Sparrows Part 92

"That's what I say. I love the little dears. Gawd's messages I call them. All the same, they're there, as you might say. An' yer can't explain them away."

"True," smiled Mavis.

"An' their cost!" grumbled Mrs Gowler, as she drained the second bottle by putting it to her lips. "They simply eat good money, an' never 'ave enough."

"One must look after one's own," remarked Mavis.

"Little dears! 'Ow I love their pretty prattle. It makes me think of 'eavens an' Gawd's angels," said Mrs Gowler. Then, as Mavis did not make any remark, she added: "Six was born 'ere last week."

"So many!"

"But onny three's alive."

"The other three are dead!"

"It costs five bob a week an' extries to let a kid live, to say nothin'

of the lies and trouble an' all. An' no thanks you get for it."

"A mother loves and looks after her own," declared Mavis.

"Little dears! Ain't they pretty when they prattles their little prayers?" asked Mrs Gowler, as her lips parted in a terrible smile.

"Many's the time I've given 'em gin from me own bottle to give the little angels sleep."

She said more to the same effect, to pause before saying, with a return to her practical manner:

"An' the gentlemen! They're always 'appy when anything 'appens to baby."

Mavis looked at the woman with questioning eyes; she wondered what she meant. For a few moments Mrs Gowler attempted to lull Mavis's uneasiness by extravagant praise of infants' ways, which culminated in a hideous imitation of baby language. Suddenly she stopped; her little eyes glared fiercely at Mavis, while her face became rigid.

"What's the matter?" asked the girl.

Mrs Gowler rose unsteadily to her feet and said:

"Ten quid down will save you from forking out five bob a week till you're blue in the face from paying it."

Mavis stared at her in astonishment. Mrs Gowler backed to the door.

"Told yer you'd fallen on your feet. Next time you'll know better. No pretty pretties: one little nightdress is all you'll want. But it's spot cash."

Mavis was alone; it was, comparatively, a long time before she gathered what Mrs Gowler meant. When she realised that the woman had as good as offered to murder her child, when born, for the sum of ten pounds, her first impulse was to leave the house. But it was now late; she was worn out with the day's happenings; also, she reflected that, with the scanty means at her disposal, a further move to a like house to Mrs Gowler's might find her worse off than she already was. Her heart was heavy with pain when she knelt by her bedside to say her prayers, but, try as she might, she could find no words with which to thank her heavenly Father for the blessings of the day and to implore their continuance for the next, as was her invariable custom. When she got up from her knees, she hoped that the disabilities of her present situation would atone for any remissness of which she had been guilty.

Although she was very tired, it was a long time before she slept. She lay awake, to think long and lovingly of Perigal. This, and Jill's presence, were the two things that sustained her during those hours of sleeplessness in a strange, fearsome house, troubled as she was with the promise of infinite pain.

That night she loved Perigal more than she had ever done before. It seemed to her that she was his, body and soul, for ever and ever; that nothing could ever alter it. When she fell asleep, she did not rest for long at a stretch. Every now and then, she would awaken with a start, when, for some minutes, she would listen to the ticking of the American clock on the mantelpiece. Her mind went back to the vigil she had spent during Miss Nippett's kit night of life. Then, it had seemed as if the clock were remorselessly eager to diminish the remaining moments of the accompanist's allotted span. Now, it appeared to Mavis as if the clock were equally desirous of cutting short the moments that must elapse before her child was born.

The next morning, she was awakened soon after eight by the noise of a tray being banged down just inside the door, when she gathered that someone had brought her breakfast. This consisted of coa.r.s.ely cut bread, daubed with disquieting-looking b.u.t.ter, a boiled shop egg, and a cup of thin, stewed tea. As Mavis drank the latter, she recollected the monstrous suggestion which Mrs Gowler had insinuated the previous evening. The horror of it filled her mind to the exclusion of everything else. She had quite decided to leave the house as soon as she could pack her things, when a pang of dull pain troubled her body.

She wondered if this heralded the birth of her baby, which she had not expected for quite two days, when the pain pa.s.sed. She got out of bed and was setting about getting up, when the pain attacked her again, to leave her as it had done before. She waited in considerable suspense, as she strove to believe that the pains were of no significance, when she experienced a further pang, this more insistent than the last. She washed and dressed with all dispatch. While thus occupied, the pains again a.s.sailed her. When ready, she went downstairs to the kitchen, followed by Jill, to find the room deserted. She called "Mrs Gowler"

several times without getting any response. Before going to her box to get some things she wanted, she gave Jill a run in the enclosed s.p.a.ce behind the house. When Mavis presently went upstairs with an armful of belongings from her box, she heard a voice call from the further side of a door she was pa.s.sing:

"Was you wanting Piggy?"

"I wanted Mrs Gowler."

"She's gone out and taken Oscar with her."

"When will she be back?"

"Gawd knows. Was you wanting her pertikler?"

"Not very," answered Mavis, at which she sought her room.

For four hours, Mavis sat terrified and alone in the poky room, during which her pains gradually increased. They were still bearable, and not the least comparable to the mental tortures which continually threatened her, owing to the dreariness of her surroundings and her isolation from all human tenderness. Now and again, she would play with Jill, or she would remake her bed. When the horror of her position was violently insistent, she would think long and lovingly of Perigal, and of how he would overwhelm her with caresses and protestations of livelong devotion, could he ever learn of all she had suffered from her surrender at Looe.

About one, the door was thrust open, and Mrs Gowler, hot and perspiring, and wearing her bonnet, came into the room, carrying a plate, fork, knife, and spoon in one hand and a steaming pot in the other.

"'Elp yerself!" cried Mrs Gowler, as she threw the plate and spoon upon the bed and thrust the pot beneath Mavis's nose.

"It's coming on," said Mavis.

"You needn't tell me that. I see it in yer face. 'Elp yerself."

"But--"

"I'll talk to you when I've got the dinners. 'Elp yerself."

"What is it?" asked Mavis.

"Lovely boiled mutting. Eat all you can swaller. You can do with it before you've done," admonished the woman.

Six o'clock found Mavis lying face downwards on the bed, her body racked with pain. Mrs Gowler sat impa.s.sively on the only chair in the room, while Jill watched her mistress with frightened eyes from a corner. Now and again, when a specially violent pain tormented her body, Mavis would grip the head rail of the bed with her hands, or bite Perigal's ring, which she wore suspended from her neck. Once, when Mrs Gowler was considerate enough to wipe away the beads of sweat, which had gathered on the suffering girl's forehead, Mavis gasped:

"Is it nearly over?"

"What! Over!" laughed Mrs Gowler mirthlessly. "I call that the preliminary canter."

"Will it be much worse?"

"You're bound to be worse before you're better."

"I can't--I can't bear it!"

"Bite yer wedding ring and trus' in Gawd," remarked Mrs Gowler, in the manner of one mechanically repeating a formula. "This is what some of the gay gentlemen could do with."

"It's--it's terrible," moaned Mavis.

"'Cause it's your first. When you've been here a few times, it's as easy as kiss me 'and."

Very soon, Mavis was more than ever in the grip of the fiend who seemed bent on torturing her without ruth. She had no idea till then of the immense ingenuity which pain can display in its sport with prey. During one long-drawn pang, it would seem to Mavis as if the bones in her body were being sawn with a blunt saw; the next, she believed that her flesh was being torn from her bones with red-hot pincers. Then would follow a hallowed, blissful, cool interval from searing pain, which made her think that all she had endured was well worth the suffering, so vastly did she appreciate relief. Then she would fall to s.h.i.+vering. Once or twice, it seemed that she was an instrument on which pain was extemporising the most ingenious symphonies, each more involved than the last. Occasionally, she would wonder if, after all, she were mistaken, and if she were not enjoying delicious sensations of pleasure. Then, so far as her pain-racked body would permit, she found herself wondering at the apparently endless varieties of torment to which the body could be subjected.

Once, she asked to look at herself in the gla.s.s. She did not recognise anything resembling herself in the swollen, distorted features, the distended eyes, and the dilated nostrils which she saw in the gla.s.s which Mrs Gowler held before her. She was soon lost to all sense of her surroundings. She feared that she was going mad. She rea.s.sured herself, however, because, by a great effort of will, she would conjure up some recollection of the loved one's appearance, which she saw as if from a great distance. Then, after eternities of torment, she was possessed by a culminating agony. Sweat ran from her pores. Every nerve in her being vibrated with suffering, as if the acc.u.mulated pain of the ages was being conducted through her body. More and even more pain. Then, a supreme torment held her, which made all others seem trifling by comparison. The next moment, a new life was born into the world--a new life, with all its heritage of certain sorrow and possible joy; with all its infinite sensibility to pleasure or pain, to hope and love and disillusion.