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Updated: May 27, 2025
And if a house influences the natures of those who dwell within its walls, how much more does the character of tenants find expression in the appearance of the place they inhabit? Hence the shabbiness and decay which Halverton Street suggested. Mavis heard from Perigal at infrequent intervals, when he would write scrappy notes inquiring after her health, and particularly after his child.
Mavis would not hear of it, till Windebank pointed out that her child's health might be permanently injured by further residence in unwholesome Halverton Street. Before Mavis fell in with his request, she stipulated that she was not to pay more than a pound a week for any rooms she might engage.
Halverton Street has an atmosphere of its own; it suggests shabby vice, unclean living, as if its inhabitants' lives were mysterious, furtive deviations from the normal.
She had previously resolved to wish him good-bye when they left the restaurant; but, somehow, when they went out together, she made no objection to his accompanying her in the direction of Halverton Street, the reason being that she felt wholly at home with him; he seemed so potent to protect her; he was so concerned for her happiness and well-being.
Mavis went on a similar errand to Halverton Street, to find that Lil had long since left and that there was no one in the house who knew of her whereabouts. She had been lost in one of the many foul undercurrents of London life. The one remaining person Mavis wished to benefit was Miss Toombs. For a long time, this independent-minded young woman resisted the offers that Mavis made her.
Mavis, for all her weariness, was not insensible to the suggestions that Halverton Street offered; but it was a hot July day; she had not properly recovered from her confinement; she felt that if she did not soon sit down she would drop in the street. She got a room for four shillings a week at the fifth house at which she applied in this street.
Miss Toombs accompanied Mavis along the Wilton Road and Denbigh Street. Halverton Street was presently reached. Mavis opened the door of Mrs Gussle's; with set face, she walked the passage to her room, followed by plain Miss Toombs. She unlocked the door of this and made way for her friend to enter.
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.
These were the "Permanent" and the "Lil" of Halverton Street days. One day, clad in shabby garments, she went to Mrs Gowler's address at New Cross to get news of the former. But the house of evil remembrance was to let; a woman at the next door house told Mavis that Mrs Gowler had been arrested and had got ten years for the misdeeds which the police had at last been able to prove.
This happened to be Cambridge Street, along the shabby pretentiousness of which they walked for some minutes in silence, each occupied with their thoughts. "How did you find out where I was?" she asked. "Miss Toombs." "You've seen her?" "She sent me 'Halverton Street' written on a piece of paper. I guessed what it meant." "You spoke to her before about me?" "Yes.
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