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Updated: June 6, 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.
As of old, the stones were where she had placed them. Something impelled her to kick them in the river, but she forbore as she remembered that this glimpse of Perigal which they commemorated was, in effect, the first breath which her boy had drawn within her. And now ! Mavis was racked with pain.
The multitude of many coloured stars dazzled her brain. It seemed to her love-intoxicated imagination as if night embraced the earth, even as Perigal held her body to his, and that the stars were an illumination and were twinkling so happily in honour of the double union.
When Perigal came in, he was smoking a cigarette. "Trying to work up a domestic atmosphere," he laughed, with a faint suggestion of a sneer in his hilarity. Mavis bit her lip. "It was the obvious thing to do. Don't be obvious, little Mavis. It jars." "Won't you have some tea?" she faltered. "No, thanks. I've ordered something a jolly sight better than tea," he said, warming his hands at the fire.
He had always liked Mavis and would have done much more for her than he had already accomplished, if his womenfolk had permitted him to follow the leanings of his heart; he knew her well enough to know that she was not the girl to bestow herself lightly upon Charlie Perigal. He had not liked Perigal's share in the matter at all, and the whole business was still much of a mystery.
Perigal, despite her protests, was heaping up her plate a second time, when he said: "Do you know what I was dreading the whole way up?" "That you'd got into the right train!" "Scarcely that. I was funky you'd do the obvious sentimental thing, and wear the old Polperro dress." "As if I would!" "Anyway, you haven't. Besides, it's much too cold." He ordered champagne.
At first, I could scarcely bring my teeth to meet; but Perigal flourished his weapon, and my jaws went faster and faster, till I was not sorry to finish the whole of the biscuit and bacon placed before me, and could have taken twice as much if I could have got it. Perigal was right. From that day to this I have never suffered from sea-sickness.
Make room for Marmaduke, some of you youngsters there," exclaimed the old mate, for such I found he was, and caterer of the mess, "Remember your manners, will you, and be polite to strangers." "But he is not a stranger," said a boy near me. "Yes, he is, till he has broken biscuit with us," said old Perigal. "That reminds me that you are perhaps hungry, youngster.
She had no intention of asking Perigal for help, as in his last letter he had made copious reference to his straitened circumstances. Any debasing shifts and mean discomforts to which her poverty might expose her she looked on as a yet further sacrifice upon the altar of the loved one, faith in whom had become the cardinal feature of her life.
"Won't you come home to tea?" "No, thanks," said Miss Toombs, as she made off, to leave Mavis gazing at the ill-dressed, squat figure hurrying along the road. As might be expected, Miss Hunter's and Miss Toombs' disparagement of Charlie Perigal but served to incline Mavis in his favour. She thought of him all the way home, and wondered how soon she would see him again.
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