Sparrows Part 63

"Then why don't you believe?"

"Supposing one can't."

"Can't?"

"It isn't given to everyone, you know."

"Then you think we're just like poor animals--"

"Don't say 'poor' animals," he interrupted. "They're ever so much happier than we."

"Nonsense! They don't know."

"To be ignorant is to be happy. When will you understand that?"

"Never."

"I know what you're thinking of--all the so-called mental development of mankind--love, memory, imagination, sympathy--all the finer susceptibilities of our nature. Is it that what you were thinking of?"

"Vaguely. But I couldn't find the words so nicely as you do."

"Perhaps I read 'em and got 'em by heart. But don't you see that all the fine things I mentioned have to be paid for by increased liability to mental distress, to forms of pain to which coa.r.s.e natures are, happily, strangers?"

"You talk like an unpleasant book," she laughed.

"And you look like a radiant picture," he retorted.

"Ss.h.!.+ Here we are."

"The moon's rising: it's full tonight. Think of me if you happen to be watching it," he said.

"I shall be fast asleep."

"And looking more charming than ever, if that be possible. I shall be having a row with my father."

"I daresay you can hold your own."

"That's what makes him so angry."

Mrs. Farthing, upon opening the door, was surprised to see Mavis standing beside young Mr Perigal.

"I think you can get home safely now," he remarked, as he raised his straw hat.

"Thanks for seeing me home."

"Don't forget your fish. Good night."

Mavis thought it well not to enter into any explanation of Perigal's presence to her landlady. She asked if supper were ready, to sit down to it directly she learned that it was. But she did not eat; whether or not her two hours spent in Perigal's company were responsible for the result, it did not alter the fact that her mind was distracted by tumult. The divers perplexities and questionings that had troubled her with the oncoming of the year now a.s.sailed her with increased force.

She tried to repress them, but, finding the effort unavailing, attempted to fathom their significance, with the result of increasing her distress. The only tangible fact she could seize from the welter in her mind was a sense of enforced isolation from the joys and sorrow of everyday humanity. More than this she could not understand.

She picked her food, well knowing that, if she left it untouched, Mrs Farthing would a.s.sociate her loss of appet.i.te with the fact of her being seen in the company of a man, and would lead the landlady to make ridiculously sentimental deductions, which would be embarra.s.sing to Mavis.

When she went upstairs, she did not undress. She felt that it would be useless to seek sleep at present. Instead, she stood by the open window of her room, and, after lighting a cigarette and blowing out the candle, looked out into the night.

It was just another such an evening that she had looked into the sky from the window of Mrs Ellis' on the first day of her stay on Kiva Street. Then, beyond sighing for the peace of the country, she had believed that she had only to secure a means of winning her daily bread in order to be happy. Now, although she had obtained the two desires of her heart, she was not even content. Perigal's words awoke in her memory:

"No sooner was a desire satisfied, than one was at once eager for something else."

It would almost seem as if he had spoken the truth--"almost," because she was hard put to it to define what it was for which her being starved.

Mavis looked out of the window. The moon had not yet emerged from a bank of clouds in the east; as if in honour of her coming, the edge of these sycophants was touched with silver light. The stars were growing wan, as if sulkily retiring before the approach of an overwhelming resplendence. Mavis's cigarette went out, but she did not bother to relight it; she was wondering how she was to obtain the happiness for which her heart ached: the problem was still complicated by the fact of her being ignorant in which direction lay the promised land.

Her windows looked over the garden, beyond which fields of long gra.s.ses stretched away as far as she could see. A profound peace possessed these, which sharply contrasted with the disquiet in her mind.

Soon, hitherto invisible hedges and trees took dim, mysterious shape; the edge of the moon peeped with glorious inquisitiveness over the clouds. Calmly, royally the moon rose. So deliberately was she unveiled, that it seemed as if she were revealing her beauty to the world for the first time, like a proud, adored mistress unrobing before an impatient lover, whose eyes ached for what he now beheld.

Mystery awoke in the night. Things before unseen or barely visible were now distinct, as if eager for a smile from the aloof loveliness soaring majestically overhead.

Mavis stood in the flood of silver light. For the moment her distress of soul was forgotten. She gazed with wondering awe at the G.o.ddess of the night. The moon's coldness presently repelled her: to the girl's ardent imaginings, it seemed to speak of calm contemplation, death--things which youth, allied to warm flesh and blood, abhorred.

Then she fell to thinking of all the strange scenes in the life history of the world on which the moon had looked--stricken fields, barbaric rites, unrecorded crimes, sacked and burning cities, the blackened remains of martyrs at the stake, enslaved nations sleeping fitfully after the day's travail, wrecks on uncharted seas, forgotten superst.i.tions, pagan saturnalias--all the thousand and one phases of life as it has been and is lived.

Although Mavis' tolerable knowledge of history told her how countless must be the sights of horror on which the moon had gazed, as indifferently as it had looked on her, she recalled, as if to leaven the memory of those atrocities (which were often of such a nature that they seemed to give the lie to the existence of a beneficent Deity), that there was ever interwoven with the web of life an eternal tale of love--love to inspire great deeds and n.o.ble aims; love to enchain the beast in woman and man; love, whose constant expression was the sacrifice of self upon the altar of the loved one.

Then her mind recalled individual lovers, famous in history and romance, who were set as beacon lights in the wastes of oppression and wrong-doing. These lovers were of all kinds. There were those who deemed the world well lost for a kiss of the loved one's lips; lovers who loved vainly; those who wearied of the loved one.

Mavis wondered, if love were laid at her feet, how it would find her.

She had always known that she was well able to care deeply if her heart were once bestowed. She had, also, kept this capacity for loving unsullied from what she believed to be the defilement of flirtation.

Now were revealed the depths of love and tenderness of which she was possessed. They seemed fathomless, boundless, immeasurable.

The knowledge made her sick and giddy. She clung to the window sill for support. It pained her to think that such a treasure above price was destined to remain unsought, unbestowed. She suffered, the while the moon soared, indifferent to her pain.

Suffering awoke wisdom: in the twinkling of an eye, she learned that for which her being starved. The awakening caused tremors of joy to pa.s.s over her body, which were succeeded by despondency at realising that it is one thing to want, another to be stayed. Then she was consumed by the hunger of which she was now conscious.

She seemed to be so undesirable, unlovable in her own eyes, that she was moved in her pa.s.sionate extremity to call on any power that might offer succour.

For the moment, she had forgotten the Source to which in times of stress she looked for help. Instead, she lifted her voice to the moon, the cold wisdom of which seemed to betoken strength, which seemed enthroned in the infinite in order to listen to and to satisfy yearnings, such as hers.

"It's love I want--love, love. I did not know before; now I know. Give me--give me love."

Then she cried aloud in her extremity. She was so moved by her emotions that she was not in the least surprised at the sound of her voice.

After she had spoken, she waited long for a sign; but none came. Mavis looked again on the night. Everything was white, cold, silent.

It was as if the world were at one with the deathlike stillness of the moon.