Sparrows Part 125

Perigal's eyes glittered, a manifestation which Mavis noticed.

"You know how you used to laugh at my belief in Providence."

"Is that how you want me to help?"

"If you will."

Perigal's face fell.

"Fire away," he said, as he lit a cigarette.

Mavis told him something of her perplexities.

"I want to see things clearly. I want to find out exactly where I am.

Everything's so confusing and contradictory. I shan't be really happy till I know what I really and truly believe."

"How can I help you? You have to believe what you do believe."

"But why do I believe what I do believe?"

"Because you can't help yourself. Your present condition of mind is the result of all you have experienced in your existence acting upon the peculiar kind of intelligence with which your parents started you in life. Take my advice, don't worry about these things. If you look them squarely in the face, you only come to brutal conclusions. Life's a beastly struggle to live, and then, when subsistence is secured, to be happy. It's nature's doing; it sees to it that we're always sharpening our weapons."

Mavis did not speak for a few moments; when she did, it was to say:

"I can't understand how I escaped."

"From utter disaster?" he asked.

"Scarcely that."

"I hope not, indeed. But you were a fool not to write to me and let me have it for my selfishness. But I take it that at the worst you'd have written, when, of course, I should have done all I could."

"All?"

"Well--all I reasonably could."

"I wasn't thinking so much of that," said Mavis. "What I can't understand is why I've dropped into all this good fortune, even if it's at your expense."

"You owe it to the fact of your being your father's daughter and that he was friendly with the pater. Next, you must thank your personality; but the chief thing was that you are your father's daughter."

"And I often and often wished I'd been born a London shop-girl, so that I should never long for things that were then out of my reach. So there was really something in my birth after all."

"I should jolly well think there was. It's no end of an a.s.set. But to go back to what we were talking about."

"About nature's designs to make us all fight for our own?"

"Yes. Look at yourself. You're now ever so much harder than you were."

"Are you surprised?" she asked vehemently, as she all but betrayed her hatred.

"It's really a good thing from your point of view. It's made you more fitted to take your own part in the struggle."

"Then, those who injured me were the strong preying on the weak?" she asked.

"It's the unalterable law of life. It's a disagreeable one, but it's true. It's the only way the predominance of the species is a.s.sured."

"I think I'll have a cigarette," said Mavis.

"One of mine?"

"One of my own, thanks."

"You're very unkind to me," said Perigal.

"In not taking your cigarette?"

"You ignore everything that's been between us. You look on me as heartless, callous; you don't make allowances."

"For what?"

"My cursed temperament. No one knows better than I what a sn.o.b I am at heart. When you were poor, I did not value you. Now--"

"Now?"

"Can you ask?"

A joy possessed Mavis's heart; she felt that her moment of triumph was near.

Perigal went on:

"Still, I deserve all I get, and that's so rare in life that it's something in the nature of an experience."

Mavis did not speak. She was hoping no one would come to interrupt them.

"There's one thing you might have told me about," he went on.

"What?"

Perigal dropped his eyes as he said:

"Someone who died."

Mavis's heart was pitiless.

"Why should I?"

"He was mine as much as yours. There are several things I want to know.

And if it were the last word I utter, all that happened over that has 'hipped' me more than anything."