sufficient to restore its vigour.

Then it occurred to Mavis how her love for Perigal, which she had thought to be as stable as the universe, had unconsciously withered within her. It was as if there had been an immense reaction from her one-time implicit faith in her lover, making her despise, where once she had had unbounded confidence. This awakening to the declension that had taken place in her love gave her many anxious hours.

For some days Mavis saw nothing of Harold. She walked on the sweep of sea front and in the streets of the little town in the hope of meeting him, but in vain. She wondered if he had gone home, but persuaded herself that he would not have left Swanage without letting her know.

Mavis was not a little irked at Harold's indifference to her friendship; it hurt her self-esteem, which had been enhanced by the influence she had so palpably wielded over him. It also angered her to think that, after all, she would not be able to drink the draught of revenge which she had promised herself at the Devitts' expense.

All this time she had given no further thought to Windebank's letter; it remained unanswered. As the days passed, and she saw nothing of Harold, she began to think considerably of the man who had written to offer her marriage. These thoughts were largely coloured with resentment at the fact of Windebank's not having followed up his unanswered letter by either another communication or a personal appeal. Soon she was torn by two emotions: hatred of the Devitts and awakened interest in Windebank; she did not know which influenced her the more. She all but made up her mind to write some sort of a reply to Windebank, when she met Harold pulling himself along the road towards the sea.

He had changed in the fortnight that had elapsed since she had last seen him; his face had lost flesh; he looked worn and anxious.

When he saw her, he pulled up. She gave him a formal bow, and was about to pass him, when the hurt expression on the invalid's face caused her to stop irresolutely by his side.

"At last!" he said.

Mavis looked at him inquiringly.

"I could bear it no longer," he went on.

"Bear what?"

He did not reply; indeed, he did not appear to listen to her words, but said:

"I feared you'd gone for good."

"I've seen nothing of you either."

"Then you missed me? Tell me that you did."

"I don't know."

"I have missed YOU."

"Indeed!"

"I daren't say how much. Where are you going now?"

"Nowhere."

"May I come too?" he asked pleadingly. "I'll go a little way," she remarked.

"Meet me by the sea in ten minutes."

"Why not go there together?"

"I'd far rather meet you."

"Don't you like being seen with me?"

"Yes and no. Yes, because I am very proud at being seen with you."

"And 'no'?"

"It's why I wanted you to meet me by the sea."

"Why?"

"Can't you guess?"

"If I could I wouldn't ask."

"I'll tell you. When you walk with me, I'm afraid you notice my infirmity the more."

"I'll only go on one condition," declared Mavis.

"That—-?"

"That we go straight there from here."

"I'm helpless where you're concerned," he sighed, as he started his tricycle.

They went to the road bordering the sea, which just now they had to themselves. On the way they said little; each was occupied with their thoughts.

Mavis was touched by Harold's devotion; also, by his anxiety not to obtrude his infirmity upon her notice. She looked at him, to see in his eyes unfathomable depths of sadness. She repressed an inclination to shed tears. She had never been so near foregoing her resolve to make him the instrument of her hatred of his family. But the forces that decide these matters had other views. Mavis was staring out to sea, in order to hide her emotion from Harold's distress, when the sight of the haze where sea and sky met arrested her attention. Something in her memory struggled for expression, to be assisted by the smell of seaweed which assailed her nostrils.

In the twinkling of an eye, Mavis, in imagination, was at Llansallas Bay, with passionate love and boundless trust in her heart for the lover at her side, to whom she had surrendered so much. The merest recollection of how her love had been betrayed was enough to dissipate the consideration that she was beginning to feel for Harold. Her heart turned to stone; determination possessed her.

"Still silent!" she exclaimed.

"I have to be."

"Who said so?"

"The little sense that's left me."

"Sense is often nonsense."

"It's a bitter truth to me."

"Particularly now?"

"Now and always."

"May I know?"

"Why did you come into my life?" he asked, as if he had not heard her request.

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Why have you? Why have you?"

"You're not the only one who can ask that question," she murmured.

He looked at her for some moments in amazement before saying:

"Say that again."

"I shan't."

"If I were other than I am, I should compel you."

"How could you?"

"With my lips. As it is—-"

"Yes—tell me."

"My infirmity stops me from saying and doing what I would."

"Why let it?" asked Mavis in a low voice, while her eyes sought the ground.

"You—you mean that?" he asked, in the manner of one who scarcely believed the evidence of his ears.

"I mean it."

He did not speak for such a long time that Mavis began to wonder if he regretted his words. When she stole a look at him, she saw that his eyes were staring straight before him, as if his mind were all but overwhelmed by the subject matter of its concern.

Mavis touched his arm. He shivered slightly and glanced at her as if surprised, before he realised that she was beside him.

"Listen!" he said. "You asked—you shall know; whether you like or hate me for it. I love you. Women have never come into my life; they've always looked on me with pitying eyes. I would rather it were so. But you—you—you are beautiful, with a heart like your face, both rare and wonderful. Perhaps I love you so much because you are young and healthy. It hurts me."

His eyes held such a piteously fearful look that Mavis was moved in spite of herself. He went on:

"If my disposition were like my twisted body, it wouldn't matter. But I love life, movement, struggling. Were I as I used to be, I should love to have a beautiful, responsive woman for my own. I should love to have you."

Before Mavis knew what she had done, she had put her hand on his. Then he said, as if speaking to himself:

"What have I to offer besides a helpless, envious love? My wife would be a nurse, not a mistress, as she should be."

"Stop! stop!" she pleaded.

"No, I will not stop," he cried, as he bent over to hold her head so that her eyes looked into his. "You shall listen and then decide. I love you. If it's good enough, I'm yours. You know what I have to offer, and I ask you to be my wife because I can't help myself. Because—"

Mavis had closed her eyes for fear that he should read her heart. He passionately kissed the closed lids before sinking back exhausted in his chair.

"Listen to me," said Mavis after a while. "It's I who am to blame. Let me go away so that you can forget me."

"Forget you! forget you!" he cried. "No, you shall not go away; not till you've said 'yes' or 'no' to what I ask."

"When shall I answer?"

"Give yourself time—only—"

"Only?"

"Don't keep me waiting longer than you can help."

For three days, Mavis drifted upon uncertain tides. She was borne rapidly in one direction only to float as certainly in another. She lacked sufficient strength of purpose to cast anchor and abide by the consequences. She deplored her irresolution, but, try as she might, she found it a matter of great difficulty to give her mind to the consideration of Harold's offer. Otherwise, the most trivial happenings imprinted themselves on her brain: the aspect of the food she ate, the lines on her landlady's face, the flittings in and out of the front door of the "dust-cloak" on its way to trumpery social engagements, the while its mother minded the baby, all acquired in her eyes a prominence foreign to their importance. Also, thoughts of Windebank now and again flooded her mind. Then she remembered all he had done for her, at which gratitude welled from her soul. At such times she would be moved by a morbid consideration for his feelings; she longed to pay back the money he had spent on her illness, and felt that her mind would never be at ease on the matter till she had.

If only he would come down, and, despite anything she could say or do, insist on marrying her and determine to win her heart; failing that, if he would only write words of passionate longing which might awaken some echo in her being! She read and re-read the letter in which he offered her marriage; she tried to see in his formal phrases some approximation to a consuming love, but in vain.

She had never answered this letter; she reproached herself for not having done so. Mavis sat down to write a few words, which would reach Windebank by the first post in the morning, when she found that the ink had dried in the pot. She rang the bell. While waiting, a vision of the piteous look on Harold's face when he had told her of his love came into her mind. Accompanying this was the recollection of the cause of which her friendship with Harold was an effect. Hatred of the Devitts possessed her. She remembered, and rejoiced, that it was now in her power to be revenged for all she believed she had suffered at their hands. So black was the quality of this hate that she wondered why she had delayed so long. When the ink was brought, it was to Harold that she was about to write; Windebank was forgotten.

As Mavis wrote the day of the month at the head of the page, she seemed to hear echoes of Harold's resonant voice vibrating with love for her. She sighed and put down her pen. If only she were less infirm of purpose. Her hesitations were interrupted by Mrs Budd bringing in a letter for Mavis that the postman had just left. It was from Mrs Trivett. It described with a wealth of detail a visit that the writer had paid to Pennington Churchyard, where she had taken flowers to lay on the little grave. Certain nerves in the bereaved mother's face quivered as she read. Memories of the long-drawn agony which had followed upon her boy's death crowded into her mind. Mavis hardened her heart.



CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

MAVIS'S REVENGE

Upon a day on which the trees and hedges were again frocked in spring finery in honour of approaching summer, Mrs Devitt was sitting with her sister in the drawing-room of Melkbridge House. Mrs Devitt was trying to fix her mind on an article in one of the monthly reviews dealing with the voluntary limitation of families on the part of married folk. Mrs Devitt could not give her usual stolid attention to her reading, because, now and again, her thoughts wandered to an interview between her husband and Lowther which was taking place in the library downstairs. This private talk between father and son was on the subject of certain snares which beset the feet of moneyed youth when in London, and in which the unhappy Lowther had been caught. Mrs Devitt was sufficiently vexed at the prospect of her husband having to fork out some hundreds of pounds, without the further promise of revelations in which light-hearted, lighter living young women were concerned. Debts were forgivable, perhaps excusable, in a young gentleman of Lowther's standing, but immorality, in Mrs Devitt's eyes, was a horse of quite another colour; anything of this nature acted upon Mrs Devitt's susceptibilities much in the same way as seeing red afreets an angry bull.

Miss Spraggs, whom the last eighteen months had aged in appearance, looked up from the rough draft of a letter she was composing.

"Did you hear anything?" she asked, as she listened intently.

"Hear what?"

"The door open downstairs. Lowther's been in such a time with Montague."

"I suppose Lowther is confessing everything," sighed Mrs Devitt.

"Nothing of the sort," remarked Miss Spraggs.

"What do you mean?"

"No one ever does confess everything: something is always kept back."

"Don't you think, Eva, you look at things from a very material point of view?"

Eva shrugged her narrow shoulders. Mrs Devitt continued:

"Now and again, you seem to ignore the good which is implanted in us all."

"Perhaps because it's buried so deep down that it's difficult to see."

Half an hour afterwards, it occurred to Mrs Devitt that she might have retorted, "What one saw depended on the power of one's perceptions," but just now, all she could think of to say was:

"Quite so; but there's so much good in the world, I wonder you don't see more of it."

"What are you reading?" asked Miss Spraggs, as she revised the draft of her letter.

The scribbling virgin often made a point of talking while writing, in order to show how little mental concentration was required for her literary efforts.

"An article on voluntary limitations of family. It's by the Bishop of Westmoreland. He censures such practices: I agree with him."

Mrs Devitt spoke from her heart. The daughter of a commercial house, which owed its prosperity to an abundant supply of cheap labour, she realised (although she never acknowledged it to herself) that the practices the worthy bishop condemned, if widely exercised, must, in course of time, reduce the number of hands eager to work for a pittance, and, therefore, the fat profits of their employers.

"So do I," declared Miss Spraggs, who only wished she had the ghost of a chance of contributing (legitimately) to the sum of the population.

"There's an admirable article about Carlyle in the same number of the National Review," said Miss Spraggs presently.

"I never read anything about Carlyle," declared Mrs Devitt.

Miss Spraggs raised her straight eyebrows.

"He didn't get on with his wife," said Mrs Devitt, in a manner suggesting that this fact effectually disposed in advance of any arguments Miss Spraggs might offer.

Soon after, Montague Devitt came into the room, to be received with inquiring glances by the two women. He walked to the fireplace, where he stood in moody silence.

"Well?" said his wife presently.

"Well!" replied Devitt.

"What has Lowther confessed?"

"The usual."

"Money?"

"And other things."

"Ah! What were the other things?"

"We'll talk it over presently," replied Montague, as he glanced at Miss Spraggs.

"Am I so very young and innocent that I shouldn't learn what has happened?" asked Miss Spraggs, who, in her heart of hearts, enjoyed revelations of masculine profligacy.

"I'd rather speak later," urged Montague gloomily, to add, "It never rains but it pours."

"Why do you say that?" asked his wife quickly.

"I'd a letter from Charlie Perigal this mornin'."

"Where from?"

"The same Earl's Court private hotel. He wants somethin' to do."

"Something to do!" cried the two sisters together.

"His father hasn't done for him what he led me to believe he would," explained Devitt gloomily.

"You can find him something?" suggested Miss Spraggs.

"And, till you do, I'd better ask them to stay down here," said his wife.

"That part of it's all right," remarked Devitt. "But somehow I don't think Charlie—-"

"What?" interrupted Mrs Devitt.

"Is much of a hand at work," replied her husband.

No one said anything for a few minutes.

Mrs Devitt spoke next.

"I'm scarcely surprised at Major Perigal's refusal to do anything for Charles," she remarked.

"Why?" asked her husband.

"Can you ask?"

"You mean all that business with poor Mavis Keeves?"

"I mean all that business, as you call it, with that abandoned creature whom we were so misguided as to assist."

Devitt said nothing; he was well used to his wife's emphatic views on the subject—views which were endorsed by her sister.

"The whole thing was too distressing for words," she continued. "I'd have broken off the marriage, even at the last moment, for Charles's share in it, but for the terrible scandal which would have been caused."

"Well, well; it's all over and done with now," sighed Devitt.

"I'm not so sure; one never knows what an abandoned girl, as Miss Keeves has proved herself to be, is capable of!"

"True!" remarked Miss Spraggs.

"Come! come!" said Devitt. "The poor girl was at the point of death for weeks after her baby died."

"What of that?" asked his wife.

"Girls who suffer like that aren't so very bad."

"You take her part, as you've always done. She's hopelessly bad, and I'm as convinced as I'm sitting here that it was she who led poor Charlie astray."

"It's all very unfortunate," said Devitt moodily.

"And we all but had her in the house," urged Mrs Devitt, much irritated at her husband's tacit support of the girl.

"Anyway, she's far away from us now," said Devitt.

"Where has she gone?" asked Miss Spraggs.

"Somewhere in Dorsetshire," Devitt informed her.

"If she hadn't gone, I should have made it my duty to urge her to leave Melkbridge," remarked Mrs Devitt.

"She's not so bad as all that," declared Devitt.

"I can't understand why men stand up for loose women," said his wife.

"She's not a loose woman: far from it. If she were, Windebank would not be so interested in her."

Devitt could not have said anything more calculated to anger the two women.

Miss Spraggs threw down her pen, whilst Mrs Devitt became white.

"She must be bad to have fascinated Sir Archibald as she has done," she declared.

"Windebank is no fool," urged her husband.

"I suppose the next thing we shall hear is that she's living under his protection," cried Mrs Devitt.

"In St John's Wood," added Miss Spraggs, whose information on such matters was thirty years behind the times.

"More likely he'll marry her," remarked Devitt.

"What!" cried the two women.

"I believe he'd give his eyes to get her," the man continued.

"He's only to ask," snapped Miss Spraggs.

"Anyway, we shall see," said Devitt.

"Should that happen, I trust you will never wish me to invite her to the house," said Mrs Devitt, rising to her full height.

"It's all very sad," remarked Devitt gloomily.

"It is: that you should take her part in the way you do, Montague," retorted his wife.

"I'm sorry if you're upset," her husband replied. "But I knew Miss Keeves as a little girl, when she was always laughin' and happy. It's all very, very sad."

Mrs Devitt moved to a window, where she stood staring out at the foliage which, just now, was looking self-conscious in its new finery.

"Who heard from Harold last?" asked Devitt presently.

"I did," replied Miss Spraggs. "It was on Tuesday he wrote."

"How did he write?"

"Quite light-heartedly. He has now for some weeks: such a change for him."

"H'm!"

"Why do you ask?" said Mrs Devitt.

"I saw Pritchett when I was in town yesterday."

"Harold's doctor?" queried Miss Spraggs.

"He told me he'd seen Harold last week."

"At Swanage?"

"Harold had wired for him. I wondered if anythin' was up."

"What should be 'up,' as you call it, beyond his being either better or worse?"

"That's what I want to know."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, that it was more from Pritchett's manner than from anything else that I gathered somethin' had happened."

"So long as he's well, there's nothing to worry about," said Mrs Devitt reassuringly.

The late afternoon post brought a letter for Montague from his son Harold. This told his father that a supreme happiness had come in his life; that, by great good fortune, he had met and quietly married Mavis Keeves; that, by her wish, the marriage had been kept a secret for three weeks; it ended by saying how he hoped to bring his wife to his father's house early in the following week. Montague Devitt stared stupidly at the paper on which this information was conveyed; then he leaned against the mantelpiece for support. He looked as if he had been struck brutally and unexpectedly between the eyes. "Montague! Montague!" cried his wife, as she noticed his distress.

The letter fell from his hands.

"Read!" he said faintly.

"Harold's writing!" exclaimed Mrs Devitt, as she caught up the letter.

Devitt watched her as she read; he saw her face grow hard; then her jaw dropped; her eyes stared fixedly before her. When Miss Spraggs read the letter, as she very soon did, she went into hysterics; she had a great affection for Harold. The hand of fate had struck the Devitts remorselessly; they were stunned by the blow for quite a long while. For her part, Mrs Devitt could not believe that Providence would allow her to suffer such a terrible affliction as was provided by the fact of her stepson's marriage to Mavis; again and again she looked at the letter, as if she found it impossible to believe the evidence of her eyes.

"What's—what's to be done?" gasped Mrs Devitt, when she was presently able to speak.

"Don't ask me!" replied her husband.

"Can't you do anything?" asked Miss Spraggs, during a pause in her hysterical weeping.

"Do what?"

"Something: anything. You're a man."

"I haven't grasped it yet. I must think it out," he said, as he began to walk up and down the room so far as the crowded furniture would permit.

"We must try and think it's God's will," said his wife, making an effort to get her thoughts under control.

"What!" cried Devitt, stopping short in his walk to look at his wife with absent eyes.

"God has singled us out for this bitter punishment," snuffled Mrs Devitt, as her eyes glanced at the heavily gilded chandelier.

With a gesture of impatience, Devitt resumed his walk, while Miss Spraggs quickly went to windows and door, which she threw open to their utmost capacity for admitting air.

"One thing must be done," declared Devitt.

"Yes?" asked his wife eagerly.

"That Hunter girl who split on Mavis Keeves havin' been at Polperro with Perigal."

"She knows everything; we shall be disgraced," wailed Mrs Devitt.

"Not at all. I'll see to that," replied her husband grimly.

"What will you do?"

"Give her a good job in some place as far from here as possible, and tell her that, if her tongue wags on a certain subject, she'll get the sack."

"What!" asked his wife, surprised at her husband's decision and the way in which he expressed himself.

"Suggest somethin' better."

"I was wondering if it were right."

"Right be blowed! We're fightin' for our own hand."

With this view of the matter, Mrs Devitt was fain to be content.

It was a dismal and forlorn family party which sat down to dinner that evening under the eye of the fat butler. Husband, wife, and Miss Spraggs looked grey and old in the light of the table lamps. By this time Lowther had been told of the trouble which had descended so suddenly upon the family. His comment on hearing of it was characteristic.

"Good God! But she hasn't a penny!" he said. He realised that the prospects of his father assisting him out of his many scrapes had declined since news had arrived of Harold's unlooked-for marriage. When the scarcely tasted meal was over, Montague sent Lowther upstairs "to give the ladies company," while he smoked an admirable cigar and drank the best part of a bottle of old port wine. The tobacco and the wine brought a philosophical calm to his unquiet mind; he was enabled to look on the marriage from its least unfavourable aspects. He had always liked Mavis and would have done much more for her than he had already accomplished, if his womenfolk had permitted him to follow the leanings of his heart; he knew her well enough to know that she was not the girl to bestow herself lightly upon Charlie Perigal. He had not liked Perigal's share in the matter at all, and the whole business was still much of a mystery. Although grieved beyond measure that the girl had married his dearly loved boy, he realised that with Harold's ignorance of women he might have done infinitely worse.

"What are you going to do?" asked Mrs Devitt of her husband in the seclusion of their bedroom.

"Try and make the best of it. After all, she's a lady."

"What! You're not going to try and have the marriage annulled?"

It was her husband's turn to express astonishment.

"Surely you'll do something?" she urged.

"What can I do?"

"As you know, it can't be a marriage in—in the worldly sense; when it's like that something can surely be done," said Mrs Devitt, annoyed at having to make distant allusions to a subject hateful to her heart.

"What about Harold's feelin's?"

"But—"

"He probably loves her dearly. What of his feelin's if he knew—all that we know?"

"I did not think of that. Oh dear! oh dear! it gets more and more complicated. What can be done?"

"Wait."

"What for?"

"Till we see them. Then we can learn the why and the wherefore of it all and judge accordin'ly."

With this advice Mrs Devitt had to be content, but for all the comfort it may have contained it was a long time before husband or wife fell asleep that night.

But even the short period of twenty-four hours is enough to accustom people to trouble sufficiently to make it tolerable. When this time had passed, Mrs Devitt's mind was well used to the news which yesterday afternoon's post had brought. Her mind harked back to Christian martyrs; she wondered if the fortitude with which they met their sufferings was at all comparable to the resolution she displayed in the face of affliction. The morning's post had brought a letter from Victoria, to whom her brother had written to much the same effect as he had communicated with his father. In this she expressed herself as admirably as was her wont; she also treated the matter with a sympathetic tact which, under the circumstances, did her credit. She trusted that anything that had happened would not influence the love and duty she owed her husband. Harold's marriage to Miss Keeves was in the nature of a great surprise, but if it brought her brother happiness she would be the last to regret it; she hoped that, despite past events, she would be able to welcome her brother's wife as a sister; she would not fail to come in time to greet her sister-in-law, but she would leave her husband in town, as he had important business to transact.

Some half hour before the time by which Harold and his wife could arrive at Melkbridge House, the Devitt family were assembled in the library; in this room, because it was on the ground floor, and, therefore, more convenient for Harold's use, he having to be carried up and down stairs if going to other floors of the house.

Devitt was frankly ill at ease. His wife did her best to bear herself in the manner of the noblest traditions (as she conceived them) of British matronhood. Miss Spraggs talked in whispers to her sister of "that scheming adventuress," as she called Mavis. Victoria chastened agitated expectation with resignation; while Lowther sat with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. At last a ring was heard at the front door bell, at which Devitt and Lowther went out to welcome bride and bridegroom. Those left in the room waited while Harold was lifted out of the motor and put into the hand-propelled carriage which he used in the house. The Devitt women nerved themselves to meet with becoming resolution the adventuress's triumph.

Through the open door they could hear that Mavis had been received in all but silence; only Harold's voice sounded cheerily. The men made way for Mavis to enter the library. It was by no means the triumphant, richly garbed Mavis whom the women had expected who came into the room. It was a subdued, carelessly frocked Mavis, who, after accepting their chastened greetings, kept her eyes on her husband. When the door was closed, Harold was the first to speak.

"Mother, if I may call you that! father! all of you! I want you to hear what I have to say," he began, in his deep, soothing voice. "You know what my accident has made me; you know how I can never be other than I am. For all that, this winsome, wonderful girl, out of the pity and goodness of her loving heart, has been moved to throw in her lot with mine—even now I can hardly realise my immense good fortune" (here Mavis dropped her eyes), "but there it is, and if I did what was right, I should thank God for her every moment of my life. Now you know what she is to me; how with her youth and glorious looks she has blessed my life, I hope that you, all of you, will take her to your hearts."

A silence that could almost be heard succeeded his words; but Harold did not notice this; he had eyes only for his wife.

Tea was brought in, when, to relieve the tension, Victoria went over to Mavis and sat by her side; but to her remarks Harold's wife replied in monosyllables; she had only eyes for her husband. The Devitts could make nothing of her; her behaviour was so utterly alien to the scarcely suppressed triumph which they had expected. But just now they did not give very much attention to her; they were chiefly concerned for Harold, whose manner betrayed an extra-ordinary elation quite foreign to the depression which had troubled him before his departure for Swanage. Now a joyous gladness possessed him; from the frequent tender glances he cast in his wife's direction, there was little doubt of its cause. Harold's love for his wife commenced by much impressing his family, but ended by frightening them; they feared the effect on his mind when he discovered, as he undoubtedly must, when his wife had thrown off the mask, that he had wedded a heartless adventuress, who had married him for his money. At the same time, the Devitts were forced to admit that Mavis's conduct was unlike that of the scheming woman of their fancies; they wondered at the reason of her humility, but did not learn the cause till the family, other than Harold, were assembled upstairs in the drawing-room waiting for dinner to be announced. When Mavis had come into the room, the others had been struck by the contrast between the blackness of her frock and the milky whiteness of her skin; they were little prepared for what was to follow.