Sparrows Part 96

"You're fond of children?" commented Mavis.

The girl nodded, the while she bit her lip.

"I can see you've had baby brothers or sisters," remarked Mavis.

"How do you know?"

"By the way you hold him."

"What do you think of Gertie?" asked Lil quickly.

"Who's Gertie?"

"Mr Gussle. Upstairs we always call him Gertie."

"I can't make him out," said Mavis, at which she learned from Lil that Mr Gussle loathed his present means of earning a livelihood; also, that he hungered for respectability, and that, to satisfy his longing, he frequented, in his spare time, a tin tabernacle of evangelical leanings. Mavis also learned that the girls upstairs, knowing of Mr Gussle's proclivities, tempted him with cigarettes, spirits, and stimulating fleshly allurements.

One day, when Mavis had left her sleeping baby to go out for a few minutes, she returned to find Lil nursing her boy, the while tears fell from her eyes. Mavis pretended not to notice the girl's grief. She busied herself about the room, till Lil recovered herself. Later, when Mavis was getting seriously pressed for money, she came across odd half sovereigns in various parts of the room, which she rightly suspected had been put there by her friend. For all Lil's entreaties, Mavis insisted on returning the money. Lil constantly wore a frock to which Mavis took exception because it was garish. One day she spoke to Lil about it.

"Why do you so often wear that dress?" she asked.

"Don't you like it?"

"Not a bit. It's much too loud for you."

"I don't like it myself."

"Then why wear it?"

"It's my 'lucky dress.'"

"Your what?"

"'Lucky' dress. Don't you know all we girls have their 'lucky' dresses?"

This was news to Mavis.

"You mean a dress that--"

"Brings us luck with the gentlemen," interrupted Lil.

The subject thus opened, Lil became eloquent upon many aspects of her occupation. Presently she said:

"It isn't always the worst girls who are 'on the game.'"

"Indeed!"

"So many are there through no fault of their own."

"How is that?" asked Mavis.

"They get starved into it. It's all these big shops and places. They pay sweating wages, and to get food the girls pick up men. That's the beginning."

Mavis nodded a.s.sent. She remembered all she had heard and seen on this matter when at "Dawes'."

"And the small employers are getting just as bad. And of them the women are the worst. They don't care how much they grind poor girls down. If anything, I b'lieve they enjoy it. And if once a girl goes wrong, they're the ones to see she don't get back. Why is it they hate us so?"

"Give it up," replied Mavis, who added, "I should think it wanted an awful lot of courage."

"Courage! courage! You simply mustn't think. And that's where drink comes in."

Mavis sighed.

"Don't you ever take to the life," admonished Lil.

"I'm not likely to," shuddered Mavis.

"'Cause you ain't the least built that way. And thank G.o.d you ain't."

"I do; I do," said Mavis fervently.

"It's easy enough to blame, I know; but if you've a little one and no one in the wide world to turn to for help, and the little one's crying for food, what can a poor girl do?" asked Lil, as she became thoughtful and sad-looking.

A time came when Mavis was sorely pressed for money to buy the bare necessaries of life. She could not even afford soap with which to wash her own and her baby's clothes. Of late, she had made frequent visits to Mrs Scatchard's, where she had left many of her belongings. All of these that were saleable she had brought away and had disposed of either at p.a.w.nshops or at second-hand dealers in clothes. She had at last been constrained to part with her most prized trinkets, even including those which belonged to her father and the ring that Perigal had given her, and which she had worn suspended from her neck.

She now had but one and sixpence in the world. The manifold worries and perplexities consequent upon her poverty had affected her health. She was no longer able to supply her baby with its natural food. She was compelled to buy milk from the neighbouring dairy and to sterilise it to the best of her ability. To add to her distress, her boy's health suffered from the change of diet. Times without number, she had been on the point of writing to Perigal to tell him of all she had suffered and to ask for help, but pride had held her back. Now, the declension in her boy's health urged her to throw this pride to the winds, to do what common sense had been suggesting for so long. She had prayed eloquently, earnestly, often, for Divine a.s.sistance: so far, no reply had been vouchsafed. When evening came, she could bear no longer the restraint imposed by the four walls of her room. She had had nothing to eat that day; all she had had the day before was a crust of bread, which she had gleefully lighted upon at the back of her cupboard. This she would have shared with Jill, had not her friend despised such plain fare. Jill had lately developed a habit of running upstairs at meal times, when, after an interval, she would come down to lick her chops luxuriously before falling asleep.

Mavis was faint for lack of nourishment; hunger pains tore at her stomach. She felt that, if she did not get some air, she would die of the heat and exhaustion. Her baby was happily sleeping soundly, so she had no compunction in setting out. She crossed Lupus Street, where her nostrils were offended by the smell of vegetable refuse from the costermonger stalls, to walk in the direction of Victoria. The air was vapid and stale, but this did not prevent the dwellers in Pimlico from sitting at open windows or standing on doorsteps in order to escape the stuffiness of their houses. They were mostly vulgar lodging-house people, who were enjoying their ease following upon the burden of the day; but Mavis found herself envying them, if only for the fact that their bodies were well supplied with food. Hunger unloosed a savage rage within her, not only against everyone she encountered, but also against the conditions of her life. "What was the use of being of gentle birth?" she asked herself, if this were all it had done for her.

She deeply regretted that she had not been born an ordinary London girl, in which case she would have been spared the possession of all those finer susceptibilities with which she now believed herself to be cursed, and which had prevented her from getting a.s.sistance from Perigal. She lingered by the cook shop in Denbigh Street, where she thought that she had never smelt anything so delicious as the greasy savours which came from the eating-house. It was only with a great effort of will that she stopped herself from spending her last one and sixpence (which she was keeping for emergency) in food. When she reached the Wilton Road, she walked of a set purpose on the station side of that thoroughfare. She feared that the restaurants opposite might prevail against her already weakened resolution. By the time she reached the Victoria Underground Station, her hunger was no longer under control. Her eyes searched the gutters greedily for anything that was fit to eat. She glared wolfishly at a ragged boy who picked up an over-ripe banana, which had been thrown on the pavement. The thought of the little one at home decided her. She turned in the direction of the post-office, having at last resolved to wire to her lover for help.

"Well, I'm blowed!" said a familiar voice at her side. Mavis turned, to see the ill-dressed figure of flat-chested, dumpy Miss Toombs.

"Miss Toombs!" she faltered.

"Didn't you see me staring at you?"

"Of course not. What are you doing in London?"

"I'm up here on a holiday. I am glad to see you."

"So am I. Good night."

"Eh!"

"I must go home. I said good night."

"You are a pig. I thought you'd come and have something to eat."