Sparrows Part 90

"Yes."

"Quite distinct?"

"Quite."

"That's awright."

Miss Nippett sighed with some content.

"If 'e don't come soon, 'e'll be too late," murmured Miss Nippett after an interval of seeming exhaustion.

Mavis waited with ears straining for the sound of the knocker on the front door. Miss Nippett lay so that her weakening eyes could watch the door of the bedroom. Now and again, Mavis addressed one or two remarks to her, but the old woman merely shook her head, as if to convey that she had neither the wish nor the strength for further speech. Mavis, with a great fear, noted the failing light in her friend's eyes, but was convinced that, for all the weakening of the woman's physical processes, she desired as ardently as ever a sight of Mr Poulter before she died. A few minutes later, a greyness crept into Miss Nippett's face. Mavis repressed an inclination to fly from the room. Then, although she feared to believe the evidence of her ears, a knock was heard at the door. After what seemed an interval of centuries, she heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Mavis glanced at Miss Nippett.

She was horrified to see that her friend was heedless of Mr Poulter's possible approach. She moved quickly to the door. To her unspeakable relief, Mr Poulter stood outside. She beckoned him quickly into the room. He hastened to the bedside, where, after gazing sadly at the all but unconscious Miss Nippett, he knelt to take the woman's wan, worn hand in his. To Mavis's surprise, Miss Nippett's fingers at once closed on those of Mr Poulter. As the realisation of his presence reached the dying woman's understanding, a smile of infinite gladness spread over her face: a rare, happy smile, which, as if by magic, effaced the puckered forehead, the wasted cheeks, the long upper lip, to subst.i.tute in their stead a great contentment, such as might be possessed by one who has found a deep joy, not only after much travail, but as if, till the last moment, the longed-for bliss had all but been denied. The wan fingers grasped tighter and tighter; the smile faded a little before becoming fixed.

Another moment, and "Poulter's" had lost the most devoted servant which it had ever possessed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE ORDEAL

Mavis and Jill stood outside Mrs Gowler's, in the late evening of the Wednesday after the day on which Miss Nippett had commenced her long, long rest. Mavis had left the trunk she was bringing at the station (a porter was trundling it on), but before opening the gate of No. 9 Durley Road, she instinctively paused to take what she thought might prove a last look at the world.

The contented serenity of the summer night enhanced the meanness of the little street; but Mavis's imagination soared over the roofs, not only of the road in which she stood, but of countless other roofs, till it winged its way to Melkbridge. Instead of the depressing road, with its infrequent down-at-heel pa.s.sers-by, Mavis saw only the Avon as she had known it a year ago. The river flowed lazily beneath the pollard willows, as if complaisant enough to let these see their reflection in the water. Forget-me-nots jewelled the banks; ragged robin looked roguishly from, clumps of bushes; the scent of hay seemed to fill the world. That was then.

Now--! Before she had set out for Durley Road, she had penned a little note to Perigal. In this she had told him of the circ.u.mstances in which she was writing it, and had said that if it proved to be the last letter she should send him, that she would never cease to love and trust him in any world to which it might please G.o.d to take her. This was all she had written; but the moving simplicity of her words might have touched even Perigal's heart. Besides writing to her lover, Mavis had given Mrs Scatchard the address to which she was going, and had besought her, in the event of anything untoward happening, either to take Jill for her own or to find her a good home. Mrs Scatchard's promise to keep and cherish Jill herself, should anything happen to her mistress, cheered Mavis much.

Mavis took a last long look of the June night, sighed and entered the gate of No. 9: her nerves were so disordered that it seemed as if it shut behind her with a menacing clang. She knocked at the door, but, upon no one coming, she knocked again and again. She knew there was someone in the house, for the wailing of babies could be heard within.

For all anyone cared, her baby might have been born on the step. After knocking and waiting for quite a long time, the door was opened by a sad-faced girl, who, with the remains of a fresh complexion, looked as if she were countryborn and bred.

"Mrs Gowler?" asked Mavis wearily.

Without making any reply, the young woman left the door open and disappeared up the stairs. Mavis, followed by Jill, dragged herself into the pa.s.sage. The puling and smell of unwashed babies a.s.sailed her ears and nostrils to such an extent, that, to escape from these, she walked into the kitchen and closed the door. This room was empty, but, as on her last visit, a fire roared in the kitchener, before which innumerable rows of little garments were airing. Overpowered by the stifling heat, Mavis sank on a chair, where a horde of flies buzzed about her head and tried to settle on her face. She was about to seek the pa.s.sage in preference to the stuffy kitchen, when she heard a loud single knock at the front door. Believing this to be the porter with her luggage, she went to the door, to find that her surmise was correct.

"Which room shall I take it to, miss?"

"It will do if you put it in the hall," replied Mavis.

When she had paid the man and shut the door, she sat upon her box in the pa.s.sage. Jill nestled beside her, whilst Mavis rested with her fingers pressed well against her ears, to deaden the continual crying of babies which came from various rooms in the house.

As Mavis thus waited, disconsolate and alone, her heart sank within her. Her present case seemed to foreshadow the treatment she would receive at Mrs Gowler's hands during her confinement, which might now occur at any moment. As she waited, she lost all count of time; her whole being was concerned with an alteration in her habits of thought, which had been imminent during the last few months, but which needed a powerful stimulus to be completely effected. This was now supplied.

Hitherto, when it became a question whether she should consider others before herself, she had, owing to an instinct in her blood, chosen the way of self-abnegation. She often suspected that others took advantage of this unselfishness, but found it hard to do otherwise than she had always done. Whether it was owing to all she had lately endured, or because her maternal instinct urged her to think only of her as yet unborn little one, she became aware of a hardening of heart which convinced her of the expediency of fighting for her own hand in the future. Mrs Gowler's absence was the immediate cause of this manifestation. Had she not loved Perigal so devotedly and trusted him so completely, she would have left the miserable house in Durley Road and gone to an expensive nursing home, to insist later upon his meeting the bill. For all her awakened instinct of self, the fact of her still deciding to remain at Mrs Gowler's was a yet further sacrifice on the altar of the loved one. Perhaps this further self-effacement where her lover was concerned urgently moved her to stand no trifling in respect of others. Consequently, when about half-past ten Mrs Gowler opened the door, accompanied by her idiot son, Oscar, who looked more imbecile than ever in elaborate clothes, she was not a little surprised to be greeted by Mavis with the words:

"What does this mean?"

"What does what mean?" replied Mrs Gowler, bridling.

"Keeping me waiting like this."

"Wot do you expect for wot you're payin'--bra.s.s banns and banners?"

"I don't expect impertinence from you!" cried Mavis.

"Imperence! imperence! And oo's Mrs Kenrick to give 'erself such airs!

And before my Oscar too!"

"Listen to me," said Mavis.

"I wonder you don't send for your 'usband to go for me."

"But--"

"Your lovin' 'usband wot's in Ameriky a-making a snug little 'ome for you."

Mavis was, for the moment, vanquished by the adroitness of Mrs Gowler's thrust.

"I'm not well enough to quarrel. Please to show me my room."

"That's better. An' I'll be pleased to show you what you call 'my room'

when I've given my Oscar 'is supper," shouted Mrs Gowler, as she sailed into the kitchen, followed by her gibbering son, who twice turned to stare at Mavis.

Alone in the unlit, stuffy pa.s.sage, Mavis whispered her troubles to Jill. Tears came to her eyes, which she held back by thinking persistently of the loved one. While she waited, she heard the clatter of plates and the clink of gla.s.ses in the kitchen. Mavis would have gone for a short walk, but she had a superst.i.tious fear of going out of doors again till after her baby was born.

The sharp cry, as of one suddenly a.s.sailed by pain, came from the floor overhead. Then a door opened, and footsteps came to the top of the first flight of stairs.

"Mrs Gowler! Mrs Gowler!" cried a woman's voice frantically. But the woman had to call many times before her voice triumphed over the thickness of the kitchen door and the noise of the meal.

"Oo is it?" asked Mrs Gowler, when she presently came from the kitchen, with her mouth full of bread, cheese, stout, and spring onions.

"Liz--Mrs Summerville!" replied the woman.

"'Arf a mo', an' I'll be up," grumbled Mrs Gowler, as she returned to the kitchen, to emerge a few seconds later pinning on her ap.r.o.n.

"You finish yer supper, Oscar, but don't drink all the stout," she called to her son, as she went up the stairs. Before she had got to the landing, the cry was heard again and yet again. It sounded to Mavis like some wounded animal being tortured beyond endurance. The cries continued, to seem louder when a door was opened, and to be correspondingly deadened when this was closed. Mavis shuddered; antic.i.p.ation of the torment she would have to endure chilled the blood in her veins; cold shivers coursed down her back. It was as if she were imprisoned in a house of pain, from which she could only escape by enduring the most poignant of all torture inflicted by nature on sensitive human bodies. The cries became continuous. Mavis placed her fingers in her ears to shut them out. For all this precaution, a scream of pain penetrated to her hearing. A few moments later, when she had to use her hands in order to prevent Jill from jumping on to her lap, she did not hear a sound. Some quarter of an hour later, Mrs Gowler descended the stairs.

"A quick job that," she remarked to Mavis, who did not make any reply.

"Let's 'ope you'll be as sharp," added the woman, as she disappeared into the kitchen.

Mavis gathered from these remarks that a mother had been delivered of a child during Mrs Gowler's brief sojourn upstairs. The latter confirmed this surmise by saying a little later, when she issued from the kitchen drying her hands and bared arms on a towel:

"The worst of these here nursing 'omes is that yer never knows when you're going to be on the job. I didn't expect Liz till termorrer."

Mavis made no reply.

"Would you like a gla.s.s of stout?" asked Mrs Gowler.