Sparrows Part 111

"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 surpa.s.sing 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. G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sing?" 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, pa.s.sed 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."