"I don't know if the church is open; but, if it is, they've been decorating it for—for—Would you very much mind?"
"Play to me: play to me!" cried Mavis.
The musician, whose whole appearance was eloquent of the soil, clumped across the gravelled path of the churchyard, followed by Mavis. He tried many doors, all of which were locked, till he came to a small door in the tower; this was unfastened.
He admitted Mavis, and then struck a wax match to enable her to see. The cold smell of the church at once took her mind back to when she had entered it as a happy, careless child. With heart filled with dumb despair, she sat in the first seat she came to. As she waited, the gloom was slowly dissipated, to reveal the familiar outlines of the church. At the same time, her nostrils were assailed by the pervading and exotic smell of hot-house blooms.
The noise made by the opening of the organ shutters cracked above her head and reverberated through the building. While she waited, none of the sacred associations of the church spoke to her heart; her soul was bruised with pain, rendering her incapable of being moved by the ordinary suggestions of the place. Then Trivett played. Mavis's highly-strung, distraught mind ever, when sick as now, seeking the way of health, listened intently, devoutly, to the message of the music. Sorrow was the musician's theme: not individual grief, but the travail of an aged world. There had been, there was, such an immense accumulation of anguish that, by comparison with the sum of this, her own griefs now seemed infinitesimal. Then the organ became eloquent of the majesty of sorrow. It was of no dumb, almost grateful, resignation to the will of a Heavenly Father, who imposed suffering upon His erring children for their ultimate good, of which it spoke. Rather was the instrument eloquent of the power wielded by a pagan god of pain, before whose throne was a vast aggregation of torment, to which every human thing, and particularly loving women, were, by the conditions consequent on their nature, condemned to contribute. In return for this inevitable sacrifice, the god of pain bestowed a dignity of mind and bearing upon his votaries, which set them apart, as though they were remote from the thoughtless ruck.
While Trivett played, Mavis was eased of some of her pain, her mind being ever receptive to any message that music might offer. When the organ stopped, the cold outlines of the church chilled her to the marrow. The snap occasioned by the shutting up of the instrument seemed a signal on the part of some invisible inquisitor that her torments were to recommence. Before Trivett joined her, the sound of the church clock striking the hour smote her ear with its vibrant, insistent notes. This reminder of the measuring of time recalled to Mavis the swift flight, not only of the hours, but of the days and years. It enabled her dimly to realise the infinitesimal speck upon the chart of recorded time which even the most prolonged span of individual life occupied. So fleeting was this stay, that it almost seemed as if it were a matter of no moment if life should happen to be abbreviated by untimely death. Whilst the girl's mind thus struggled to alleviate its pain and to mend the gaps made by the slings and arrows of poignant grief in its defences, Trivett stumbled downstairs and blundered against the pews as he approached. Then the two walked home, where Mavis resumed her lonely vigil beside the ark which contained all that was mortal of her baby. No matter what further anguish this watch inflicted, she could not suffer her boy to be alone during the last night of his brief stay on earth.
The next afternoon, about two, when all Melkbridge was agog with excitement at the wedding of Major Perigal's son to Victoria Devitt, two funeral carriages might have been seen drawing up at a cottage in the Broughton Road. Under the driver's seat of the first was quickly placed a small coffin, which was smothered with wreaths, while a tall, comely, fair young woman, clad in deep mourning, stepped into the coach, the blinds of which were closely drawn. A homely, elderly man, accompanied by his wife, got into the next, and the two carriages drove off at a smart trot in the direction of the town. Soon after the little procession had started, a black spaniel might have been seen escaping into the road, where it followed the carriages with its nose to the ground, much in the same way as it had been used to follow the Pimlico 'buses in which its mistress travelled when she had carried her baby.
Mavis, white and drawn, lay back in the carriage that was proceeding on its relentless way. She did not know, she did not care, who had made the arrangements for this dismal ride. All she knew was that all she had left of life seemed confined in the glass case beneath the driver's seat.
During the morning, Mrs Trivett had brought in wreaths of flowers from Windebank, Miss Toombs, herself, and her husband. A last one had arrived, which bore upon the attached card, "From C.P., with all imaginable sympathy." Mavis, after glancing at the well-remembered writing, had trodden the flowers underfoot and then had passionately kicked the ruined wreath from the room.
He, at least, should have no part in her sorrowful lot. As she drove into the town, she was now and again met by gay carriages which were returning from setting down wedding guests at the church door. The drivers of these wore wedding favours pinned to their coats, while their whips were decorated with white satin ribbons. As each carriage passed, Mavis felt a sharp tugging at her heart. She guessed that she was not being driven to Melkbridge; she wondered with an almost impersonal curiosity whither they were bound. She had been told, but she had not listened. She had reached such depths of suffering—indeed, she had quite touched bottom—that it now needed an event of considerable moment to make the least impression on her mutilated sensibilities. When they reached the market-place and bore to the right, she gathered that they were going to Pennington.