Sparrows Part 77

"Stay here!" she gasped.

"With me--as you did in Polperro." Then, as she did not speak: "There's no reason why you shouldn't!"

A great horror possessed Mavis. This, then, was all she had laboured for; all he thought of her. She had believed that he would have offered immediate marriage. His suggestion helped her to realise the hopelessness of her situation; how, in the eternal contest between the s.e.xes, she had not only laid all her cards upon the table, but had permitted him to win every trick. She fell from the summit of her blissful antic.i.p.ations into a slough of despair. She had little or no hope of his ever making her the only possible reparation. Ruin, disgrace, stared her in the face. And after all the fine hopes with which she had embarked on life! Her pride revolted at this promise of hapless degradation. Anything rather than that. There was but one way to avoid such a fate, not only for her, but for the new life within her. The roar and rush of the express, when she had crossed the footbridge at the station, sounded hopefully in her ears.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't!" he repeated.

"Indeed?" she said mechanically.

"Is there? After all that's happened, what difference can it make?" he persisted, as he reached for a cigarette.

"What difference can it make?" she repeated dully.

"Good! Dear little Mavis! Have another cigarette."

Unseen by him, she had caught up coat, gloves, and hat, and moved towards the door. Here she had paused, finding it hard to leave him whom she loved unreservedly for other women to caress and care for.

The words, "What difference can it make?" decided her. They spurred her along the short, quick road which was to end in peaceful oblivion. She opened the door noiselessly, and slipped down the stairs and out of the front door with out being seen by any of the hotel people. Once in the street, where a drizzle was falling, she turned to the right in the direction of the station. It seemed a long way. She would have liked to have stepped from the room, in which she had been with Perigal, on to the rails before the pa.s.sing express. She hurried on. Although it was Sat.u.r.day night, there were few people about, the bad weather keeping many indoors who would otherwise be out. She was within a few paces of the booking office when she felt a hand on her arm.

"Don't stop me! Let me go!" she cried.

"Where to?" asked Perigal's voice.

She pressed forward.

"Don't be a little fool. Are you mad? Stop!"

He forced her to a standstill.

"Now come back," he said.

"No. Let me go."

"Are you so mad as to do anything foolish?"

By way of reply, she made a vain effort to free herself. He tried to reason with her, but nothing he urged could change her resolution. Her face was expressionless; her eyes dull; her mind appeared to be obsessed by a determination to take her life. He changed his tactics.

"Very well, then," he said, "come along."

She looked at him, surprised, as she started off.

"Where you go, I go; whatever you do, I do."

She paused to say:

"If you'd let me have my own way, I should be now out of my misery."

"You only think of yourself," he cried. "You don't mind what would happen to me if you--if you--!"

"A lot you'd care!" she interrupted.

"Don't talk rot. It's coming down worse than ever. Come back to the hotel."

"Never that," she said, compressing her lip.

"You'll catch your death here."

"A good thing too. I can't go on living. If I do, I shall go mad," she cried, pressing her hands to her head.

Pa.s.sers-by were beginning to notice them.

Without success, Perigal urged her to walk.

She became hysterically excited and upbraided him in no uncertain voice. She seemed to be working herself into a paroxysm of frenzy. To calm her, perhaps because he was moved by her extremity, he overwhelmed her with endearments, the while he kissed her hands, her arms, her face, when no one was by.

She was influenced by his caresses, for she, presently, permitted herself to walk with him down the street, where they turned into the railed-in walk which crossed the churchyard.

He redoubled his efforts to induce in her a more normal state of mind.

"Don't you love me, little Mavis?" he asked. "If you did, you wouldn't distress me so."

"Love you!" she laughed scornfully.

"Then why can't you listen and believe what I say?"

He said more to the same effect, urging, begging, praying her to trust him to marry her, when he could see his way clearly.

Perhaps because the mind, when confronted with danger, fights for existence as l.u.s.tily as does the body, Mavis, against her convictions, strove with some success to believe the honeyed a.s.surances which dropped so glibly from her lover's tongue. His eloquence bore down her already enfeebled resolution.

"Go on; go on; go on!" she cried. "It's all lies, no doubt; but it's sweet to listen to all the same."

He looked at her in surprise.

"Your love-words, I mean. They're all I've got to live for now. What you can't find heart to say, invent. You've no idea what good it does me."

"Mavis!" he cried reproachfully.

"It seems to give me life," she declared, to add after a few moments of silence: "Situated as I am, they're like drops of water to a man dying of thirst."

"But you're not going to die: you're going to live and be happy with me!"

She looked at him questioningly, putting her soul into her eyes.

"But you must trust me," he continued.

"Haven't I already?" she asked.

He took no notice of her remark, but gave utterance to a plat.i.tude.