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Updated: June 13, 2025
Then a procession of the events in her life, which were for ever seared into her memory, passed before her mind's eye the terror that possessed her when she learned that she was to be a mother; her interview with Perigal at Dippenham; her first night in London, when she had awakened in the room in the Euston Road; Mrs Gowler's; her days of starvation in Halverton Street; the death and burial, not only of her boy, but of her love for and faith in Perigal all were remembered.
For three days the mother was kept in a suspense that served to protract the boy's illness, but, at the end of this time, largely owing to Mrs Gowler's advice, he began to improve.
After Mavis had got ready to hand things that might be wanted in the night, she settled herself in a chair by the head of the bed in order to snatch what sleep she might. Before she dozed, she wondered if that day week, which she would be spending at Mrs Gowler's, would find her as prostrated by illness as was her friend.
Had she not loved Perigal so devotedly and trusted him so completely, she would have left the miserable house in Durley Road and gone to an expensive nursing home, to insist later upon his meeting the bill. For all her awakened instinct of self, the fact of her still deciding to remain at Mrs Gowler's was a yet further sacrifice on the altar of the loved one.
Mavis gathered that they were mostly the mean sort of general servant, who had succumbed to the blandishments of the men who make it a practice to prey on this class of woman. So far as Mavis could see, they were mostly plain and uninteresting-looking; also, that the majority of them stayed only a few days, lack of means preventing them being at Mrs Gowler's long enough to recover their health.
For the life of her, she could not understand why such terrible caricatures of humanity were permitted to live, and were not put out of existence at birth. The common trouble of Mrs Gowler's lodgers seemed to establish a feeling of fellowship amongst them during the time that they were there.
In the event of Mavis wanting medical advice, Mrs Gowler had an arrangement with a doctor by which he charged the moderate fee of a shilling a visit to any of her patients that required his services. The extreme reasonableness of the terms inclined Mavis to decide on going to Mrs Gowler's. "There's only one thing," she said: "I've a dog; she's a great pet and quite clean.
Whenever the simple belief recurred to her, as it sometimes did, she would think of Mrs Gowler's, to shudder and put the thought of beneficent interference with the things of the world from her mind.
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.
"This time he spoke to me. He went soon after I told him we hadn't heard of you." "Did he send you to town to look for me?" "I did that on my own. I traced you to a dancing academy, then to North Kensington, and then to New Cross." "Where at New Cross?" asked Mavis, fearful that her friend had inquired for her at Mrs Gowler's. "I'd been given an address, but I lost it on the way.
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