Part 92 (2/2)
”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.
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