Sparrows Part 74

Above, the stars shone out with a yet greater brilliance and in immense profusion. Now and again, a shooting star would dart swiftly down to go out suddenly. The mult.i.tude of many coloured stars dazzled her brain.

It seemed to her love-intoxicated imagination as if night embraced the earth, even as Perigal held her body to his, and that the stars were an illumination and were twinkling so happily in honour of the double union. For all the splendid egotism born of human pa.s.sion, the immense intercourse of night and earth seemed to reduce her to insignificance.

She crept closer to Perigal's side, as if he could give her the protection she needed. He too, perhaps, was touched with the same lowliness, and the same hunger for the support of loving sympathy. His hand sought hers; and with a great wonder, a great love and a great humility in their hearts, they walked home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE CURSE OF EVE

A little one was journeying to Mavis. A great fear, not unmixed with a radiant wonder, filled her being. It was now three months since her joyous stay with Perigal at Polperro. At the expiration of an all-too-brief fortnight, she had gone back, dazed, intoxicated with pa.s.sion, to her humdrum work at the Melkbridge boot factory; while Perigal, provided by his father with the sinews of war, had departed for Wales, there to lay siege to elusive fortune. During this time, Mavis had seen him once or twice, when he had paid hurried visits to Melkbridge, and had heard from him often. Although his letters made copious reference to the never-to-be-forgotten joys they had experienced at Polperro, she scanned them anxiously, and in vain, for any reference to his marrying her now, or later. The omission caused her many painful hours; she realised more and more that, after the all-important part she had suffered him to play in her life, it would not be meet for her to permit any other man to be on terms other than friendship with her. It was brought home to her, and with no uncertain voice, how, in surrendering herself to her lover, she was no longer his adored Mavis, but nothing more nor less than his "thing," who was wholly, completely in his power, to make or mar as he pleased.

During these three months, she had seen or heard nothing of Windebank, so concluded that he was away.

She was much perturbed with wondering what she should do with the sumptuous dressing-case he had given her for a wedding present.

Directly there was no longer room for doubt that her union with Perigal would, in the fulness of time, bear fruit, she wrote telling him her news, and begging him to see her with as little delay as possible. In reply, she received a telegram, curtly telling her to be outside Dippenham station on Sat.u.r.day afternoon at four.

This was on a Wednesday. Mavis's anxiety to hear from Perigal was such that her troubled blood set up a raging abscess in the root of a tooth that was scarcely sound. The least movement increased her torments; but what troubled her even more than the pain, was that, when the latter began to subside, one of her cheeks commenced to swell. She was anxious to look her very best before her lover: her lopsided face gave her a serio-comic expression. The swelling had diminished a little before she set out on the bleak December afternoon to meet her lover. Before she went, she looked long and anxiously in the gla.s.s. Apart from the disfigurement caused by the swelling, she saw (yet strove to conceal from herself) that her condition was already interfering with her fresh, young comeliness: her eyes were drawn; her features wore a tense, tired expression. As she looked out of the carriage window on her train journey to Dippenham, the gloom inspired by the darkening shadows of the day, the dreariness of the bleak landscape, chilled her to the heart. She comforted herself by reflecting with what eager cheerfulness Perigal would greet her; how delighted he would be at receiving from her lips further confirmation of her news; how loyally he would fulfil his many promises by making the earliest arrangements for their marriage. Arrived at her destination, she learned she would have to wait twelve minutes till the train arrived that would bring her lover from Wales. She did not stay in the comparative comfort of the waiting-room, but, despite the pain that movement still gave her, preferred to wander in the streets of the dull, quaint town till his train was due. A thousand doubts a.s.sailed her mind: perhaps he would not come, or would be angry with her, or would meet with an accident upon the way. Her mind travelled quickly, and her body felt the need of keeping pace with the rapidity of her thoughts. She walked with sharp, nervous steps down the road leading from the station, to be pulled up by the insistent pain in her head. She returned so carefully that Perigal's train was steaming into the station as she reached the booking office. She walked over the bridge to get to his platform, to be stopped for a few moments by the rush, roar, and violence of a West of England express, pa.s.sing immediately under where she stood. The disturbance of the pa.s.sing train stunned and then jarred her overwrought nerves, causing the pain in her face to get suddenly worse.

As she met those who had got out of the train Perigal would come by, she wondered if he would so much as notice the disfigurement of her face. For her part, if he came to her one-armed and blind, it would make no difference to her; indeed, she would love him the more. Perigal stepped from the door of a first cla.s.s compartment, seemingly having been aroused from sleep by a porter; he carried a bag.

Mavis noticed, with a great concern, how careworn he was looking--a great concern, because, directly she set eyes on him, she realised the immensity of her love for him. At that moment she loved him more than she had ever done before; he was not only her lover, to whom she had surrendered herself body and soul, but also the father of her unborn little one. Faintness threatened her; she clung to the handle of a weighing machine for support.

"More trouble!" he remarked, as he reached her.

She looked at him with frightened eyes, finding it hard to believe the evidence of her ears.

"W-what?" she faltered.

"Heavens!"

"What's the matter, dear?"

"What have you done to your face?"

"I--I hoped you wouldn't notice. I've had an abscess."

"Notice it! Haven't you looked in the gla.s.s?"

Mavis bit her lip.

"I shouldn't have thought you could look so--look like that," he continued.

"What trouble did you mean?" she found words to ask.

"This. Why you sent for me."

She felt as if he had stabbed her. She stopped, overwhelmed by the blow that the man she loved so whole-heartedly had struck her.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Nothing--only--"

"Only what?"

"You don't seem at all glad to see me."

She spoke as if pained at and resentful of his coldness. He looked at her, to watch the suffering in her eyes crystallise into a defiant hardness.

"I am, no end. But I'm tired and cold. Wait till we've had something to eat," he said kindly.

Mavis melted. Her love for him was such that she found it no easy matter being angry with him.

"How selfish of me! I ought to have known," she remarked. "Let someone take your bag."

"I don't know where I'm going to stop. I'll leave it at the station for the present."

"Aren't you going home?" she asked in some surprise.

"We'll talk over everything when I've got warm."

She waited while he left his bag in the cloak-room. When he joined her, they walked along the street leading from the station.

"I could have seen what's up with you without being told," he remarked ungenially.

"It won't be for so very long. I shall look all right again some day,"

she declared, with a sad little laugh.

"That's the worst of women," he went on. "Just when you think everything's all right, this goes and happens."

His words fired her blood.

"I should have thought you would have been very proud," she cried.

"Eh!"

"However foolish I've been, I'm not the ordinary sort of woman. Where I've been wrong is in being too kind to you."

She paused for breath. She was also a little surprised at her bold words; she was so completely at the man's mercy.

"I do appreciate it. I'd be a fool if I didn't. But it's this development that's so inconvenient."

"Inconvenient! Inconvenient you call it--!"

"This will do us," he interrupted, pausing at the doorway of the "King's Arms Hotel."