Sparrows Part 126

"I shall tell you nothing," declared Mavis.

"I've a right to know."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I tell you, no. You left me to fight alone; it was all so terrible, I daren't think of it more than I can help."

"But--"

"There are no 'buts,' no anything. I bore the sorrow alone, and I shall keep to myself all the tenderness that remains: nothing can ever alter it."

"You say that as if you hated me. Don't do that, little Mavis. I love you more than I do my mean selfish self."

"You love me!"

"I do now. I wanted you to know. Once or twice, I hoped--never mind what. But from the way you said what you said just now, I see it's utterly 'off.'"

"You never said anything truer. And do you know why?" she asked with flaming eye.

"Because I left you in the lurch?"

"Not altogether that, but because you were a coward, and, above all, a fool, in the first place. I know what I was. I see what other women are, and it makes me realise my value. I realise my value as, if you'd married me, I'd have faced death, anything with you. Pretty women with a few brains who'll stick to a man are rather scarce nowadays. But it wasn't good enough for you: you wouldn't take the risk. You've no--no stuffing. That is why, if you and I were left alone in the world together for the rest of our lives, I should never do anything but despise you."

Perigal's face went white. He bit his thin lips. Then he smiled as he said:

"Retributive justice."

"I'm sorry to be so candid. But it's what I've been thinking for months. I've only waited for an opportunity to say it."

"We've both scored," he said. "You can't take away what you've given, and that's a lot to be thankful for--but--but--"

"Well?"

"I'm dependent for my bread and b.u.t.ter on a woman who bores me to death, and have to look to a family for any odd jobs I may get--a family that, whatever they may do for me, I should always despise.

That, and because I see what a fool I've been to lose you, is where you've scored."

As he strolled away, wondering how Mavis could be so indifferent to him after all that had happened, she did not trouble to glance after his retreating form.

Henceforth, Mavis was left much to herself. Perigal avoided her; whilst Windebank, about this time, to her annoyance, discontinued his frequent visits. Having so much time on her hands, Mavis returned to her old prepossessions about the why and wherefore of the varied happenings in her life.

Looking back, she found that her loving trust, her faith in her lover, her girlish innocence of the ways of sensual men had been chiefly responsible for her griefs; that it was indeed, as Perigal said, that she in her weakness had been preyed upon by the strong. Thus, it followed that girlish confidence in the loved one's word, the primal instinct of abnegation of self to the adored one, whole-hearted faith--all these characteristics (which were above price) of a loving heart were in the nature of a handicap in the struggle for happiness.

It also followed that a girl thus equipped would be at a great disadvantage in rivalry with one who was cold, selfish, calculating.

Mavis shuddered as she reached this conclusion.

Her introspections were interrupted by an event that, for the time, put all such thoughts from her mind.

One morning, upon going into Harold's room, she found that he did not recognise her. The local doctor, who usually attended him, was called in; he immediately asked for another opinion. This being obtained from London, the remedies the specialist prescribed proved so far beneficial that the patient dimly recovered the use of his senses, with the faint promise of further improvement if the medical instructions were obeyed to the letter. Then followed for Mavis long, scarcely endurable night watches, which were so protracted that often it seemed as if the hand of time had stopped, as if darkness for ever enshrouded the world.

When, at last, day came, she would make an effort to s.n.a.t.c.h a few hours' sleep in order to fit her for the next night's attendance on the loved one. The shock of her husband's illness immediately increased her faith in Divine Providence. It was as if her powerlessness in the face of this new disaster were such that she relied on something more than human aid to give her help. Always, before she tried to sleep, she prayed long and fervently to the Most High that He would restore her beloved husband to comparative health; that He would interfere to arrest the fell disease with which he was afflicted. She prayed as a mother for a child, sick unto death. At the back of her mind she had formed a resolution that, if her prayer were answered, she would believe in G.o.d for the rest of her life with all her old-time fervour.

She dared not voice this resolve to herself; she believed that, if she did so, it would be in the nature of a threat to the Almighty; also, she feared that, if her husband got worse, it would be consequently inc.u.mbent on her to lose the much needed faith in things not of this world. Thus, when Mavis knelt she poured out her heart in supplication.

She was not only praying for her husband but for herself.

But Mavis's prayer was unheard. Her husband steadily got worse. One night, when the blackness of the sky seemed as a pall thrown over the corpse of her hopes, she took up a chance magazine, in which some verses, written to G.o.d by an author, for whose wide humanity Mavis had a great regard, attracted her.

The substance of these lines was a complaint of His pitiless disregard of the world's sorrow. One phrase particularly attracted her: it was "His unweeting way."

"That is it," thought Mavis. "That expresses exactly what I feel. There is, there must be, a G.o.d, but His ways are truly unweeting. He has seen so much pain that He has got used to it and grown callous."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

THE WELL-BELOVED

One morning, when Mavis was leaving Harold, she was recalled by one of the nurses. He had signalled that he wished to see her again. Upon Mavis hastening to his side, he tried to speak, but could not. His eyes seemed to smile a last farewell till unconsciousness possessed him.

As before, Mavis called in the most expensive medical advice, which told her that nothing could be done. It appeared that Harold's spine had commenced to curve in such a manner that his lungs were seriously affected. It was only a question of months before the slight thread, by which his life hung, would be snapped. Mavis knew of many cases in which enfeebled lungs had been bolstered up for quite a long time by a change to suitable climates; she was eager to know if the same held good in her husband's case.

"Oh yes," said the great specialist. "There were parts of South Africa where the veld air was so rarefied that a patient with scarcely any lung at all might live for several years. But--"

"But what?" asked Mavis.

"If I may say so, he will never be other than what he now is. Would it be advisable to prolong--?"

The expression on Mavis's face stopped him short in the middle of his question.

"Of course, if you've decided to send him, it's quite another matter,"

he went on. "In that case, you cannot be too careful in seeing he has the most reliable attendants procurable."

Mavis hesitated the fraction of a second before replying:

"I should go with him."

It needed only that brief moment for Mavis to make up her mind. She would do her utmost to prolong her husband's life; she would accompany him wherever he went to obtain this end.

In making this last resolve, Mavis knew well the trials and discomforts to which she would expose herself. Her well-ordered days, her present existence, which seemed to run on oiled wheels, the friends and refinements with which she had surrounded herself, the more particularly appealed to her when contrasted with the lean years of her earlier life. Her days of want, joined to her natural inclinations, had created a hunger for the good things of the earth, which her present opulence had not yet stayed. She still held out her hands to grasp the beautiful, satisfying things which money, guided by a mind of some force and a natural refinement, can buy. Therefore, it was a considerable sacrifice for Mavis to give up the advantage she not only possessed, but keenly appreciated, to tend a man who was a physical and mental wreck, in a part of the world remote from civilising influences.

But, together with her grief for the loss of her boy, there lived in her heart an immense and ineradicable remorse for having married her husband from motives of revenge against his family.

Harold's living faith in her goodness kept these regrets green; otherwise, the kindly hand of time would have rooted them from her heart.

"Do you believe?" Mavis had once asked of her husband on a day when she had been troubled by things of the spirit.

"In you," he had replied, which was all she could get from him on the subject.

His reply was typical of the whole-hearted reverence with which he regarded her.